

The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage - kp27
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-truth-about-the-stem-shortage-that-americans-dont-want-to-hear-2013-5

======
crazygringo
I just always assumed this was the case, since everyone talks about wanting to
hire only "A" engineers.

But I'm not so sure we Americans should be "offended" by this. This article
says:

> _The view from Silicon Valley is that a lot of the US talent, while
> bountiful in number, just doesn't stack up. But Silicon Valley doesn't want
> to just come out and say this, since it will sound offensive to a lot of
> American-born grads._

I mean, of course, only 5% of American engineers are going to be in the top 5%
of American engineers, for example. It's not a national failure. It's not
offensive. That's the entire conversation about "A" engineers. _Any_ country
needs to look outside its borders for additional top engineers.

Then, the article goes on to paraphrase Silicon Valley:

> _"Hey America, please raise the visa limit. There's a shortage of STEM
> talent that is willing to work for what we'll pay that also meets our high
> standards._

I'm not really convinced that pay has anything to do with it. The general
problem really seems to genuinely be finding engineers that are good enough,
just in the recruitment process period -- at least in many cases.

The article tries to use statistics to show that some STEM majors go on to
other fields. But saying that 18.7% of CS majors aren't working in their field
because of pay/promotion/working conditions doesn't strike me as unreasonable
at all. I mean, maybe they're the "C" engineers or something, and they decided
they're better at something else. Or they just _enjoy_ something else more.
The article certainly isn't proving that they're the "A" engineers everybody
wants, and that they've gone on to brain surgery instead because that's more
lucrative and has better working conditions.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
It's very definitely a pay issue. It's also a hiring issue: most of Silicon
Valley deliberately makes it as difficult as possible to pass the hiring bar.

There is one company with whom I've interviewed once, gotten an offer, and
then been rejected when I applied later in a separate round after a year and a
half doing other things. There's another company where I interviewed once, got
an offer, did something else, interviewed later, got rejected, was recommended
for an internship later, got put through such a bureaucratic fuck-up that I
didn't even receive a technical interview before they'd selected interns for
all their slots for the year, and they _still_ regularly try to recruit me
every few months (including this past month), despite my being a grad-student
right now. Then there's a third company that keeps continually sending
recruiters my way every so often despite rejecting me with no reason given
_every single time_.

I'm not naming names, but these are _big, famous_ companies. Literally
everyone on this entire board knows these companies and "knows" about their
_absolutely ravening_ hunger for engineers, "knows" about their six-figure
offers for new college grads (I never got one of those, but I graduated in
2011).

If these are the recruiting, filtering, and hiring practices at three of the
world's largest technology companies, then I have to declare, fuck it, there's
no shortage of "talent", aka: skilled labor. There's a shortage of top-5%
skilled labor willing to jump through the right hoops, with the right Luck
Bonus stat on their character sheet to get through the outright _random_
filters, who are willing to take the salaries on offer after all the crap they
just went through to find a job.

By contrast, I'll tell you how I found my (No evil eye /spits!) internship for
this summer. I checked the "Who's Hiring" thread on Hacker News for
interesting internship positions, sent a bunch of cover letters, had one Skype
interview with the CTO of a very nice company, received the initial offer,
negotiated a bit (nothing too heavy, it's an internship after all, but a
slightly nicer deal on tax status and travel expense), and accepted the offer.
As far as I can tell (again, No evil eye /spits!), they're a very nice company
doing highly interesting work that could even potentially inspire me towards
new research directions in my grad work, and I'll be pretty glad to spend my
summer vacation with them.

And _at no point whatsoever_ did I have to recite the definition of a red-
black tree, figure out how to jump out of a spinning blender when I've been
miniaturized, or solve an Advanced Algorithms exam problem.

~~~
arohner
> It's very definitely a pay issue.

How do you know this? From my own experience trying to hire in this economy,
and from talking to other people hiring, the problem is finding good engineers
that are hirable at all [edit: local or remote, for any amount of money]. When
I've lost a candidate due to him taking another offer, the reasons have always
been unrelated to money. Things like "The other company's problems are more
interesting to me" or "I'd prefer to work locally in my current city, rather
than move to SF or work remotely".

