STEM shortage

The Trump administration is apparently in the middle of crafting yet another executive order, this one dealing with H1B visas. While nothing has been made public, it purports to address abuses. That might be ok, in principle. There are certainly examples of companies circumventing laws to get cheaper employees in the USA.

A big talking point around H1B is whether we need them at all. Many complain there's a STEM shortage, while others point to articles like this that "prove" there isn't. I'd like to address a few things within.

As the article rightly points out, a lack of definitive data or even definition of what STEM is makes this a potentially difficult web to untangle. The author concludes there can't be a STEM shortage because:
1. There are more STEM graduates than there are open STEM positions
2. If there truly were a shortage, wages wouldn't stagnate. Apparently they have?

This is a gross oversimplification and fails to acknowledge how H1B fits into the STEM fields and that not all graduates are qualified to do these jobs (consider those barely passing or going through a for-profit diploma mill). Let's look at some relevant numbers, because the article above left lots to be desired.

There is a cap of 65,000 H1B each year, and 20,000 more for those with advanced degrees (85,000 total). Compare that to a total near 160M across the USA. Each year, we're at most giving an H1B to 1 in 1870 workers. Granted, these are "good jobs" and probably matter more economically, but it's still a fraction of a tenth of a percent. It would literally not move the unemployment numbers as reported to a tenth of a percent.

The literal majority of H1B go to people in the computer-related occupations (see Table 8a). Per that document, 375,038 out of 598,781 (63%) fell into that category in CY 2013+2014.

And therein lies the answer: The CEOs shouting about STEM shortages are likely running software companies. Being in that field myself, I can confirm that my own (and my peers') incomes have not stagnated**. I don't want to get into the numbers too exactly, but our typical wage growth is well above COLA. Table 10 shows the 25th (64,000), mean (84,000), median (75,000) and 75th (96,000) percentile compensation ranges as well. Because the median is a lot lower than the mean, there must be a tight cluster on the low end and a longer range on the high end (meaning probably 20% or so are above 100k per year). If they're getting lowballed at these wages, those are still well above the American median and us software engineers should only complain so much, right?

If the article focused on the niche within STEM that actually consumes the bulk of the H1B visas, it may have come to a very different conclusion. Software development is singularly poised to be most hurt by limits to the H1B program.

The comments section is rampant with people complaining about how Americans aren't even given a shot. This is blatantly false in our industry. One guy makes the correct point: while there is a never-ending stream of applicants, few meet a quality bar. What is that bar? That they be able to work autonomously, solve problems and create reliable software. Others jumped on him, that perhaps his bar was unrealistic. I suppose those same people should just live with paying the same for an inferior product (insert joke about XFinity cable boxes). I can confirm from my time giving interviews that people I really want to work with are not appearing left and right. For anyone wanting an analogy, imagine someone shows up for a trucking job and doesn't even know what a clutch or a steering wheel is. That level of interviewee is all too common, and that lack of quality is common across domestic and foreign applicants. It's not like being foreign makes someone a magical unicorn candidate. They have to be good too.


** - This does depend on employer, but most large firms (ie: "the ones you've heard of") are in constant competition with each other, constantly wanting to hire away each others' talent. Why? Because they'd rather pay extra for someone who's proven they can cut it than try to wade through hundreds more resumes for an unknown.

Economy vs Environment

According to the Trump team, it's the greatest fight of the century ... but can't the two just get along? Certainly there are compelling positive examples. Iceland generates 99.98% of its energy from renewable sources and Norway is at 98.5%. Brazil and Colombia are over 80%, and a host of other notable countries (New Zealand, Canada, Venezuela, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark) are above 50%. All told, 29 countries are over 75% and 28 more are over 50%.

List of countries by percent renewable energy generation.
List of countries by total GDP.
List of countries by GDP per capita.

But, picking a few notable countries does not make a convincing argument. It does, definitively, allow that a country can have a thriving economy while using lots of renewable resources. But what are the trends? Who should we compare ourselves to?

The list of countries with very high renewable use hydro almost exclusively. This is a consequence of their geographies; they have significant rivers, lakes, etc, that they can dam. Many of these countries are actually quite poor: using renewable energy did not spur a strong economy for them. This is not shocking or really even interesting for us. Our question is to what extent a reliance on renewable energy hinders a country's economy. We should look at the strongest performers and see if they were able to succeed while using renewable energy at higher rates than the USA does. Let's look at the top 20 by total and per capita GDP to paint a picture of scale and individual well-being and see where we fit in. 20 is somewhat arbitrary, yes, but it should be a reasonable proxy for "leading economy"; it'd be the top 10% of the world.

Total GDP vs percent renewable energy
There are multiple authorities on total economy. Their results are all listed. Small differences exist in the ordering but they are not material. I'll be using the IMF ordering.

