7 ms·

The Myth of the Science and Engineering Shortage

108 points by vitaminj 13y ago

baldfat 13y ago
I do not work in IT. Family and friends think I should be a millionair because I am "so good with computers." Worked in IT in the 90s for 18 months as IT Manager and well I went bald at 22. Did programing when I was 17 and well I woke up with ideas on how to do to fix my issue. To much stress and to little pay for the jobs. Don't see the change for a "good" IT job for most people. When students start asking about the industry from people that work it they usually get a negative response and told to do something else.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
stale2001 13y ago
What world is this article living in? I got a job making $100k as a software engineer, right out of college (top-tier I guess). And then I realized that I was worth more than that, and 8 months later I'm now switching over to a job making $150k in total compensation. And TBH, I was middle of the road compared to my classmates.
- acchow 13y ago
  Software engineering is an exception in the science and engineering camp. FTA: "Because labor markets in science and engineering differ greatly across fields, industries, and time periods, it is easy to cherry-pick specific specialties that really are in short supply, at least in specific years and locations. But generalizing from these cases to the whole of U.S. science and engineering is perilous." But, surprise surprise, still higher unemployment than the guild-protected professions. FTA: "unemployment among scientists and engineers is higher than in other professions such as physicians, dentists, lawyers, and registered nurses" On a related note, a good read about guilds: http://nplusonemag.com/death-by-degrees http://nplusonemag.com/death-by-degrees
  - ahomescu1 13y ago
    > FTA: "unemployment among scientists and engineers is higher than in other professions such as physicians, dentists, lawyers, and registered nurses" Which is counter-intuitive to me, considering how heavily regulated those other professions are (and their numbers restricted).
    - acchow 13y ago
      Curious, what do you think the employment rate among physicians is? I'd be surprised if it wasn't 100%. The issue is regulation - employment only takes a hit outside the protected professions. There are 13,605 taxi medallions in new york city. What do you think the employment rate among taxi drivers in NYC is?
      - ahomescu1 13y ago
        I'm also considering the people who would be in those careers, if not for the heavy regulations. For example, how many people in NYC would be taxi drivers if they could, but aren't allowed to be?
    - austinz 13y ago
      It actually makes sense, I think. The bottleneck (bar, qualifying exam) keeps the supply artificially low, so those who pass and qualify are always in high demand (low unemployment). Those who don't pass either try again, or after a while go into other fields and no longer consider themselves prospective doctors, lawyers, etc. It's sort of like the effect where, during a prolonged recession, unemployment numbers 'drop' because some people give up actively looking for a job, and are no longer counted.
      - ahomescu1 13y ago
        Sure, I should have specified that I'm also counting people who have the skills and training, but aren't allowed to practice (such as people who failed the medical or bar exam). It makes sense to me to consider those "prospectives" as unemployed in their profession (especially since those professions take years, in some cases as much as a decade, of specialized education, all before the exam itself).
- hmsimha 13y ago
  Good for you. I graduated from a college that was not top tier over a year ago, as a below-average student, and have yet to find any kind of development work that pays as much as I made delivering pizza while working my way through college. Not everyone has the same experience as you. Furthermore, this article is talking about the entire STEM domain.
  - ranci 13y ago
    What major?
    - hmsimha 12y ago
      Computer Science
      - ranci 12y ago
        What are you doing now and where do you live? I'm just curious. I am studying CS right now.
        hmsimha 12y ago
        I'm living in Portland, OR now, though I'm about to move to Canada. I graduated from a school in Memphis, TN. Right now I'm taking a little break, but for most of the last year I've been reading about different programming languages and frameworks, doing a part-time internship using Ruby on Rails, and basically developing my skill-set to (hopefully) make myself a more desirable candidate for entry-level positions. If you're reading hacker news, you're already probably doing better on that front than I was during my entire undergrad. I'd highly recommend getting an internship and building a personal project before you graduate too, as I believe my failure to do both of those things (in addition to a sub-3.0 GPA) were the factors that have prevented me from getting a job thus far.
- duochrome 13y ago
  I think top-tier college graduate is the shortage.
- Spooky23 13y ago
  You're in a hot market in a hot locale. You probably pay an arm and a leg for housing. I'm in a second tier city with more limited options. I know folks who successfully start CS grads in the $50-60k range, mostly from state schools. Someone with a good track record is anywhere from $80-105. Sounds awful, but a 2000 ft^2 house can be found around $200k in a nice area. McMansions are $400-500k. I ended up moving back here from NYC, taking a big salary haircut in the process. My overall standard of living got a little better right off the bat, mostly due to reduced housing and commuting expenses.
  - 31reasons 13y ago
    What place that be ?
  - a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
    At many levels the national discussions are distorted by failure to understand regional costs of living and taxes and the matter of finding acceptable schools. People talk about the 1% without realizing that two $150K incomes supporting a few kids are at best "comfortable" by the standards of our grandparents in markets like NYC and SF. My grandfathers with skilled tradesman wages were able to support stay at home wives and send six kids down the street to a totally safe and high quality school, and at the same time take a month off every summer on nice quiet rental beach front property (not some hyper crowded vegas style resort bullshit, we're talking single family home on a large lot on a barrier island). People just don't seem to understand how little money $150K is relative to what a skilled and competent worker could get out of a remotely comparable sum 50 years ago. OK, you make $150K, can your four or five kids walk down the street to a quite good school? Is it essentially optional whether your wife works or not?