~~~
eli_gottlieb
And in my experience, if you are willing to pay the price, either in salary or
in training investment, you _will_ find yourself an engineer. Note that I
didn't _just_ say salary. Compensation includes the whole package, _including_
, yes, the locality whose cost of living you're paying for, and _especially_
the skills training you can provide, which is often not nearly as expensive as
you think it is.

Not to say there aren't _some_ limits. There are obviously a limited number of
people with expertise in kernel-level scheduler algorithms at any given time,
for example. But as several of us have said below: if your business model
_relies_ on consistently finding and hiring unicorns, _that is your problem_.
Either stop relying on unicorns or move your corporate HQ to the magical land
of Equestria.

Still, the BigCos almost all hire people right out of college and _actually
relocate and train them_ in the industrial environment, so I wouldn't call it
a labor shortage until I've tried competing with that.

(None of this is to say that I'm not trying to take advantage from my side by
deliberately getting as close as I can to Unicorn-level expertise. Of course I
am! But most of the time _a well-run company built to grow_ should want my
hardworking front-end, back-end, every-end web-dev friend who's less
egotistical and doesn't rant on Hacker News, _not_ a unicorn.)

~~~
arohner
Who said I wasn't willing to pay the price? Again, this is about just
_talking_ to engineers that 1) I would enjoy working with 2) that are
currently hirable. Offers and negotiating on price hasn't entered the
conversation at all. Even that is hard.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
What about all the ones you're _not_ talking to?

------
tokenadult
From the article:

"There is a different kind of shortage, but the American people won't like to
admit it.

"What there is is a shortage of ultra-elite American-born talent, and Silicon
Valley wants to hire the very best in the world. The view from Silicon Valley
is that a lot of the US talent, while bountiful in number, just doesn't stack
up."

That is the nub of the issue. Several of the leading companies in high-tech
industry believe that "hire the best" is the most successful way to compete
with other companies, and that requires hiring from a worldwide pool of job
applicants. An immigration lawyer might point out that the "outstanding
ability" O-1 temporary worker visa category

<http://minsk.usembassy.gov/temporary_workers.html>

<http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind10/c3/c3s5.htm>

allows people who are truly world-class experts to enter the United States to
work. (If I remember correctly, that is how Fields medalist Terence Tao was
able to gain his faculty position at UCLA as a citizen of Australia, although
his visa status may have changed meanwhile.) But, yes, demonstrating that a
person meets the O-1 visa requirements is difficult for an employer, and even
at that only allows temporary residence (not a "green card").

That American graduates of STEM programs vary wildly in quality of preparation
for demanding work is why any smart company will hire workers on the basis of
work-sample tests rather than on the basis of college degree requirements.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4613543>

Until companies in general emphasize actual job task performance rather than
school credentials in hiring, visa regulation reform won't do the whole job of
helping companies meet their hiring needs.

~~~
kyllo
_What there is is a shortage of ultra-elite American-born talent, and Silicon
Valley wants to hire the very best in the world. The view from Silicon Valley
is that a lot of the US talent, while bountiful in number, just doesn't stack
up._

That's a tautology. By definition, there's always going to be a shortage of
ultra-elite talent. If we had a surplus of job candidates with that level of
talent, it wouldn't be considered elite anymore.

SV wants easier access to the entire world's pool of ultra-elite talent, not
just the US's. They want more selection _and_ lower prices.

I don't blame them, but I don't think what they want is necessarily what's
best for America. I think we would be better off if companies went back to the
old-school method of "hire smart people locally and train them for the
specific job skills." Because you have to train people anyway, no one is
_really_ a plug-and-play hire.

------
tosseraccount
Pro competition Economist Milton Friedman dismissed H-1B as a subsidy ...
[[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/72848/H_1B_Is_Just_An...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/72848/H_1B_Is_Just_Another_Gov_t._Subsidy)
]

'Nobel economist Milton Friedman scoffs at the idea of the government stocking
a farm system for the likes of Microsoft and Intel. "There is no doubt," he
says, "that the [H-1B] program is a benefit to their employers, enabling them
to get workers at a lower wage, and to that extent, it is a subsidy." '

~~~
arohner
That's specifically about H1-Bs, as opposed to a hypothetical "no limits"
visa.

He also said "There is no doubt that free and open immigration is the right
policy in a libertarian state". Compared to "free and open immigration", yes,
H1-Bs are a subsidy.

------
learc83
There's a big problem with the bar graph in the article. They are lumping
Engineering Technology together with Engineering and Information sciences in
with Computer Science. Engineering Technology is completely different from
Engineering, just like CIS is completely different from Computer Science.

Grouping those together is like grouping employment numbers for electrical
engineers and electricians just because they have the same root word in their
titles.

The article also talks about "foreign born students... crushing the homegrown
talent." If they're talking about foreign born students at US universities I
wouldn't say they are "crushing" US students at all. From what I've seen the
reason so many foreign students are accepted has more to do with them paying
_way_ more tuition than in-state students than anything else.

