The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage 392
walterbyrd (182728) writes in with this story that calls into question the conventional wisdom that there is a shortage of science and engineering workforce in the U.S. "Such claims are now well established as conventional wisdom. There is almost no debate in the mainstream. They echo from corporate CEO to corporate CEO, from lobbyist to lobbyist, from editorial writer to editorial writer. But what if what everyone knows is wrong? What if this conventional wisdom is just the same claims ricocheting in an echo chamber? The truth is that there is little credible evidence of the claimed widespread shortages in the U.S. science and engineering workforce."
Links (Score:4, Insightful)
Why link to an article about some studies that "prove" common knowledge is false, instead of linking directly to the studies themselves?
Is it journalistic courtesy?
Want to write a kernel ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wanna install windows 8 on 100 machines ?
Nope
Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Looking in the wrong place... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Looking in the wrong place... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. When there are shortages in a free market, you can see the shortage from the rising price. It's an objective, quantifiable measurement of the shortage.
Do STEM salaries indicate a shortage ? That is, are they increasing at a rate beyond other areas ? I don't see it.
Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
The authors agree:
"Most studies report that real wages in many—but not all—science and engineering occupations have been flat or slow-growing, and unemployment as high or higher than in many comparably-skilled occupations."
Re:Shortage of people or people with degrees? (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies have no desire what so ever to train up employees. Which is of course part of the shortage right there. Companies bitch that they can't find people with the exact skill set they need, but are unwilling to hire and train. Also the management set has their heads very far up their asses and have convinced themselves that engineers and other highly skilled workers are overpaid.
Consider that to be an engineer requires 4 years of 'work' during high school (unpaid). 5 years of college (also unpaid and requiring taking on debt). 2-3 years work experience. That's probably an investment of 15000-25000 hours. An investment worth 3/4 to a 1.25 million dollars. Certainly a 5-10% return on investment is very reasonable right? Well that's 50-100k per year.
Unreasonable to the political and management class, why? Cause reasons.
What gets me is these guys think, oh lets just outsource this to India and China. Forgetting that then India and China get the factories, trained work force, supply chains, technical know how, etc. And while the managers still control trademarks, patents and distribution, that won't last either.
Shortage of *good* scientists and engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
I've taught off and on for 30 years now, and over the entire time one thing has remained pretty constant: About 10% of the students completing the programs are really good; they will be star programmers and eventually software architects. Another 40% are competent - they would be able to carry out plans created by others, but should never carry any larger responsibility. Good, solid programmers. The remaining 50% manage to graduate, but frankly should never work directly in the field. Maybe they can be testers or write documentation, but never let them write a line of code in a real project.
Unfortunately, it's not always obvious what kind of person you are hiring. Add to this mix the people who are self-taught, who are coming from some other field, and may have wildly inappropriate ideas. Just as an example, I am currently working with a company whose star programmer (and he really is very good) comes from process control - and has zero clue about testing or quality control. He writes code and assumes that it works, and his company is so glad to have him (at a grunt-level salary) that they refuse to insult him by testing his code - so they deliver his work untested straight to clients - you can imagine how well this works.
tl;dr: There is no shortage of bodies in STEM fields. However, there is a shortage of good people who also have a solid education in and understand of their field. This is true in computer science, and almost certainly in every other STEM field out there.
Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because there's a fine line between coding and designing. A design done in such a way that it is too expensive to code is not a realistic design. For realistic designs, it helps to have coding experience. Similarly, merely following specs for coders negates their influence on design when they spot an efficiency or feature that should be reflected back up into the design. I think this is what you intended to say.
For the GP: "one programmer in C++, in Fortran by another one, and in LISP by a third one". Nah, this should be "one programmer in C++ and/or Fortran and/or LISP". Good coders can use just about any language given a bit of experience with it, and these mainstream languages should be known by anyone who calls him/her self a coder.
Re:A myth indeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
You just don't know how it is when a farmer is blackmailed to join a farmer's collective by having a truck outside his house all night with a running engine, shining the beams into the bedroom. When his son is put in jail for trumped up traffic violation charges, and the charges will only be dropped if his father joins the collective. You don't know how it is when a private owned print shop just doesn't get any paper, because the order for new paper was put back and back and postponed again by the state owned papermill. You don't know how it is when you can't rent out your house anymore, but you are required to report all available appartements to the municipal appartement administration which then will send you whoever people they allocated the appartments to.
Stop your clueless musings about how socialist the U.S. would be. It just isn't true.
Re:A myth indeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently, you don't believe in education either, or you wouldn't spell "global" as "globul" or "religion" as "religon". Tax rates in the U.S. are well below those of other countries. That alone doesn't make the U.S. not-capitalist, but it does put it in perspective. Yes, the company tax rates need to be adjusted, that usually happens about every 20-30 years, so hold on to your britches.
Socialized medicine? Errr....how come the insurance companies are still in business and the new ACA requires everyone to get insurance somehow. Ma and Pa Kettle do get Medicare, but that is because the sainted insurance companies want to cherry pick the healthy people and insure them. Death panels you say? What do you think actuarial boards of insurance companies are?
