245. The STEM Shortage

The 2023 tech sector layoffs have claimed a quarter of a million jobs to date, but this hasn't seemed to make a dent in the enthusiasm for getting more kids into STEM - what's going on here?
- Links for the Curious -
Bulfin, Michael. 2017. “InSTEMnifying Youth: STEM, Capital, & Power.” Critical Education, November, Vol 8 No 15 (2017). doi.org/10.142....
Butz, William P., and United States, eds. 2004. Will the Scientific and Technical Workforce Meet the Requirements of the Federal Government? Santa Monica, CA: RAND.
Carrell, John, Joshua M. Cruz, Andrew Mark Herbert, Michael Scott Laver, Emily Lazarus, Iris V. Rivero, Erika Nuñez, and Nafisha Tabassum. 2023. “Board 346: NSF DUE 2142666 and NSF DUE 2142685. Collaborative Research-Engineering Empathetic Engineers (E^3): Effects of the Humanities on Engineers’ Critical Thinking and Empathy Skills.” In . peer.asee.org/....
Charette, Robert N. 2013. “The STEM Crisis Is a Myth.” IEEE Spectrum 50 (9): 44-59. doi.org/10.110....
“Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities: 2021 | NSF - National Science Foundation.” n.d. Accessed November 12, 2023. ncses.nsf.gov/....
Heffernan, Virginia. n.d. “How We Learned to Love the Pedagogical Vapor of STEM.” Wired. Accessed November 10, 2023. www.wired.com/....
“Inspiring STEM Learning.” n.d.
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Kolata, Gina. 2016. “So Many Research Scientists, So Few Openings as Professors.” The New York Times, July 14, 2016, sec. The Upshot. www.nytimes.co....
Langdon, David. n.d. “U.S. Department of Commerce.”
“Layoffs.Fyi - Tech Layoff Tracker and Startup Layoff Lists.” n.d. Layoffs.Fyi. Accessed November 14, 2023. layoffs.fyi/.
“Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Battle Cry for STEM | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).” 2012. November 5, 2012. www.aaas.org/n....
“Nsf.Gov - NCSES Employment and Educational Characteristics of Scientists and Engineers - US National Science Foundation (NSF).” n.d. Accessed November 15, 2023. wayback.archiv....
OECD. 2019. “PISA 2018 Results COMBINED EXECUTIVE SUMMARIES.” OECD. www.oecd.org/p....
“One Decade, One Million More STEM Graduates.” 2012. Whitehouse.Gov. December 18, 2012. obamawhitehous....
Salzman, Hal. 2013. “What Shortages? The Real Evidence About the STEM Workforce.” Application/pdf. doi.org/10.728....
“Science, Technology, Engineering and Math: Education for Global Leadership: (555842013-001).” 2010. doi.org/10.103....
“Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, Including Computer Science | U.S. Department of Education.” n.d. Accessed November 5, 2023. www.ed.gov/STEM.
“Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.” 2023. In Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.o....
Siegel, Harvey, D.C. Phillips, and Eamonn Callan. 2018. “Philosophy of Education.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2018. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. plato.stanford....
Stevenson, Heidi J. 2014. “Myths and Motives behind STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Education and the STEM-Worker Shortage Narrartive” 23 (1).
Stringer, Alyssa. 2023. “A Comprehensive List of 2023 Tech Layoffs.” TechCrunch (blog). November 3, 2023. techcrunch.com....
“The STEM Crisis: Reality or Myth?” 2013. The Chronicle of Higher Education. November 11, 2013. www.chronicle.....
“Wayback Machine.” 2019. February 28, 2019. web.archive.or....

[@Zeioth]

There is no shortage of people in Stem. There is a shortage of companies willing to pay a fair salary for high difficulty jobs.

[@vitalyl1327]

Bullcrap. There is a shortage of competent engineers, no matter how much you're willing to pay.

[@nacpatil]

@@vitalyl1327 what is definition of competent engineer? If you want someone to know 10 frameworks and leet code and full stack, yes you have shortage but is that even necessary?

[@vitalyl1327]

@@nacpatil web monkeys are not engineers anyway, and they will all be replaced by stochastic parrots soon. I am talking about the proper engineers.

[@onionSpanks]

Yes, it is. We need to raise the bar to entry because junior devs have no idea what they're doing.@@nacpatil

[@doublesushi5990]

@@vitalyl1327 low iq take

[@aquafish129]

20 years programming experience, 10 of which as an IT architect, companies still balk at my resume and say they're going to look at someone with slightly better qualifications. In all of my experience I haven't found a company organized, skilled, or with a mature enough IT organization that deserves whatever MIT graduate they think they deserve.

[@galaxypanda1288]

I’m currently working for a university doing some basic IT work. Even the help desk staff here is outrageously understaffed to the point where if more than 3 people are out sick, zero tickets will get done. Yet still the university refuses to hire any new IT staff stating the “can’t afford it” meanwhile they blow hundreds of thousands on equipment they will never use and still expect us to service it all whenever their shining new machines stop functioning from misuse. I’ve been thinking about going back to school for software engineering instead but I’ve been worried it’ll be more of the same. Any advice?

[@aquafish129]

@@galaxypanda1288 that's indicative of one or more issues. For instance: 1) non-technical people making technical decisions 2) people making emotional decisions based on either the emotional aspect of shiny new toys or the perception that purchasing = accomplishment 3) management not building an understanding of quantitative or conceptual capability that relates to drivers, priorities, principles, and goals/objectives. All of which are exceedingly common or incorrectly done for most IT organizations. I feel your pain.

[@Mbrace818]

​@@galaxypanda1288Software engineering is just as bad, if not worse.

[@aquafish129]

​@@Mbrace818 Yup. That's my area, and it's like there is shenanigans around every turn.

[@Mbrace818]

@@aquafish129 It's my area too. Experienced my first layoff.

[@nukestrom5719]

There is NO stem shortage. I have seen 500 people applying for 1 position in the advanced tech industry. We have an oversupply of STEM graduates than what's needed. People hype STEM jobs, especially programming and software-related jobs on youtube and social media to make a living and sell their education courses.

[@honkhonk8009]

The only people who profited in the gold rush, where the ones who sold the shovels.

[@thatgui88]

​@@honkhonk8009correct

[@maythesciencebewithyou]

Many people here like to say "There is no shortage, there is just a shortage of companies willing to pay a fair sallary". That would mean that STEM people are there, but don`t apply anymore because they don`t like how low the salaries are and instead prefer to stay jobless. Nonsense. Companies get tons and tons of application. The only people who can afford to say no to a job are people with a wealthy background or young people who stay with their parents. The real problem is that companies are looking for the "perfect" candidate with the perfect resume and will reject any applicant who isn`t their ideal candidate. Those who are the best of the best or just long in the industry (whether they are actually good or not), however, have often other options with other companies, so they can say "no" to a job offer and take another one istead. Them rejecting job offers doesn`t mean there aren`t many more graduates and people with not so great resumes out there who would love to get a chance and get the job. It has gotten so bad and companies so entitled, that they won`t even hire a fresh graduate, who would be willing to work for way less. I`m sick and tired of all the automated rejection mails I`ve gotten over the past year.

[@mizutofu]

@@maythesciencebewithyou Companies think they can wait for the perfect candidate because there is an endless supply of applicants, so one again it's proof there is no shortage

[@NoRockinMansLand]

What's the solution

[@nickcorn93]

Hear hear! As a materials engineer who went on to get a PhD in applied Physics I personally experienced how the "STEM shortage" is a lie. What makes it even worse is all the people, especially family, who continue to believe the myth and don't understand why I'm not rich and successful (at least by their standards). I literally cringe when I hear the media lament how we need more scientists and engineers to "innovate" and to solve the big societal problems. Then why is there insane competition for those kinds of jobs? I WAS doing research on big societal problems and now I'm just messing around with data and IT systems. Societal relevance: 0. The best and brightest minds in the world are not solving the worlds problems; they are competing against each other in the zero-sum game of high finance. Our neoliberal society just needs replaceable drones to manage mundane boring shit to serve the interests of those with capital. A STEM education is a pretty good signal that you can figure stuff out on your own. Probably you know how to calculate a weighted average. Most "STEM jobs" are pretty simple and do not require the lengthy education graduates went through. Almost no job requires a PhD, and getting one may even hurt your chances of getting a job. Most of my engineering peers are messing around in Excel all day "managing" projects or processes. Science/engineering education prepares you for R&D, but R&D is not what companies need most workers in. Additionally, not all STEM education is created equal with respect to relevant employment opportunities. Ask all those underpaid biotech researchers how their job search is going. Ask how many astrophysicists found employment within their field. Since exiting academia I haven't done a job relevant to any of my domains of expertise. Instead, like many academic peers, we all somehow end up in data or IT. Even for degrees that ostensibly lead to the best opportunities job wise, e.g. computer science, there is a large disconnect between the education and the job. Still, it's important to place things in perspective. Those without a "STEM" education typically do even worse in the job market.

