

Study: There may not be a shortage of American STEM graduates after all - ilamont
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/study-there-may-not-be-a-shortage-of-american-stem-graduates-after-all/2013/04/24/66099962-acea-11e2-a8b9-2a63d75b5459_story.html?hpid=z3

======
pbiggar
This (and the discussion around it) are bullshit. They somehow think on STEM
job is equivalent to another, which is lunacy.

\- Talking about all STEM graduates as equal is pointless, because some people
are useless and some are amazing.

\- Talking about STEM in general is useless, because software is booming, and
nothing else really is.

\- Talking about all H1B jobs as the same is also bollox: half are employed by
infosys (etc) as low cost (and low quality) contractors to avoid paying a fair
wage (against the rules of the H1B program as I understand it). However,
Google and Facebook (etc) are paying them great salaries, equal to what they
pay US employees (even though the expenses are higher with visa and relocation
costs).

So startups and high growth companies are being starved of great talent,
because chemists can't find jobs and Infosys is trying to depress wages of
low-quality IT workers? Makes no sense.

~~~
jmduke
_because software is booming_

Do you have statistics for this? While the need for STEM is obviously rising,
I feel like a lot of this conversation devolves into an echo chamber: I'd love
to see hard statistics about STEM career demand.

~~~
pbiggar
I know that when I sent an email to the YC founders list cause I needed a job
(2 years ago, but that's recent), I got 100 replies. I also know I find it
hard to find really good devs for CircleCI. But those are just anecdotes...

~~~
bicknergseng
Anecdotal evidence in the opposite direction: only half of my computer
engineering peers in my graduating class of 2011 had jobs in the industry
within 3 months of graduating.

While I think some devs are in high demand, I think many have little
horizontal or upward mobility if they can get a job at all. I don't have a lot
of evidence to back this up, and that WP study seems to talk a lot more about
IT than software development, but I think it's probably something to think
about. I think there's a crisis in training and mentorship in our industry,
rather than one of willing bodies.

~~~
pbiggar
I totally agree, and I don't think that's actually an argument in the opposite
direction, but rather an affirmation: good people have great opportunity, bad
people do not. Half of my classmates in college were poor programmers, so I
don't doubt that yours were too.

Which is my point above: we're starved of great devs because of stats about
shit devs.

~~~
bicknergseng
But I think that misses my point... I don't think we get to complain about a
lack of good developers without trying to do something to make the bottom 50%
of developers better. Taken in the context of the general population, that
bottom 50% is still highly intelligent and generally very capable group of
individuals.

IMO we're starved of great devs because we don't make bad devs better.

~~~
ktsmith
It used to be that employers trained less skilled individuals and there was
more incentive to stay with employers for a long time. Now there is very
little loyalty between employees or employers. I think this is a significant
part of the problem.

~~~
lsc
> It used to be that employers trained less skilled individuals and there was
> more incentive to stay with employers for a long time. Now there is very
> little loyalty between employees or employers. I think this is a significant
> part of the problem.

Uh, I dono about the whole staying long time thing, but employers do train, or
at least hire unqualified people they expect to grow into the position.

Especially low-budget web startups... yeah, they talk about "rockstar ninja"
this and that, but who do you think they actually get, when they are paying
below market rates?

I mean, I'm not criticizing; some people really respond to "non-monetary
compensation" - and that's what the rockstar ninja bullshit is.

I hire from the same pool, really; but I'm all apologetic about paying you
shit. Who would you rather work for? me, saying "Hey, sorry I'm paying you
shit. but hey, the last guy who had the job got a really good job with
$realcompany after two years." - or some startup, that says you are an awesome
best in the world rockstar ninja, and you aren't getting much money, but you
have equity in this startup that will change the world!"

I mean, it's really the same thing, just framed in different ways. And most
people? they like the rockstar ninja framing.

