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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

#71

Post by powertower »

groaner wrote: post #29
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.

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

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

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

The answer then becomes - Yes.

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

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#72

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #40
pfortuny wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your anger. But exiting a blender when minituarized is really necessary! Honestly, if they do not TALK with you, it is probably a worthless job. And by talk I mean questions and answers are full duplez, like POSIX sockets. Blender!

The thing is, I'm not so much angry about being turned down as I am about the bureaucratic randomness and then being recruited by the same companies months later. Either I'm good enough to fill some job opening they have when they interview me, and they've got lots of job openings, or I'm not. Wasting weeks of my time when I could be saying "yes" to someone else (which is exactly what happened ) is a problem. There's…

At the risk of sounding like an old man patronizing a youngster, "welcome to the real world, kid." Unfortunately, getting hired is not as deterministic or fair as getting an A on an exam. It's certainly not as simple as "Either I'm good enough or I'm not." There is a random dice roll involved, for all kinds of messy real world reasons, and you've got to accept that and move on - do your best to rack up as many bonus modifiers as you can, and keep plugging away. (BTW, it seems like you have done that, as you found yourself a promising gig. Now you just need to let go of the anger :)

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#74

Post by BadassFractal »

jellicle wrote: post #32

Except that this isn't the truth. H1B imported engineers aren't the best in their field, working for top wages. They're middling-low, working for below-average wages. They pull down wages for the entire software engineering field by about 6%, say the studies. If H1B's are really the best software engineers in the world, why are they being hired for less than the average wages in the U.S. for average engineers? I appr…

I was going to say exactly this. As an ex-H1B myself working for a top firm, I can guarantee you I was in no way top of the line at the time. I was very much equivalent to every other average USA top 5 CS school graduate working with me at the company, and that's to say, not particularly impressive in any way.

Moving to SF/SV and working with the startup and open source communities has really opened my eyes to what a "top engineer" really means, and I sure as hell wasn't one (or surrounded by them) at BigCorp.

Real top talent is really hard to get hold of, and the dozens of thousands of H1Bs are absolutely not that top 5%.

The way I see it, H1B is a way to get slightly cheaper decent labor for big enterprise firms, and you occasionally luck out and get a few great gems in there. Even better if you can lock them in to your company for 10 years waiting for the green card to get approved.

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#75

Post by arohner »

This is amazingly bad statistics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#76

Post by arohner »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #35
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…

It's very definitely a pay issue. It's also a hiring issue: most of Silicon Valley deliberately makes it as difficult as possible to pass the hiring bar. There is one company with whom I've interviewed once, gotten an offer, and then been rejected when I applied later in a separate round after a year and a half doing other things. There's another company where I interviewed once, got an offer, did something else, int…

> It's very definitely a pay issue.

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

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#77

Post by doktrin »

incision wrote: post #68
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very definitely a pay issue. It's also a hiring issue: most of Silicon Valley deliberately makes it as difficult as possible to pass the hiring bar. There is one company with whom I've interviewed once, gotten an offer, and then been rejected when I applied later in a separate round after a year and a half doing other things. There's another company where I interviewed once, got an offer, did something else, int…

>Then there's a third company that keeps continually sending recruiters my way every so often despite rejecting me with no reason given every single time. Same deal here. Most frustrating is that I don't know how they found me as I don't have a public resume nor do I have any real idea what they're really looking for as they seem intent on being "confidential" (incredibly vague) about everything.

I've had similar experiences. On some occasions, it's even the same recruiter, obviously just spamming her/his list.

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#78

Post by cesarbs »

null_ptr wrote: post #70
jellicle wrote: post #32

Except that this isn't the truth. H1B imported engineers aren't the best in their field, working for top wages. They're middling-low, working for below-average wages. They pull down wages for the entire software engineering field by about 6%, say the studies. If H1B's are really the best software engineers in the world, why are they being hired for less than the average wages in the U.S. for average engineers? I appr…

> Except that this isn't the truth. H1B imported engineers aren't the best in their field, working for top wages. They're middling-low, working for below-average wages. That's a blanket statement. There's a difference between the H1B mill contracting firms and H1Bs that are directly recruited by top companies, and paid on par with their American employees. The H1B mills give genuinely talented workers who fully deser…

Glad someone pointed that out. That distinction seem to be constantly forgotten in this debate. Top companies recruit H1Bs using the same process they use to recruit Americans.

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#79

Post by Stratego »

pandaman wrote: post #67
jellicle wrote: post #32

Except that this isn't the truth. H1B imported engineers aren't the best in their field, working for top wages. They're middling-low, working for below-average wages. They pull down wages for the entire software engineering field by about 6%, say the studies. If H1B's are really the best software engineers in the world, why are they being hired for less than the average wages in the U.S. for average engineers? I appr…

While it's true that the bulk of H1B are bodies for Indian body shops it's not a problem with H1B, it's the problem with the corrupt government issuing visas to body shops. And it's true that H1B's are not the best engineers in the world. However many of the best engineers in the world are H1Bs.

It's true based on what data, exactly?

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#80

Post by arohner »

tosseraccount wrote: post #28

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 e…

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

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

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