~~~
danzig13
I have an MIS degree and have had no trouble working alongside CS grads my
entire career. Likewise for my family member with an Engineering Technology
degree. I don't think there is that huge of a gap. It is still about getting
your foot in the door and doing things on the job.

~~~
learc83
>I have an MIS degree and have had no trouble working alongside CS grads my
entire career.

Sure, but how much of that has anything to do with your MIS degree.

Sure there are CIS majors who can program, and there are high school dropouts
who can program as well. But CS degrees teach you how to program while CIS
degrees do not. They prepare you for two completely different fields.
Employment figures for Software developers and IT people are very different.

>Likewise for my family member with an Engineering Technology degree

Engineering Technology is also a different field. Again, sure there are people
with engineering tech degrees that work as engineers and are paid like
engineers, but the vast majority do not.

------
arohner
This is amazingly bad statistics.

The author is using self-reported surveys of STEM majors who didn't work for
an SV company to answer the question of what SV companies are looking for.
There are giant assumptions: 1) they wanted to work for an SV company 2)
they're not deluding themselves about why they didn't get offered an SV job. A
much better source would be to actually ask the SV companies why they didn't
hire someone.

As someone who has been actively hiring for the last six months, trying to
grow our team from 5 to 10, hiring is really damned hard. You'll get a
mountain of crappy resumes, and a few really good resumes. Some of the really
good resumes will turn out to be really good people, some of them will accept
offers somewhere else, and some of the people that initially appeared great
will test poorly, or you won't click with them personally, or something else.

Aside from technical ability, startups also need to look for a certain
personality. At my own company, we're strongly influenced by the Valve
Handbook. We like to hire people that understand the problem on their own and
say "I think this is the most important thing to work on". Not every STEM
major has that capability. We also like to hire generalists, or people who
aren't afraid of learning how to do the things that need to get done. Both of
these reduce our hiring pool.

I know founders of funded SV companies who aren't in the country legally. One
in particular has a pHD, published papers, and is quite literally creating
jobs. The O visa is a possibility, but it's a ton of paperwork. The H1B is
tricky to use for founders, because the visa requires that their "boss" be
able to fire them. Also, the H1B window is short, and the next opportunity to
hire someone on an H1 is something like Fall 2014.

I've not given offers to candidates because their visa situation was too
risky. As in "I'm in the country legally today, but I have to go back home for
a few weeks, and I may or may not be able to get back in".

Every company I've talked to is in a similar situation, in terms of being
desperate for hirable, highly skilled engineers, at any price.

~~~
adpirz
I'm more of an observer to the field, so I'm curious, what does a "bad" resume
look like? And what kinds of things do you find on those few good ones?