~~~
ruswick
You.

~~~
lsc
really? well, I'm actually looking for people right now. I mean, this month I
need a bunch of rack and stack help (but I'm willing to take you through
setting up several brands of switches, if you sign on before I set 'em up
myself) I can pay $15/hr on a 1099, (remember, that means you pay both the
employer and employee payroll taxes, so at minimum, that means you are paying
7.5% more of that as taxes than you would as a w2. Plus tax calculation effort
and stuff.) but I've got a kinda informal headhunting deal with a buddy who
needs similar skills. He pays a little more (full time, though, and w/ health
benefits, on a w2, and I think he would pay like $15-$18/hr, but between the
w2 and the benefits, that's significantly better than the $15 on a 1099.) I
point him at good folks who work for cheap, and instead of giving me a
recruiting bonus, he lets me rent you back at a discounted rate. So yeah, if
you are in silicon valley, drop me an email (in my profile) and call your
first few days 'paid interview' and maybe you get a full time gig with that
other guy?

(I hire people full-time with benefits, too- but right now, I don't have
enough revenue to hire another full-time. I do need some help moving, though,
which is why that shady deal with my buddy is so good for me; I get some per-
day work, but can attract someone that wants to be full time, and thus end up
paying closer to full-time rates.)

I am okay with a full-day minimum; I'm not expecting you to show up for an
hour for $15, and I usually get lunch or dinner or something.

But yeah; I don't know. “Napoleon's hat on the battlefield is worth 50,000
men”. - most people expect /leadership/ - and most people think leadership
involves motivating people through personal charisma and confidence.

Personally? I understand how bad leadership can destroy value, but I don't
really see how good leadership (in the personal charisma sense) can help
anything. I think good leaders pick good people, (or, at least, the best
people available considering the compensation the company can afford.) then
mostly get out of the way. I mean, i do a lot of "no, don't spend time on
that, this other thing is more important" - like today, I redirected an
employee away from working on new images and towards improving our per-port
BCP38. And I do training, too, but that's really more experienced individual
contributor type work.

(And as for Napoleon, after the french revolution? the french soldiers were
treated better than any of their contemporaries, and I think that had a lot to
do with their success. I mean, I'm not entirely discounting Napoleon, but
"Liberté, égalité, fraternité," I think, really had a lot to do with his
success. It's not a unique strategy; every Caesar since, well, Caesar has used
populist rhetoric and policies to gain and keep power, but at that time? the
rest of the world really treated their soldiers poorly, and France was, at
least in Europe, uniquely populist.)

~~~
ruswick
I'm not really looking for work right now (nor am I in SV), but thanks.

As for how leadership can affect employees, I'm inclined to believe that
leadership will always have a substantive effect on productivity and skill.
Obviously, most employees do not work on projects entirely of their choosing;
they are given tasks or projects to do, often decided by the team or by
management. Certainly, the employee can have input, but ultimately employees
exist to serve a role determined by higher-ups. Higher-ups, then, have the
responsibility of appropriating their tallent in ways that are effective. Good
people aren't good when they aren't given meaningful work.

~~~
lsc
>Higher-ups, then, have the responsibility of appropriating their tallent in
ways that are effective. Good people aren't good when they aren't given
meaningful work.

Sure, but that's in the "make the right decisions" category. Logistics,
really. We're talking Marshal Berthier here, not Napoleon. Part of that is
assigning the right people to the right tasks. That doesn't take personal
charisma or being tall or anything, that's just being technically right.

I mean, it's obvious that the people making technical decisions need to do so
competently. It's not always easy to do correctly, but I can understand the
process... I understand what needs to be done.

I'm talking about, you know, leadership. When a teacher says someone has
"leadership skills" they don't mean that the kid understands how to manage
logistics; they mean the kid has a bunch of personal/emotional qualities that
allow him or her to emotionally manipulate others to get what he or she wants.
(Or, if you want to phrase it in positive terms, "they mean the kid has a
bunch of personal/emotional qualities that inspire others to do what they
want." )

That's the part I wonder if I need to spend time on. (I mean, logistics is
huge, and I /know/ I need to spend more time on it, but that's just a matter
of execution, really. I know what I want.)

I mean, do I take time out from the logistics (which I know I need) to learn
how to become slick? Certainly, on a personal level, nearly everyone prefers
the up-beat, happy person who phrases everything positively, and acts as if
they know what they are doing; someone who shows they are marching to certain
victory, over to someone who says and does the same things, but who phrases it
negatively and states up front that realistically, failure is the likely
outcome, that if they do succeed, the reward will be middling, and
acknowledges that they are just figuring it out/making it up as they go along.

My problem is that I tend to phrase things negatively, in part because all of
my grave financial errors have been due to a terribly unrealistic level of
optimism, and in part because I fucking hate guys like that.

Now, I always thought of myself as being more honest and direct... and in some
ways, I certainly am, but I have been finding, lately that quite often my
false humility comes off as being non-confrontational. Sometimes, I fear that
it is. Sometimes, I find myself rephrasing my thoughts directly to be less
confrontational, which really puts some people off. I mean, if I'm leaving in
the negative phrasing, why go through the effort to also be non-
confrontational? well, in part because humility is non-confrontational, and
I'm attempting, however clumsily, to emulate humility; but should I? I mean,
sure, it turns me in to a person _I_ would like more, but most people are
exactly the opposite.

I mean, my feeling on the matter is that I can fake what other people call
'confidence' fairly easily by simply letting my scorn for the fact that you
value confidence show. Most people seem to think that's close enough to
"confidence" to get me the job or the date or whatever. It doesn't really work
long-term, but in a job, at least, by the time they figure it out, I've proven
myself useful, so it's fine.

My current feeling? emotional bullshit is bullshit; so long as my logistics
are good enough, it doesn't really matter all that much, so long as I avoid
high-touch sales situations. It's probably fucking my personal life, but that
can be dealt with later.

------
Locke1689
It's important to note that even if this is true (and I suspect that the
statistics lead more towards the statement that, "there is not a shortage of
low-level IT trained workers" rather than "there is not a shortage of very
talented developers") it doesn't mean that the right thing is to limit
immigration.

Protectionism is almost always a negative for economic growth of a country.
Even if wages in the US are depressed, that just means that wages were
artificially high and that the US would soon become increasingly
noncompetitive.

The biggest problem with H-1B visas seem to be the restrictions on working for
a single established employer rather than having too many of them.

