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Millennial Tech Workers Losing Ground In US
Nerval's Lobster writes Millennial tech workers are entering the U.S. workforce at a comparable disadvantage to other tech workers throughout the industrialized world, according to study earlier this year from Educational Testing Services (PDF). How do U.S. millennials compare to their international peers, at least according to ETS? Those in the 90th percentile (i.e., the top-scoring) actually scored lower than top-scoring millennials in 15 of the 22 studied countries; low-scoring U.S. millennials ranked last (along with Italy and England/Northern Ireland). While some experts have blamed the nation's education system for the ultimate lack of STEM jobs, other studies have suggested that the problem isn't in the classroom; a 2014 report from the U.S. Census Bureau suggested that many of the people who earned STEM degrees didn't actually go into careers requiring them. In any case, the U.S. is clearly wrestling with an issue; how can it introduce more (qualified) STEM people into the market?
Makes me glad I'm one of the last born Gen X'ers.
introduce them all....this ain't about work. it's about wages.
College is too Expensive, doesn't guarantee a job in the US. In WA State, they used to be heavily subsidized. Now they aren't. Not enough STEM, Businesses lobby the Govt for more H1B visas and out-source more. Vicious circle since the mid 90s.
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EEs coming out of places like MIT with degrees in MATLAB. Physicists coming out of Stanford with degrees in Mathematica. Circuits? What's that? FPGAs? What's that stand for again? Been happening long enough in some places I've seen that senior management thinks it have software without coding, eletronics without soldering, and mechanisms without machining. Sad. But all rooted in laziness and an inability to handle criticism or recognize polite discouragement for what it is. No mystery.
Pay us well (and give us raises as we gain experience so we don't have to job-hop to be paid market rates).
Treat us well (no more 70 hour weeks, no more rollout-on-weekends-with-no-comp-time, no more demand to fix bugs on our own time, no more keeping us in meetings all week then wondering why work didn't get done on time, etc).
Give us job security (no more you-are-useless-if-you-are-over-40).
Do that, or even some of that, and the workforce will swell with tech workers.
copy finland
whatever they do, we do the same
#1 thing we should copy from finland's universities:
https://www.jyu.fi/en/academic...
Doctoral sword
The sword used at the Degree Ceremony is independent Finland's official civilian sword. The sword comes with a scabbard and a black or golden holder. The University's golden symbol will also be on the sword. Other traditional swords can also be used if available.
The sword is traditionally carried on the left side. Men carry the sword in its holder. A loop for the holder can be sewn into pants and the sword will stay firmly in place because there is a catch on the scabbard. Female doctors should also have a sword. In most cases the sword cannot be directly attached to dresses, because the material is not strong enough. A belt with a loop can be used, or the sword can be attached to a skirt at the waist by taking out some of the seam, or the fastening can be hidden under the top of a two-piece outfit. There is also the option of carrying the sword in hand.
The person's name, the date of their dissertation and the date of the Degree Ceremony is etched on the sword. One does not need to attend a Degree Ceremony to purchase a sword.
To buy the doctoral sword the Promovendi can join the collective order. Additional information on the collective order will be sent later for all registered Doctors.
i mean, that's just awesome. if we gave our graduates swords, i think they would try harder, right?
all joking aside, we really should just copy finland
fuck japan, it's a closed society and a stifling culture that doesn't have anything to translate to our own
but finland, we can just copy their system wholesale
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
the companies that are hiring electrical engineers either aren't doing it in America or they're importing their labor. EE is a dead end in America because of this. There's also practically no entry level jobs because there's no factories to cut your teeth in. It's kinda hard to compete when other countries can dump their toxic sludge into drinking water. It's not laziness, it's survival instinct. That skill is all but worthless in a country with zero protection for it's native industry and workers.
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You have a good point, but H1Bs are slave labor because it gives the employer power to kick an employee not just out of the company but out of the country. It's tough for locals to compete in that market.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Another problem is that very few companies want to invest in their workers. They want somebody who already has the skills that they need, and will be performing the same role for the extent of their employment there. No wonder there is so much job hopping among the people who are qualified. Never mind that even qualified people take weeks or months to get up to speed in a project of any complexity. Everybody's asking for, "Hit the ground running."