[@cryora]

To put things into perspective, people who are in special forces, which may not involve all that advanced math that STEM fields claim to require, but are nevertheless way harder jobs than most office jobs, and more risky, are paid the same as anyone else in the military with maybe some extra pay.

[@DrDiabolical000]

​@@cryoraWhat are you trying to do? He was not putting anyone down and just mentioning how there's a disconnect between the education system and actual job tasks required.

[@cryora]

@@DrDiabolical000 Trying to put things into perspective. To put things into another perspective, people generally want to pay for a solution or product, not for a person to spend time trying and failing multiple times before getting to a solution. The latter is what a person has to do in order to get to a solution. May take this person weeks or months. But this person competes with a market that has immediate solutions available, for example in the form of commercial off the shelf products. Faster and cheaper to buy, say, a robot than it is pay someone a professional salary to work on building one until he does. People in STEM need to think about how they can deliver value efficiently. Not just consume a paycheck for "working" towards a solution. That is expensive to pay for. Yes people need to eat and have bills to pay, but from the perspective of a paying customer, it is an unattractive deal. Same reason why homeless beggars are homeless, because it costs a lot to take care of a human being.

[@paul5324]

100% correct.

[@zenrhys589]

Eloquently said.

[@ishtaraletheia9804]

A sobering perspective that makes all too much sense. False scarcity is a classic marketing strategy. I'l have to keep this in mind as a math and CS student.

[@Thanzin1]

As new STEM grad with no experience struggling to land my first job, I think the problem is companies refusing to train. Companies want someone who already has experience for entry level jobs who they can low ball and don’t have to train. Companies don’t even invest in workers anymore yet they are still making record profits. On top of that, if they cannot find that one unicorn worker who is overqualified and don’t mind being underpaid in the country, they will just abuse the foreign work visa system to hire people from India. They will post a job with impossible requirements just to tell the government that there are no qualified people in the country so they can hire overseas workers mostly from India. Indians are incredibly desperate due to the fact that salaries in their country are very low and they have very few jobs relative to the amount of competition they face. This creates a race to the bottom where people are competing against the entire world for jobs that exist in their own country.

[@Juandinggong]

This is the best comment I have ever read!! You hit the nail on the head. One of my friend use to work for a company who hired lots of India software developers and she told me they work Indians here like slaves. I graduated last year and luckily I got on with a company given my previous experience and I must say it’s tough out there to find a reasonable employment.

[@AnotherDayattheDock]

based and goatpilled

[@rcarterbrown1]

You're right here. Due to outsourcing and remote working you're no longer competing with people in your city or even country. You're competing in the global labour market. Your only option is to make yourself more valuable than the competion. It's much easier to sell your services when you have a portfolio of software that you've built. You may need to work in a different field for a while that pays the bills while you build up a portfolio.

[@losfromla1480]

​@@alexanderdvanbalderen9803that's why they need to stay in their own country. Not come here and drag down our labor market. They'll end up making our country as bad as theirs.

[@cuchulainkailen]

This started in about 1995 in Sillycon Valley, at Cisco for example. I saw it. The CIS has it well documented. Loopholes in H-1B & e-verify put in by D's like Schumer - strategically. ... a major force to corrupt the 1986 enforcement requirements: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Zp3Fp39jrsubqa8

[@angelmarauder5647]

STEM shortage = "what ... you want us to pay you more? Aaaaah we have a worker shortage!"

[@milandalosur1850]

Worker shortages mean higher salaries. This is supply demand 101 why would I claim a shortage of workers if I wanted to pay less?

[@aecgem]

@@milandalosur1850 You lie about there being a STEM worker shortage -> government pushes a ton of people into STEM -> oversupply of workers to jobs -> you pay less per worker. It's an artificial movement along the supply curve, which is *actually* in Economics 101.

[@the_expidition427]

@@aecgem Saving this

[@milandalosur1850]

STEM workers have always out performed Non-STEM for salary. Now is there a multitude of movements to get workers into stem that could lower that wage disparity? Yes there have been for decades and it's not moved the needle. There is a legitimate shortage of workers compared to what other industries has that drives the wage disparity. You can grandstand about how this is all a plot to get salaries down, but it does not change the current fact that there is a labor shortage and that shortage a cause for higher salaries. If you want to say there is not a labor shortage the burden of proof is to explain why STEM jobs pay more. @@aecgem

[@retardo-qo4uj]

​@@milandalosur1850shortage = cant find inside country = outsource to india for cheaper price. Its part of globalization for programming

[@Thanzin1]

It’s not surprising why they are pushing more kids towards STEM. More STEM grads mean higher supply which will push down wages and reduce costs for the company thus leading to higher profit margins. Most of which will go towards the shareholders. I’ve had friends call me a conspiracy theorist for expressing this view.

[@matthewgilfus1640]

I love people calling me a conspiracy theorist for saying that a thing that happened in the past is happening again.

[@wardibald]

Any time someone mentions a _they_ doing a concerted-effort-good-for-them-bad-for-society-anything that would require all of _them_ to be in on _it_ for _it_ to work, that someone is a conspiracy theorist. What happened is the covid crisis created a lot of temporary need for extra IT tech, mostly for the big tech companies, asymmetrically situated in the US. The IT tech market in Europe is doing quite fine at the moment. It's not perfect, but when has it ever been? Current problem I see is companies want their tech cheaper, but can't get it cheaper due to the still existing IT tech market shortage. So we get overworked with unrealistically tight deadlines for ever increasingly complex and business-critical projects.

[@thomashenry4798]

@@wardibald I think its better to conceptualize it as a systemic problem rather than a conspiracy of deliberate action: The system itself is bad and so it pushes people into these behaviors and conclusions. Its no *one* persons fault but rather its all of us acting according to our incentives and interests to produce a faulty outcome. The fish dont need to talk to each other to know to swim in a school; because all the fish who didnt wound up dead.

[@wardibald]

@@thomashenry4798 Humans are not fish. We're able to do self-reflection and evaluation of an existing system we're part of. In this case, to get to the 0P-described outcome, teachers from all types of schools for all ages from - say - 8 year old all the way to university, need to be consistent in pushing kids to STEM while knowing it's bad for them but good for whatever cost-cutting scheme they're part of. Obviously there is a business-education connection, more so in the US than in Europe, since US schools are essentially for-profit businesses, and it can be argued that is not an ideal situation, but this fish-like behaviour explanation of people in positions that require critical thinking, leaves much to be desired.

[@thomashenry4798]

@@wardibald Sure, we arent fish, but neither are we above the systems in which we find ourselves. If we are hungry, we eat food. If we cant find any, we go looking for it. Some individuals may choose to let themselves starve, sure. But the overall trend of behavior is that given hunger, most people will seek to eat. Even the very wealthy and elite are cogs in the machine. The rich spin too; they exist in a rarified vacuum and struggle to connect emotionally with their fellow humans. Instead having potentially a warped perception of what life is like for most other people. As an example. So even if they want to do good they struggle to understand just what it is other people might actually need and fall back on the traditions and socialization they were raised with. We are a part of nature, a part of the system, a part of the machine, and we always will be. Its just that some pieces of that machine we can potentially tear apart and replace with better, more intentional and deliberate machines that actually address our needs. If we so choose. But even as we choose we are still servants of the incentives we create; bad KPIs and metrics that judge workers will drive worker behavior. People need jobs, they need money, they need to pay rent, to eat. So as what happened with Wells-Fargo bank, where new accounts opened where the metrics by which bank workers were judged, people took peoples money to open bank accounts to drive those metrics so that they would not be replaced until the whole thing exploded. KMart had a loyalty program where workers were judged by how many loyalty accounts were opened or used. Most people didnt have one. *Every* cashier padded their numbers because if you did not pad your numbers you would be replaced by someone who did because *everyone* was judged based off of it. This was only exacerbated when the elderly, the most likely demographic to have an account or want one, were cut off when email requirements were enforced. I can go on and on and on. So long as we want to do stuff like eat food, drink water, sleep in a shelter, we cannot refuse to be a part of the social systems that govern our lives.