~~~
qiqing
Quick correction @Lock1689: It is possible for someone with an H-1B to
transfer from one employer to another.

~~~
pbiggar
And you can actually work for 2 of them by holding 2 H1Bs at the same time
(which is what happens naturally when you transfer to a new company).

~~~
ktsmith
The I-94 (or I-797C) indicates which employer you can work for on an H1. When
you transfer you don't get a new visa and the new I-94 invalidates the
previous I-94. So you never hold two visas or two valid I-94s and are not
authorized to work for two employers.

~~~
pbiggar
Hmmm. I agree I was not as technically accurate as I should have been, but I
am 90% certain you can work for 2 H1B employers at the same time.

~~~
ktsmith
You can work for multiple employers on an H-1B if you have multiple approved
I-129 petitions. Your original comment was in regards to a transfer which
falls under AC-21.

edit: Technicalities in immigration law can have large consequences, working
outside of one's status, or for an unapproved employer can result in being
removed from the US and being banned from return for a number of years
depending on the circumstances.

------
pdonis
My BS detector went off when I read:

 _Basic dynamics of supply and demand would dictate that if there were a
domestic labor shortage, wages should have risen. Instead, researchers found,
they’ve been flat, with many Americans holding STEM degrees unable to enter
the field and a sharply higher share of foreign workers taking jobs in the
information technology industry._

In other words, wages haven't risen because the reduction in the number of
domestic STEM workers has been offset by the increase in the number of foreign
STEM workers; the total supply of STEM workers has remained the same, but more
of them are foreign.

Note that if you remove the word "domestic" in front of "labor shortage", the
above quote would be correct; but it _includes_ that word, which makes it
worse than wrong.

------
nathansobo
My anecdotal experience says there's a ton of demand for skilled programmers.
If we're graduating CS students that don't have the skills that tech companies
need, that's a problem with quality rather than volume.

~~~
RyanIyengar
And my anecdotal experience says there is not a ton of demand for skilled
programmers. Guess we're back where we started now.

~~~
kkowalczyk
Your "anecdotal" experience is rubbish.

I'm getting unsolicited requests for interviews from software companies by the
bucket.

There are 180 open positions at Google in Mountain View alone
([https://www.google.com/about/jobs/search/#t=sq&q=j&j...](https://www.google.com/about/jobs/search/#t=sq&q=j&jl=Mountain%20View,CA&jc=SOFTWARE_ENGINEERING&jc=HARDWARE_ENGINEERING&jc=NETWORK_ENGINEERING&jc=USER_EXPERIENCE&jc=TECHNICAL_INFRASTRUCTURE_ENGINEERING)).

Multiply that by all Google's locations, add job listings from hundreds of
other tech companies in SV.

Every time I hear this topic discussed by people who actually know what they
are talking about (i.e. those running companies that try to hire competent
programmers or those that are involved in the process, like VCs), it's always
the same: finding good programmers is brutal.