Place	Country	Percent
1	United States	14.3
2	China	24.4
3	Japan	15.5
4	Germany	32.7
5	United Kingdom	22.3
6	France	17.4
7	India	19.1
8	Italy	45.9
9	Brazil	84.0
10	Canada	64.5
11	South Korea	1.4
12	Russia	16.6
13	Australia	13.5
14	Spain	31.0
15	Mexico	15.7
16	Indonesia	12.0
17	Netherlands	12.7
18	Turkey	28.3
19	Switzerland	62.0
20	Saudi Arabia	no data

The USA ranks ahead of only 4 or 5 countries (depending on Saudi's standing), and all but one of those countries is essentially tied (12.0 vs 14.3% is not a huge difference). In the meantime, 8 of the top 20 countries are more than 10% ahead. What this tells me is that a large economy and large renewable energy generation are not at odds; in fact many of the other largest economies have managed to blow past us.


Per capita GDP vs percent renewable energy
Same here as before. Since there are a lot of tiny countries in the last that are basically rich-people havens, I'll extend the list to the top 30. This can be argued to be reasonable anyways since the USA is 13th: we should look above and below roughly equally.

Place	Country	Percent
1	Qatar	no data
2	Luxembourg	15.4
3	Macau	no data
4	Singapore	no data
5	Brunei	no data
6	Kuwait	no data
7	Ireland	20.2
8	Norway	98.5
9	UAE	no data
10	San Marino	no data
11	Switzerland	62.0
12	Hong Kong	no data
13	United States	14.3
14	Saudi Arabia	no data
15	Netherlands	12.7
16	Bahrain	no data
17	Sweden	60.2
18	Australia	13.5
19	Germany	32.7
20	Iceland	100.0
21	Austria	78.4
22	Taiwan	no data
23	Denmark	56.6
24	Canada	64.5
25	Belgium	13.8
26	Oman	no data
27	United Kingdom	22.3
28	France	17.4
29	Finland	41.8
30	Japan	15.5

This one is a little harder to look at. If we eliminate the no data entries, every country ahead of the USA in GDP per capita is also ahead in renewable energy generation. Trailing behind in the top 30 are many other countries who are clearly ahead of the USA in renewable energy use. On a per capita basis, it looks even more compelling that economic success and renewable energy generation are not at odds.

Naturally we can ask questions. Does investing in clean(er) energy create a drag on the economy and those other countries would be even better off if they didn't bother? I'm not expert enough to say. But, I would argue the evidence is clear that a comparable economy and lifestyle to ours can coexist with much higher levels of clean energy; thus it's clear that clean energy does not prevent a successful economy.

48 hours of awful

It's been just past 2 full days since Trump has been sworn in, and the carnage just continues.

The main issues circulating are whether or not 1.5 million people attended the inauguration. It seems pretty clear they did not, and his troupe is doubling down on this claim and turning it into a shit storm. They're also fanning the fact that the Women's March was terrible and left trash all over the place. Kellyanne Conway even insinuated that the march could not have been about Trump, after all he'd only been in office a day. What could they even have to protest about?

Not that Trump's words are binding or even remotely reliable, but he made a few curious claims in there. Here's a full annotated transcript. I'll let the Washington Post handle a lot of it, but a few lines struck me in particular.

...but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the people.
Says man who claimed he alone can fix this country.

From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it's going to be only America first, America first.
I'm not sure how anyone can make a claim that previous administrations has acted with any other motivation than America First. Of course the details are important: it can be difficult to explain that an investment in a foreign interest is projected to be beneficial to the USA as well. Judgement and execution might end up incorrect, but the motivation has always been this.

I will fight for you with every breath in my body and I will never ever let you down.
Well, it took him about an hour to do just that (if I don't include his entire history on the campaign trail as a continuous letdown). Examples include: continuing the assault on basic fact and truth, throttling environmental regulations, temporarily shutting down the NPS's twitter account, scrubbed whitehouse.gov of a number of subsites. Classic flexing of bully muscles.

We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world
Or at least Russia? I literally can't think of a positive thing he's said about any other country. And he's said lots of negatives.

At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America
I imagine this comes with a concrete definition of "allegiance" in mind that goes way beyond a generally accepted set of requirements.

And most importantly, we will be protected by God
Great.

In the meantime, while everyone is caught up in the above, some seriously sinister stuff is happening. In addition to the assault on the press, Trump has made clear that

... he'd like to showcase the military
like they do in authoritarian communist countries. To show off the strength of the great leader.

... he will not release his taxes because no one cares about them
except 3/4 people polled said they did, and even half his supporters said they wanted to. And even if we go with his bullshit "under audit" thing, he should be able to release taxes from 2008 or before as a show of goodwill. Or if he sticks to that, his last 3-4 years of taxes could still be under audit by the time he leaves the White House in January 2021. In other words, this is a "when pigs fly" kind of promise.

... he will cancel our inclusion in the TPP
To be fair, I don't know enough about the TPP to assess it, but this seems like it fails the goodwill test.

... he will cancel NAFTA and renegotiate the terms
Again, I'm not a NAFTA expert but from all neutral accounts this would be an economic disaster.

... he will pull us out of the UN
And wow, talk about the opposite of goodwill and friendship.

... he will roll back environmental regulations
under the premise they are inherently damaging to the economy. There are some very advanced countries and some of our states that show this to be false.

I'm sure there's more, but I'm just one man and can only complain about so many things.