My assumptions are that everyone is applying with decent CS background and at
least a BS in the field, or is that off?

~~~
arohner
The assumption that you can distinguish good and bad engineers through their
resume is flawed. Some of the better engineers I've worked with didn't go to
school. Some of the worst engineers I've worked with got advanced degrees at
reputable schools.

The biggest secret in software is that we simply don't know how to teach
software. Half of all graduates in all relevant programs, at all universities,
are simply unhirable. Talented, second-year interns are more valuable than the
median graduate.

We know how to take talented students and make them better, but we don't know
how to identify talented students early, and we don't know how to make
untalented students even barely competent.

------
twoodfin
Believe you me, if the big immigration reform effort in Washington were just
about bringing in new STEM workers via an expanded or reformed visa system, it
would be done by now. Certainly a majority of Republicans and Democrats are
for it in the abstract. Mitt Romney wanted to "staple a green card" to every
STEM graduate's diploma.

But that's not what the debate's about, and it's fairly silly to claim
otherwise. The debate is whether or not any immigration reform will be
"comprehensive", the Washington euphemism for amnesty and normalization of the
existing illegal population. There is a not insignificant block of both
Democrats and Republicans who will not allow anything short of a
"comprehensive" bill to pass because they believe it's the only shot to
achieve such normalization. There's also a reasonable argument often made that
opening the doors to STEM graduates and other "desirable" workers while
forcing the existing illegal population to continue to skirt the law is de
facto discriminatory, because of the way the demographics of those two groups
line up.

Zuck & Co. are taking the reverse position: They're pushing for the STEM
reform they want just in case this time reform really does make it over the
hump, and are happy to push for normalization as well, since it is the only
likely path to that result.

Anyway, I don't know how I feel about normalization, but I do know that any
nation that has skilled workers who will contribute much, much more than they
take lining up to get in would be crazy not to let them in.

------
latch
My take on this is that anywhere you look, most developers are poor to
mediocre. The problem isn't specific to America. What is [mostly] unique to
America is that immigration restrictions is the only thing stopping them from
swooping up above-average talent from other countries (in no small part thanks
to good salaries and the near-mythical nature of the valley)

In other words, Portugal (as a random example) has the same shitty breakdown
of poor/average/good developers as the US, but a not-insignificant number of
the good ones are hirable.

~~~
stcredzero
One company I worked for _didn't_ look for and hire rockstar talent. They had
a shop in India with lots of diligent guys who followed instructions, a
decidedly inelegant architecture with lots of "repeating yourself," and a good
position in an industry where just getting data from one place to another and
usefully aggregating it made you tons of money.

Don't underestimate the value of being in the right market and simply knowing
how to manage people.

~~~
raverbashing
That is probably one of the most difficult things for the 'average engineer'
to understand.

Solve a person's problem and you'll profit, doesn't matter if it is the worse
hack ever invented, if it's reasonably easy to use and/or fulfills a need it
gets the money.

------
powertower
There was an article going around here some time ago about a company in the
described position that was literally flabbergasted about not being able to
hire all the top engineering talent that they wanted in the US ... at $14/hour
pay.

That pretty much summed up the real issue for me.

------
crabasa
This article is needlessly sensationalistic and the claim that there is a
"shortage" of ultra-elite engineers illustrates a basic misunderstanding of
math. But it does show us what a red herring the phrase "STEM" is.

Let's not get bogged-down in STEM, or the differences between Engineering and
Computer Science. There are massive differences both in the curriculum and
quality of instruction even inside the field of CS.

I believe there is a massive shortage of people who are capable of programming
in mainstream languages and platforms. The tool chains that have been
developed to solve problems for online retail, advertising, travel, media,
entertainment, etc are now in the process of being applied to virtually every
other industry.

I think the failure of our industry (post-2000) to attract more people to this
field is sad. I think the emphasis on ultra-elite SV talent ignores the
broader application of programming to the world at large, and perpetuates an
attitude that people who program are special, as opposed to simply being
passionate practitioners of an increasingly creative trade.

Below are some interesting links I've picked up on this subject:

<http://braythwayt.com/2013/04/29/calling-all-hackers.html>

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/why-
scien...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/why-science-
majors-change-their-mind-its-just-so-darn-hard.html?_r=2)

[http://readwrite.com/2012/05/17/computer-programming-for-
all...](http://readwrite.com/2012/05/17/computer-programming-for-all-a-new-
standard-of-literacy)

~~~
zanny
Hey, I'm a CS grad who can write / has written a lot of C, C++, Java, C#,
Python, and Javascript all pretty well (though I've been mostly using C++ /
Python / JS so I'm rusty on the others) but I'm still job hunting after a year
out of my BS mainly because I went to a small private school and I'm not the A
talent this article talks about.

If people needed bodies that can just write (or test, or comment, document)
mainstream languages, I shouldn't have this much resistance to job hunting in
Philly and NY (I live in the middle of nowhere PA, which doesn't help) even
when I offer to come visit in person.