Now, I'm sure that what you said is true in Alaska and many other parts of US
that are not one of the tech centers, but when it comes to SV/Seattle/NY etc.,
it's clear that there is more demand than supply for skilled developers.

~~~
dimtim
Really? Are there really 180 open positions at Google in the sense that they
are desperate for hires? If they wanted to hire people by the droves they
could simply make it a little easier to get a job there. It's misleading that
they even list positions.

~~~
svachalek
Given the choice between hiring less skilled workers or workers somewhere
else, which would you choose?

------
icn2
There is no such a thing shortage of IT workers. These companies (google,
facebook…)claim shortage of talents because they always want top ones (at
least with the standard they think). As far as there are better quality
foreigner workers they always claim shortage.

~~~
pjscott
So there's a shortage of _good_ IT workers. Your point?

~~~
icn2
No shortage of good IT workers as well. My point is it doesn't matter how good
local workers are. As far as there are better (their standard) foreign workers
they claim there is a shortage because they want top ones.

~~~
jlgreco
So suppose, _purely hypothetically I assure you_ , that I'm an engineer that
does technical interviews.

What is going on, is HR filtering out all the good domestic talent and making
me waste my time interviewing crappy candidates that they know won't make the
cut just so that they can hire abroad?

If there is an abundance of qualified unemployed domestic talent then why
can't I, the employed engineer, find some of that talent to recommend so that
I can collect some of those juicy bonuses?

Or am I _hypothetically_ in on this conspiracy to discriminate against
domestic talent as well?

Maybe there is something simpler going on. Maybe most candidates really do
suck.

------
gojomo
Be careful trusting data from the EPI, a left/labor/economic-protectionist
think tank. It will be selectively chosen and spun to advance their core idea
that domestic/union laborers need constant government rescue, via things like
immigration restrictions. (Of course data selected by think tanks with other
ideologies deserves skeptical reading, as well.)

As was pointed out last time the EPI scored a press hit with their claim of
stagnant IT wages (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4880332>), they
appear to be leaving out the very real possibility a younger/earlier-career
mix of workers -- a demographic bulge -- makes their broad wage averages look
worse, even while each individual cohort is better off.

And, when in this latest study they highlight how many college graduates who
fill IT positions have non-IT degrees (Figure F: 38%+), or of all IT workers
have no degree at all (36%, p. 8), they should realize that one way to deal
with a skills shortage is to make-do with less-skilled/less-trained people,
_but then pay them less_ while they learn or simply play-out-of-position.
(This making-do also creates the early-in-career demographic bulge mentioned
above.)

On the other hand, when the EPI looks at the fact many STEM majors don't wind
up working in STEM jobs (Figure D), it is spun as: "For every two students
that U.S. colleges graduate with STEM degrees, only one is hired into a STEM
job." From that wording you'd think the streets are filled with woeful idle
STEM graduates! But maybe, given the still very low unemployment among all
with college degrees (and especially technical degrees), these graduates found
something else they preferred? Or maybe they really weren't very good at or
happy with their exact STEM degree area?

It requires the EPI's factory-floor mindset, where STEM degree recipients are
cogs that could (or should) be dropped into closely-matching STEM jobs, to
make this natural dynamism sound like we might have way more idle STEM
graduates than we can use.

~~~
jmspring
I won't go into EPI numbers, any study -- left, right, or center -- there is
always a bias. There is a simple fact in the STEM debate, however, there was a
period in time where companies invested in people, trained them, and
established a relationship with the employee based on mutually beneficial
growth.

Today, that is long gone. There are many STEM individuals that did not adapt
with the times that are considered no longer employable. Rather than reaching
out to and training these individuals, companies want the quick fix -- thus
the H1B path. There are amazing individuals that want to establish or work for
businesses in the US that may be victims of the process, at the same time,
there are average individuals getting work visas that could just as well be
handled by a local (possibly skilled, possibly w/ a bit of training).

