For the HN crowd, it's probably worthwhile to split "STEM" into "high-end engineering" and "normal engineering". The former is suffering from a labor shortage which is why FAANGs and similar companies are willing to pay $300k-600k for engineers with 5-10 years of experience. But for normal SWEs and other engineering fields, there is a glut of talent (https://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/) so it can be harder to find an engineering job that pays enough to justify the college tuition. This article is about the latter group.
However, there is still a significant shortage of talented engineers in non-SWE roles. We've outsourced engineering jobs such as semiconductor manufacturing and other tech production to other countries which makes it hard for junior engineers to find jobs and learn enough to become highly talented engineers. And that requires heavy investment by the government in our engineering ecosystem so that junior engineers can find good jobs and learn more. Tim Cook explained this well in the context of iPhone screws: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/technology/iphones-apple-...
> “In the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room,” he said. “In China, you could fill multiple football fields.”
However, there is still a significant shortage of talented engineers in non-SWE roles. We've outsourced engineering jobs such as semiconductor manufacturing and other tech production to other countries which makes it hard for junior engineers to find jobs and learn enough to become highly talented engineers. And that requires heavy investment by the government in our engineering ecosystem so that junior engineers can find good jobs and learn more. Tim Cook explained this well in the context of iPhone screws: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/technology/iphones-apple-...
> “In the U.S., you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I’m not sure we could fill the room,” he said. “In China, you could fill multiple football fields.”