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The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

businessinsider.com

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Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#21

Post by jacques_chester »

stcredzero wrote: post #19
jacques_chester wrote: post #3

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.

Well, there's freelancing, but that market has serious problems with flows of information. (Which would be worth tons of money, if you could solve them.)

There's freelancing and remote work, which are less restricted.

The flow of information between transacting parties is a fairly central problem of economics. It's believed to be why companies exist (since alternatively the logical end point for a perfect free market is a thin gas of individual, rational agents), and it explains the "Market for Lemons".

Solving that problem preoccupies a large part of the economy. And making it worse, another large part. All hail the Red Queen.

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#22

Post by 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.

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#23

Post by 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.

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#24

Post by ryanSrich »

crazygringo wrote: post #10

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 gr…

> 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.

It's neither the pay nor the talent. It's the combination of both. Companies in SV want to pay the highest talent the least amount of money. They do this while masking their actions as a shortage of STEM workers in the US. Programmers are the new labor force and just like the ones before it are being outsourced for cheaper work. Only this time the employees must come here.

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#25

Post by 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.

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#26

Post by 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.

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#27

Post by stcredzero »

jacques_chester wrote: post #21
stcredzero wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's freelancing, but that market has serious problems with flows of information. (Which would be worth tons of money, if you could solve them.)

There's freelancing and remote work, which are less restricted. The flow of information between transacting parties is a fairly central problem of economics. It's believed to be why companies exist (since alternatively the logical end point for a perfect free market is a thin gas of individual, rational agents), and it explains the "Market for Lemons". Solving that problem preoccupies a large part of the economy. And…

> The flow of information between transacting parties is a fairly central problem of economics.

The prevalence of spammers and scammers is how this manifests on freelancing sites.

> the logical end point for a perfect free market is a thin gas of individual, rational agents

Is that like, the "heat death" of the market economy? (Of capitalist society, actually.)

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#28

Post by tosseraccount »

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

'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." '

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#29

Post by groaner »

tosseraccount wrote: post #26

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.

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.

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#30

Post by sliverstorm »

crazygringo wrote: post #10

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 gr…

Any country needs to look outside its borders for additional top engineers.

But the quote isn't saying they want 5% engineers; it is saying most available engineers are not satisfactory. This does not have much to do with top 5% engineers naturally being restricted in number.

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