- Joined
- Jul 8, 2013
- Messages
- 16,825
- Reaction score
- 7,184
- Location
- Out West
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Centrist
Here's what our government thinks about STEM jobs...
Government encourages employers to use H-1B visas to replace STEM jobs.
As much as I love my working class brethren, a lot of their drug problems don't stay off the job.
Can't count how many good people lost their jobs, after being given multiple chances at rehab and just staying sober at work.
As for STEM people, engineers are the first people my company lays off.
They don't provide much real value.
If these jobs are so poorly paying with little benefits, it seems to me one option might be to learn a skilled trade and work for yourself starting a business.
My daughter got a BSN nursing degree, so her & her classmates did pretty well right-out-of-the-box landing decent gigs. My boy just started studying for a finance degree, so after the first two years he'll decide between the finance or accounting concentration, so he might do O.K., but it remains to seen.
The nursing and finance/accounting kids have both been starting at reasonably paying salaries in my neck-of-the-woods (very large U.S. city).
But for kids that aren't choosing in-demand degrees or in places with high demand, I'd probably consider following their education with a skilled trade or some other entrepreneurial endeavor. If they're going to work for peanuts and no bennies, may as well take a crack at building something for yourself. Guys in my city have become millionaires selling hot dogs and pizza!
I've found temp agencies to be the worst way to find work, but it probably depends on what part of the country you live in.
My solution is to make a more business friendly environment in this country. All business, not just mega-corps. Its a place to start anyways. Reducing the size of government, not growing it would also be helpful.
Not trying to needle you but, you didn't answer my question about subsidizing wages.
I don't like it. People need to perform to earn.
If we put our heads together, we might come up with something that works.
Maybe like the EIC, something that (moderately) rewards the fact that you're working, even if at a job that doesn't pay much, but that isn't necessarily pegged to how many kids you have. Just a thought.
I'm completely out of touch with entry level jobs, but what you describe above strikes me as pretty pitiful, particularly the CS guy.
And therein lies the problem. Earning more than minimum wage is too much like work for many.
Getting harder.every year, though.
People keep moving "down" a tier from where they're qualified which pushes the least qualified on THAT down a tier, etc.
So lots of folks are falling out the bottom.
Lots of service jobs are now considered "unskilled, unworthy of more than minimum wage". I remember when many retail workers made a "real" living. They were also MUCH better at their jobs.
Not sure of the causal link. Did workers just start sucking or did they just go elsewhere when the jobs were declared "unskilled/minimum wage".
And even though people don't like to talk about it, MANY people weren't born with the chops to compete in the "new economy". Coupled with automation and desperate foreign labor, we really need to start thinking about what a post-labor economy is going to look like.
You have to be a strategist now.
More people going to school hasn't really helped.
It just caused employers to require even more education, to reduce the number of applicants.
Getting an inside advantage, even if the work is not in your field, is what people should be doing, in my opinion.
My company shows greater interest to inside applicants, rather than outside.
Even if the position is from lowly machine operator to higher office worker.
When I signed up with the stagehands union here I immediately put myself on the "short-notice" list. Making myself (almost) always available has moved me ahead in the pecking order as the call stewards keep me working when its slow.
My point is there are always little tricks to move ahead.
Cause and effect. When people are conditioned to believe they deserve more pay for less, or even, NO work. And often times literally paid NOT to work, what do you think is going to happen? Couple that with the move to a godless society, where morality is considered "subjective", and you have arrived at the 21st century.
If these jobs are so poorly paying with little benefits, it seems to me one option might be to learn a skilled trade and work for yourself starting a business.
My daughter got a BSN nursing degree, so her & her classmates did pretty well right-out-of-the-box landing decent gigs. My boy just started studying for a finance degree, so after the first two years he'll decide between the finance or accounting concentration, so he might do O.K., but it remains to seen.
The nursing and finance/accounting kids have both been starting at reasonably paying salaries in my neck-of-the-woods (very large U.S. city).
But for kids that aren't choosing in-demand degrees or in places with high demand, I'd probably consider following their education with a skilled trade or some other entrepreneurial endeavor. If they're going to work for peanuts and no bennies, may as well take a crack at building something for yourself. Guys in my city have become millionaires selling hot dogs and pizza!
My solution is to make a more business friendly environment in this country. All business, not just mega-corps. Its a place to start anyways. Reducing the size of government, not growing it would also be helpful.
Not trying to needle you but, you didn't answer my question about subsidizing wages.
It depends, a lot of the smaller manufacturing firms, do indeed not pay much with little benefits.
Others, like Shaw (one of Warren Buffet's companies) pay well, but they are prone to high lay offs during economic down turns.
Still others are good year round.
I have a stick in my craw about our post secondary school system.
It's being shown to be nothing more than signaling (it's a legal mine field for companies to test potential employees for competency) and less about being an actual knowledge gaining experience.
With the cost and time spent in it, it's a massive waste of money and time, an overall drag of the economy itself.
We need to find a better way.
I've seen a number of computer content generation folks get good jobs with NO college. Taught themselves the skills so they could do things they wanted to do and it turned out those skills were in demand.
(Most got in through networking/introduction, as they wouldn't have even made it through the first resume pass based on education alone)
I don't know if you play video games, but the mods for some of them are better than the content put in the game developers themselves.
These are kids/young adults with little to no formal training.
I would encourage your son to look at trends in AI. Accounting/finance are both positions AI is coming for soon.
Pretty much anybody going to school needs to make sure machines won't already have the jobs they are training for when they graduate.
(Nursing should be OK for a while yet)
The only real way to make America more business friendly is for American workers to work for about $5/day.
All the talk about regulations/taxes is mostly just that. Talk. Cheap labor is the draw. Eliminate regs and taxes and it still would probably be more profitable to use desperate foreign labor. (And our infrastructure would eventually fail and our rivers would burn again, etc.)
Not trying to be a jerk, but this issue is FAR more complex than think-tank generated "common sense" can address.
There is really three main groups of modders from my experience.
1. People doing it just for fun.
2. People that want to be in the industry.
3. People that are in the industry.
All three groups can be highly skilled and release quality mods.
2 of the highest quality Skyrim modders are just college kids.
They do excellent and novel work.
That is not going to be happening any time soon, you can automate parts of the job but not all of it, all technology will be doing in those fields in the near future is increasing efficiency. I am studying those systems, accountants and bankers do not need to fear for their jobs yet.
If you actually believe this, what would be the point of further discussion with you.
Increases in efficiency often lead to fewer jobs.
Its the new AI systems' ability to learn that's the game changer.
Any Job where large amounts of data are being analysed are at risk because machines do it better. Especially when what is done with that analysis is pretty repetitive.
And that's what accounting is, at the end of the day. So I would expect one guy with several AIs doing the work once done by ten, or some such.
The idea that machines can't "think" like we do is rapidly becoming incorrect.
It was thought until recently that no computer could win at Go. Now an AI can beat the best.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?