[@CaraiseLink]

"STEM as a concept is a tool for maintaining the reserve army of labor" is not what I was expecting to get out of this video, and yet it's depressingly unsurprising. Thanks for the video as always.

[@Khyranleander]

Agreed, tho it's not the ONLY reason, eg: Types like me didn't like "artsy" fluid studies as we could only "get" stuff divisible into formal rules. There's also the post-medieval backlash against classical education which put law & medicine above logic/rhetoric, with the early "sciences" at the bottom. Probably other reasons.

[@TheThreatenedSwan]

Wat. People just forget everything they don't use

[@gitgudnga]

work for lockheed martin

[@avernvrey7422]

They talk about a STEM shortage, but then it's extremely hard to find a job for a lot of CS majors...

[@thecodebrief]

STEM is more than CS , if you ask the medical profession they will tell you they are bleeding for doctors and nurses right now and its true. So there can be demand in one area but not another. Biology is also "STEM" and all those grads are either pre-med or have to take higher education to even be competitive for research.

[@RealisiticEdgeMod]

@@thecodebrief It theres a shortage of medical personnel then they would drop the false requirements for entry. For example having to pass a course in chemistry.

[@Saberking875]

A lot of cs jobs are outsourced to India, they will all be gone within 2 decades

[@lalithrockz]

​@@Saberking875I think there'll be enough for high skill jobs.

[@NoDrizzy630]

Medical! The majority of my family works in the medical field and they are always in demand and pay very well. Unfortunately I’m studying data analytics because I don’t want be covered in someone else’s bodily fluids.

[@thebeautifulones5436]

I got sucked into the stem vortex. I wanted to solve real problems, improve my country and the world, and make money. it was a struggle to study something as difficult as electrical engineering and hard to get my first jobs, but after 10 years working there was lots of available work. However I could have got to the same place much faster and cheaper if I just became an electrician. And I didn’t get to save the world. I saved a bit, quit and now raise cattle.

[@sergioalcantar3290]

Moo.

[@johnElden8760]

the best life proabably

[@Infantry12345]

I understand this video to basically be a discussion of one angle on how we understand (and market) STEM education as a society, and I agree with all of the points made. Coming at it from a different angle, I’ve often heard arguments that the way tests and education rubrics are built is in a way conducive to creating a good worker: the idea of kids learning and doing work in an environment where they need to ask permission to use the bathroom, where imperfections are exaggerated by a 70% minimum acceptability bar, lots of homework, etc. creates a precedence of working conditions that favor business owners over the employees. For my part, I did very well in school, and I recognize it made me into someone particularly easy to exploit in the workplace. So yeah, I’d say there are more than a few arguments about how discussions around education are really about its mechanism in generating profit. The more we can recognize that rhetoric, the better we can address it. I don’t think we can reasonably continue on like we have been, for lots of reasons. The argument for social assistance programs like UBI grows stronger by the day, and I’ll be adding the points in this video under my hat for the next time I get into a discussion about the topic. Thanks for another great video, I hope you find stable employment soon!

[@ikegru4346]

I agree on almost everything, but making yourself dependent on government through UBI is the road to authoritarianism. So it is just not the way to move forward.

[@Infantry12345]

@@ikegru4346 I mean, I'd prefer a world where money didn't or hardly existed, and people agreed to share resources and services because its a good thing to do rather than because someone coerced them into it with money, but I feel like UBI is easier to obtain. I grant that UBI isn't a silver bullet, it can be done poorly

[@ikegru4346]

@@Infantry12345 I am in doubt, that AI will replace people. Every expert in the field probably works at an AI firm, so they won't say, that it is overrated, because that might negatively impact their career. Also, they afraid to be wrong, because if they were predicting doomsday and everything came out ok, no one is going to remember that, but if they said it would be fine and it wasn't, they might at least get some serious guilt for helping the worst case scenario to come to life, if not made pay for their incorrect opinions of the past by some angry mob. Most of them admit, that they do not have enough understanding to model, how the AI actually works from the inside, because it is at this point almost to complexed to be adequately modeled, so they definitely would not want to be the one underselling the potential danger there might be. Other people have no clue about what is going on, so Big Tech can sell them the need for AI regulation (and more regulation benefits large corporations by eliminating the competition, which is not able to dedicate a whole department for AI safety and other regulations the government will throw into the mix) and tell them that this AI thing is some innovation on the level of invention of fire is going on, so people need to invest even more money into their shares or they will miss out on opportunity of the century. And government can tighten surveillance on the people to "ensure AI safety and that no criminal activity being commited with its help" and also to sell you UBI, because soon you will lose your job to the scary large language model, which got to good at predicting the next word, or to an image generator, which if not explicitly asked to generate some creative idea won't generate anything. While AI might be a threat to a guy who writes pornographic novels or draws hentai first, and then some mediocre writer or artist starts loosing his job, the jobs where precision and deep understanding of what you are doing is demanded (like coding or math) will simply experience a boost in productivity, so less of these people will be needed, but they will find another job, which AI won't be able to do for at least ten more years. Those who are good at what they do, will become better, and those, who are below average will find another job. It is literally industrial revolution and automatization for the second time. So while AI will definitely be influential, it would not be the pivotal point for the species, that we expect it to be.

[@aomorgancool1775]

@@ikegru4346 let's just hope your right. I don't think that a UBI system is sustainable if I'm honest. There are other social programs the government uses that we could just bolster that would be more useful than UBI.

[@orthodoxcaveman5819]

There is something else that could play into this. After covid and most of us outside of the US went full remote, we've been getting job offers from US and other international companies, with salaries that are high for us, but low for a US citizen. At least here in Portugal, the labour is cheaper and the delivered work has the same quality, so they might be taking advantage of that.

[@nicolasreinaldet732]

Also here In Brazil boeing oppened a huge building for 500 people to work there. If you can separate the gold from the trash you will find at least one or two universities in every middle income country that deliver very high quality workers but that will be amazed by a fraction of the pay.

[@Default78334]

The S part of STEM hasn't been doing great for a while. A BS in chemistry or biology basically gets you a $35k/yr job as a lab tech with a career path that plateaus shortly thereafter. If you want a "real" job, hope you have a Ph.D. I got out of the lab myself and moved into the sales side of things years ago and never looked back. It turns out that selling the science boxes pays much better than using them.

[@picklerix6162]

My brother learned the hard way about sales. It’s a young man’s game and he resisted the move into management because he didn’t want all of the headaches dealing with subordinates and upper management. Once he turned 50, he became a target for layoffs.

[@yoeyyoey8937]

Yup. I drive the sample for the lab I work for and I make more than the lab techs. And I have a biology degree lol

[@eisenkrieg553]

​@yoeyyoey8937 I like the idea of being a chemist, but my pockets and my appetite for debt only allow me to consider a bachelor level investment into that education; and I saw what that gets you. You get to be some geriatric's fetch hound for his community college chemistry course. That poor woman, doing little more than setting up labs for a handful of students.

[@yoeyyoey8937]

@@eisenkrieg553 yeah don’t do graduate school unless you know where you’re going or what you’re getting yourself into or you have a free ride deal. If you have a good mentor then maybe you can have network to get into an industry job or coveted position elsewhere but make sure that’s gonna happen first

[@xxbatman69xx98]

My problem with stem right now is how hard it is to actually get a job. I’m still in college for EE and even just internships are saying things like “you have to have experience” and to have work with things that no normal EE student works with or has worked with. All for a freaking internship. And internships are at this point the new entry level jobs, because actual jobs require 3 years experience as if I can just pull that experience from thin air.

[@NtandoMbele]

try and work 10 hours a week or even 20 within your field. that's what I did. I had a friend in Aeronautical Engineering who worked full time by 3rd year. I know it sounds scary, but it's possible with today's edge of working from home too. I had class mostly in the morning so in my afternoons I'd work. get a student job in a small company.