My problem is that my last 15 years of education, work, and hobbies, they just sweep it away as "Not qualified." Heinlein's Specialization is for insects? Doesn't exist as far as recruiters are concerned. You've been a network admin but haven't used OSPF? Fail. You've been a Clojure programmer but haven't used it for a commercial client? Fail. You've run a helpdesk for dozens of clients but haven't supported thousands of clients? Fail. Well, you recruiters fail, as far as I'm concerned.
Have a nice time.
Green Card is the only honest resident alien immigrant status. All others (student visas, J1, H1B, etc.) exist to force techies to accept 2nd class citizen status. If you compete with people for whom getting fired equals getting deported, you will think twice about asking for a partnership in your tech company the way any lawyer or doctor would ask if they contribute to their practice. You may be just as smart or well-educated, but you can be replaced by an indentured servant. Before serfdom was abolished, they used to advertise serfs with special skills (music talents, poetic writing talents, etc.) Being better skilled won't get you ahead if you have no power to bargain for your wages. And unlike low-skilled workers, you can't retrain after half a life-time of learning. You are in. As long as there is any legal immigrant status other than a Green Card, any US citizen would be insane to pursue a STEM career. To make a decent wage, you need to be in top 10%. And if you that smart, any career other career will do.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
It's not that hard to figure out.
4 jobs at 40 hours equals 5 jobs at 32 hours.
And as an employer, my per-employee loading costs go up by 20%.
Tell you what: Go to a single payer health care system, roll unemployment, disability, and retirement into a Basic Guaranteed Income program, and define away poverty because with a BGI, it doesn't exist, and I'll happily split up jobs into as many pieces as you want, down to 20 hours/week/worker, because it won't cost me extra to hire more people, as long as the same number of hours get worked.
Until then, thank your government unfunded mandates and offshoring for current unemployment levels (26%+, according to World Bank numbers, since DOL unemployment statistics only count people receiving unemployment insurance, and vastly underestimate the number of unemployed).
If you want to fix the offshoring problem, I can help with that, too, but you really need to abandon the TPP, modify NAFTA to eliminate the trans-shipment loophole, and eliminate MFN status for China (for starters; there's other things that will need to happen on top of that, but it's the minimum foundational bedrock necessary to move forward).
"Pay us well" Meaning that Fair Market value shouldn't be based on what you can pay people in a third-world country where the cost of living is 1/8 what it is here.
"Treat us well". Not equally, Working everyone to death equally is like Communism - everyone equally poor.
"Give us job security". Once upon a time, your knowledge of the company and how it runs and how best to make it run was considered as important as actual technical skills and not something to be lightly discarded just because this quarter ran under than management wants to keep their bonuses up/prop up stock prices by laying off people en-masse.
Just because you have a cushy job where they still behave companies did pre-1980 doesn't mean that that's how the majority of today's corporations work. If they should happen to change - and companies do change - I worked at one where doing a good job was guarantee of employment until one day - literally one day - their new owners threw that policy away, dumped whole departments on the street. It was such a big cultural shift that the local news agencies reported on it.
And when that day comes, you'll find that all those job offers you've been getting aren't so shiny as they appeared.
Finally, one last bit of advice. Before you go quacking out that Nobody owes anyone a job, remember that nobody owes a company any business either. If you're going to go by third-world market rates and lay off the greedy locals, don't be surprised if the unemployed locals can no longer afford your products and the third-world potential customers don't want to pay first-world prices.
Finnish education system has been fucked for past 10 years already.
Teaching has become female-only profession and only people who are accepted to study to be teachers here are straight-a geeks(the bad kind) who lack the proper authority in front of the class.
There is/were large number of good class teachers in the post-war generations, but those people are now/soon retiring.
The trade union of teachers, AKAVA is well known joke in the union field and isn't strong enough to actually do anything that matters to improve things.
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