Due to low birth rate, Japan abolishes social sciences, STEM for all.

[Ideologue]

I thought you're a lawyer. 

I worked at a law firm until I moved to Pittsburgh.  It's not a hub of doc review activity the way Columbia, SC, is, and also the rules are a little different here (DR places that do exist tend to want someone with an active bar license).  But I've always been trying to find a job outside of the law qua law, because if you want to talk about low-paid unicorns, shit...

Just talk to Capetan Mihali, graduate of Harvard Law.

[DGuller]

How much of that HR nonsense is an actual thing, and not an isolated example turning into a myth?  And how often do people actually get hired through job postings, as opposed to through a recruiter?

[Ideologue]

In my experience, never.

[Hamilcar]

I thought you're a lawyer. 

I worked at a law firm until I moved to Pittsburgh.  It's not a hub of doc review activity the way Columbia, SC, is, and also the rules are a little different here (DR places that do exist tend to want someone with an active bar license).  But I've always been trying to find a job outside of the law qua law, because if you want to talk about low-paid unicorns, shit...

Just talk to Capetan Mihali, graduate of Harvard Law.

Go hire some talented CMU CS grads and start a business selling software that replaces paralegals.

[Hamilcar]

I'm not kidding, and you owe me 25% equity. I'll settle for 15%.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

But to be clear the solution isn't closing down liberal arts departments entirely, but some sort of centralized effort by the responsible governmental authorities to tailor the actual number of liberal arts graduates to the number of liberal arts jobs that are available.  And this shouldn't be limited to liberal arts, but STEM as well.  Specific training in the absence of actual employment opportunity is a waste of human capital, and winds up fucking up job markets (this is what's happened in the US) along with creating a huge education-industrial complex that is for-profit in all but name (ditto).

Though at least with STEM majors there's the possibility of them innovating something and creating their own markets.  I'm relatively certain that a new critical theory of Romantic literature, for example, has ever increased GDP.

University degrees are not job training and should not be tied to the job market.  That is actually one of the problems underpinning the cognitive dissonance I was referring to.  These companies, in all fields nowadays, expect students to graduate pre-trained and ready to work on day one.  That's not how universities are supposed to work.  In the past, new grads were recognized as being "book-smart" but in need of a few months or mentorship to function in the role they were hired for.  Now they are expected to just jump right in, and when they can't companies start whining about shortages.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Just off the cuff, this appears to be a lot more based on the general dysfunction accruing to companies lately as they attempt to respond to shareholder demands for profits as aggregate demand continues to sag.  It's related to the apocalyptic problems with college, and to some degree is driven by that (we can hold out for a perfect candidate!), but I'd say the real takeaway is that the jobs that they can't fill evidently are simply not direly needed, because the organization can continue to run without it--in fact, at a lower cost, as long as it isn't filled.

That is actually a point I repeatedly raise in opposition to the shortage.  If your organization can function without significant pain with the req open, is the hire really necessary?  If it isn't necessary, how can you complain about shortages when you can't fill it to your liking?

The cynical claim these postings are intentional in order to get H1b employees at cut rates.  I think it is just clueless management.

[garbon]

Isn't psychology both a social science and STEM?

According to whom?  Psychologists?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEM_fields

STEM-eligible degrees in US immigration
For more details on Temporary foreign workers, see Global labor arbitrage, H-1B visa, and Optional Practical Training.

An exhaustive list of STEM disciplines does not exist because the definition varies by organization. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lists disciplines including physics, actuarial science, chemistry, biology, mathematics, applied mathematics, statistics, computer science, computational science, psychology, biochemistry, robotics, computer engineering, electrical engineering, electronics, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, information science, civil engineering, aerospace engineering, chemical engineering, astrophysics, astronomy, optics, nanotechnology, nuclear physics, mathematical biology, operations research, neurobiology, biomechanics, bioinformatics, acoustical engineering, geographic information systems, atmospheric sciences, educational/instructional technology, software engineering, and educational research.