[@4mb127]

There's always a shortage of slave labor.

[@htconexify]

I'll be a slave for 300k a year dw

[@nERVEcenter117]

I obtained a great job at a smaller company working on projects independently DURING all of this. The key is: Money printing. All of these engineers were hired during a period of massive inflation, resultant stock price booms, and $2 trillion valuations. The biggest tech firms, receiving all this free cash, were hiring engineers just to sit on them; if they were working on anything, it was projects without a clear value add or future. I really think it's that simple. Engineers chasing jobs at giant tech firms must be wary of the amounts of cash these companies have to waste on projects they will cut without hesitation. If you want security, work at a company making a valuable product that people and businesses are already paying for.

[@slop123456789]

Bitcoin fixes this.

[@joshavery]

Same situation as you. I got a data job at a smaller company. I will probably end up staying for quite a while because I can see my work impacting people directly, and people don't seem to want to die all the time, as you might see in large companies. The pay is decent, not like the flashy numbers CS youtubers talk about, but enough to live on comfortably with a modest lifestyle. Plus, I have job security. I do my job well, and my company wants to keep me around for as long as possible. Many other employees want to and have stayed for 10, 15+ years, which you don't see often at large companies.

[@cowl6867]

The issue also comes down to how corporate and rigid these fields have turned into. Making enigmatic and driven students into workers rather than professionals, leaving them miserable. The amount of skill and expertise people have in these fields end up going to waste because they got stuck into corporate capitalism or politics, not letting them have the freedom they should. The people I met who work in stem are either miserable or so brainwashed by living the 9-5 so much they just view it as any other job having all the passion drained out and repeat the same tasks as any other cog in the machine.

[@adrianm7203]

That one's difficult, almost all white collar jobs suffer from that '9-5 draining' atmosphere. It's a consequence of an education system teaching people to view work as a series of pointless assignments. Now in the wake of pandemic many companies have shifted to remote work, reducing even your co-workers to just names on a screen. Even the human connection you might have formed with co-workers is gone. There's not much anyone can do though, you gotta work to pay the bills. Most people come home too drained to do anything else, so life just becomes a repetitive grind. The only solution I've seen is getting up early and filling the hours before you head off to work with projects you are passionate about. Not everyone has the option of getting up at 4-5am, but I'd recommend it to anyone who can.

[@dan-allen]

Yep I’ve seen this up close at three different companies during acquisitions. And look at how much big companies like Google and Facebook spend acquiring tiny companies. Like six people will leave a giant company because they have an idea they can’t get management to invest in, get traction acquiring customers faster and faster, old company tries to build a competing product, uses 10x the resources and still fails, only to finally spend even more money to acquire the new company (which was founded by their own employees). Companies cry about how expensive smart people are, but when those people leave to start competing businesses they end up creating dramatically more value than the salary they left. The best way to get paid for your skills anymore is to work for yourself. I suspect the staggering size of modern giants also slows down technological progress. Instead of investing in developing new things, they just buy out potential competitors when they’re small to protect their market position. I know one of the companies I worked at hadn’t launched a profitable new product in decades. Instead they bought up companies that they were losing customers to.

[@raylopez99]

Excellent, subscribed. But lacking was a mention of the theory that university is nothing but signaling; the smart people will eventually make it to the top, and largely the value of higher education is for networking and signaling to employers you are smart, not what you learn in school. I made my money in science, retired after a decade and a half, most of it in Silicon Valley, while still in my 40s. My secret? Besides the several advanced STEM degrees, the legal expertise, and the entrepreneurial drive (I managed others and also ran my own firm for a while), I earned my money the old fashioned way: I inherited a boatload from a rich, childless relative. Good luck to you!

[@shimadabr]

Was not expecting that last sentence hahaha.

[@silpheedTandy]

even if education was only about creating workers whose training can directly and obviously be applied to benefit society, fields like nursing, early childhood educators, trades, and psychotherapists (and others of course) weren't nearly as pushed as STEM was, when i graduated in high school in the early 2000s. i never thought about it, until you articulated it, that STEM skills help companies make money more efficiently, but fields like nursing and childhood educators etc don't really.

[@vitalyl1327]

Medical sciences are a part of STEM though.

[@cryora]

STEM skills are basically company builders, the way railroad tracks were built. Once built, they are no longer needed, and their products help the company make money, costing them only maintenance and operations.

[@mitchio86]

yeah it's nonsense. I was told this lie when I went to uni in 2004. I was also told that the workers in STEM were old and about to retire such that there was going to be many vacancies in the coming years. Looking at the number of STEM graduates per year there is clearly nowhere near the number of jobs available

[@DrunkenUFOPilot]

LOL! Who was saying that about old workers leaving openings? Sheesh! I think every kind of lie possible is being told by someone somewhere.

[@matthewgilfus1640]

They want to push wages and salaries down. They've done this for years and years. Remember the push for nursing and pharmacy? My ex was a nurse and I think her union was on strike for at least 10 years because of wages and staffing shortages. I know a pharmacist that graduated 9 years ago and has never gotten a raise.

[@peterhub1]

I studied engineering and found a job that was boring to me. After becoming restless I got a second engineering degree. Looking back I believe university was not a good environment to make an informed decision about what path to choose. I worked very hard during those six years and graduated the second on the Dean's list. If I got an A+ cert instead I could have paid less than 20% of the money and had my foot in the door fixing computers within two years. That quickness would have allowed me to experience real work and understand what things would bother me about it. I didn't understand that the same things that suck about working as a cashier are fully present in an engineering job. I didn't understand that I would kind of suck at engineering. I didn't understand that what they teach you in college is rarely relevant at your first job, each job will train you to work that job the way it is done at that particular place(meaning all four years of study are worth less than one month of just freaking start doing it) I didn't understand that what I enjoyed about university wasn't the engineering, it was the close fellowship I had with my friends, the campus itself, the ability to walk everywhere and have quiet places to study all around me. The real job lacks those things. Anyway, my point is this. Univiersity shouldn't be the first choice for everyone, in fact I believe that only those who are already aiming for research and phd should go to college straight out of high school. Certificates, vocational training, learning a second language, that would be what I would do if I could start over. not 100,000 in debt, confused, depressed, restless and naïve.

[@FirstnameLastname-bx4zk]

Thanks for your input ❤

[@NtandoMbele]

Completely agree. for me any career, it's also important to have connections within the space especially family. If your family has an engineering company then you can get into that space with more ease than most people. and be better inform.

[@dragonfyre1589]

What an excellent video! I've yet to see anyone else address these points so effectively. I do think the universities could help mitigate this crisis a little bit by graduating less STEM students. Talk to any STEM professor and they'll tell you that standards have dropped dramatically because the universities want to keep their graduation rates up and keep tuition rolling in. This means that students who may not have the aptitude to do well in STEM (often simply because they would've been better at something else and were forced into STEM because of the supposed career prospects) are graduating with STEM degrees and having a hard time finding work. It would be better if these students failed out of STEM early and transferred to a degree that better suits their talents. Of course, this won't happen, because the universities will lose money and the finance / big tech / MIC industries will all lose money, so we'll sadly keep pushing natural born artists and historians into STEM.

[@alandeutsch9987]

this is so true

[@michaelcherry8952]

Straight up I'm extremely uncomfortable with defining education solely in terms of "big paycheques for graduates". In my province, the government has tied educational funding to statistics regarding how quickly graduates attain full-time employment. The result is universities being starved for funding while trade schools get the lion's share. The fact is, we need all manner of university graduates as well as welders, pipe fitters and coders. Also, I think telling students to study STEM subjects ONLY because it will theoretically get them well-paying jobs is ignoring the fact that STEM learning AS WELL AS learning the so-called "soft subjects" is vital to the development of a well-rounded, intelligent population, able to work in a variety of fields and with the imagination and skills to see through a lot of the B.S. that the world throws out (such as any given speech by any given politician). Hmmm. Politicians are eager to over-promote STEM learning at the expense of other subjects that might enable the B.S. detector in the students. Coincidence? I think not!

[@jackdeniston59]

Soft subjects? You couldn't cut it in stem eh. Pay attention, currently the 'soft subjects' destroy well rounded intelligence. Toe the party line comrade is the only lesson being taught.