I do think it is a maligned pipe dream amongst hiring departments of getting
one of two things - 1. A 5+ year veteran a couple pay grades below what they
are worth or 2. A rockstar supergenius savant that gradated college at 16 and
knows every language from Cobol to Clojure. Going with someone like me (and I
like to think of myself as an average SE) seems like settling to them, and
they don't _really_ need the work right now, they just want to exploit the
productivity of a rockstar below their pay grade.

~~~
crabasa
I'm bummed to hear you're still looking for a job, especially based on
everything I'm hearing about the opportunities in New York. Are you willing to
relocate, or are you specifically looking for a remote role.

In any case, I'm certainly not making the case that it's easy to get a job.
Virtually every step in the process is broken, from education to vocational
training to job placement to recruiting. I think it's fair to say that
companies have really not figured out how to hire. The current solution
reminds me of overengineering: you hire an 9, even though you only need a 6
because you know there's a +/- 3 margin of error.

------
tosseraccount
There is no tech labor shortage.

[ source : <http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/h1b.html> ]

If there was a labor shortage, wouldn't real U.S. wages have been going up?

If I want a $5 Prime Rib Eye steak, and can't find it, is there a beef
shortage?

Raise wages, and the talent will come.

~~~
groaner
If I want a $1,000,000,000 unicorn, and can't find it, is it because I'm not
paying enough?

The fact that many SV companies want mythical beings to solve their
engineering problems is an entirely different issue, but this does not
invalidate their claims of a "shortage." It just means that they have failed
to come up with a business that is capable of being worked on by the existing
talent pool.

~~~
powertower
> If I want a $1,000,000,000 unicorn, and can't find it, is it because I'm not
> paying enough?

To be fair with the analogy, that should rather read...

> If I want a $1,000,000,000 unicorn, one out of the 100 that are in
> existence, and I can't find someone to sell it, is it because I'm not paying
> enough?

The answer then becomes - Yes.

Top engineers in the US are not mythical creatures, they do exists. Hence why
the original analogy is disingenuous.

------
wmil
Of course if Silicon Valley CEOs were smart about immigration they wouldn't
try jumping on the "comprehensive immigration reform" bandwagon. Or even
pushing for an increase in the number of visas.

Instead they should be pushing for a H1B salary floor in the 90k-100k range.
This would allow them to claim the majority of the existing H1B pool, and it's
hard to argue that jobs like "Food Service Manager" are jobs America vitally
need foreign workers to fill.

~~~
TulliusCicero
This would never fly politically. "They want to give IMMIGRANTS six-figure
jobs while Americans are unemployed???"

~~~
jacques_chester
Australia's 457 visa program requires employers to pay foreign workers the
same amount as a local worker, specifically to prevent downward pressure on
wages.

Still, the politics are still fraught with TOOK EHR JERBS stuff.

------
stcredzero
I think a significant part of SV's problem, is that there's an "old boy"
mentality, just with different trappings. I bet a lot of the actual people who
lived in the milieu portrayed in Mad Men believed they were living a sort of
heightened humanity and were helping to make the world a better place. I also
think that is exactly what many in SV and the Bay Area actually do; that's not
a justification to look down on and prejudge fellow human beings, however.
Sometimes, I wonder if I'm getting a little flavor of what pre-revolutionary
Paris was like.

------
outside1234
the part they missed is that they also want indentured workers as well, as in,
workers that can't switch jobs for 3-4 years while they get their green card.

~~~
mratzloff
Yes, this is extremely relevant.

Note that 1 in 5 STEMs don't work in software because of pay or working
conditions (we can assume that means, for instance, long hours).

But if you're scared of being fired (and therefore deported), startups have a
free hand to exploit you.

------
yekko
There is a shortage of good people willing to work for peanuts. There is no
shortage of good people.

Offer 500k/year, you'll have more people than you can manage.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Yes, but this reasoning only goes so far. In order to pay all your engineers
500k/year, you'd have to absurdly profitable. Maybe MS and Google could pull
that off, but most companies could not.

~~~
yekko
Then those other companies are not competitive and will wither away in a
Capitalist economy.

Problem solved.

tl;dr: paying high salaries is becoming a competitive advantage.

~~~
dougabug
Anti-poaching agreements between top tech giants notably Steve Jobs' Apple,
Google, Adobe, Intel, Pixar, etc. clearly showed that the industry was willing
to go to extraordinary lengths to prevent/minimize bidding wars against one
another.

~~~
yekko
Then they ask for more H-1Bs

------
jellicle
Except that this isn't the truth. H1B imported engineers aren't the best in
their field, working for top wages. They're middling-low, working for below-
average wages. They pull down wages for the entire software engineering field
by about 6%, say the studies.

If H1B's are really the best software engineers in the world, why are they
being hired for less than the average wages in the U.S. for average engineers?

I appreciate that there's a persistent media myth that H1B is about getting
"top" engineers, but this has been thoroughly, totally debunked and should be
roundly mocked whenever it shows up.

