The Myth of America's Tech Talent Shortage • Hacker News Board

Re: The Myth of America's Tech Talent Shortage

#51

Post by angersock » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 5:15 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #12

gnoway wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

kneejerk reaction: like what? I haven't thought a lot about this, but I tend to equate STEM with 'profitable future'. What other industries/disciplines are you thinking of?

"I tend to equate STEM with 'profitable future'." There's a large number of extremely wealthy and extremely powerful people working publicly as hard as they can against that belief, and the government has been purchased to be on their side. Very few things unite everyone in power both in .biz and .gov quite as well as the destruction of STEM as a middle class or better lifestyle. My advice is be very careful when goi…

That's quite a claim there--would you mind elaborating on your reasoning?

Perhaps it's just due to my current existence in a very productive city, but STEM (and vocational training) seem to be both very much in demand and rewarded.

Re: The Myth of America's Tech Talent Shortage

#52

Post by enoch_r » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 5:17 PM UTC

> As shown in the EPI graph below, in 2009 less than two thirds of employed computer science grads were working in the IT sector a year after graduation.

How horrifying!

Now present the relevant statistics for history majors, economics majors, or English majors.

Re: The Myth of America's Tech Talent Shortage

#53

Post by ttrreeww » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 5:17 PM UTC

ardit33 wrote: post #37

ttrreeww wrote: post #28

So... after I got my green card (was on H-1B), my base salary skyrocketed from around 110k-ish to 150k

I have an H-1B and already make more than you, so that doesn't mean that H-1B will prevent you from demanding a high salary. I have had to switch jobs though and reset the Green Card process though, which is a bit nervewreking.

Yeah, if you don't care about the green card, switching job easily get you huge raises.

(I've seen people fell off the H-1B train and had to go home, so be careful)

Re: The Myth of America's Tech Talent Shortage

#54

Post by freyr » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 5:22 PM UTC

kyllo wrote: post #42

This article makes a big mistake in conflating software development with STEM in general. It shows a stock photo of a guy looking through a microsope (btw why is he looking through the lens if the microscope is plugged into a monitor? Seems redundant...), when the focus of the article is Microsoft, Google, and Facebook wanting to raise the H1-B visa cap so they can bring in more cheap coders from India. Is there a sh…

> There is massive, and growing, demand in all sectors for software developers, and our universities aren't graduating them faster than demand growth, and as a result software dev salaries are rising (or at least not falling).

This is a direct contradiction to what's claimed in the article, namely that dev salaries are not rising to the extent that would be expected if there were a true shortage.

Re: The Myth of America's Tech Talent Shortage

#55

Post by mjmahone17 » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 5:24 PM UTC

ardit33 wrote: post #45

graycat wrote: post #17

The article just assumes as clear and given that the immigrants have better skills, but there is no explanation for just how that could be. The technical education system in Taiwan and India is much better than in the US? Tough to believe.

Not necessary, but the top 10% of any of those countries (even third world countries), will be better than the average US dev. (not necessary better than the top 10% of engineers coming out of US). That means that bringing the top 10% of the rest of the world here, will bring the average up, which means harder technical stuff gets done, which by itself opens up more jobs for the economy. Any good immigration policy s…

Why should immigration policy filter out immigrants? One of the pushes behind Arizona's economic boom in the 90s and 00s was the influx of immigrant labor (who then bought houses that needed to be built/bought services that needed to be provided, and paid taxes for the government to hire more people to build/do more things).

Immigration policy shouldn't support non-free labor, but it's unclear why we should only be focusing on the "best" immigrants, rather than trying to let in as many people as possible who will help build their communities.

Re: The Myth of America's Tech Talent Shortage

#56

Post by VLM » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 5:26 PM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #38

skwirl wrote: post #16

As someone who has been working as a software developer for five years since graduating, the claims made by this article are completely contrary to my personal experience. Finding good developers is hard. We spend months trying to hire for positions, sometimes interviewing dozens of people, before we find someone. And we pay well, use modern technologies, have a great group of existing developers, and don't expect an…

This article makes the fundamental mistake almost all other articles of its topic do: it assumes that software development is a monolithic entity, when it is instead a collection of extremely dissimilar camps. Part of this is the fault of government - in almost all statistics the $200K systems architect at Google is rolled into the same column as the $45K coder pounding out VB6 apps for the company intranet. This art…

"The more accurate title is: "top level developers in extreme shortage,"

Vs the article

"134,780 H1-B visas that were approved in 2012."

A good analogy to the debate is we're talking about a shortage of, and reasonable desire to import any legendary epic level multi-platinum award winning rock star, but in actual practice we're importing anyone who's ever touched a guitar in order to keep domestic wages low by pushing unemployment higher than it should be. They are two separate issues.

Re: The Myth of America's Tech Talent Shortage

#57

Post by jfb » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 5:29 PM UTC

enoch_r wrote: post #52

> As shown in the EPI graph below, in 2009 less than two thirds of employed computer science grads were working in the IT sector a year after graduation. How horrifying! Now present the relevant statistics for history majors, economics majors, or English majors.

Well, English/history/&c. majors are usually not presented as vocational training, as it seems that CS is these days, so it's not entirely a useful comparison.

Re: The Myth of America's Tech Talent Shortage

#58

Post by VLM » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 5:34 PM UTC

mseebach wrote: post #41

polymatter wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if my hypothetical children needed guidance, I'd probably advice on accounting. Huge industry that ain't going anywhere, lots of work at the low end, lots of pay at the high end, still applicable if you change job later, generally respected culturally.

What about accounting makes it inherently less outsourceable than programming? In a world where STEM is not a practical career, presumably because it's all done in low-wage countries overseas, how is accounting still being done in-house?

Strange as it sounds, fraud prosecution. If a software dev lies or the product is buggy nothing really happens to anyone, but at least in theory a fraudulent or incompetent accountant could go to jail, and that's not happening in Outsourceland, so fundamentally at least some of it has to be done locally.

Most of the lowest level of data entry and paper shuffling has long since been disposed of via automation, so already mostly only decision makers remain.

Its not a bad idea.

Re: The Myth of America's Tech Talent Shortage

#59

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 5:35 PM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #23

Every time I try to hire someone to do any tech work for me, I am convinced there is a shortage of tech talent. It is cray hard to hire people, leaving aside price. It is hard to even get people to discuss working for me, before compensation is even discussed. And I live in NYC, not under a rock. And I'm friendly. Sure seems like a tech shortage to me.

My cousin is a contractor. He says the same thing about drywall guys. My boss when I was stock clerk in high school said the same thing about cashiers.

Hiring people is hard. Most good people already have jobs, so you need to find folks transitioning or starting out. There's a risk either way. The more specialized the skill, the harder it is.

Re: The Myth of America's Tech Talent Shortage

#60

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 5:35 PM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #23

Every time I try to hire someone to do any tech work for me, I am convinced there is a shortage of tech talent. It is cray hard to hire people, leaving aside price. It is hard to even get people to discuss working for me, before compensation is even discussed. And I live in NYC, not under a rock. And I'm friendly. Sure seems like a tech shortage to me.

My cousin is a contractor. He says the same thing about drywall guys. My boss when I was stock clerk in high school said the same thing about cashiers.

Hiring people is hard. Most good people already have jobs, so you need to find folks transitioning or starting out. There's a risk either way. The more specialized the skill, the harder it is.