[@tamanpara2682]

I graduated university in 2020. Let me respond to your assertion that post-secondary education should not only be about making money for the student in the future in a way that is authoritatively, logically and emotionally resonating all in one: WHERE IS THE MONEY???!!! PAYCHEQUES PAYCHEQUES PAYCHEQUES!

[@michaelcherry8952]

@@tamanpara2682 And I totally agree that a university graduate both desperately needs (thanks to the ridiculous costs) and deserves to have employment. What I object to is a single-minded focus by government solely on employment outcomes. Two things need to happen: Firstly, the cost of post-secondary education needs to be reduced or even eliminated for the first four years. Secondly, there needs to be a pro-active approach from government to make sure that qualified people get employment in their fields. Currently, the approach seems to be to stick a giant vacuum cleaner hose into the students' wallets and once they have managed to graduate, tell them "You're on your own, kid!" Not helpful in the least. Does this mean that government alone should be responsible for all of it? I would say not, but in today's hyper-capitalist world there would need to be major incentives for businesses to get off their collective butts and actually do something to help the situation. It's a dual situation: higher education costs too much, which encourages young people to compromise on their futures in favour of a secure (but low-level) paycheque. On the other hand, once students actually achieve a higher level of education, neither government nor business seem that interested in taking advantage of these people. Then you have people with doctoral degrees driving cabs to earn any kind of a living. This is unsustainable and actually impairs the advancement of the society as a whole.

[@chesshooligan1282]

Well, that's your opinion on who should get financed by the taxpayer and who shouldn't. Other people have different opinions. The problem is quickly solved when the government doesn't finance anybody and everybody pays for their own stuff. I'm extremely comfortable with universities being starved for funding. If it was up to me, unis would get zero funding from the taxpayer. And don't worry, people would still study engineering and mathematics. A few with money to burn would even study sociology or gender studies.

[@michaelcherry8952]

@@chesshooligan1282 Right. Lets leave university education to the rich elite. Brilliant. What the hell do people think tax revenue is supposed to be used for anyway? Take a look at what the U.S. government spends on the military versus what it spends on education in all areas--not just post-secondary. Middle and high school teachers are buying classroom supplies out of their own meager wages while the military gets whatever shiny new toys it wants. That's just screwed up. Democracy is nowhere near a perfect system, but it sure as hell goes pear-shaped when you have an uneducated electorate. That's when you elect people who think Israel has secret satellite based laser weapons that they use to start forest fires (for some reason). That's when you elect people who believe that vaccinations will turn you into Godzilla. That's when you elect people who don't give a good God Damn about the people they are supposed to serve and use their office as an opportunity to line their own pockets. That's what you get when you starve education because you think it's "wasting taxpayer money". Give me a break. A government's job it to protect and support the citizens of the state. Yes, the military comes under "protection" but so do things like food inspection, drug approvals, work safety regulations, environmental protection. Support includes things like education, health care, social services, infrastructure like bridges, roads, water treatment plants and so on. That's where your taxpayer's money is supposed to be going. There are countries in Europe where the first four years of university are government funded. You would say "Oh, but they pay so much more in taxes" as if it were a one-way street. Your tax payments are returned to you with the services that the government supplies to you, or at least that's the way it's supposed to be. Instead of whinging on about how universities should get zero funding, how about taking a leaf out of Woodward and Bernstein and "Follow The Money". Where is the tax money being spent? Who benefits?

[@morkzorckerborg5000]

"there is a shortage of people in stem" - company offering 35hr/week part time jobs at minimum wage. On the other hand, many companies would rather hire consultants to tell them the right way (how their competitor does it) and fix entire infrastructures; instead of maintaining and teaching a team.

[@dekumutant]

This is exactly what ive been saying for years. Big texh companies have soend money on glamourising software jobs to reduce how much they have to pay in the long run

[@eisenkrieg553]

I appreciate how an education only continues to rise in price while our means to ever pay off that debt evaporates like water on Mars. What a system, make the employees pay to train themselves, cry about a shortage of educated workers, get a glut of them, get to pay them less.

[@EachSenseTalk]

I am happy that you discussed about the agenda espoused by many lobbyists, business owners, and businesses to take advantage of labor. You even see this with the "trades" where they are trying to push people into that sector without investing in their own work force

[@SorryBones]

It’s so hard to explain this to my parents having just graduated… This isn’t 1975. I’m no longer competing against people in my area and having my resume read by a human being. Im competing against all of the U.S. and other countries. I’m being filtered out by algorithms. My generation is the most educated generation in the world, my degree doesn’t even get me in the door. I’m going to have to go through 3-4 rounds of interviews minimum IF they don’t ghost me. And they’re just going to hire a foreigner who depends on them for their green card so greedy companies can shortchange them and not have a job hopping U.S. citizen… Who will job hop because companies don’t give raises anymore. It’s not the same world anymore, human beings are just resources and don’t matter. This is impossible

[@vyliad]

I unfortunately completely fell for the whole thing, I wasted my childhood gaining a decade of software development experience instead of being a kid. And now my choices going forward are to compete with people who have decades more experience than I've been alive for difficult cutthroat jobs with a meager salary, be unemployed for the rest of my life, or forget the whole system that's been stacked against me since birth and do things my own way and hope that one day I'll get an opportunity somewhere. I regret going into a STEM field, I should've focused on art.

[@warriordx5520]

rip bozo lol

[@retardo-qo4uj]

In art you compete with dead people 100s years old older than you though

[@gavinlew8273]

The same cut throat competition applies in Art. As long as there are humans. There WILL BE competition. And did you know that software development is an art form as well? You'd need to be a good craftsman at that!

[@RSlayer001]

So you can't use software engineering/programming skills to make art? Why don't you try messing around with programming in a 3d software like Unreal Engine or Houdini?

[@nakedwzrd]

I don’t want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers.-Rockefeller

[@cryora]

I want a nation of beautiful loose women.

[@gavinlew8273]

The 2023 version: I don't want a nation of talkers. I want a nation of do-ers!

[@naniyotaka]

They want a nation of slave wage workers.

[@xxbatman69xx98]

@@gavinlew8273real

[@hunivan7672]

I always thought the reason for so obviously pushing STEM down everyone's throats was a way to push down the cost of STEM-labor by increasing supply. But it does make sense that if you remove bright minds that would go into philosophy, theology and literature, you are de-facto reinforcing capitalism.

[@brandonturner9065]

I’m a current mechanical engineer and philosophy double major at LSU and yeah I get told all the time how stupid I am for wasting my time but the way I saw it was always I wanted to learn philosophy and I liked engineering and it will guarantee me a job so I’ll just do both and luckily I’m still graduating in four years but Ive never seen someone put into words my feelings about the distinction. I’m also a co-op at nasa and I’ve found that my philosophy expertise helps me at work just as much as my technical competence. Thank you !

[@FaCiSmFTW]

Wow good for you, how are you able to do it in 4 years? I'm in my first year of mechanical engineering and I wish I could take more philosophy classes but I don't want to be in school forever.

[@belx4955]

I'm doing a double major in CS and economics for the same reasons! good to know other people feel the same about their academic goals.

[@belx4955]

@@FaCiSmFTW idk how engineering works in the US but if you do a double major usually it's 4 years total, 2 for each major.

[@internallyinteral]

Nothing will guarantee a job.

[@tohanFreerun]

Can you tell more about how philosophy helps at work in your case?

[@kapoioBCS]

Well, in my case I pursued what I loved the most, which was theoretical research (PhD) in pure mathematics and mathematical physics (string theory) and now I cannot find any jobs to pay my bills :(. (There is zero funding for post docs anymore, they pay very bad anyway, also no chance for an academic position like professor..)

[@Drakeblood97]

Let others waste their time with string theory and study something more useful like dark matter or black holes, you could probably find a real job for that stuff.

[@kapoioBCS]

@@Drakeblood97 how about no..

[@drd4059]

Migrate to another topic. There was a crash in demand for nuclear physicists after 3 mile island. A lot of the talent left the field and fueled a boom in medical imaging technologies. Others went to Wall St. and develop analytic models of capital markets. I went from slow neutron physics to polymer physics as a post doc and now do food safety and medical diagnostics. I founded a R&D company in 2000 and now own about 40 US patents. On average, it takes 13 years (known as the valley of death for tech start ups) to go from concept to commercial. My perspective has survivor bias: do what I did and become wealthy. Most don't make it out of the valley of death. The key is to use your high level math in a field where high level math is not common whether as a well paid employee (low risk) or as an entrepreneur (high risk, high reward).