Global warming is a fact, stop trying to turn it into a political issue. Don't believe me? Look up Miami and the plans they have for sea level rise and how expensive it will be for them. And even if you do not believe in global warming (although frankly I think it is like not believing in gravitation), observe the data on the acidification of the oceans. That's directly due to CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere. It's killing coral in....Florida and throughout the Caribbean. Localized? Hardly, it is also killing coral in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. They expect it to be gone within about 50 years if something isn't done. Yes, I know, what's a good Libertarian care about coral. Well, the crux is the ocean is the bottom of the food chain. Maybe you've heard of it, you're at the top...for now.
And if the U.S. isn't a capitalist economy, how did the real estate market manage to tank the U.S. economy and give the world's a cold? The basic problem is that a pure capitalist economy spawns bubbles and monopolies. In order or to level that out, laws and regulations were needed. Don't believe me, look at the U.S. before the Great Depression. The economy was a wild west of an economy and lurched from crisis to crisis. Of course, if you lost your money in one, your days of lurching were over. The Great Recession happened because the Bush Administration did not believe in regulation. The head of the SEC was a puppet of Wall Street. That allowed Wall Street to run amok. Realtors, the local zoning officials, the builders, and the sainted American people worked with almost no rules and...splat...there went the economy.
everyone Shouldn't go to college (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Shortage of *good* scientists and engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
I've taught off and on for 30 years now, and over the entire time one thing has remained pretty constant: About 10% of the students completing the programs are really good; they will be star programmers and eventually software architects. Another 40% are competent - they would be able to carry out plans created by others, but should never carry any larger responsibility. Good, solid programmers. The remaining 50% manage to graduate, but frankly should never work directly in the field. Maybe they can be testers or write documentation, but never let them write a line of code in a real project.
Unfortunately, it's not always obvious what kind of person you are hiring. Add to this mix the people who are self-taught, who are coming from some other field, and may have wildly inappropriate ideas. Just as an example, I am currently working with a company whose star programmer (and he really is very good) comes from process control - and has zero clue about testing or quality control. He writes code and assumes that it works, and his company is so glad to have him (at a grunt-level salary) that they refuse to insult him by testing his code - so they deliver his work untested straight to clients - you can imagine how well this works.
tl;dr: There is no shortage of bodies in STEM fields. However, there is a shortage of good people who also have a solid education in and understand of their field. This is true in computer science, and almost certainly in every other STEM field out there.
Sturgeon's Law all over again. Which itself was a somewhat embittered re-observation of what had already been seen in the Pareto Principle (ratios may vary somewhat).
The saving grace of that is you don't need 100% of your staff to be rock stars. There's room for the stars, the supporting cast, and even a few janitors, and that actually makes a lot more economic sense, since those of us with star talents are neither being efficiently used when we have to do the grunt work nor likely to be very happy to so so.
What it more telling is that companies these days typically don't attempt to take their existing assets and train them to become worth more, they want to hire in new people who can "hit the ground running" - trained at someone else's expense, and if the existing people cannot be found a place, they're summarily discarded. Along with their accumulated knowledge of how the business works and how to efficiently support the business.
Business as usual (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a business as usual so far as I can see from what companies claim.
There's no shortage.
There's a shortage of highly competent, high producing, years of experience individuals willing to work for peanuts.
Everyone else needs training, which companies are no longer willing to pay for. In some magical fashion, employees are just supposed to be hired and become immediately productive.
Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's certainly no shortage of lobbyists in Washington crying to Congress that they need more indentured servitude licenses (aka H-1B visas).
Re:Links (Score:5, Insightful)
Normally I'd agree, but the article summarizes a collection of studies, so is a work by itself. To skip the article, you'd either need to just link a number of studies and skip any useful summary of them, or you'd need to reproduce the summary in the article (which would be plagiarism, or at least wasted effort).
Re:Links (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary; it's a shortage of companies willing to provide on-the-job training and the salaries and rates necessary!
Re:Want to write a kernel ? (Score:4, Insightful)
On the contrary, the lack of distinction between design and code makes the distinction between engineers and programmers even more clear. "Making it up as you go along" is exactly the opposite of engineering!
Programming computers != engineering (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, I will be trolled into oblivion. But please, managing and programming a computer is not engineering.
Re: Want to write a kernel ? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have degrees in both civil engineering and computer science, am a licensed EIT, and work as a "Software Engineer." The vast majority of "Software Engineers" are indeed not true engineers.
Re:A myth indeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
"The U.S. is capitalist."
Perhaps your time in whatever state you are from has clouded your view some?
What us capitalist? Wikipedia tells us "Capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industry and the means of production are controlled by private owners with the goal of making profits in a market economy."
We do have private property ownership here in the states, but then you are allowed to own private property in Europe, in Russia, even in China, are you not?
We are taxed here at all levels, income, sales, property, capital gains, death. Local, state and federal. These taxes pay for all manner of social programs from food stamps to SSI (it's a tax), Obamacare (medicare/medicaid), unemployment, I could go on. And this is a progressive tax, that is those who earn more are taxed more, excluding of course those elites who find themselves very powerful and connected to the state decision makers and this get themselves out of these things. These people exist but they are not large in number, basically unless you are very poor, or very rich you are paying anywhere from 60 to 80% of what you earn to government in one form or another.