    - waterlesscloud 13y ago
      "two $150K incomes supporting a few kids are at best "comfortable" by the standards of our grandparents" No. This is a gross exaggeration and extremely out of touch with economic reality.
- jonrimmer 13y ago
  Why do you think all these silicon valley CEOs are throwing their weight behind schemes to get kids and adults learning how to code? It isn't because they really believe there's some social or personal value in being able to program, it's because they want to flood the job market with developers and so crash wages. What's sad is that many programmers are actually buying it, and volunteering their time to help support and evangelize these schemes.
  - jkrems 13y ago
    CEOs who think just throwing more developers at a problem will solve it are what natural selection is for.
    - aviraldg 13y ago
      More developers might not solve a problem faster, but they will drive down wages (even for skilled developers)
      - ranci 13y ago
        There is a lot of crying and worrying about wages on here right now. If you are from CS or SE, you don't have the right to cry about a saturated job market driving down your wages. They are plenty high. If you want people with real problems, look at the graphic design industry. $10/hr can get you your pick of the litter among several applicants who have over 20 years experience in one of the biggest cities in the United States. Then imagine what it must be like for recent college graduates in the field.
        collyw 12y ago
        Wages are plenty high in the States, or places like London. The rest of us are not on anything special.
  - meddlepal 13y ago
    You speak the truth but I don't know how to prevent what is going on. I've also come to the conclusion most developers are too shortsighted to see their own career demise in 20 years.
- enewc 13y ago
  First of all your, viewpoint is restricted to EE/CS. Any of the other pure sciences: biology, chemistry, physics, etc. do not enjoy the same luxuries. Another important distinction to make is that there are almost no science (i.e. research) jobs any more. Most technology jobs are just run of the mill programming, not actually investing in research.
  - unknownian 13y ago
    And yet everyone wants to equate the two. Personally I don't even think webdev should count as STEM at all.
- firstOrder 13y ago
  You said you went to a top-tier college. Most of them charge over $40k a year. So that $150k pays for less than your tuition costs. You are worth $150k a year (which means your boss is making $160k, $165k etc. off of you, they hire you to be profitable). So your four years of study were in a sense $600k down the drain in that. So it will be at least five years before you start to break even. Minus the housing and living costs over that five years. You spent over $150k and four years ($600k) worth of your time training for this job. Also remember the market is hot. In 2000/2001 air went out of the bubble. Also in 2008/2009. Right now is the peak of a go-go time like 1998/1999 was. It is not the norm.
mehrdada 13y ago
I think it is important to avoid using the term STEM and specifically dissect it in the discussions about shortage. Computer Science is a very peculiar part of STEM and not all of the STEM fields face the same challenges. As Hadi Partovi of Code.org put out eloquently in his testimony before Congress[1], there is a difference between enrollments in Computer Science and STEM in general. For instance, in US high schools, it seems like there is no shortage of students in biology or math, but CS is underenrolled. [1]: http://www.c-span.org/video/?317093-1/house-subcmte-hearing-private-sector-stem-education http://www.c-span.org/video/?317093-1/house-subcmte-hearing-...
- wil421 13y ago
  CS in high school doesn't exist in most schhool you can't compare it with bio or math. Students may change their major more then once. What matters is the college graduation rates, companies looking for college grads in stem no a high school diploma.
  - mehrdada 13y ago
    I am quite ignorant about how US high school system works and that's one anecdote I had heard, so I apologize about not being able to carry on a meaningful discussion on that topic, but that's just an example, and my core points stands regardless: there are huge differences between various fields that fall under STEM, and they should not be thought about as a single bucket. That's certainly true beyond high school as well.
    - wil421 12y ago
      That's quite true. With CS you can get hired right out of college but with other fields like bio and physics more schooling is required. I don't think a lot of students in the US want research positions (or qualify for them). So yes I believe that you're right it's an apples to oranges comparison.
- curun1r 13y ago
  It's also possible for there to be a shortage of qualified workers and a surplus of qualified workers...this is a point that people often miss. Qualified US workers have this annoying tendency to be unwilling to uproot their life and move to where the jobs are. Foreign workers coming from other countries don't have this issue...they're moving anyways, so they move where the jobs are. And hi-tech jobs cluster in certain areas, usually around one or more universities to supply talent. So you end up with areas that have lots of jobs and not enough qualified applicants and areas with qualified applicants and no jobs. That's what makes this issue so obnoxious...both sides are right. And that makes it difficult to find a middle ground.
ChristianMarks 13y ago
The Silicon Valley cartel conspirators helped to depress wages and increase unemployment. Universities have relied on cheap student and postdoc labor. Their game-theoretic strategy is cheap talking their serfs into the belief that they too may become masters. ADDENDUM: downvoters can take a warm piss on a power line.
- kenrikm 13y ago
  ADDENDUM: made me laugh, gave an up vote for that.
- mmorett 13y ago
  I normally just lurk, but I signed in just to upvote him. Still laughing...
dblacc 13y ago
I thought the whole shortage for demand argument was to do with the lack of talent that was being produced, rather than simply the number of people who had a bachelors degree.
- firstOrder 13y ago
  I don't know how many jobs I've seen out there where they have an incredibly high bar to hire someone, and then it is 99% CRUD work. Some of the AI jobs at Google, yes, they need good people. Amazon needs some good engineers at the top guiding the creation of EC2 architecture. But most jobs ask for a much higher caliber of people than they actually need.
  - collyw 12y ago