~~~
khuey
Truly world-class engineers can be brought to the US on O visas. H1Bs are
trying to fill a need for good or even great, but not amazing, engineers.
Which is why it's a tragedy that so many of the spots go to shitty outsourcing
firms for mediocre wages.

~~~
ktsmith
Depending on the field getting an O visa can be exceptionally hard as they are
intended for exceptional people. One of my clients has four or five employees
with O visas and these people are all top of their field including a nobel
laureate. You could easily be in the top 5% of your field and get rejected for
an O.

~~~
khuey
Yes, that's the idea.

~~~
ktsmith
Sure, but most people here are not really talking about world class engineers.

------
wavefunction
Maybe the real problem, is the quality of the recruiters and HR and business
people? Sure, technical people find it very easy to dismiss non-technical
folks (_especially recruiters_) out of egoism, but maybe there's some truth to
it?

I keep hearing about "rockstar" this and that, but aren't actual rockstars
(rather than professional musicians) known for being unrealistic assholes?

------
WalterBright
Let's see:

1\. Companies want to pay as little salary as possible

2\. Programmers want to get paid as high a salary as possible

It's almost as if supply and demand was more than a theoretical concept!

------
aghull
I have a lot of problems with this article.

> What there is is a shortage of ultra-elite American-born talent, and Silicon
> Valley wants to hire the very best in the world. The view from Silicon
> Valley is that a lot of the US talent, while bountiful in number, just
> doesn't stack up.

So you're saying that the US has a shortage of the world's best talent? And
that Silicon Valley wants to be able to hire the world's best? Those 2
suppositions seem too obvious to bear mentioning. Are we supposed to expect
the majority of the ultra-elite of anything to come out of the US?

Then the article looks at average salaries for STEM workers over time to
"prove" that there's no shortage based on "the fundamental laws of supply and
demand." OK, but average price would only rise if the supply-to-demand ratio
was also shrinking, not if it was relatively constant. I don't see this
brought up in the article.

~~~
Glyptodon
I have a huge issue with what the article says because we constantly also hear
about how foreign scientists and engineers aren't as creative, innovative, or
competitive and how countries like Japan, China and India have issues
fostering creativity, independence, innovation, individualism, etc., which are
_supposedly_ exactly what we need in developers.

Likewise the most talented scientists, engineers, and developers I know are
always the ones who have a harder time finding work. Why? Because they can
intimidate potential bosses and co-workers without meaning to. Because they're
indifferent a lot of marketing schlock or the jargon flavor of the month. And
because _really smart people constantly undersell themselves._ In fact, smart
people who don't are most likely narcissistic. (Yes, this means most
'rockstar' 'talent' is neither.)

The average person, regardless of what hip SV types spouting the kool-aid say,
is unlikely to feel comfortable hiring someone who makes them feel threatened,
confused, or inferior. Even with the best intent to hire people 'more
talented' than the manager or existing developers, there're many other divides
that preclude there being more than a small difference in skill.

~~~
dougabug
Richard Feynman's account of his experience teaching in Brazil speaks to your
first point. Focusing purely on test scores, fact regurgitation, and formulaic
problem solving misses far more important abilities such as grasping
underlying fundamental concepts and applying them to novel situations.

------
laurentoget
The main argument of the article is 'If there was a shortage in STEM salaries
would rise'.

Comparing the salary ranges in London and Silicon Valley on the two recent
polls on HN seems like a pretty flagrant sign that the salary may not have
risen recently but developers definitely commend a good bit more money in the
US than in London. ( the mode for london seems to be between LBP 30k and 50k,
which is $45k-$75k, whereas bay area salary mode is between $120k and $130k )

Disclosure: While having my salary multiplied by 3 was not the main reason for
me to move from academia in france to industry in the US, it certainly was a
plus.

------
roasm
There isn't just a shortage of ultra-elite local talent, there's even a
shortage of halfway competent local talent.

I've done a lot of hiring, mostly from colleges, and I can tell you that there
are some schools that should just shut down their CS departments. You know
there's a problem when you've given someone a 4 year degree, and they can't
even get through a for loop. There's a reason fizz buzz is an interview
question.

I refuse to outright ignore any school because I believe great people can go
to any school (or no school at all), but some schools I have experience with
are definitely a strike against you on your resume.

