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Most STEM grads don't work in STEM jobs

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Re: Most STEM grads don't work in STEM jobs

#91

Post by lolinder »

wharvle wrote: post #7

> The Census Bureau reported in 2021 that a paltry 28% of STEM grads are working in these supposedly in-demand, highly paid and important STEM jobs. These include diverse sectors such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and energy, but about half of STEM jobs are in computers, and tech firms typically complain the loudest of STEM shortages. I’ve long suspected that the whole “STEM” education movement is a way for big tech…

I hate this stereotype on HN that we're all working in or adjacent to adtech. It's simply not accurate.

There were 4.4 million computer programmers in 2022.

Taking some extremely rough numbers: Google employs ~190k people worldwide. Meta another 86k worldwide. Microsoft 120k (in the US). Amazon 950k (in the US).

Even if we were to treat every single one of the employees I listed above as if they were a programmer living in the US (which is clearly ridiculous), we'd still only account for 1/3 of US programmers. Once you factor in the number of those employees outside the US and the number who do things other than programming (and even more those who work on, say, AWS), the number would become even smaller.

The vast majority of programmers do not and never have worked in ad tech. Working in ad tech is a choice that some people make, and yeah, it can pay even more money than a regular software job, but choosing one of the millions of other jobs available isn't exactly choosing poverty.

Re: Most STEM grads don't work in STEM jobs

#93

Post by mp05 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #72
mp05 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It looks like a classical education. "[...]humanities, language arts, dance, drama, music, visual arts, design and new media." I think of a classical education as debate/rhetoric, philosophy, and Greek/Latin but I went to public school so I'm just going off of hearsay.

> classical education as debate/rhetoric, philosophy, and Greek/Latin It should also include music and art, both creating and appreciating.

Okay I went to a really great public school, so that's just standard education from my perspective. Everyone took fine arts and music. The classes I listed were the things that only the real enthusiasts trying for Ivy league schools got into. I was aiming for engineering school and kind of a philistine at that age, so I took auto body in my free time.

I realize many schools cut the arts classes first and I bemoan that as much as anyone now at my advanced age, but that's a different conversation.

Re: Most STEM grads don't work in STEM jobs

#94

Post by wharvle »

fragmede wrote: post #88
wharvle wrote: post #7

> The Census Bureau reported in 2021 that a paltry 28% of STEM grads are working in these supposedly in-demand, highly paid and important STEM jobs. These include diverse sectors such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and energy, but about half of STEM jobs are in computers, and tech firms typically complain the loudest of STEM shortages. I’ve long suspected that the whole “STEM” education movement is a way for big tech…

Google and Facebook pay well and employ a good number of software developers, but there are more types of software out there by the many other companies out there that don't involve selling ads. Sure, if you want to be depressing and toxic to the people around you, be reductive about it and oversimplify things, and disqualify the positives - software has done good things for the world, I'm sure you can think of some.

The top-comp tier skews toward harmful things, though, and if not for those bad things... would there be a shortage?

It doesn't take a majority of the market—not even close—seeing such huge price- and demand-distortion to mess things up really bad for the whole thing.

Re: Most STEM grads don't work in STEM jobs

#95

Post by wharvle »

lolinder wrote: post #91
wharvle wrote: post #7

> The Census Bureau reported in 2021 that a paltry 28% of STEM grads are working in these supposedly in-demand, highly paid and important STEM jobs. These include diverse sectors such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and energy, but about half of STEM jobs are in computers, and tech firms typically complain the loudest of STEM shortages. I’ve long suspected that the whole “STEM” education movement is a way for big tech…

I hate this stereotype on HN that we're all working in or adjacent to adtech. It's simply not accurate. There were 4.4 million computer programmers in 2022. Taking some extremely rough numbers: Google employs ~190k people worldwide. Meta another 86k worldwide. Microsoft 120k (in the US). Amazon 950k (in the US). Even if we were to treat every single one of the employees I listed above as if they were a programmer liv…

Huge market distortions can come from a small absolute proportion of the market. Say, those with spying-advertising money-spigots. Nothing I wrote contradicts what you've written—rather, and the phenomenon paying incredible wages to capture the top talent—so, those with both a lot to gain from improving labor supply—and the coincidence of having a whole lot of money to fund PR and lobbying pushes to get more grads in the pipeline for computer-stuff hiring, is concentrated largely among ad companies.

What I mean is the STEM push sold one thing, but it was largely about another thing, which was more workers to help sell ads slightly better. It was about that to the people pushing it, that is.