    I don't get why CRUD work is so under appreciated here on HN. I do CRUD work (at least I think I do - I create and maintain the database and front end for a DNA sequencing centre). I have in in depth understanding of SQL - my database returns some moderately complex results. I have solid database design and optimization skills. I know Django in depth. I know Python well. I have a solid understanding of Linux, and know enough to get Django running on the server. I have read up a fair bit on NoSQL, but have yet to find a suitable use case for it. I can do some Javascript / HTML / CSS. Bioinformatics on the other hand seems to be considered a lot more brain power, when most of it is just scripts to count stuff an plot it on a graph. Its' (often) an order of magnitude simpler than what I do. The majority of bioinformaticains I know have never used a debugger - so the code can't be too complex - or they are WAY smarter than me. Or when people talk of CRUD, do they mean the sort of thing you should use MS Access for?
_Robbie 13y ago
I like this article, but it does not delve very deep into why the current perceived shortage exists. On the public policy side, there is probably a belief that more STEM professionals will increase the economic competitiveness of the nation, even if there is a surplus. From technology businesses' standpoint, it is in their interests to have a surplus of STEM graduates in order to maintain or reduce wages.
- tsotha 13y ago
  >On the public policy side, there is probably a belief that more STEM professionals will increase the economic competitiveness of the nation, even if there is a surplus. Except that it doesn't work, and it should be obvious why. There's no reason to bust your ass in college to enter a field the government floods with foreigners. The more people the government imports the less attractive the field looks to domestic students choosing a major. I can't complain about my treatment as an EE and later a software developer, but knowing what I know now I doubt I would go into anything technical if I were graduating from high school today.
  - matteotom 13y ago
    As somebody graduating from high school in a bit, I have to ask: what would you do differently today? It seems to me that, as somebody who can do comp sci reasonably well, that's my best option right now.
    - tsotha 12y ago
      If I were going to do it today the first choice would be business degree and MBA from Harvard or Yale. I'd be willing to borrow what it took, because the payoff is there. In the US today this is the ticket to the C-Suite. If I couldn't get in I'd try to get an ROTC scholarship for as prestigious a place as I could manage and graduate without borrowing money. Either business or liberal arts, though the latter case is a minefield of worthless programs, so it would require some research.
michaelochurch 13y ago
Well, there is a shortage of competent software engineers willing to sacrifice as much as corporate executives think they should, for what corporate executives think such people should be paid. In the same vein, there's a shortage of supermodels who want to fuck obese, unemployed men with halitosis and general poor hygiene.
- jshen 13y ago
  I think you're wrong. I have the hardest time finding good engineers, we pay very well, we don't expect anyone to work crazy overtime, etc. Can we make this more concrete? What sacrifices do you think is being asked of competent developers? What pay do you think they are offered?
  - mehrdada 13y ago
    > we pay very well How do you know, objectively? Have you tried paying twice (or more) the current market rate, for instance, and binary search for a point where you have enough happy hires and failed? Perhaps the market rate is artificially lowered.
    - jshen 13y ago
      The problem isn't that good engineers turn done our offers, it's that very few good engineers come in the door. The ones that have were very happy with their offers. Edit: Didn't realize you weren't the person I originally replied to. Let's reverse your question. What is the objective basis for the claim that engineers are asked to sacrifice to much for too little pay?
      - mehrdada 13y ago
        > it's that very few good engineers come in the door I have one possible answer for this issue: Well, no one in the Valley (to best of my knowledge) really advertises that they are going to pay a meaningful multiple of what's considered the market rate to potential employees. So from the potential employee side, it is reasonable to assume that they are going to get paid around the "market rate". The Valley seems to be at a point where "starting/not starting a startup" is becoming an IQ test (compared to "market rate") financially if you think you are reasonably good at doing stuff, so it is natural that good engineers wouldn't go and apply for a job, because the expectation for compensation is unlikely to be satisfactory anyway (or at least that's what they believe and prevents them from trying). >And you dodged my questions. Oh, I am not the OP and I'm not pretending to have the answers. I was genuinely interested in knowing how you measured that you are paying very well, except for the fact that they were competitive with what's considered the "market rate" which is the questionable piece of data here.
frozenport 13y ago
How does it look for other fields? There is a misunderstanding on how jobs are made. Consider what these look like for history of English majors? STEM is in demand if you look at the areas with predicted job growth.
eranation 13y ago
There is no shortage of bad programmers, there are plenty of medium programmers, it's also not that hard to find decent programmers. It's harder to find good programmers, but much harder to find great ones. The thing is that a great programmer can do 5X more than a good programmer, that can do 2X more than a decent one, that can do 2X more than a medium one. It's not just the number of features they can write in a given time or the fact they have less bugs or test their code better, or simply can do things no one else can. It's not even their ability to design better. It's their ability to do all that and influence the others to follow. I think there is a shortage in that kind of developers, and there is no school that teaches these soft skills.
- mehrdada 13y ago
  I don't disagree that there is a shortage of great programmers, but another problem is that people are generally not willing to pay 100x (or anything close to that) for a 100x programmer. Often they don't even realize whether a person is a great programmer or not.
  - firstOrder 13y ago
    You hit the nail on the head. He talks about the 5x programmer. Well if the 1x programmer is making $100k-$150k a year, the 5x programmers should be making $500k-$750k a year. When was the last time you went on Craigslist and saw a programmer job offering over $500k or more a year? I'm not saying it never happens, but...
    - hueving 13y ago
      Those type of job postings don't go on Craigslist. The few people with those kind of skills just decide where they want to go and apply there.