~~~
tosseraccount
"There isn't just a shortage of ultra-elite local talent, there's even a
shortage of halfway competent local talent."

Don't all businesses and consumers complain about finding quality on the
cheap? This is not special to tech nor specific to a region, right?

------
derricki
I joined Silicon Valley as a grad student at Stanford in 2007, and I've been
on both sides of hiring multiple times. I'm now the recruiting committee chair
for an ambitious startup. The key to the article is: "What we may have is a
'STEM majors who have the skills that Silicon Valley prefers' shortage."

For me the issue is not that schools don't teach a certain algorithm or design
pattern, but it takes a lot of searching to find someone smart who is also
diligent, dedicated, hard-working, and responsible.

Every university should ask their students to read the short essay "A Message
to Garcia" (<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17195/17195-h/17195-h.htm>) that
tells the story of the dependable servant Garcia. The author exclaims: "By the
Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the
statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men
need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae
which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate
their energies: do the thing"

------
bayesianhorse
I have a problem with "If supply of workers is short of demand, price should
go up". In a very basic view this makes sense. But not in even slightly more
sophisticated models.

A company makes a certain "marginal" revenue off the employee. It's not always
easy or even possible to compute the exact amount, but the salary is limited
by this marginal revenue. The difference between marginal revenue and salary
is the marginal profit. If that profit is too small, management might not be
able to get the money to even hire this employee.

Supply and demand in the labor market is a very fickle thing, and I am
certainly no expert. But adding job opportunities and subtracting immigrants
is not going to fly.

~~~
dyno12345
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=revenue+per+employee+ap...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=revenue+per+employee+apple,+google,+microsoft,+amazon)

Seems likely to be a pretty safe margin

~~~
TulliusCicero
You realize that's revenue, not net income or profit, right?

~~~
dyno12345
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=profit+per+employee+goo...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=profit+per+employee+google%2C+apple%2C+microsoft%2C+amazon)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Or in words: each of Google, Apple, and Microsoft make enough _profit per man-
year_ that they could _double_ their salaries without becoming unprofitable.

~~~
bayesianhorse
If you assume that they can hire for example a 1000 more engineers and receive
the same about of "profit per employee", then this is correct.

But in reality "hire more people, increase revenue/profit" isn't remotely as
simple...

~~~
eli_gottlieb
No, I was assuming they can raise salaries for their _current_ employees
without affecting productivity levels.

------
michaelochurch
I find it utterly ridiculous that people are complaining about a "talent
shortage" when a typical 35-year-old software engineer can't buy a house in
the Bay Area.

You tell a shortage by price signals, and useless bikeshedding executives out-
earn engineers by quite a bit, but no one takes this (I hope) to mean that
there's a useless-meddling-executive shortage.

This concept of a "talent shortage" is hereby banned until we're seeing
25-year-old software engineers buying third homes. When we're at that point,
we can start worrying about this so-called "shortage".

There is a shortage of talented people doing _useful_ things for society, but
that's more of a job shortage than a people shortage.

~~~
natrius
That's a Bay Area problem, not an industry problem. I don't hear the same
housing complaints from people in Austin and Seattle.

------
jtchang
Of course large corporations want immigration reform!

They don't want to pay for mediocre talent in the US when they can get someone
just as good overseas. The reality is that technology is eating the world and
there aren't enough good engineers to create everything we need.

I think some reform is definitely necessary. The need for top engineer talent
is just going to get worse (and not just in the US...all the countries will
need them). If immigrants want to come to the US I feel we should welcome
them.

------
Stratego
Where in this article is it acknowledged that the mechanics of supply and
demand are radically impacted during a recession?

Where in this article is the rate of employment and remuneration of STEM
workers compared to the mean employment rate and remuneration of all American
works?

------
jacques_chester
Given that immigration laws are import quotas, that the free market will fix
things is a confused argument. There's no such free market in software
engineering labour.

~~~
tejay
> There's no such free market in software engineering labour.

Can you explain this a little bit? Not trying to sound combative, just would
like to hear your thoughts!

~~~
jacques_chester
Well to sabotage myself, there's no free market in anything. "Free market" is
a fuzzy set.