[@scepticalchymist]

I feel you, because I did the same :). We idealists have to learn that what gets paid is not idealism, passion, devotion, that's only ever gets one abused and exploited by others, but to be have a practical skill that is valuable to others, and this can be very basic, something like being able to write well, being able to think clear, being able to get things done fast, not perfect, but fast, and reliable. Unfortunately short term goals are favored by society, not being persistent and having the endurance to master a field as difficult as string theory. This said, I admire you for all the things that other people find not fancy and cannot see and appreciate. Understanding the inner workings of the universe still is a decent way of living and has its own rewards. This is something, that 99% of humans will never understand.

[@DrunkenUFOPilot]

That's how my career path went. (Checking to make sure this isn't an answer I wrote... nope!) But I was lucky to be out of college and grad school at a time when anyone who could program a microprocessor to make an LED blink was hot stuff in the engineering world. Easy to land a job in manufacturing, medical imaging, or anything involving electronics. That world is long gone now.

[@dinzoharris6294]

The reason we don’t include psychology or sociology into STEM is not because it doesn’t make money, but because its object of study is too abstract for mathematics to properly apply to it. Yes, psychology and sociology make advanced use of statistics, but so too do certain parts of the humanities, and we wouldn’t call them STEM. Science involves more than just the statistical organization of observations.

[@escthedark3709]

Social sciences aren't even proper sciences, and I find that the term gives them far more weight than they deserve. Social 'sciences' steal the legitimacy of scientists and engineers while rubbing their crap all over the name of science in order to seem more reliable and trustworthy.

[@lanceemry5899]

Yes and that is why Neuroscience is included in STEM.

[@SevenThunderful]

Psychology is a failed pseudo-science. All the big so called theories of the mind have been falsified over the years. It's best use case is something like Neuro linguistic programming in marketing. You learn how to lie effectively.

[@zenrhys589]

application to mathematics is not a prerequisite to being a science. Geologists use about as much math as psychology does and yet its considered STEM. Science is any pursuit that uses empirical data to make hypotheses and predictions. So no, science is not more than just statistical organizations of observations. Thats literally all it is.

[@escthedark3709]

@@zenrhys589 Take a look at critical theory. It is based on challening and critiquing (hence the term critical) social structures rather than using scientific methods to understand society. The whole point of critical theory is to take a step away from the scientific method, yet it is seen as rather reasonable in the world of social "sciences" in spite of being rooted in trying to understand society sans scientific methods.

[@JayVal90]

The push for STEM has generated a glut of low quality STEM workers.

[@fruitloopz311]

I think you mean to say H1B visas lol

[@misterleegains4020]

​@@fruitloopz311Yeah,as a result we will become a H1B-type third-world shithole, except with ethnic and cultural conflict on top of it. 😂

[@Michael-it6gb]

If a 2 year education in software development is a "low quality STEM worker" then companies are spoiled garbage people. A person wasted years of their valuable life because these companies said "shortage of stem, we need more engineers", and then refuse to hire anybody who just graduated. These "CEOs" are liars and criminal people who deserve to sit behind bars for this scam.

[@adamaubry4598]

Everyone is trying to predict the future yet forget that the ones working their asses off now, forgetting what everyone else is predicting, are going to be far well off in the long term.

[@rabbitcouch15]

Graduated with a PhD in chemistry this spring. Spent 7 months looking for a job since I defended my dissertation the previous winter. My first job after getting out of grad school was as a cashier in a gas station. Now I’ve got a job I could’ve gotten with my BS out of college without wasting 5 years of my life. Pays like shit too compared to the six figure salaries everyone always told me I’d be able to get in industry.

[@javiersaenz1040]

You have been replaced, and your job was given to the HB1 immigrant for less paid.

[@TerryJulianLive]

Damn thats insane.. Have you looked into working at Dow Chemical?

[@timisa58]

Thank you for this. Opened my eyes to a few things I hadn't considered. As someone who has benefited from STEM education and career paths, I sometimes have a myopic view. I agree. The Employer is who benefits most, overwhelmingly so, than the new graduate or employee. More efficient tech, abundant workforce, means more MONEY MONEY MONEY for LESS LESS LESS.

[@trashpanda5947]

You're making a logical fallacy. You assume that if you don't study something in uni that means that you don't learn it. For someone educated in tech you should know this is BS. University is so that you get a piece of paper validating skills that you will use in a job or to prepare you to do research in a topic. You can simply read the books without getting the paper. Student debt is voluntary.

[@ijuhi]

I have a b.s. in maths from a tier 1 research university. There are no non-teaching jobs for a fresh graduate with a maths degree. You're expected to have 5-10 years of experience if you want to find anything.

[@THUNKShow]

One of the brightest mathematicians I know bailed on academia & became a barista. I guess she decided chasing the carrot forever didn't add up.

[@dluu13]

I'm a STEM graduate and worker (very fulfilling, by the way). My mind would go numb if I couldn't come home and watch a movie, or video about art or music. STEM is necessary, but the other subjects make life worth living.

[@braumski2]

Looked through your channel, I'm gonna have to binge some of these 😁

[@sirhenrystalwart8303]

The low salary of STEM jobs outside of FANG software plainly shows there is no STEM shortage. When there is an actually shortage, you will see folks with a bachelors in chemistry make 500k+ with a few years of experience.

[@milandalosur1850]

STEM is full of 6 figure jobs outside of FANG. There’s just no evidence to support what you’re saying.

[@oflameo8927]

They been advertising the STEM shortage for decades and I personally been burned from the fib.

[@landspide]

There is a root of all evil, forgot what that was again, too busy rat racing 🤔... We are rapidly approaching post scarcity, I would argue AI is going to be the catalyst, automation as a means to decouple from external dependencies is also going to be critical. I am getting old now but it really does feel like we are hitting saturation across many markets. I do agree, we need a shift in gears with respect to education.

[@denimGoldenBlues]

Having more STEM graduates is not a bad thing, given they are at the forefront of product creation and brings in substance. What we did do wrong is relying on “giant corporations” to assemble the industries and provide us a job we can clock to. If we started developing our own several series of collaborative small businesses that can not only bring American capabilities before early 2000s and we won’t have to worry about product dependence on other nation to fill in many of our needs. The economics of it should bring the inflation down as well. We are stronger when we don’t participate as a victim.

[@javiersaenz1040]

STEM is oversatured now. There is no shortage

[@userMB1]

I think that most people, including me to be honest, think that social sciences and especially arts and humanities, don't really require much brain power; you can learn them on your own. The looking down on anything other than STEM is everywhere but in the US it's more common because of extremely high student loans. How are you supposed to pay back those loans with a philosophy degree? So the problem is very broad.

[@fnorgen]

I'm inclined to agree. I have a lot of friends who spent 3+ years to get a non-stem degree, and to most of them it was purely a waste of time. It may have been interesting, but all it did was keep them out of the labour market and not gaining any experience until after graduation. The vast majority of them ended up with work completely unrelated to their education, and many of them later went back to uni to get a new degree related to their actual work. Many of the others have just settled into retail jobs they technically didn't even need a high school education to qualify for. Not that there's really a need for more people in STEM either. It's more that trade schools around here have a reputation as the dumping ground for bad students who just want to get their education over with as quickly as possible. This creates a large surplus of high schoolers chasing the limited supply of relevant university courses, so a lot of them settle for the irrelevant ones that still look interesting. I may be projecting though. During the last year of middle school I visited an electrical trade school for a day because I considered becoming an electrician. I found the subject comically easy, and most of the students there to be complete idiots. I figured this stuff was way too easy for me, so I decided to pursue a STEM degree instead. I could have been guaranteed a steady job at 18 as a licensed electrician, with the opportunity to later get into electrical engineering, but instead I've been stuck in limbo for the last 10 years, as studying turned out to be complete poison for my mental health. It all left me a little disillusioned about higher education in general. Pardon my rant.