- x0x0 13y ago
  Sorry, but that's nonsensical. 1 - virtually no supposed 5x or 10x programmer makes even 2x more. If people are really 5x, why on earth don't I see $300-$500k salaries? Particularly given the fall in communication costs ala Brooks, it would be an enormous win for employers 2 - at least in the bay area, there would be tons and tons of highly qualified candidates if moving to the bay area wasn't a financial nightmare (cost of living is horrific and the pay doesn't come anywhere close to making up for it); and if buying a decent 3 bedroom home and having kids didn't nearly require winning a startup lottery -- or at least enough for a good downpayment to get to a conforming mortgage. 3 - I'm in my 30s, and in my cohort of developers I know a number (all of them very skilled and in high demand in the bay area) who have moved to the midwest or austin because financially they're so much better off 4 - the majority of complaints about unavailability of developers, particularly in the bay area, are after the fact justifications to (1) cover employers not paying salaries commensurate with the cost of living, and (2) the ability to import (cheaper, more easily controlled) h1b labor 4a - with a side of companies ducking their responsibilities to america, the state they are in, and their communities to help create the employees they need. Now obviously I don't think 1-4 person startups have any such responsibilities, but somewhere between that and google/fb/hp companies have responsibilities to their communities and countries that bay area companies in particular almost completely duck. For example, why isn't facebook or google, in lieu of whinging about difficulty hiring (while illegally restraining wages, ain't that beautiful) running hacker schools themselves? It couldn't be because they'd rather let someone else pay for it and cherry pick the winners (saving money two ways)?
DonGateley 13y ago
Time to demonstrate once and for all the fraud that the H1B visa has always been. All it does is push older engineers out of the field so they can be replaced very cheaply. That needs to stop but having the best congress money can buy pretty much assures that it won't.
keypusher 12y ago
All I know is from my own experience, and that experience is that I have recruiters calling up at least once a week and a few more via email looking for software engineers. I never got that kind of attention when I was working a cash register in retail, and my friends with liberal arts degrees certainly aren't getting it either.
jedanbik 12y ago
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. John Adams US diplomat & politician (1735 - 1826)
- lifeisstillgood 12y ago
  brilliant - except the implication that liberal arts should be all we need by now
  - jedanbik 12y ago
    Rather than an all or nothing proposition, I saw this quote as an elegant framing of what the liberal arts are: nice-to-haves in the wake of ought-to-haves in the wake of die-or-haves. In the popular discourse, we aren't always afforded that sense of perspective.
    - lifeisstillgood 12y ago
      Agreed
- jmeister 12y ago
  Related quote by Yo-Yo Ma: It takes three generations to make a musician; the first to leave poverty, the second to go to school, and the third to master the instrument.
Malarkey73 12y ago
Are wages purely determined by supply and demand though? There is a tale I remember about an economics professor who dumbfounds his class by pointing out that there is a huge surplus of economics students across the country who all want to work for Goldman Sachs. But the wages/bonuses don't fall to reflect the oversupply. I think the same is true for doctors and dentists. Do very few people want to be company executives or politicians? Is there a scarcity? I don't think so. Sometimes people are well paid because they are setting their own salaries (many believe bankers have hijacked banks from the shareholders), others are setting the rules within society (politicians), or interpreting those rules (lawyers), or just getting close to those who do (lobbyists, bureaucrats, special interests). In short the wages of workers are dependent partly on their position of power within society .. of which supply and demand is just one element.
- jacalata 12y ago
  the set of econ students who want to work at Goldman is not the supply: the set of econ students that Goldman thinks will make them money is the supply, and I bet very few of them are unemployed. similar: set of waiters who want to be actors is huge, set of known actors that a studio can say 'his face on the poster will bring in an extra 50 million cinema tickets' is miniscule. That's why all the waiters are acting for free in film student projects and Tom Cruise is a millionaire.
  - Malarkey73 12y ago
    No. I don't believe a word of that. And your analogy undermines your own argument. If you had said Michael Jordan or Lionel Messi ... but Tom Cruise? Really? Tom Cruise is a perfectly good Tom Cruise (a good actor) but a million other waiters could have been him. There maybe Messi like geniuses in politics, banking, business but the idea that bankers are all paid Millions because "they are worth it" is to me ... laughable. They are paid millions because they can get away with it.
dleskov 12y ago
Out of all those graduates, the number of which we are told is 2-3x the number of open positions, are really qualified to fill in those positions? Passionate about their field of study? Intended to get a job in that field in the first place, as opposed to getting a degree in something they can (afford)? Our own experience is that even internships do not always yield good results. And the level of most applicants, many of whom are recent graduates, makes me sad. They manage to find work at some other company in the end, but only because we are in IT and IT is big at our place...
PhantomGremlin 12y ago
Fundamentally, I don't accept that there is, in general, a shortage of "good people" in the USA. I responded earlier [1] to someone who thinks there is. Instead of continuing to follow up with just that one person, I'd like to propose an interesting "experiment" for hiring managers: Do an Ask HN, linking to a recent representative job posting you haven't been able to fill I'd like to see all the relevant details, such as: 1) the job posting, of course 2) company name, location, salary range 3) are the usual requested perks applicable, e.g. flex time, work from home, etc? 4) what kind of resumes are you seeing? How many? What, in general, has been wrong with those people? Then I'd like to see HN posters dissect the information. Let's find out if the requirements are realistic. Let's find out if the company's reputation is toxic. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7452376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7452376

