Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is there a STEM worker shortage?

blog.vivekhaldar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 80 posts

Re: Is there a STEM worker shortage?

#51

Post by rizzom5000 »

ifben wrote: post #46

"... how many grads do not have a decent grasp of elementary algorithms and data structures, and are not comfortable with code." This is more a fault of computer science education than the student. I was taking 16 credits of upper division CS courses at [not renowned but not bad university]. Half-way through the term I had yet to do any programming. I realize that CS is about more than programming (my four classes br…

CS isn't about programming at all. While CS can help make a programmer a better engineer, it's not intended to teach programming skills; which is much more a vocational skill than a science.

I think the primary reason so many development shops ask for CS grads, is not because they should have learned programming at university - it's because they've already been selected for intelligence by getting into a more selective hard science university program. If programming skills were more important than intelligence, these jobs could be filled with folks who have a 6-month certificate from ITT -- but hiring shops have evidently found out that they get a better product from CS departments.

I kind of feel that CS departments should really emphasize these points to prospective applicants so they can go to HackReactor instead of wasting their time in CS programs - but unfortunately they have little incentive to do so.

Re: Is there a STEM worker shortage?

#52

Post by Balgair »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #49
Balgair wrote: post #39

A couple of friends of mine decided to 'walk a mile in their shoes' and became hiring managers. Craigslist is a wonderful thing, especially since it is very cheap to post a job listing. My buddies put out a very generic job posting for the types of jobs they were looking for. It was a way to gauge the heat of the job market, to see the competition, and mostly to see what it was like. Their hypothesis was at least 100…

The only thing that came to mind was that MOST of the craigslist postings were fradulent, just like my friend's. This is the basic assumption, yes. It's why most of us don't job-hunt on Craigslist.

Ok, so where do we all job hunt, and how can we do this again? The info there is of great value for applicants.

Re: Is there a STEM worker shortage?

#53

Post by Balgair »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #43
Balgair wrote: post #39

A couple of friends of mine decided to 'walk a mile in their shoes' and became hiring managers. Craigslist is a wonderful thing, especially since it is very cheap to post a job listing. My buddies put out a very generic job posting for the types of jobs they were looking for. It was a way to gauge the heat of the job market, to see the competition, and mostly to see what it was like. Their hypothesis was at least 100…

Isn't craigslist about the bottom of the barrel in terms of job advertising? I'd be pretty sceptical applying for a job posted there.

Why? Identity theft? Where are good places to job hunt then?

Re: Is there a STEM worker shortage?

#54

Post by eli_gottlieb »

Balgair wrote: post #52
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only thing that came to mind was that MOST of the craigslist postings were fradulent, just like my friend's. This is the basic assumption, yes. It's why most of us don't job-hunt on Craigslist.

Ok, so where do we all job hunt, and how can we do this again? The info there is of great value for applicants.

LinkedIn? Hacker News hiring threads?

Re: Is there a STEM worker shortage?

#55

Post by bcheung »

angdis wrote: post #7
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #2

tl;dr: there is no shortage, its just that most candidates are crap

And the real reason that the "candidates are crap" is that too many employers no longer spend the time and resources to train their workers properly. Instead employees are expected to get hired with insanely specific skills and "hit the ground running" working for some clueless line and project managers who don't give a damn about what happens outside of their small-minded metrics.

You make it sound like competency is a bad thing. What a sad state when people don't value it and think it is someone else's responsibility to provide it for them.

"clueless line and project managers..." is an ad hominem and doesn't support your argument.

Re: Is there a STEM worker shortage?

#56

Post by bcheung »

tekalon wrote: post #42

The shortage is in jobs that are willing to take graduates/applicants that know that basics, or even has experience, and then TRAIN them on what they want. Those that can pass STEM are usually smart enough to be trainable. Companies are expecting schools to teach current skills (not just theory) or students to be 100% self motivated in learning those skills on their own.

Yes, they are expecting that. Imagine that.

Re: Is there a STEM worker shortage?

#57

Post by dnautics »

dschuler wrote: post #45
dnautics wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe I'm being pessimistic, she got into an good school that I respect, she just - deserves more. EDIT: I guess I could be more specific. In the state of california, there is the Cal State system and the UC system, the UC system is considered to be the "top tier" system, and the CS system is widely considered to be "slightly less than". She got into a CS engineering program, that I happen to think creates a substant…

I went to a Cal State for undergrad, and had a great experience. None of my engineering or math classes were 'seminar-style', I always had access to my professors, who generally knew me by name. Most of the students come out being able to put something together on their own. I ended up going to to a private school for my master's, and was surprised to see so many people who wouldn't know which end to hold on a solder…

without naming names, there are DEFINITELY programs/whole schools in the UCs that are worse than many Cal States, in my opinion. Nonetheless, my opinion in this world doesn't count for very much.

Re: Is there a STEM worker shortage?

#58

Post by geebee »

bowlofpetunias wrote: post #9
gopher1 wrote: post #3

This guy linked to the IEEE Spectrum article, but I don't think he read it, because they address the issue about defining STEM workers, and despite his anecdotal evidence, they came to the conclusion that, yes, the STEM shortage is a myth.

No, they don't address the issue in that article, they carefully circumvent it. Like all shortage-denial articles, they focus on education rather than actual practical competence. There is no shortage of STEM graduates. There is a shortage of people actually capable of doing the jobs which, amongst other things , require a STEM background. And for most software development jobs, the latter isn't even the most importa…

"Nobody actually in the business ever complained about a STEM shortage."

Yes, they have, to the point where legislation is being considered to award green cards specifically to recipients of MS or PhD degrees in STEM fields.

http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/issues_STEM%20Jobs%20Act.h...

I completely agree with you that STEM should be a red herring. But it's hard to say that a focus on STEM is circumventing the issue when the notion of a shortage of STEM degrees is specifically built into the proposed legislation.

Re: Is there a STEM worker shortage?

#59

Post by drewying »

robbles wrote: post #37

One issue I keep seeing in these kind of studies is the use of the "STEM" acronym itself. I'm sorry, but with the current job market, this kind of grouping makes NO sense. The jobs and opportunities are mostly in the middle two letters - technology and engineering. Science and mathematics are still tied to academia enough that only the real go-getters with the ability to self-educate and work out how to transfer thei…

I have a good friend who is a mathematician, masters degree. She works for an insurance company doing statistics as an actuary.

This is just based her anecdotes, but from her stories it sounds like the world of professional mathematicians/staticians is suffering from a talent shortage that completely dwarfs what we experience in the technology sector. A good mathematician is rare gold in the finance/insurance worlds right now.

Re: Is there a STEM worker shortage?

#60

Post by eli_gottlieb »

noonespecial wrote: post #32
hackula1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We complain about a shortage of competent people. As an aside, software development is one of the most internally brutal and self-critical industries out there. We tend to consider anyone outside the top 20% to be entirely, unredeemably incompetent. It creates a huge drive in our industry to keep getting better, but I do wonder if the d* measuring contest might be holding us back at the same time. The ridiculously…

>We tend to consider anyone outside the top 20% to be entirely, unredeemably incompetent. The trouble is, in software, single individuals in that top 20% are capable of doing things in a short time that individuals from the bottom 80% couldn't do in 1000 man years. Software is funny like that, some people can think different kinds of thoughts. So in a way, for certain values of incompetent, this is actually true.

In which case, merely adding more software developers won't help the problem. You need to add more people of the quality of the current top 20%, thus expanding that to "top 30%", "top 40%", and eventually the actual majority, hopefully.
Post reply on HN