Companies no longer invest in the average individual, after a certain point it
is all about the dollar. I think any immigration policy around STEM in this
country needs to include some incentives for training and investment in
current citizens.

~~~
jlgreco
> _"There are many STEM individuals that did not adapt with the times that are
> considered no longer employable. Rather than reaching out to and training
> these individuals, companies want the quick fix -- thus the H1B path."_

I think it is very easy for companies to lose their patience with people who
have not kept up with technology and need to be retrained when, on the other
hand, a large portion of the people that they _are_ hiring are kids with _no_
experience who trained themselves with current technologies and require less
handholding with those current technologies.

So basically let's say 25% of your new-hires are out of school and ramp up in
a few weeks. What do you do with the other 75%? Hire people who have _more_
industry than the young 25% but require _more_ training with recent tech, or
look potentially outside the country for some more of those 25% types?

~~~
learc83
> Hire people who have more industry than the young 25% but require more
> training with recent tech

What evidence do you have that kids just out of college do require less
training than people with work experience?

What kind of "new tech" are kids using these days, that experienced employees
can't handle?

In any kind of STEM field (other than the most basic IT tech support) college
kids definitely aren't going to be able to "ramp up" to the level of someone
with 10 years experience in a few weeks.

~~~
jlgreco
My hypothesis is that all tech people teach themselves whatever is trendy at
the time when they are still in school (college, or if they decide not to go
that route, highschool). Older more experienced candidates of course did the
same, but the trendy tech they taught themselves in school is now out of date.

There will of course be those golden candidates that have extensive industry
experience but also know the modern newfangled hipster shit that any junior in
college is hacking away with at the time. I don't see _these_ candidates
having trouble finding work.

You're a startup. You're trendy; your office is littered with nerf-guns and
shit, or whatever trendy startups are doing these days. Your systems are all
Node/Go/Ruby/Whatever. ...Do you hire the guy out of college, for an "out-of-
college" salary, that has all of this stuff on his resume? Or do you hire the
guy with 15 years of experience on his resume who only has "C/C++/Perl" on his
resume for a "15 years of experience" salary?

Even if you'd go with the 15+ years guy, can you see why companies might
become frustrated?

~~~
learc83
Sorry that doesn't make sense.

In my experience there are few college kids with Node/Go/Haskell/Clojure on
their resume, and those same kids will have whatever is new and exciting in 10
years on their resume then too.

Your average brand new college CS graduate knows Java.

The average foreign programmer also knows Java.

The average programmer with 10 years experience knows Java and probably C++.

The average programmer doesn't work with "modern newfangled hipster ship", and
the average employer isn't looking for employees who do.

And if you are a startup, you _definitely_ aren't going to find people skilled
in Node/Go/Whatever by hiring cheap H1-B workers.

In general Colleges are about 10-15 years behind what's considered the new hip
thing in programming. Since most new grads only know what they learned in
college most new college grads are 10-15 years behind the new hip thing in
programming.

Startups don't hire new grads because they can ramp up faster, they hire them
because they don't have families to take up their time, so they don't mind
working 80 hours a week for peanuts.

~~~
jlgreco
> _In my experience there are few college kids with Node/Go/Haskell/Clojure on
> their resume_

> _Your average brand new college CS graduate knows Java._

Maybe we are reaching different conclusions because we are looking at
different anecdotal evidence. What you are saying in these two lines does not
jive with what I have observed at all.

Colleges are not teaching that trendy stuff, but CS programs in American
universities don't teach _any_ technology anyway (aside perhaps from an OS
course or two that focuses on the Linux kernel a bit too much, and the
obligatory first freshman quarter with Java/C++). The tech college students
come out of school with, from what I have seen, is the stuff they taught
themselves outside of their coursework. That stuff is almost invariably the
trendy shit. At the very least, the trendier parts of Java.

> _they don't mind working 80 hours a week for peanuts._

Either way, it is either about the ability to do the work for those salaries,
or the willingness to to do the work for those salaries. Even if I'm off-base
and it is entirely the second, it makes sense that companies are going to
start looking for some more of the same sort of cheap but effective talent.

~~~
learc83
>The tech college students come out of school with, from what I have seen, is
the stuff they taught themselves outside of their coursework.

That's the thing, the majority of students don't teach themselves anything
outside their coursework. The ones that do are the top x% that everyone wants
to hire, and they are still teaching themselves new stuff when they have 10
years experience. Being passionate about programming has nothing to do with
age.

> Even if I'm off-base and it is entirely the second, it makes sense that
> companies are going to start looking for some more of the same sort of cheap
> but effective talent.

Of course companies are going to look for cheaper talent, the people doing the
hiring for the most part are looking to optimize for the short term.

The problem is that it's very hard to accurately and objectively measure
programmer productivity, so companies use ineffective proxies.