108 points by vitaminj 13y ago

I do not work in IT. Family and friends think I should be a millionair because I am "so good with computers." Worked in IT in the 90s for 18 months as IT Manager and well I went bald at 22. Did programing when I was 17 and well I woke up with ideas on how to do to fix my issue. To much stress and to little pay for the jobs. Don't see the change for a "good" IT job for most people. When students start asking about the industry from people that work it they usually get a negative response and told to do something else.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

stale2001 13y ago

What world is this article living in? I got a job making $100k as a software engineer, right out of college (top-tier I guess). And then I realized that I was worth more than that, and 8 months later I'm now switching over to a job making $150k in total compensation. And TBH, I was middle of the road compared to my classmates.

acchow 13y ago
Software engineering is an exception in the science and engineering camp. FTA: "Because labor markets in science and engineering differ greatly across fields, industries, and time periods, it is easy to cherry-pick specific specialties that really are in short supply, at least in specific years and locations. But generalizing from these cases to the whole of U.S. science and engineering is perilous." But, surprise surprise, still higher unemployment than the guild-protected professions. FTA: "unemployment among scientists and engineers is higher than in other professions such as physicians, dentists, lawyers, and registered nurses" On a related note, a good read about guilds: http://nplusonemag.com/death-by-degrees http://nplusonemag.com/death-by-degrees
- ahomescu1 13y ago
  > FTA: "unemployment among scientists and engineers is higher than in other professions such as physicians, dentists, lawyers, and registered nurses" Which is counter-intuitive to me, considering how heavily regulated those other professions are (and their numbers restricted).
  - acchow 13y ago
    Curious, what do you think the employment rate among physicians is? I'd be surprised if it wasn't 100%. The issue is regulation - employment only takes a hit outside the protected professions. There are 13,605 taxi medallions in new york city. What do you think the employment rate among taxi drivers in NYC is?
    - ahomescu1 13y ago
      I'm also considering the people who would be in those careers, if not for the heavy regulations. For example, how many people in NYC would be taxi drivers if they could, but aren't allowed to be?
  - austinz 13y ago
    It actually makes sense, I think. The bottleneck (bar, qualifying exam) keeps the supply artificially low, so those who pass and qualify are always in high demand (low unemployment). Those who don't pass either try again, or after a while go into other fields and no longer consider themselves prospective doctors, lawyers, etc. It's sort of like the effect where, during a prolonged recession, unemployment numbers 'drop' because some people give up actively looking for a job, and are no longer counted.
    - ahomescu1 13y ago
      Sure, I should have specified that I'm also counting people who have the skills and training, but aren't allowed to practice (such as people who failed the medical or bar exam). It makes sense to me to consider those "prospectives" as unemployed in their profession (especially since those professions take years, in some cases as much as a decade, of specialized education, all before the exam itself).
hmsimha 13y ago
Good for you. I graduated from a college that was not top tier over a year ago, as a below-average student, and have yet to find any kind of development work that pays as much as I made delivering pizza while working my way through college. Not everyone has the same experience as you. Furthermore, this article is talking about the entire STEM domain.
- ranci 13y ago
  What major?
  - hmsimha 12y ago
    Computer Science
    - ranci 12y ago
      What are you doing now and where do you live? I'm just curious. I am studying CS right now.
      - hmsimha 12y ago
        I'm living in Portland, OR now, though I'm about to move to Canada. I graduated from a school in Memphis, TN. Right now I'm taking a little break, but for most of the last year I've been reading about different programming languages and frameworks, doing a part-time internship using Ruby on Rails, and basically developing my skill-set to (hopefully) make myself a more desirable candidate for entry-level positions. If you're reading hacker news, you're already probably doing better on that front than I was during my entire undergrad. I'd highly recommend getting an internship and building a personal project before you graduate too, as I believe my failure to do both of those things (in addition to a sub-3.0 GPA) were the factors that have prevented me from getting a job thus far.
duochrome 13y ago
I think top-tier college graduate is the shortage.
Spooky23 13y ago
You're in a hot market in a hot locale. You probably pay an arm and a leg for housing. I'm in a second tier city with more limited options. I know folks who successfully start CS grads in the $50-60k range, mostly from state schools. Someone with a good track record is anywhere from $80-105. Sounds awful, but a 2000 ft^2 house can be found around $200k in a nice area. McMansions are $400-500k. I ended up moving back here from NYC, taking a big salary haircut in the process. My overall standard of living got a little better right off the bat, mostly due to reduced housing and commuting expenses.
- 31reasons 13y ago
  What place that be ?
- a8da6b0c91d 13y ago
  At many levels the national discussions are distorted by failure to understand regional costs of living and taxes and the matter of finding acceptable schools. People talk about the 1% without realizing that two $150K incomes supporting a few kids are at best "comfortable" by the standards of our grandparents in markets like NYC and SF. My grandfathers with skilled tradesman wages were able to support stay at home wives and send six kids down the street to a totally safe and high quality school, and at the same time take a month off every summer on nice quiet rental beach front property (not some hyper crowded vegas style resort bullshit, we're talking single family home on a large lot on a barrier island). People just don't seem to understand how little money $150K is relative to what a skilled and competent worker could get out of a remotely comparable sum 50 years ago. OK, you make $150K, can your four or five kids walk down the street to a quite good school? Is it essentially optional whether your wife works or not?
  - waterlesscloud 13y ago
    "two $150K incomes supporting a few kids are at best "comfortable" by the standards of our grandparents" No. This is a gross exaggeration and extremely out of touch with economic reality.
jonrimmer 13y ago
Why do you think all these silicon valley CEOs are throwing their weight behind schemes to get kids and adults learning how to code? It isn't because they really believe there's some social or personal value in being able to program, it's because they want to flood the job market with developers and so crash wages. What's sad is that many programmers are actually buying it, and volunteering their time to help support and evangelize these schemes.
- jkrems 13y ago
  CEOs who think just throwing more developers at a problem will solve it are what natural selection is for.
  - aviraldg 13y ago
    More developers might not solve a problem faster, but they will drive down wages (even for skilled developers)
    - ranci 13y ago
      There is a lot of crying and worrying about wages on here right now. If you are from CS or SE, you don't have the right to cry about a saturated job market driving down your wages. They are plenty high. If you want people with real problems, look at the graphic design industry. $10/hr can get you your pick of the litter among several applicants who have over 20 years experience in one of the biggest cities in the United States. Then imagine what it must be like for recent college graduates in the field.
      - collyw 12y ago
        Wages are plenty high in the States, or places like London. The rest of us are not on anything special.
- meddlepal 13y ago
  You speak the truth but I don't know how to prevent what is going on. I've also come to the conclusion most developers are too shortsighted to see their own career demise in 20 years.
enewc 13y ago
First of all your, viewpoint is restricted to EE/CS. Any of the other pure sciences: biology, chemistry, physics, etc. do not enjoy the same luxuries. Another important distinction to make is that there are almost no science (i.e. research) jobs any more. Most technology jobs are just run of the mill programming, not actually investing in research.
- unknownian 13y ago
  And yet everyone wants to equate the two. Personally I don't even think webdev should count as STEM at all.
firstOrder 13y ago
You said you went to a top-tier college. Most of them charge over $40k a year. So that $150k pays for less than your tuition costs. You are worth $150k a year (which means your boss is making $160k, $165k etc. off of you, they hire you to be profitable). So your four years of study were in a sense $600k down the drain in that. So it will be at least five years before you start to break even. Minus the housing and living costs over that five years. You spent over $150k and four years ($600k) worth of your time training for this job. Also remember the market is hot. In 2000/2001 air went out of the bubble. Also in 2008/2009. Right now is the peak of a go-go time like 1998/1999 was. It is not the norm.

