Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
(OP)
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Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
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Are STEM Workers Overpaid?Are STEM Workers Overpaid?(OP)
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RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
It seems to be making the argument that the income disparity that we see in America today is somehow being caused by STEM workers earning more than non-STEM workers. Their argument just doesn't hold water, or are they suggesting that the 1% are somehow all engineers and scientists? Besides, their solution is NOT to increase the compensation for non-STEM workers but rather to drag down the wages of engineers and other STEM workers. Well, if this has no impact on the wages being earned by the 1% then this will only make income disparities WORSE since it will ultimately undermine even further the earning potential of the middle-class, where most STEM workers generally find themselves after getting their degrees and finding those supposedly higher-paying jobs.
Anyway, that's my humble opinion, for what it's worth...
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:
To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
PE, SE
Eastern United States
"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
Article seems to be total garbage.
And by the way, whatever happened to free market and ability to sell my skill to a highest bidder?
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
through any means available.
Funny how that free market thing just takes a back seat when it hurts instead of helps the fortune 500.
An interesting link from the article.
http://users.nber.org/~peat/PapersFolder/Papers/SG...
Also note that the phrase "labor shortage" as applied to any level of job is nonsensical in an economics
perspective. Whatever labor is desired can be obtained by just paying more, which is the rub.
Yeah that free market rhetoric is only for the top and not the individual.
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
Regards,
Mike
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
Toward the second half it was clearly debunking the premise of the title and what folk like Alan Greenspan have been claiming.
From what I've seen H1B (and even the student guest worker visa version) are pretty close to being indentured servitude which in turn isn't that far from modern slavery which I thought something had been added to the Constitution about but my memory must be playing up. Very few of the H1B's I've seen are truely astounding 'world leading' talent etc from what I've seen.
Now, if the question had been "Are Senior Executives & Wall Street Types Overpaid"...
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
- Steve
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
Regards
Mike
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
People who are paid less spend less, so you have fewer customers. Also as you allow more workers here, there are fewer workers for jobs in other countries. So people who are less qualified will fill those positions (you thought imported stuff is crap, just wait).
The people who are most qualified will gravitate to better paying jobs, leaving most companies with lower paid people, who are less qualified (Why does this copier keep breaking).
Why don't we just allow more business people and pay the business people less. Same with lawyers.
Apperently there is a shortage of truck drivers, so if pay decreases below that of truck drivers, then people will gravitate there.
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/the-stem-crisis-is...
Preaching to the converted here: the people who profit from an oversupply of engineers have been complaining about engineering shortages since the 1930s. See the sidebar of the article for the quotes, one per decade, from now until then.
There's no shortage- there's an oversupply of massive proportions, well beyond the needs of the marketplace. That's why engineering compensation has slipped relative to every other professional. The median salary of an Ontario teacher is now greater than that of a Level D (experienced) engineer.
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
Have you heard of this: Link
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
Work to rule, only works, if the rules in place, are contradictory, and incomprehensible.
B.E.
You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
The joke I remembered before going to Wiki:
"Do you know what Italian Strike is? They go to work and don't do anything."
"How is it different fron regular days?"
My apologies to all hard-working Italians out there...
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
I believe this was a saying from Russa on how communisism worked.
It just sounds like controlling people, the oposite of freedom.
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
I feel we as engineers are often looked at as a scourge. We want to do things right (and have a professional responsibilty to do so) but that often costs money. Do you want the best employees offering the best and yes, most cost effective (not cheap always!) solutions? Then that costs more money. MBAs don't like that because in their mind it hurts their bottom line. In the long run I'd argue their bottom line is far stronger with solid professionals on board rather than bottom of the barrel slackers cutting corners to make the quartley earnings look good and make their investor conference call go smoothly.
Does Greenspan want to drive down the wages of Doctors, CEOs, other high level executives? Wonder why not??? We all know that how the sausage is made is the secret that keeps Jimmy Dean in business. I bet the CEO doesn't know the secret, but the mid-level grunt grinding the meat sure does. Point: Without CEO, company keeps selling sausage. Without the grunt mixing, they stop selling sausage because it's no longer Jimmy Dean but some other "guesswork" recipe.
And when did STEM get this "HIGH PAID" label? Yeah, we are "well paid" but certainly I could argue to my two little boys when they start making those career path choices that a trade or business direction will make them as much or more money for far less education and unpaid effort then a STEM occupation will garner. I am almost 10 yrs out of college and they could make the same as me now 2 yrs out of high school with a trade. So why bother if it's about money??
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
Force your engineer to release raw, unfinished design, report completing your R&D 2 weeks early, saving money.
Then, because of the flaw that could be caught given some time, re-work or even scrap mold that cost as much as you pay your engineer in a year. The money still coming from the owner’s pocket, but thru different channel, so everybody is happy.
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
Should we dissuade the best and brightest from a career in engineering? It's like anything. If it's your true passion, go for it- the top 10% of engineers, similar to any profession, can make a very nice living. If it isn't your passion, take a look at the stats and make up your mind on a rational basis. Smart kids have options.
I certainly wouldn't recommend engineering to a kid who wasn't passionate about what engineers actually do. The risk and investment in educational effort and cost are disproportionately high to the monetary reward, compared with many other options they could pursue, passion aside. There are no guaranteed meal tickets for fresh grads any more, but engineering has the lowest match rate of any of the professions in Canada, i.e. fewer eng grads work as engineers than teaching school grads work as teachers or anything else resembling a true profession. That should tell you something, and it isn't that engineering is such a fabulous preparation as an educational path that it makes you qualified for all sorts of work. Surveys of 4th year eng students indicate that the overwhelming majority of them- over 90% of them- want a career in engineering when they graduate. Most of them don't end up there, and it's not all by choice.
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
http://www.engineersmedia.com.au/journals/aaee/pdf... seems to suggest that in 2006 31% of engineering graduates in Australia worked as engineers, and perhaps the same again in related fields. That doesn't answer my own question, I'll do some more digging.
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/it/the-changing-pattern-of-stem-worker-employment
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
Any use? http://www.theiet.org/factfiles/education/skills20...
This took forever to load and I got sick of waiting for it: http://www.engc.org.uk/ecukdocuments/internet/docu... Good luck!
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
I don't have the exact number at hand, but it was something around 20% of eng grads worked in areas for which they were obviously overqualified by education: as technicians or technologists, in the trades etc. That's a very high rate of people who are obviously under-employed. Of the remaining occupational categories subdivided in the StatsCan data, it's tough to know whether those people are properly employed or underemployed.
Our Tory federal government likes to make decisions based on ideology, and doesn't like pesky data getting in the way. Accordingly, they killed the mandatory long-form census in 2011, so the 2006 census data is the last good data we're getting. Try doing national forecasting and planning on the basis of a census where only those who really feel like it bother to fill out the survey- it's nuts.
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
RE: Are STEM Workers Overpaid?