Hiring an inexperienced programmer who works for $25 an hour vs an experienced
one who works for $50 an hour may look like a good deal when it's likely that
it actually isn't.

~~~
jlgreco
> _That's the thing, the majority of students don't teach themselves anything
> outside their coursework._

Right. So I don't know how many recent graduates are like that, I think I am
less pessimistic about that than you _(I want to collect some of those juicy
referral bonuses, but everybody that I know is either employed or plainly
incompetent, including everyone I knew in school... By far most of them are
employed)_ , but basically I consider those people to be a part of the
essentially unemployable pool. There are no doubt a lot of fundamentally
unemployable people that _want_ to be in tech (without being willing to crack
a book outside of class), but as far as I can tell there is a clear shortage
of competent employable people.

~~~
learc83
If you're talking about top graduates from top schools, or recent graduates
working for some hip startup in the valley, then you're probably right,
they're aren't many who didn't do extra outside of class.

But the majority of programmers are those mediocre students who didn't do
anything extra, and are now slaving away writing some internal purchase order
management system for XYZ corp (in Java)--someone has to do that stuff.

~~~
jlgreco
I suppose you are probably right. I guess where I am coming from is that I am
not convinced that there isn't a labour shortage just because there are a ton
of those mediocre Java-slaves bouncing around.

------
dbond
A little of topic but...

Having read the comments here and many blog posts on HN on this subject it
seems that many recent graduates are not up to scratch with what the industry
expects.

Yet a degree is required to obtain a H1-B visa or 12 years (IIRC) work
experience, could the removal of this requirement ever possibly be lobbied for
with judgement left up to the potential employer?

I realise that a degree is used as a general quality standard in immigration
processes but this seems like a situation in which it could actually be
detrimental.

Note: I'm from the UK, I see the same problems here and I'm curious about the
U.S situation.

~~~
ecdavis
From what I understand, companies are currently asking for the H1-B visa
quotas to be increased. This suggests that they are finding plenty of people
to hire who qualify for an H1-B visa but there are simply not enough visas to
go around. With this in mind, dropping the degree requirement is probably not
necessary yet.

------
nickff
This piece fails due to a logical fallacy: the fallacy of composition. What is
good for each scientist or engineer is a higher salary, but this is not
necessarily good for all of them, or the rest of a country.

Perhaps having more scientists and engineers would depress their salaries,
(though this is not necessarily true,) while increasing the country's total
productivity, and making the average citizen richer.

So this article proves nothing, and fails to clearly define what they mean by
shortage.

------
TheCoelacanth
The problem with this whole discussion is that it is lumping all STEM
graduates together. There is really only high demand for CS and some
engineering fields. There is a surplus of graduates in many of the other
fields that are categorized under STEM. When someone says there is a shortage
of STEM graduates, they are really only talking about the T & E, they aren't
talking about the S & M.

------
john_w_t_b
There is a shortage of technical specialists in computer programming. It seems
that companies are reluctant to train local workers. Startups like to show
growth by listing jobs, but they only want "rock stars" so the positions sit
unfilled. This saves on labor costs and signals a growing business. It gives
an artificial view of the job market however.

~~~
prostoalex
What kind of training would a company offer? CS is one of those disciplines
where wealth of materials, books, documentation, videos and working code
examples are available online, for free or at pretty reasonable prices.

Why would you sign up to waste a day at New Horizons listening to some drone
over-explaining stored procedures on a whiteboard?

------
parennoob
I'm confused by their conflation of STEM (in particular CS) grads and IT
workers. For example they say, “For computer science graduates employed one
year after graduation . . . about half of those who took a job outside of IT
say they did so because the career prospects were better elsewhere, and
roughly a third because they couldn’t find a job in IT,”

None of the people who work in the IT department at my company have CS
degrees. They have, however, held various sysadmin and programming positions,
and do a bloody good job running our IT. I'm not sure we'd hire a fresh-out-
of-school CS grad for our IT jobs if they didn't have any experience doing
sysadmin or equipment / facility maintenance stuff.