mehrdada 13y ago

I think it is important to avoid using the term STEM and specifically dissect it in the discussions about shortage. Computer Science is a very peculiar part of STEM and not all of the STEM fields face the same challenges. As Hadi Partovi of Code.org put out eloquently in his testimony before Congress[1], there is a difference between enrollments in Computer Science and STEM in general. For instance, in US high schools, it seems like there is no shortage of students in biology or math, but CS is underenrolled. [1]: http://www.c-span.org/video/?317093-1/house-subcmte-hearing-private-sector-stem-education http://www.c-span.org/video/?317093-1/house-subcmte-hearing-...

wil421 13y ago
CS in high school doesn't exist in most schhool you can't compare it with bio or math. Students may change their major more then once. What matters is the college graduation rates, companies looking for college grads in stem no a high school diploma.
- mehrdada 13y ago
  I am quite ignorant about how US high school system works and that's one anecdote I had heard, so I apologize about not being able to carry on a meaningful discussion on that topic, but that's just an example, and my core points stands regardless: there are huge differences between various fields that fall under STEM, and they should not be thought about as a single bucket. That's certainly true beyond high school as well.
  - wil421 12y ago
    That's quite true. With CS you can get hired right out of college but with other fields like bio and physics more schooling is required. I don't think a lot of students in the US want research positions (or qualify for them). So yes I believe that you're right it's an apples to oranges comparison.
curun1r 13y ago
It's also possible for there to be a shortage of qualified workers and a surplus of qualified workers...this is a point that people often miss. Qualified US workers have this annoying tendency to be unwilling to uproot their life and move to where the jobs are. Foreign workers coming from other countries don't have this issue...they're moving anyways, so they move where the jobs are. And hi-tech jobs cluster in certain areas, usually around one or more universities to supply talent. So you end up with areas that have lots of jobs and not enough qualified applicants and areas with qualified applicants and no jobs. That's what makes this issue so obnoxious...both sides are right. And that makes it difficult to find a middle ground.

ChristianMarks 13y ago

The Silicon Valley cartel conspirators helped to depress wages and increase unemployment. Universities have relied on cheap student and postdoc labor. Their game-theoretic strategy is cheap talking their serfs into the belief that they too may become masters. ADDENDUM: downvoters can take a warm piss on a power line.

kenrikm 13y ago
ADDENDUM: made me laugh, gave an up vote for that.
mmorett 13y ago
I normally just lurk, but I signed in just to upvote him. Still laughing...

dblacc 13y ago

I thought the whole shortage for demand argument was to do with the lack of talent that was being produced, rather than simply the number of people who had a bachelors degree.

firstOrder 13y ago
I don't know how many jobs I've seen out there where they have an incredibly high bar to hire someone, and then it is 99% CRUD work. Some of the AI jobs at Google, yes, they need good people. Amazon needs some good engineers at the top guiding the creation of EC2 architecture. But most jobs ask for a much higher caliber of people than they actually need.
- collyw 12y ago
  I don't get why CRUD work is so under appreciated here on HN. I do CRUD work (at least I think I do - I create and maintain the database and front end for a DNA sequencing centre). I have in in depth understanding of SQL - my database returns some moderately complex results. I have solid database design and optimization skills. I know Django in depth. I know Python well. I have a solid understanding of Linux, and know enough to get Django running on the server. I have read up a fair bit on NoSQL, but have yet to find a suitable use case for it. I can do some Javascript / HTML / CSS. Bioinformatics on the other hand seems to be considered a lot more brain power, when most of it is just scripts to count stuff an plot it on a graph. Its' (often) an order of magnitude simpler than what I do. The majority of bioinformaticains I know have never used a debugger - so the code can't be too complex - or they are WAY smarter than me. Or when people talk of CRUD, do they mean the sort of thing you should use MS Access for?

