You and the IEEE are sampling different universes. Specific parts of the universe of "devs and related trades" currently have high demand and rising wages.
However, as a Ph.D. holder in quantum optics and semiconductor manufacturing, I would be happy to introduce you to a dozen physicists and EEs who are unemployed or who work for half my salary. There is no apparent shortage of physicists. My impression is that the biologists have it even worse.
The problem in this conversation is the notion that (e.g.) "web and mobile software development" is a subspecies of STEM. This premise gets sillier by the year, as more and more babies grow up teething on their parents old iPhones. Many of the best developers I know have no training in science or engineering: They're musicians or historians or artists, or they have no formal schooling beyond high school. Web development is as much about project management, self-direction, self-education, patience, consistency, pattern recognition, memory, design sense, decisiveness, experience, practice, persistence in the absence of immediate positive feedback, equanimity when faced with a thousand distractions, and – above all – communication as it is about scientific or mathematical knowledge.
And, while the combination of skills that make a great developer is evidently rare – or so the market conditions seem to say – it doesn't serve anyone to pretend that this represents a shortage of physicists or biologists or even of computer scientists. [1] It's a shortage of developers, and a particular subspecies of developer at that.
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[1] Well, anyone who doesn't run a school for STEM, anyway.
However, as a Ph.D. holder in quantum optics and semiconductor manufacturing, I would be happy to introduce you to a dozen physicists and EEs who are unemployed or who work for half my salary. There is no apparent shortage of physicists. My impression is that the biologists have it even worse.
The problem in this conversation is the notion that (e.g.) "web and mobile software development" is a subspecies of STEM. This premise gets sillier by the year, as more and more babies grow up teething on their parents old iPhones. Many of the best developers I know have no training in science or engineering: They're musicians or historians or artists, or they have no formal schooling beyond high school. Web development is as much about project management, self-direction, self-education, patience, consistency, pattern recognition, memory, design sense, decisiveness, experience, practice, persistence in the absence of immediate positive feedback, equanimity when faced with a thousand distractions, and – above all – communication as it is about scientific or mathematical knowledge.
And, while the combination of skills that make a great developer is evidently rare – or so the market conditions seem to say – it doesn't serve anyone to pretend that this represents a shortage of physicists or biologists or even of computer scientists. [1] It's a shortage of developers, and a particular subspecies of developer at that.
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[1] Well, anyone who doesn't run a school for STEM, anyway.