[@milt0n290]

I’m leaving the country for grad school in computer science. You absolutely can learn stem on your own as well. It’s just tedious. Don’t let anyone gaslight like stem is for smart people. It’s all a scam. I say do what makes you happy because unless you’re exceptional, no matter what route you go, you’ll struggle like everyone else. I decided to say fuck it and max out my education but really just to travel and find a country I can work and live decently

[@urip_zukoharjo]

Except for IT jobs I suppose, had known a person who's from botanical background and now works as a senior IT person in banking, also tech bubble happens and everyone's rushing to data jobs I don't live in us btw

[@pepsiman9840]

sometimes i feel like the opposite. anybody can learn math if they read the textbooks and dedicate the time. I don't understand any social theory though, not unless I take a class or have a youtuber explain it to me

[@forstuffjust7735]

​@@pepsiman9840Social theories are quite easy to grasp in theory, the hard part is when it comes to applying them

[@firejuggler31]

I work a finance job. Have seen a lot of resumes with engineering degrees. When I ask, the answer usually goes along the lines of “it’s harder to get a job in engineering”.

[@slop123456789]

One of the many symptoms of a fiat monetary system; an overgrown, overpaid finance sector that sucks the best talent away from solving tangible, real world problems and diverts them towards a meaningless fantasy that serves purely to enrich the wealthiest few and transfer risk to the many.

[@firejuggler31]

Maybe in general. In my case my job helps make sure your home being destroyed in a fire doesn’t also cause financial ruin for you.

[@antoniobortoni]

Automatization is growing exponentially in all areas but nobody expects that programer become obsolete by chatgpt, its socialism or seeing capitalism collapse because who is going to buy?? the middle class is not growing, people are not having children because life its more hard, collapse of population is happening, sooo, socialist is the way... the more kids the more money people should get to promote life... its that or collapse.

[@TheThreatenedSwan]

You think having a shortage of competent stem workers and the tech lay offs are contradictory? Suddenly the lay offs are making more sense

[@yaboy7120]

I think the layoffs are more attributable to the increase in hiring during the 2020-2021 period

[@TheThreatenedSwan]

@@yaboy7120 Yes, they overhired and disproportionately in non-tech jobs in tech companies, which he doesn't seem to realize or is deceptive about, so they trimmed the fat

[@JJSmalls]

No more free money thanks to the Fed.

[@argentaegis]

There's a difference between "things that are valuable" and "things for which we want to subsidize the acquisition of credentials". The cost of subsidy for many liberal arts degrees is higher than that of engineering degrees because theater production is less employable and less well compensated, thus making repayment of tuition an issue. As long as we're compensating professors for sharing their knowledge, this will be true, even if we change who does the compensating. A society might well value classical reading, and consider it a worthy thing to have done, but not be willing to pay people for professionals to train people in those readings if they consider that sort of life enrichment to be a primarily personal good, and not a good that will enrich people other than just the reader. Arguments to be made there, surely, but it's an argument of scarce resources.

[@XAUCADTrader]

Wow, so glad I found this channel, had no idea it existed! Hopefully it blows up, but I think it probably caters to a smaller demographic =/. I'm doing a computer science degree now in my late 30s, health sciences before...But seems like the economy is precarious in general, and even a skills reset may not even save me lol.

[@joaquinbecerra7405]

This is a great take, thank you for sharing!

[@ISpitHotFiyaa]

The media needs to stop referring to STEM when they're solely talking about computer scientists, computer engineers, and data scientists. Those are the people who make up the technical workforce at tech companies. Google and Facebook aren't hiring very many biologists or civil engineers. The STEM category is so broad that it isn't meaningful.

[@johnhershberg5915]

This is a bit of an odd take because it leaves out the actual students. The actual people in question here. At some point you stop the pattern of living with your parents and going to a school. Everyone wants this. But unfortunately accomplishing that takes money. The idea that's been pushed for ages is education = money. And especially in STEM that's true. So it's not so much that we as a society value money over knowledge. It's that there's a dishonesty in the system. If STEM were removed from higher education, and higher education was all things like history and the humanities, I would say that would actually increase the value of education. You'd get a degree in order to become a more well-rounded person, not just to get a bigger paycheck. But also much fewer people would go get a degree in the first place if they didn't think they'd get a bigger paycheck out of it. But I don't see how you can divorce those things. Some professions like law or medicine straight-up legally require you to get an education. And those are high-paying professions. The only thing changing is that STEM is now slowly entering into that same sphere. Another way to look at it is that a doctor that also has some education in the humanities is a better doctor. And maybe the same is true for a programmer, I don't know. But as a programmer myself I feel like programmers are more akin to plumbers and electricians than we are to doctors and lawyers. Maybe that should change?

[@gilbertocamacho6769]

Why does Silicon Valley employ so many Chinese and Indian engineers?

[@ronpearson1912]

The only way out of this is by punishing taxes for these companies as well as punishing anti-trust enforcement and massive company breakups. Absent that we will yield to China very soon, and actually technical people might be better off in the USA from a Chinese take over. The situation in the USA is simply not sustainable, they claim trade jobs are the way but they are paid just as poorly most of the data is taken from sole properiterships (people who were able to boot strap their way to carving out their own company that does well). Average trades men working for an employer dont make anything.

[@1three7]

Sorry, but as a psychology major myself. I'd say the question is "Is psychology a science" and the answer is no. At least it isn't a hard science like physics, chemistry, engineering etc. You can make tons of money as a psychologist, but your research is personal report surveys and P hacking

[@profdc9501]

Any job may be sacrificed if the C-suite needs to show a profit this quarter. It's about management keeping their jobs by sacrificing yours.

[@honkhonk8009]

Problem is we have too many barriers to entry for most tech businesses. Remove taxes and bureaucracy for startups. Problem solved.

[@threethrushes]

The goal of education/knowledge is to increase the accuracy of our mental models of the world. The divide between humanities graduates and STEM graduates is artificial. Yet, both humanities and STEM graduates tend to have tunnel vision. [Insert obligatory humblebrag about having separate post-graduate degrees in both STEM and humanities]. Disclaimer: I am not American. Brits and Europeans have rather different values this side of the Atlantic.

[@kikodekliko1209]

Wait, I probably don't understand how the US job market works but how does a mass layoff in the tech sector affect mechanical engineers? You'd expect it to mostly affect computer scientists, software engineers, applied mathematicians, statisticians and so on. Not engineers in the field of hardware (like mechanical engineers). At least here, in a European country, the effects of such a thing would be more specific than affecting the whole of STEM.

[@DrunkenUFOPilot]

This phrase "tech sector" or "tech jobs", "the tech field" often just means huge web-oriented companies like Amazon, Facebook et al - the "FAANG" companies where F is for Facebook, A is Apple, and um.. one of those letters is for Microsoft... but that's just one sector of the economy. It's dependent on fads and fashion, economic cycles, classes of people having more money or less and media hype. Big time web development, big time databases and enterprise systems. Completely separate are areas such as medical devices, scientific research, NASA spacecraft operations, studio automation for TV/film production and live theater, and even some big enterprise area such as banking, the IRS, the FAA, mostly immune from media hype and pop culture, though often squeezed like everyone during a recession.

[@kikodekliko1209]

@@DrunkenUFOPilot Agreed of course. By the way, love your username. But what I meant was, if Facebook (or Meta) and Google and Twitter (X) fire a bunch of staff it obviously affects downstream software developer and related jobs (IT, data science etc.) at smaller companies. Because of increased competition. Electrical Engineering I could maybe see too because a lot of devs have electrical engineering degrees and got started in software that way. But why would it affect the 'physical' engineering fields like mechanical engineering? That makes little sense to me. Yet it is claimed that the STEM field as a whole is less attractive because of this 'tech' financial bust.

[@spielosophtv]

Hey man Your Videos have a really good quality! Also I study philosophy and I felt like studying something I won’t get rich with. But know I feel really thankful for it, as I realize, that clear thinking is something really valuable :) So philosophy is no waste of time ^^

[@yuzan3607]

I'd say the same for engineering. I didn't go to engineering school to "get rich". Actually, I got many opportunities to "get rich" with my engineering degree that I passed. But to "think like an engineer" is a real benefit of studying engineering. You can then take that and apply it to literally any other field, in fact a lot of engineering graduates end up doing things completely different and their foundation in engineering will always be beneficial in every other field.