_Robbie 13y ago

I like this article, but it does not delve very deep into why the current perceived shortage exists. On the public policy side, there is probably a belief that more STEM professionals will increase the economic competitiveness of the nation, even if there is a surplus. From technology businesses' standpoint, it is in their interests to have a surplus of STEM graduates in order to maintain or reduce wages.

tsotha 13y ago
>On the public policy side, there is probably a belief that more STEM professionals will increase the economic competitiveness of the nation, even if there is a surplus. Except that it doesn't work, and it should be obvious why. There's no reason to bust your ass in college to enter a field the government floods with foreigners. The more people the government imports the less attractive the field looks to domestic students choosing a major. I can't complain about my treatment as an EE and later a software developer, but knowing what I know now I doubt I would go into anything technical if I were graduating from high school today.
- matteotom 13y ago
  As somebody graduating from high school in a bit, I have to ask: what would you do differently today? It seems to me that, as somebody who can do comp sci reasonably well, that's my best option right now.
  - tsotha 12y ago
    If I were going to do it today the first choice would be business degree and MBA from Harvard or Yale. I'd be willing to borrow what it took, because the payoff is there. In the US today this is the ticket to the C-Suite. If I couldn't get in I'd try to get an ROTC scholarship for as prestigious a place as I could manage and graduate without borrowing money. Either business or liberal arts, though the latter case is a minefield of worthless programs, so it would require some research.

michaelochurch 13y ago

Well, there is a shortage of competent software engineers willing to sacrifice as much as corporate executives think they should, for what corporate executives think such people should be paid. In the same vein, there's a shortage of supermodels who want to fuck obese, unemployed men with halitosis and general poor hygiene.

jshen 13y ago
I think you're wrong. I have the hardest time finding good engineers, we pay very well, we don't expect anyone to work crazy overtime, etc. Can we make this more concrete? What sacrifices do you think is being asked of competent developers? What pay do you think they are offered?
- mehrdada 13y ago
  > we pay very well How do you know, objectively? Have you tried paying twice (or more) the current market rate, for instance, and binary search for a point where you have enough happy hires and failed? Perhaps the market rate is artificially lowered.
  - jshen 13y ago
    The problem isn't that good engineers turn done our offers, it's that very few good engineers come in the door. The ones that have were very happy with their offers. Edit: Didn't realize you weren't the person I originally replied to. Let's reverse your question. What is the objective basis for the claim that engineers are asked to sacrifice to much for too little pay?
    - mehrdada 13y ago
      > it's that very few good engineers come in the door I have one possible answer for this issue: Well, no one in the Valley (to best of my knowledge) really advertises that they are going to pay a meaningful multiple of what's considered the market rate to potential employees. So from the potential employee side, it is reasonable to assume that they are going to get paid around the "market rate". The Valley seems to be at a point where "starting/not starting a startup" is becoming an IQ test (compared to "market rate") financially if you think you are reasonably good at doing stuff, so it is natural that good engineers wouldn't go and apply for a job, because the expectation for compensation is unlikely to be satisfactory anyway (or at least that's what they believe and prevents them from trying). >And you dodged my questions. Oh, I am not the OP and I'm not pretending to have the answers. I was genuinely interested in knowing how you measured that you are paying very well, except for the fact that they were competitive with what's considered the "market rate" which is the questionable piece of data here.

frozenport 13y ago

How does it look for other fields? There is a misunderstanding on how jobs are made. Consider what these look like for history of English majors? STEM is in demand if you look at the areas with predicted job growth.

eranation 13y ago

There is no shortage of bad programmers, there are plenty of medium programmers, it's also not that hard to find decent programmers. It's harder to find good programmers, but much harder to find great ones. The thing is that a great programmer can do 5X more than a good programmer, that can do 2X more than a decent one, that can do 2X more than a medium one. It's not just the number of features they can write in a given time or the fact they have less bugs or test their code better, or simply can do things no one else can. It's not even their ability to design better. It's their ability to do all that and influence the others to follow. I think there is a shortage in that kind of developers, and there is no school that teaches these soft skills.

