# STEM Crisis



## Terrabang (Dec 13, 2013)

1.	Does the STEM crisis even exist? 

2.	What is the nature of the crisis? 

2.1. Is there age discrimination (I have heard both sides frequently: the average engineer is closer to retirement age and young engineers are not being hired due to inexperience but others say companies want to hire young engineers)?

2.2.	How is each industry affected by this (i.e. Would Apple and Facebook have younger employees because they are more on the cutting edge while power companies value more experience)?

Post your opinion, whether it be about the U.S. or another country.

Advice on how to avoid this is welcome (aside from: "you just have to be fascinated by the field"). Analyses of the current situation and predictions of potential foreign job-seekers’ impact are also welcome. I am particularly interested in the neuroscience field and power generation section of electrical engineering in the U.S.


Some resources (additional resources wanted):
EPI analysis finds no shortage of STEM workers in the United States | Economic Policy Institute
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/what-shortage-of-scientists-and-engineers/?_r=1
The STEM Crisis Is a Myth - IEEE Spectrum
Are STEM Workers Overpaid? - IEEE Spectrum
An Engineering Career: Only a Young Person (Links provided in article are more useful than the article itself)
National Math + Science Initiative Blog | Is the STEM Crisis a Myth? The Truth About STEM Education


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## Epherion (Aug 23, 2011)

1. Kind of. The US is not graduating many engineers and have to rely on the H1B visa. When i graduated there were 6 of us. All the classes had a heavy skew of Indian, Korean, Chinese, and Saudi students. While that's great, many return to their homelands to with their skills. Despite the market being better in the west. Then when the companies cant find qualified individuals here, they outsource to those in other nations(educated here in the US)

2. Lack of students, the retirement age of many in the field is approaching, many have to stay in due to the fiscal issues of 2008.
2.1 Its really based on the experience needed for a position. All the entry level are 3-5 year mandatory. And there is no mentor ship and internships are un-payed or not around.

2.2 Yes, Apple, FB, Google are run by "younger people"; not baby boomers. So they understand our position. IBM, Lexmark, Hp not so much, they are sill run by the old paradigm. They need to fix it if they want to compete.

If you want tyour job, well, know your field well. Get published, kiss the professors ass so you can get mentorship. Move to the east coast or the west where the tech companies are. Make projects, connect to sites like(source forge, codeproject, a personal website, github etc..) advertise.


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## associative (Jul 1, 2013)

UK perspective:

1. When employers complain of a shortage what they really mean is they'd like to pay their workers less. 

2. There isn't one as far as I can see. In science at least qualification inflation is rampant. If you want to know why bright students don't enter STEM fields, then you might want to consider the low wages (relative to other fields with comparable levels of education) and sneering disrespect that those working in technical fields receive in popular culture.

2.1 I wouldn't know about IT, but from what I have seen ageism is subtle: you don't get taken seriously until you are almost 40. Plenty of new graduates and PhDs in my industry. A lot of new starts seem locked into a cycle of repeated temporary contracts though, you really need to shine as a temp in order to get a full-time position.

2.2 Pass

2 pieces of advice:
1) Be prepared to move for the best opportunities. Possibly countries.
2) Network, network, network.


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## Impavida (Dec 29, 2011)

1. Sort of. In my field (a highly specialized branch of electronics engineering) it somewhat depends on the location. So long as you're willing to move, it's certainly not difficult to find work. Overall, it's definitely an employees market. I've been head-hunted into every position I've had, including my first job right out of college. I average about 2-3 unsolicited job offers per year from competitors.

2. Speaking only for my particular field: lack of interest combined with a difficult training program. Of the 32 people who started the program together, only 10 of us graduated. Of those, only 6 of us stayed in the field - the other 4 went back to school to retrain in something else. It's a well-paid and somewhat respected industry, so the rewards are certainly there if you're willing to put in the work.