And for all that we live in a society of regulations from cradle to grave. You cannot buy a light bulb without the permission of the state. You cannot buy a toilet without the permission of the state. You cannot wash your car without the permission of the state. Your food must pass the inspection of some nameless faceless beauracrat. Likewise your medicine. Your clothes. Your home. Your car. Your barber cannot cut your hair without a state license.
This isn't capitalism, not by any stretch of the imagination.
And by the way, I am not trying to attack you in any way, I have no doubt whereever you are from it is also highly socialised. I am just trying to make the point that so many "progressives" and liberals (a terrible word but it's what people here use) constantly accuse us of being "evil capitalists". We haven't seen the free market here for generations, and every year taxes go up, government get's bigger and individual liberties go away.
I don't know about you but I rather liked the whole "freedom" thing we used to have.
You seem to be confusing an economic system with a governmental system. Your definition of Capitalism is an economic system in which trade, industry and the means of production are controlled by private owners with the goal of making profits in a market economy. I don't see how any taxes or regulations negate that. Even with all that stuff, the US still has an economic system in which trade, industry and the means of production are controlled by private owners with the goal of making profits in a market economy.
Or do you mean that the trade and means of production aren't really in control of their owners because those owners must comply with regulations and pay taxes? Many (not all) of those regulation were enacted to solve problems. I actually like that my food is inspected by some faceless bureaucrat; likewise my medicine. In such a complex society we need rules and regulations to maintain a standard of quality, safety and responsibility. You may counter that we do not achieve that, and I might agree. But not everyone is an honest or virtuous actor. There is an old saying that if men were angels, we wouldn't need government. I agree with that. I would love to eliminate government. But men are manifestly not angels, and they act in short-sighted and selfish ways. Capitalism without regulation is the Devil's playground, as has been demonstrated time and again. I don't see how those regulations make it not-capitalism.
Re:anonymous coward (Score:2, Insightful)
"Creep" by Radio Head #mcconnelling
Re:A myth indeed. (Score:5, Insightful)
And the truth comes out. Why is it that every time someone gets up in arms about Socialism, or regulation or taxation it turns out to be about the government taking your money and giving it to those people? You know why the state has to do that, Cletus? Because Capitalism can't seem to provide enough for everyone.
Capitalism is an economic system concerned with bringing goods and services to market at a profit for the capitalist. That's it. It has nothing to say about making sure everyone gets fed. It has nothing to say about whether people in a society have a roof over their heads, or safe roads to drive on, or a fire department, or help when they are sick, or courts to redress their grievances, or are discriminated against. It's an economic system, not a governmental system.
You may not like how the government is run, but the minorities and the poor are not the problem. Sure, the government takes some of your (and my) money to support some of those people. But that's only because Capitalism doesn't do it. Society is more than economics and commerce.
Re:anonymous coward (Score:5, Insightful)
It has to do with far, far more than just visas and immigration policies, it has to do with all the policies backed by these administrations (and the Congresses during their terms) and their cumulative effect on the American economy: NAFTA and other trade policies, wars, defense spending, spending on research (or lack thereof), corporate welfare, and on and on.
Re:Links (Score:5, Insightful)
No, not really. Companies are complaining about lack of supply and are unwilling to do anything about it when they hold most of the power and have most of the resources. They want to treat people like dirt and they're surprised it's biting them in the butt.
With inflation in china and india, give it 4-8 yea (Score:4, Insightful)
In 2003, you could get a masters degree quality indian programmer for a third of the price of an american bachelors degree.
Then it was a "bachelor's degree 'A' student" about 2006.
By 2010, the quality was lower but the price was cheaper.
In 2011, we started seeing a new scam around the "L" visa. These indians were physically here but legally still in india. They could work 6 months in each calendar year then had to return home.
Two years ago, inflation ran over 20% in india and over 30% in china (and over 50%-- up to 100% at non technical jobs) for these jobs and Infosys started changing it's business model.
The typical offshore programmer in 2013- always said yes, delivered exactly to the specs- even if the specs were clearly insane/wrong/incomplete, was still willing to work 60 hour weeks but less so than in the past.
And the turnover was insane. Entire teams of people would just be gone replaced by new people every six months. And you realized the outsourcing company was training people at our expense. And our american managers LOVED the concept that programmers are generic glorp to begin with so they bit really hard on the concept that process documentation would allow an offshore programmer to be instantly productive the second they walked in the door. You can imagine the actual results in reality. Regardless of the level of documentation (which wasn't as good as promised), it was a multi *million* line system. In reality, it took years to learn how things hooked together.
The sneaky thing is the always saying "yes". An american manager asks an american programmer to do something and they know what is desired and say "can't do it on this set of constraints" while the indian programmer says "I'll do my best". "I'll do my best" is code for "can't do it on this set of constraints". But the managers bit on it every single time. And then had us working 70+ hour weeks to try and make up the difference/fix it.
Glad I was able to retire having saving half what I made since 1990. Now when I program, it will be for fun like it used to be.