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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

#101

Post by Retric »

harichinnan wrote: post #93
Retric wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a separate visa for top tallent. H1B's are randomly assigned because it's about body's not tallent. Which is not to say we don't get top tallent randomly, but if your paying 400k/year you don't need to risk the H1B lotto. PS: you only need 3 on that list and 4, 6, and 8 are not that hard to meet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_visa

Did you miss the comment that Linus Torvald didn't qualify for O visa.

Any idea when this was? He is a US citizen which takes a long time, so this must have been a while ago. Depending on when he was denied he could easily not met the qualifications.

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#102

Post by eli_gottlieb »

dyno12345 wrote: post #97
TulliusCicero wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that's revenue, not net income or profit, right?

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=profit+per+employee+goo...

Or in words: each of Google, Apple, and Microsoft make enough profit per man-year that they could double their salaries without becoming unprofitable.

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#103

Post by arohner »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #95
arohner wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

And in my experience, if you are willing to pay the price, either in salary or in training investment, you will find yourself an engineer. Note that I didn't just say salary. Compensation includes the whole package, including , yes, the locality whose cost of living you're paying for, and especially the skills training you can provide, which is often not nearly as expensive as you think it is. Not to say there aren't…

Who said I wasn't willing to pay the price? Again, this is about just talking to engineers that 1) I would enjoy working with 2) that are currently hirable. Offers and negotiating on price hasn't entered the conversation at all. Even that is hard.

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#104

Post by derricki »

I joined Silicon Valley as a grad student at Stanford in 2007, and I've been on both sides of hiring multiple times. I'm now the recruiting committee chair for an ambitious startup. The key to the article is: "What we may have is a 'STEM majors who have the skills that Silicon Valley prefers' shortage."

For me the issue is not that schools don't teach a certain algorithm or design pattern, but it takes a lot of searching to find someone smart who is also diligent, dedicated, hard-working, and responsible.

Every university should ask their students to read the short essay "A Message to Garcia" (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17195/17195-h/17195-h.htm) that tells the story of the dependable servant Garcia. The author exclaims: "By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing"

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#105

Post by pandaman »

Retric wrote: post #101
harichinnan wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss the comment that Linus Torvald didn't qualify for O visa.

Any idea when this was? He is a US citizen which takes a long time, so this must have been a while ago. Depending on when he was denied he could easily not met the qualifications.

It's been when he got job in Transmeta in early 2000s. At that time he has already been very well known.

You obviously have not been involved in O visa process otherwise you'd known that the qualifications for O visa are chiefly publications (other qualifications would be academic awards, involvement with awarding those awards and such). So any PhD can get one while a programmer who is not into writing books and articles for peer reviewed journals has no chance.

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#106

Post by eli_gottlieb »

arohner wrote: post #103
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in my experience, if you are willing to pay the price, either in salary or in training investment, you will find yourself an engineer. Note that I didn't just say salary. Compensation includes the whole package, including , yes, the locality whose cost of living you're paying for, and especially the skills training you can provide, which is often not nearly as expensive as you think it is. Not to say there aren't…

Who said I wasn't willing to pay the price? Again, this is about just talking to engineers that 1) I would enjoy working with 2) that are currently hirable. Offers and negotiating on price hasn't entered the conversation at all. Even that is hard.

What about all the ones you're not talking to?

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#107

Post by [deleted] »

BadassFractal wrote: post #74
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…

[deleted]

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#108

Post by adpirz »

arohner wrote: post #75

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…

I'm more of an observer to the field, so I'm curious, what does a "bad" resume look like? And what kinds of things do you find on those few good ones?

My assumptions are that everyone is applying with decent CS background and at least a BS in the field, or is that off?

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#109

Post by ditonal »

arohner wrote: post #76
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…

> 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…

Saying it's a pay issue could also imply it's a macro issue, meaning that if salaries went up higher, the field would be more attractive and would attract more talent from other better compensated fields (i.e. medicine, big law), creating more hireable engineers in the long term.

Re: The Real Truth About the STEM Shortage

#110

Post by khuey »

ktsmith wrote: post #54
khuey wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truly world-class engineers can be brought to the US on O visas. H1Bs are trying to fill a need for good or even great, but not amazing, engineers. Which is why it's a tragedy that so many of the spots go to shitty outsourcing firms for mediocre wages.

Depending on the field getting an O visa can be exceptionally hard as they are intended for exceptional people. One of my clients has four or five employees with O visas and these people are all top of their field including a nobel laureate. You could easily be in the top 5% of your field and get rejected for an O.

Yes, that's the idea.
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