[@spielosophtv]

@@yuzan3607 how would you describe the way in which engineers think?

[@yuzan3607]

@@spielosophtv Systemic. Reducing any seemingly complex problem into its bare fundamentals. I'd also say that one big difference between engineers and philosophers for example, is that engineers always value practicality over idealism. I personally tend to be more of an idealist since I was young, but my engineering thinking always keeps me in check and I'm very grateful for that because it keeps me balanced.

[@brandonb9764]

+ shortage of people. The population is shrinking

[@Atlas92936]

Note: ACADEMIA stem jobs (research) I think are in shortage. White collar corporate Tech jobs are not in shortage.

[@cryora]

Entry level jobs are. And if you have a PhD, people aren't going to want to hire you for an entry level job nor do they think you are qualified for a more senior job because you don't have job specific entry level experience.

[@honkhonk8009]

Both are. Academia is beyond saturated. Do not think for a second it has a shortage.

[@Michael-it6gb]

There has never been a "STEM shortage", even before these layoffs. I graduated as a C# developer back in 2015 and have not been able to find a real steady job since then. I worked briefly until 2016 and haven't found a job in stem then. I work with something completely different now. Shortage of any workers is a scam, these companies lie because it is legal to do so.

[@internallyinteral]

There has NEVER BEEN a stem shortage.

[@duellinksantimeta7636]

It depends. I would say that electrical and civil engineering has not enough graduates and computer science is getting outsourced.

[@vitalyl1327]

Oh, really? We are already a Type 1 civilisation and ready to start colonising the galaxy? There is a massive shortage.

[@internallyinteral]

These companies cry shortages every year so they can pull visa workers and pay them pennies

[@DrunkenUFOPilot]

How do you view the 1950s, 1960s, especially the push for science and engineering education due to the space race and related matters?

[@maythesciencebewithyou]

There is a shortage of companies willing to hire someone who doesn`t have the "perfect" resume.

[@tomawey2141]

There no shortage. Just a shortage of companies willing to hire, and pay a good wage to stem workers

[@meferswift]

being pushed for STEM is alternaltive to being pushed o social studies. Honestly, overall all part of world we are pushed to University than anything specific

[@paradox_1729]

Really well put. I think the situation was compounded by the plethora of STEM education businesses that kept piling on either through government grants and the artificial demand that they created (not created by the actual STEM market)

[@gekkkoincroe]

I tried to get a job for 4 years couldn't get 😂 Entry level asks for just impossible credentials

[@johns6176]

Tech business owners actually publish inflated demand and salary articles. From their point of view it’s not illegal and they are stocking the pond where they fish.

[@yfchina143]

But everyone go to school for stem. How is there shortage?

[@amperro]

Biotech was supposed to be THE field of the future (they said that decades ago). What happened?

[@user-rd5nc1nb9f]

we don’t have a stem shortage we have a family and kids shortage. nothing works as it should when the demographic pyramid and fundamental family blocks aren’t at their optimal.

[@Saberking875]

The reason for the layoffs is because a lot of companies like LinkedIn are outsourcing to India

[@honkhonk8009]

Accurate. Blue collars get outsourced to Mexico. White collars outsourced to India. We need to protect our jobs more than ever. Nobody should be subject to the abject horrors of overpopulation that another country forced upon them.

[@darthbumblebee7310]

Companies have been outsourcing to India for decades. There are better explanations for the layoffs that coincide with more recent events

[@Saberking875]

@@darthbumblebee7310 its definitely been ramping up, they have been targeting high end jobs specifically entry level jobs, because they are cheaper to get done from India

[@misterleegains4020]

Exactly,if you are not a nationalist at this point you are a moron

[@varunv2584]

Thoughts on Physics majors? (Am studying University Physics)

[@IamTuanPham]

Wait i recognize these course listings. UCSD Revelle?

[@THUNKShow]

Got it in one! I didn't know what I was signing up for when I applied for Revelle, but I had a blast & learned a lot. Worth the extra semester, IMO. ;)

[@lazaryanya9407]

STEM refers to University educated people. Trades refers to high school grads that finished an apprenticeship in a trade. The problem is Employers successfully pushing wages down. I personally know millwrights who gave up on their trade where one became a real estate agent, another one became a truck driver, and third a teaching instructor. I had to endure a factory running at a horrible level for years. I watched skilled people let go and replaced by people who could not do the job. The new people were paid less but cost the factory more in all other ways; much more. Needless to say the factory is not doing well.

[@pizzacrust7029]

If there’s a shortage why can I not find a decent job?

[@EternityUnknown]

Computer science litterly has the word "science" in it and is applied mathmatics as well as the script for all modern technology. How is that not STEM??

[@crackparrot3479]

@@Larp01235 CS follows the same engineering processes of designing, testing, and deploying finite state systems that produce an output much the same way an engineer may design a time-invariant system with an output such as in a specialized circuit, the only exception being the medium in which they are deployed. CS is just as much of an engineering discipline as EE, ME, ETC.

[@rayhatesshoegaze]

it was a psyop all along huh

[@fungouslobster5123]

no theres a ton of stem grads, nobody wants to train or hire new grads

[@anakimluke]

omggg you and Newton have matching outfits!!!! ❤❤

[@luk890]

i like your style with those text comments :P. Especially the hairy one :P

[@oghatarana]

That is why many majors are for those with a wealthy family and college education were exclusively for the privileged back then.

[@Jarlus]

Hm, of the layoffs I've been seeing, it hasn't actually been that many engineers that have been cut from what I can tell. Overpaid project managers/product managers/product marketers, sure. But not typically the people who actually do stuff.

[@khatharrmalkavian3306]

Pausing at 2:21 to say... "I have a feeling he's going to get this right, lol." 10:02 Hey! He got it.

[@youcantata]

STEM job is unglamorous job, hard to learn and hard to work, low payment, long hours, unstable job security, short prime time in life (Engineer over 40 is essentially useless), no clear path in the future, socially unrecognized job. I was electronics engineer from premier college, but after realizing these, I turned to be a patent lawyer, which is paid way better than engineer. I don't recommend STEM job at all. I am very worried that my son will insist to go to engineering college as I did foolishly.

[@er00ic]

The same thing is happening in biotech. Biologists, chemists, statisticians, and engineers are being laid off in droves right now.

[@zDoubleE23]

Psychology is not science. I’m also interested in seeing what the future will hold for engineering positions when reading and math scores for Covid students are so dreadfully low. Will that cause a reduction in engineering grads or increase grade inflation?

[@demonboy7777]

I would argue the high salaries that engineers can have still shows that there is demand for them. Current layoffs in tech are more from the boom and bust cycles of tech. STEM majors often contribute to improving people's every day lives so if they are more abundant it helps everyone.(except perhaps the extremely in demand engineer)

[@honkhonk8009]

CS grads do not anymore. Our best minds have been hyperfocused into creating fart apps for iphones. We need the military to stop spending money on Israel, and to start spending money on Lockheed Martin, Anduril, Google, and Amazon. 90% of the advancements thats actually worth shit, came from military endeavours. Europe is pacifist and liberal, and have lost out on decades of potential progress because of this. America has been slowing down aswell. USSR has collapsed and they got bigger problems now. China is the few countries that somewhat realize this.

[@patrickbg110]

Great video, thanks for sharing your insight!

[@itsdavidmora]

Fascinating argument. I agree that we undervalue fields that actually critique power and social systems. I’m curious if, given my experience as a software engineer in Sillicon Valley for the better part of a decade, we’re short on *highly skilled* STEM workers. One great engineer can be much more impactful than than 10 engineers going through the motions.

[@userMB1]

Thanks for proper subtitles

[@thatgui88]

OKAY if there is such a shortage of stem workers, then why is there so much competition for these jobs???

[@bthomson]

There's the puppy! Soon it will become more obvious what AI and robots can't do. Yes, yes. They can do a lot but not everything. Example: climb the ladder in my closet to get to my heating system to repair it. The "trades" as they used to be called will imo always be in demand. The old apprentice system always seemed to me an excellent teaching system. Kid helps master plumber and learns the trade while making some money. Anyway hope you get whatever lucrative employment suits you. You certainly do a wizard video!

[@internallyinteral]

Every year you need less technicians to install the same equipment, less laborers and less time to build the same house. Don't kid yourself the trades will have their own issues.