Import quotas are well studied. When you limit the number of foreign cars,
foreign commodities etc that can enter your country, you drive up the price.
Local suppliers of those goods will benefit at the expense of local consumers
of those goods.

But humans, unlike cars or bananas, come with lasting and deep impacts on a
local society. It is a very human thing to wish to control who belongs to your
ingroup, even if that ingroup is an abstraction of continental scope and with
hundreds of millions of existing members.

But the fact the immigration restrictions arises from ancient social logic
doesn't change its _economic_ nature, its economic morphology if you will. And
immigration restrictions are isomorphic onto any other import quota. They
artificially raise the price of local suppliers (US citizens) at the expense
of local consumers (US companies).

As an Australian this is less of a problem for me. We have a special secret
backdoor into the US engineering market in the form of the E-3 visa.

------
gojomo
The EPI study keeps misleading people. Key points to remember:

(1) The EPI is a unionized-labor think tank with strong anti-immigration
views. Its research – its selection of figures and spin – will always be in
service of that goal.

(2) This latest EPI report, like a similar one before it, uses industry-wide
and degree-wide averages with no adjustment for cohorts of experience/age. It
is thus possible for the 'average' to go down if there is an in-rush of new
younger workers (or equivalently, less-experienced career-changers at starting
salaries).

As a simple contrived example, assume an 'industry' starting with two workers,
a entry-level worker at $50K a year, a senior worker at $100K a year. The
average is $75K.

A year passes. Business is booming and there's a shortage of well-qualified
workers. The senior worker gets a raise to $125K. The now-junior worker gets a
raise to $62.5K. The company would like to hire more senior stars, but they're
all already doing well in other industries (or other countries and deterred
from working domestically by immigration barriers). Still, the sector is
growing so they hire two new promising entry-level workers at $50K each, one
recent graduate and one career-switcher, who were both making just $40K last
year in non-STEM work. Maybe one of them will be a domain-specific star, with
salary to match, once trained-up in a year or so.

Every single person in this scenario got a 25% year-over-year raise... but the
'industry average' compensation dropped from $75K to $71.9K, split over a
larger and earlier-in-career base.

If you live in the simpleminded, interchangeable-STEM-laborer world of the EPI
analysis, this is a crisis. There are plenty of "STEM workers" because every
"STEM worker" is just like every other "STEM worker" and the new entrants
haven't magically started making the old $75K average simply by putting on a
STEM-worker-jumpsuit. But really, everyone's doing better, the industry _is_
talent-constrained and responding with _both_ salary increases and legally-
allowed hiring, and would be able to expand more if other truly 'senior'
industry-skilled people were available.

(3) The EPI report uses wordcrafting like "[f]or every two students that U.S.
colleges graduate with STEM degrees, only one is hired into a STEM job" to
create the impression many STEM graduates are left without a desired job. But
there's plenty of evidence (including in their own report) that STEM-graduate
unemployment remains low, and lots of workers happily go into non-STEM jobs
with STEM degrees, or into STEM jobs with non-STEM degrees. (In particular,
many STEM graduates prefer the pay and challenges of other fields – law,
finance, consulting, even many sales and small-business roles – and may have
taken their STEM degree simply out of intellectual interest, not as strict
occupational training.)

So the healthy churn of matching of people with jobs where they, individually,
thrive gets spun by EPI as implying we have more STEM graduates as we need.
They seem to think of a STEM degree as if it were chiefly a 'union card'
giving you the right to work in some rationed job role... and if not everyone
with these cards takes those jobs, too many cards were issued. Cut back on the
STEM worker supply, from schools and immigration, pronto!

That's the kind of fixed-pie, world-oblivious analysis that did wonders for
the big-three US auto industry... don't let the EPI port that thinking into
the high-tech world.

We need as many smart, trained workers - from schools _and_ career-changers,
foreign _and_ domestic – as we can get.

------
jimhefferon
In short: they want people with more than a C+ in C++.

~~~
wavefunction
Silicon Valley may be different, but for most of today's software development,
you just need someone who can write managed code that's maintainable.

I'm willing to tackle any sort of technology project, but do we really need to
reinvent the system bus? (A friend tells me about 6 months of meetings with
the team arguing over piddling details in a simple system bus implementation
that will probably get scrapped when the next team comes in.)