mehrdada 13y ago
I don't disagree that there is a shortage of great programmers, but another problem is that people are generally not willing to pay 100x (or anything close to that) for a 100x programmer. Often they don't even realize whether a person is a great programmer or not.
- firstOrder 13y ago
  You hit the nail on the head. He talks about the 5x programmer. Well if the 1x programmer is making $100k-$150k a year, the 5x programmers should be making $500k-$750k a year. When was the last time you went on Craigslist and saw a programmer job offering over $500k or more a year? I'm not saying it never happens, but...
  - hueving 13y ago
    Those type of job postings don't go on Craigslist. The few people with those kind of skills just decide where they want to go and apply there.
x0x0 13y ago
Sorry, but that's nonsensical. 1 - virtually no supposed 5x or 10x programmer makes even 2x more. If people are really 5x, why on earth don't I see $300-$500k salaries? Particularly given the fall in communication costs ala Brooks, it would be an enormous win for employers 2 - at least in the bay area, there would be tons and tons of highly qualified candidates if moving to the bay area wasn't a financial nightmare (cost of living is horrific and the pay doesn't come anywhere close to making up for it); and if buying a decent 3 bedroom home and having kids didn't nearly require winning a startup lottery -- or at least enough for a good downpayment to get to a conforming mortgage. 3 - I'm in my 30s, and in my cohort of developers I know a number (all of them very skilled and in high demand in the bay area) who have moved to the midwest or austin because financially they're so much better off 4 - the majority of complaints about unavailability of developers, particularly in the bay area, are after the fact justifications to (1) cover employers not paying salaries commensurate with the cost of living, and (2) the ability to import (cheaper, more easily controlled) h1b labor 4a - with a side of companies ducking their responsibilities to america, the state they are in, and their communities to help create the employees they need. Now obviously I don't think 1-4 person startups have any such responsibilities, but somewhere between that and google/fb/hp companies have responsibilities to their communities and countries that bay area companies in particular almost completely duck. For example, why isn't facebook or google, in lieu of whinging about difficulty hiring (while illegally restraining wages, ain't that beautiful) running hacker schools themselves? It couldn't be because they'd rather let someone else pay for it and cherry pick the winners (saving money two ways)?

DonGateley 13y ago

Time to demonstrate once and for all the fraud that the H1B visa has always been. All it does is push older engineers out of the field so they can be replaced very cheaply. That needs to stop but having the best congress money can buy pretty much assures that it won't.

keypusher 12y ago

All I know is from my own experience, and that experience is that I have recruiters calling up at least once a week and a few more via email looking for software engineers. I never got that kind of attention when I was working a cash register in retail, and my friends with liberal arts degrees certainly aren't getting it either.

jedanbik 12y ago

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. John Adams US diplomat & politician (1735 - 1826)

lifeisstillgood 12y ago
brilliant - except the implication that liberal arts should be all we need by now
- jedanbik 12y ago
  Rather than an all or nothing proposition, I saw this quote as an elegant framing of what the liberal arts are: nice-to-haves in the wake of ought-to-haves in the wake of die-or-haves. In the popular discourse, we aren't always afforded that sense of perspective.
  - lifeisstillgood 12y ago
    Agreed
jmeister 12y ago
Related quote by Yo-Yo Ma: It takes three generations to make a musician; the first to leave poverty, the second to go to school, and the third to master the instrument.

Malarkey73 12y ago

Are wages purely determined by supply and demand though? There is a tale I remember about an economics professor who dumbfounds his class by pointing out that there is a huge surplus of economics students across the country who all want to work for Goldman Sachs. But the wages/bonuses don't fall to reflect the oversupply. I think the same is true for doctors and dentists. Do very few people want to be company executives or politicians? Is there a scarcity? I don't think so. Sometimes people are well paid because they are setting their own salaries (many believe bankers have hijacked banks from the shareholders), others are setting the rules within society (politicians), or interpreting those rules (lawyers), or just getting close to those who do (lobbyists, bureaucrats, special interests). In short the wages of workers are dependent partly on their position of power within society .. of which supply and demand is just one element.

jacalata 12y ago
the set of econ students who want to work at Goldman is not the supply: the set of econ students that Goldman thinks will make them money is the supply, and I bet very few of them are unemployed. similar: set of waiters who want to be actors is huge, set of known actors that a studio can say 'his face on the poster will bring in an extra 50 million cinema tickets' is miniscule. That's why all the waiters are acting for free in film student projects and Tom Cruise is a millionaire.
- Malarkey73 12y ago
  No. I don't believe a word of that. And your analogy undermines your own argument. If you had said Michael Jordan or Lionel Messi ... but Tom Cruise? Really? Tom Cruise is a perfectly good Tom Cruise (a good actor) but a million other waiters could have been him. There maybe Messi like geniuses in politics, banking, business but the idea that bankers are all paid Millions because "they are worth it" is to me ... laughable. They are paid millions because they can get away with it.

dleskov 12y ago

Out of all those graduates, the number of which we are told is 2-3x the number of open positions, are really qualified to fill in those positions? Passionate about their field of study? Intended to get a job in that field in the first place, as opposed to getting a degree in something they can (afford)? Our own experience is that even internships do not always yield good results. And the level of most applicants, many of whom are recent graduates, makes me sad. They manage to find work at some other company in the end, but only because we are in IT and IT is big at our place...

PhantomGremlin 12y ago

Fundamentally, I don't accept that there is, in general, a shortage of "good people" in the USA. I responded earlier [1] to someone who thinks there is. Instead of continuing to follow up with just that one person, I'd like to propose an interesting "experiment" for hiring managers: Do an Ask HN, linking to a recent representative job posting you haven't been able to fill I'd like to see all the relevant details, such as: 1) the job posting, of course 2) company name, location, salary range 3) are the usual requested perks applicable, e.g. flex time, work from home, etc? 4) what kind of resumes are you seeing? How many? What, in general, has been wrong with those people? Then I'd like to see HN posters dissect the information. Let's find out if the requirements are realistic. Let's find out if the company's reputation is toxic. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7452376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7452376