Re: Most STEM grads don't work in STEM jobs

#96

Post by spacemadness »

torginus wrote: post #43
wharvle wrote: post #7

> The Census Bureau reported in 2021 that a paltry 28% of STEM grads are working in these supposedly in-demand, highly paid and important STEM jobs. These include diverse sectors such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and energy, but about half of STEM jobs are in computers, and tech firms typically complain the loudest of STEM shortages. I’ve long suspected that the whole “STEM” education movement is a way for big tech…

The thing is even though I went to school for EE, I found it weird that EE jobs demanded an incredibly wide and difficult to obtain skillset, including rudimentary CS knowledge, yet paid less than what I could sell said CS knowledge for. We live in a society.

This is why I switched out of firmware after years of twiddling bits and routing circuits. Imagine working on difficult threading issues one minute then needing to deeply understand a circuit layout the other and getting paid less than entry level bootcamp python programmers. Oh yes, with constant threat of being sent to country_of_manufacture to work out manufacturing issues on a moments notice. It’s capitalisms way of saying “we don’t really want or need this right now.” I heard you loud and clear, American tech companies.

Re: Most STEM grads don't work in STEM jobs

#97

Post by wharvle »

yongjik wrote: post #84
wharvle wrote: post #7

> The Census Bureau reported in 2021 that a paltry 28% of STEM grads are working in these supposedly in-demand, highly paid and important STEM jobs. These include diverse sectors such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and energy, but about half of STEM jobs are in computers, and tech firms typically complain the loudest of STEM shortages. I’ve long suspected that the whole “STEM” education movement is a way for big tech…

Meh, you can make any industry look awful by picking the worst side effects. Rocketry: We can now incinerate civilians 0.5 seconds faster than before. Pharmaceutical: The stage-4 cancer patient will spend five more days in agony. Electronics: Your new smartwatch can now render ads at 60 fps. Chemistry: We added a dozen new forever chemicals to rainwater.

My suspicion, and what I'm getting at, is that the people selling "STEM education is vital!" were likely on the payroll of places that mostly just wanted to have more workers to sell ads better. They had the money to make the push for that, and the incentive to try to fatten their hiring pipeline, and dragging the other three letters along was just a sales tactic.

I don't mean that everyone working on computers works on ads, I mean that, for a lot of the people behind the STEM push in particular, my suspicion is that their main concern was in fact to be able to more-easily hire folks to sell ads slightly better. I think the form of the campaign was to make it look more noble.

Re: Most STEM grads don't work in STEM jobs

#98

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

netbioserror wrote: post #33
wharvle wrote: post #7

> The Census Bureau reported in 2021 that a paltry 28% of STEM grads are working in these supposedly in-demand, highly paid and important STEM jobs. These include diverse sectors such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and energy, but about half of STEM jobs are in computers, and tech firms typically complain the loudest of STEM shortages. I’ve long suspected that the whole “STEM” education movement is a way for big tech…

I must be really lucky. I work at a smaller engineering company, working for engineering clients, making software that analyses engineering data, and I get to use the languages and tools I want. I must be a unicorn at this point given how miserable most programmers seem to be.

Nope, you're not alone. I've spent most of my 30-year career writing embedded software for generally pretty interesting systems.

Miserable people love bitching about it.

Re: Most STEM grads don't work in STEM jobs

#99

Post by TillE »

netbioserror wrote: post #33
wharvle wrote: post #7

> The Census Bureau reported in 2021 that a paltry 28% of STEM grads are working in these supposedly in-demand, highly paid and important STEM jobs. These include diverse sectors such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and energy, but about half of STEM jobs are in computers, and tech firms typically complain the loudest of STEM shortages. I’ve long suspected that the whole “STEM” education movement is a way for big tech…

I must be really lucky. I work at a smaller engineering company, working for engineering clients, making software that analyses engineering data, and I get to use the languages and tools I want. I must be a unicorn at this point given how miserable most programmers seem to be.

A lot of (younger?) people in web development seem to forget that other software continues to be developed, much of it unglamorous and not consumer-oriented, but still interesting to work on.

Re: Most STEM grads don't work in STEM jobs

#100

Post by lolinder »

wharvle wrote: post #95
lolinder wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate this stereotype on HN that we're all working in or adjacent to adtech. It's simply not accurate. There were 4.4 million computer programmers in 2022. Taking some extremely rough numbers: Google employs ~190k people worldwide. Meta another 86k worldwide. Microsoft 120k (in the US). Amazon 950k (in the US). Even if we were to treat every single one of the employees I listed above as if they were a programmer liv…

Huge market distortions can come from a small absolute proportion of the market. Say, those with spying-advertising money-spigots. Nothing I wrote contradicts what you've written—rather, and the phenomenon paying incredible wages to capture the top talent—so, those with both a lot to gain from improving labor supply— and the coincidence of having a whole lot of money to fund PR and lobbying pushes to get more grads i…

It's a nice theory, but do you have any evidence for it at all? STEM is a new acronym, but the same line has been being pushed ever since Sputnik. What makes you think that this new version is suddenly ad tech and not just a continuation of the same old national security concerns that it's been about for generations?
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