2.1. No. There is experience discrimination. Employers don't want to train new grads (it costs my current employer about a quarter of a million dollars over two years to train up a new grad). They want experienced employees who can hit the ground running. It's also a pay issue. Hiring experienced engineers who are new to the country is cheaper than hiring local new grads. The locals know the industry standard salary and hold out for what they're worth. The immigrants are usually so happy to have work that they settle for much lower wages.

2.2. Software development is a unique animal. They function quite differently from the rest of the employment market.

As others have said: know your stuff, network, and be prepared to move to find work (I've worked in my field in 3 different countries and had job offers from two more). As far as networking goes, reputation matters - especially in smaller industries. Make a name for yourself AND live up to it. Employers will pay a premium to capture employees who are respected in their fields, but they won't keep you around if you can't deliver results.


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## dragthewaters (Feb 9, 2013)

There's a shortage of STEM workers? That's news to me, considering:

a) In 2003 my fiance graduated from a very good college with a master's degree in electrical engineering and a 3.6 GPA. It took him almost a year and a half to find a job in his field, and he was looking within our entire state which has a lot of people and a lot of industry.

b) This year I graduated from a very good college with a bachelor's in molecular and cellular biology and a 3.4 GPA. Now I am working in a lab for $13/hr. I don't know why everyone tells women to major in STEM when the "science" part of that acronym doesn't even lead to a stable career (see the next point I'm about to make).

c) In every science field there are way too many Ph.Ds compared to positions that actually require Ph.Ds. I may be getting fucked over by the job market now since I decided grad school is a waste of my time, but I guarantee that my friends who are going to grad school in the sciences are going to be getting fucked over even harder in 10 years.

No, the real "crisis" in STEM (and other fields) is the fault of employers. Employers don't want to provide on-the-job training to promising recent graduates, but then they also don't want to pay a decent salary in order to recruit a more experienced person. Most engineering and programming jobs are temporary contract work! And even though they want an experienced person, they don't want that person to be "too old." Then they tell people to go back to school to become more qualified, then say they're overqualified once they get their degree.

Also, it should be easier to get qualified in a field even if you didn't major in it. There should be more post-bacc opportunities to learn electrical engineering, for example. I have to learn signal processing on my own for a software project I am working on, but I hope someone actually takes that seriously. At least it's really easy to learn comp sci on your own.

But seriously, let me know which STEM fields have a shortage of workers so I can get in on that.


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## intjonn (Apr 20, 2013)

Terrabang said:


> 1. Does the STEM crisis even exist?
> 
> Advice on............I am particularly interested in the neuroscience field and power generation section of electrical engineering in the U.S


My degrees are in Mathematics and Engineering and I long ago chose to become self employed. Went out and made my own fuking job. The hell with all the govt. econ. forecasts trends whatever and I'm very proud of the fact that my clients are private individuals - I won't work for govts or large corporations - fuk them!.......

That said and re your inquiry: my adopted daughter's undergrad is EE Purdue and she's currently working on her PhD neuroscience in California- if your interested I can prally put you in contact as she (if she's interested)might be able to give some info re your interests. PM only.


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## Epherion (Aug 23, 2011)

thismustbetheplace said:


> I have to learn signal processing on my own for a software project I am working on, but I hope someone actually takes that seriously. At least it's really easy to learn comp sci on your own.


Im curios what is it you are doing? For some reason i think you are writing and OS.




> But seriously, let me know which STEM fields have a shortage of workers so I can get in on that.


Oh, learn Ada C also helps, learn it well. You can get 120K starting programming for Boeing. They need people for missile guidance, avionics and the like. Thats my plan now.


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## dragthewaters (Feb 9, 2013)

Epherion said:


> Im curios what is it you are doing? For some reason i think you are writing and OS.


I don't want to go into the exact details, but my ultimate goal is to do a program for videos that involves voice and possibly image recognition. I have a long way to go though. I just started learning how to code at all 3 months ago. Also found out yesterday that my fiance's company is planning a project for the third quarter of next year that is pretty similar to part of what I was planning to do, so that's just great.