~~~
svachalek
Companies that aren't in the tech industry usually lump their programmers (for
their web site, or internal process tools) into the IT dept. Still, the
conflation of terms in this article makes it hard to understand what it's
really saying; most interpretations I can make are just hard to believe.

~~~
bennyg
Yep. My official title is IT Technical Specialist 2 - but I'm an iOS Developer
if we're playing with words that actually mean something when said together.
Funny enough though, I don't have a CS degree, I have an Art degree. Though
everyone I work with is either CS or ECE.

------
Symmetry
I'd be really interested in finding out how that study defines "IT". And also
how it defines "STEM job". Would being a quant on Wall Street be considered a
"STEM job", for instance?

~~~
samirahmed
good question, its probably much broader than you would expect... I think
quant would fall under

27.0305 financial math

see the official list here

<http://www.ice.gov/doclib/sevis/pdf/stem-list.pdf>

------
graycat
It's the same old, same old: It's an old story that somehow too many powerful
people in the US Federal Government want to do 'US national technical manpower
management'.

E.g., when Sputnik went up, the Feds via the NSF flooded US high school and
college education with money, scholarships, summer programs, etc. to get more
US citizens into STEM fields.

During the Cold War and the Space Race, STEM students were paid nearly well
enough to buy a house; then the powers that be got really scared.

But, with the stimulus, soon the supply exceeded the demand; US citizens who
walked into a college STEM course saw the TA and half of the students from
Asia or India, turned, and walked out.

So, right: Joe and Mary paid taxes to support public education K-college and
graduate school. For their children they struggled to meet college expenses.
And when their children went to college, somehow they found lots of students
there from India and Asia. How come? These students were from families with
annual incomes less than $10,000 yet somehow got their children into the
college supported by the taxes of Joe and Mary when Joe and Mary had to
struggle to pay for their children in that college? Bummer. Sure: The students
from India and China were there on various scholarships, indirectly paid for
by Joe and Mary. Bummer. Ripoff.

During the Viet Nam war, the head of the Selective Service system was old
General Louis B. Hershey with the remark that "The US Selective Service System
has national manpower management responsibilities far exceeding staffing the
armed forces." by which he meant that US young men had two, just two, options,
(1) do well in college or graduate school in STEM fields or (2) go to Viet
Nam. Of course, that 'responsibility' was only in his egotistical imagination;
still he executed on his delusion.

Later much of the US 'military industrial complex' concluded that there was a
US STEM shortage. So, the powers that be got the NSF to set up a team of
economists to calculate, with essentially supply and demand curves, how much
'stimulus' would be needed to increase the labor supply.

The stimulus didn't work well for US citizens, so the plan was to write into
research grants in US research universities that with the grant money so many
students had to be supported and that, hint, hint, there were plenty of
willing students from India and Asia, hint, hint.

Then there got to be the H1B scam, mostly just a new version of 'indentured
servitude' or 'slave labor'.

Basically, anytime STEM worker bees get paid well enough to buy a house, big
forces in the US move to flood the market with STEM graduates.

It's dirt simple: It's capital versus labor. Capital has power and wants cheap
labor.

These US powers that be are just seeking more money and power and, net, are
seriously hurting the basic strength of the US.

The solution is for US voters to become informed and come together and vote
for the US for the US as a whole and not just for the 1% richest capitalists.

Of course there's more at Prof. Norm Matloff's

    
    
        http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html

~~~
parennoob
This comment seems slightly overwrought and racist to me, specially this part,
"US citizens who walked into a college STEM course saw the TA and half of the
students from Asia or India, turned, and walked out." -- Really?

I don't see an option to downvote here, but if I could, I would definitely do
that for this.

~~~
eru
You need more karma to downvote.

Otherwise, it seems to me more like graycat is describing racism, but you
can't tell greycat would support it based on that comment.

~~~
graycat
I'll put it to you this way: I'm of Western European descent, England and
Germany. Still, no way do I want the US Federal Government to flood US STEM
classes with students from England and Germany. This view is not racism.

Here is one thing it really is: The US is getting badly hurt in the world
economy. The real unemployment rate is ballpark 20%. The US is creating boom
times in several other countries.

Well, one way for the US to help itself is for the US to continue to have a
great college and university system and, then, keep those educations for US
citizens. That is, US citizens are paying for those institutions and, thus,
should be able to 'keep' the 'intellectual property' and other advantages
inside the US. So, it is now strongly in the interest of US citizens to move
not to let any foreign students in US colleges or universities.

It is in the interest of US tax payers to pay to educate the US but not the
world that wants to compete with the US economy.

~~~
eru
In contrast, British universities are actually financed by the oversees
students.