Epherion said:


> Oh, learn Ada C also helps, learn it well. You can get 120K starting programming for Boeing. They need people for missile guidance, avionics and the like. Thats my plan now.


I'm sure they want people with an engineering background and actual degree in comp sci  I'm hoping I can get a job that combines software development with my science background.


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## Epherion (Aug 23, 2011)

thismustbetheplace said:


> I don't want to go into the exact details, but my ultimate goal is to do a program for videos that involves voice and possibly image recognition.


Are you using and ANN?




> I'm sure they want people with an engineering background and actual degree in comp sci  I'm hoping I can get a job that combines software development with my science background.


Ah.


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## dragthewaters (Feb 9, 2013)

Epherion said:


> Are you using and ANN?


Right now I'm not using anything, since I'm still figuring out the basics of comp sci (I also work full-time so I can only devote a few hours a week to it). There are a lot of speech recognition things out there though, so I think I should be able to find some sort of template for that. The image recognition thing is an idea I just had today and that one is more complicated.


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## Epherion (Aug 23, 2011)

thismustbetheplace said:


> Right now I'm not using anything, since I'm still figuring out the basics of comp sci (I also work full-time so I can only devote a few hours a week to it). There are a lot of speech recognition things out there though, so I think I should be able to find some sort of template for that.


Did you use any from google? A friend of mine from AI used some google code to work on his "Siri".



> The image recognition thing is an idea I just had today and that one is more complicated.


Very, this one you will have to do with an ANN. You will have to isolate the imaged in a grid assigin it a neuron and cross reference with a database.


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## RobynC (Jun 10, 2011)

There seem to be plenty of people in the STEM field: After all there are all sorts of advancements in technology and I see nothing to suggest any deceleration.


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## Diauxie (Nov 17, 2012)

I graduated with a 3.4 GPA in biochemistry and couldn't even get a $10-15/hr lab tech position having 3 years previous work experience with a state department of agriculture (interviewed at several places and got turned down each time). Pretty much gave up trying to get a scientific/research job and now work as a cable tech (where I was hired on the spot during the first interview with one of the top contractors for the region despite no directly related experience).

On the other hand, my dad is a chief electrical engineer and has talked about how his company that has been outsourcing work to China and SE Asia is starting to bring some of that work back to the US since they're having so many quality issues that the lower cost of labor isn't worth it.

So yea, the S side of "STEM" has really dropped off in terms of career prospects after the economic downturn (ofc I had already completed most of my degree when all of that went down). Looked at my university's published statistics and the avg salary for biochem graduates is something like $31,000 a year which is like assistant manager of a McDonalds tier.


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## PowerShell (Feb 3, 2013)

Diauxie said:


> On the other hand, my dad is a chief electrical engineer and has talked about how his company that has been outsourcing work to China and SE Asia is starting to bring some of that work back to the US since they're having so many quality issues that the lower cost of labor isn't worth it.


It seems like there is a trend of moving the manufacturing back to the US. I know Texas is becoming big for chip manufacturing and companies coming back there. When I worked for the trucking company, there was a mechanic that basically said, "You know why these parts suck? They design them here in the US in English and send them over to another country where they don't speak English. They most likely have pictures of what it should look like and then guess on that."


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## DemonAbyss10 (Oct 28, 2010)

Once I get my Electrical Engineering Degree I already have a few highly likely to get in jobs lined up. Local there are a ton of openings for things within the field, I live near a warehouse hub after all. 2) I have family and friends in the local telecommunications company so I can easily get a job there if need be. 3) I am working on teaching myself to build musical equipment (Synthesizers, Amps, SFX and the like), it is kind of a dream of mine to get into that sort of business, and since there are loads of local artists both famous and not, I already would have a potential customer base to tap.

People complain about no work when really, one either just simply needs to move to where the opportunities are OR get creative and perhaps start your own business.


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