By keeping good education for a select few only, you do not actually help the
US absolutely, you just make the other people less well off. (And even the US,
but perhaps less so.)

~~~
graycat
Again, my point is that US citizens Joe and Mary pay taxes, state and federal.
Those taxes are used in part to support US higher education: The state taxes
support institutions in the state of Joe and Mary. The federal taxes provide
support of various kinds and essentially all the research at US research
universities.

Joe and Mary have children and want them to get good higher educations and,
then, good jobs for good careers. But the children still have to pay to go to
college. What they pay for a state school is high; for a private school,
higher.

So, commonly such US children skip some or all of college.

Then wonder of wonders, presto, in US higher education paid for partly by Joe
and Mary, there are foreign students in seats the children of Joe and Mary
could not afford to occupy. And the foreign student only paid at most 1/3rd of
the cost of the education, not nearly the full cost. For undergraduate school,
a big question is how can a student from a poor country afford the cost of a
US education? For graduate students, the US NSF has arranged that there will
be STEM graduate students, US or foreign.

Here Joe and Mary have a very good reason to feel ripped off.

Why does the US do this? Because some powerful people in the US want to flood
US STEM fields with enough students to lower labor rates in those fields. So,
the policy is to tax Joe and Mary and use their money to support foreign STEM
students. Then when those students enter the US labor market, which some do,
they compete with the children of Joe and Mary. Again Joe and Mary feel ripped
off.

There are many excuses given for supporting foreigners in STEM fields. One of
the excuses is that the foreign students are better at creating jobs in the US
and, thus, help the children of Joe and Mary get jobs. That's saying that the
US, with 330 million people, with universities that dominate the list of the
best universities in the world, that dominates the Nobel prizes and the
publications at the best research journals, etc., somehow is short on people
to start businesses. Nonsense.

Especially nonsense to the US NSF that set up a group to do calculations on
how many foreign students would have to be imported to drive down the cost of
STEM labor. The whole point was just to drive down the cost of STEM labor. So,
it's no surprise that the cost of STEM labor went down. And the income of the
children of Joe and Mary went down if those children were in STEM fields.

"By keeping good education for a select few only" The US does no such thing:
There are 330 million people in the US. All or nearly all the states have
state colleges and universities. And there are private universities --
Harvard, Stanford, etc.

The best students can go on scholarships. Otherwise students who can get
admitted can get financial aid if they need it. Still, often the cost to the
student and/or their family is high. But college education is the US is not
limited to "the select few" US citizens and would not be if US universities
cut way back on foreign students.

The US is hurting: The reasons are, too many foreign wars, too many foreign
military bases, the disaster of the US inflation caused by the Viet Nam war
that, then, caused the S&L crisis and likely enabled OPEC, the disaster of the
housing bubble from efforts to 'spread the home ownership around', and,
heavily, the idea of the US State Department that for 'world peace' the US
should pursue 'world trade' by which lower paid US jobs would go to Japan,
Mexico, Canada, Taiwan, South Korea, India, Pakistan, and now China. So, the
US has a real unemployment rate of about 20%, and real incomes have hardly
increased since the Viet Nam war in about 1960. In the 1950s, Detroit had a
license to print money and looked like a dream town. Now Detroit looks like a
bombed out WWII city. Much of US metal manufacturing in the US Midwest has
gone out of business. Textiles in the Carolinas have gone. GE got seriously
hurt by Japan. The heirs of Sam Walton have done well by importing products
from China. Maybe Microsoft has done well exporting software to China,
although there is the issue of China not paying for the software. And now
China has decided to move to Linux as their national operating system. Likely
Intel has done well selling chips, but they are close to having their products
copied in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Germany. And likely China would like
to do the same.

When a US citizen buys an imported product, often they are paying twice, once
for the product directly and once more for the 'safety net' for the US worker
who lost his job making such products.

The US is one of the few countries in the world that throws open its markets
to foreign countries. Again, the State Department, the Walton heirs,
Microsoft, etc. like the situation, but nearly all the rest of the US is
suffering. People are dying, literally.

The US has to do much better competing in the world economy, and for this the
US must quit giving away its markets, businesses, technology, intellectual
property, and educations.

~~~
eru
> The US is one of the few countries in the world that throws open its markets
> to foreign countries.

Please see e.g. <http://www.economist.com/node/11586026> and observe the
correlation between high-income and lower trade barriers. Does your argument
still stand?