And then yes among psychs:

http://www.apa.org/pubs/info/reports/stem-discipline.aspx

The goal of this report is to review the current status of psychology as a STEM discipline, articulate the problem of inconsistent recognition of psychology as a core STEM discipline, provide a rationale for consistent recognition of psychology as a STEM discipline, and recommend specific actions to achieve this goal.

One of those is not like the others. 

Educational research

[Malthus]

But to be clear the solution isn't closing down liberal arts departments entirely, but some sort of centralized effort by the responsible governmental authorities to tailor the actual number of liberal arts graduates to the number of liberal arts jobs that are available.  And this shouldn't be limited to liberal arts, but STEM as well.  Specific training in the absence of actual employment opportunity is a waste of human capital, and winds up fucking up job markets (this is what's happened in the US) along with creating a huge education-industrial complex that is for-profit in all but name (ditto).

Though at least with STEM majors there's the possibility of them innovating something and creating their own markets.  I'm relatively certain that a new critical theory of Romantic literature, for example, has ever increased GDP.

University degrees are not job training and should not be tied to the job market.  That is actually one of the problems underpinning the cognitive dissonance I was referring to.  These companies, in all fields nowadays, expect students to graduate pre-trained and ready to work on day one.  That's not how universities are supposed to work.  In the past, new grads were recognized as being "book-smart" but in need of a few months or mentorship to function in the role they were hired for.  Now they are expected to just jump right in, and when they can't companies start whining about shortages.

Heh, in Canada, even allegedly strictly professional law schools aren't really business training: people take bar admissions training *after* law school, and do what amounts to an apprenticeship at law firms and the like ("articling").

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

How much of that HR nonsense is an actual thing, and not an isolated example turning into a myth?  And how often do people actually get hired through job postings, as opposed to through a recruiter?

This is a very Silicon Valley perspective, and one I have acquired second-hand, so keep that in mind.

The oft-quoted statistic is that it takes about 50 resume submissions to yield an interview, and about 4 interviews to yield an offer when going through job postings.  My response rate is much worse.  The problem here is the "resume blasters" who shovel their resume at every open position regardless of applicability.  Nobody has a good way of filtering the signal out of this noise.

My personal experience with recruiters is that about 6 in 10 have misunderstood my background and are pursuing me for an inappropriate position, 3 in 10 are pursuing me for something that is kinda-sorta aligned with by background (though not necessarily with my desired path), and 1 in 10 presents a desirable opening.  Responding to that 1 in 10 yields an interview 50 %- 60% of the time.  I have been told that I have better luck with recruiters than people who live in "hot" areas.

Personal referrals are supposed to be almost a guaranteed interview.  I don't know, because I've never had a real referral and only one of my acquaintance referrals has yielded an interview.  Thus, the vapidly-dispensed advice on various forums is to "network".  Apparently many companies have decided that interviewing a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend is somehow less risky than interviewing random people.

The issue with the "isolated example" is that, in this corner of the STEM world, certain companies like Google have disproportionate influence.  Smaller companies cargo cult Google practices without bothering to analyze whether these practices are applicable to their situation.  They just want to "be like Google".

[The Brain]

Unlike Sweden Japan doesn't look like a Third World shithole with rampant vandalism, beggars everywhere etc. I have more confidence in Japan's abilities to overcome the challenges of the next 100 years than I have in Sweden's.

[Legbiter]

One would hope that the pendulum will swing back to children and stable family life once an entire generation has died alone and forgotten save for when the smell got so bad people living downwind noticed.

[garbon]

One would hope that the pendulum will swing back to children and stable family life once an entire generation has died alone and forgotten save for when the smell got so bad people living downwind noticed.

[Maximus]

Journalists, sociologists, philosophers etc. provide us with data for that. Without knowing ourselves - as a society, as a nation, as a group etc. - we are not capable of self reflection because we are in the dark. All that is left then is the cacophony of social media and infotainment - that can be chaotic at best and completely manipulated by those in power at worst.

Fortunately those can now all be replaced by data scientists.

[garbon]

Journalists, sociologists, philosophers etc. provide us with data for that. Without knowing ourselves - as a society, as a nation, as a group etc. - we are not capable of self reflection because we are in the dark. All that is left then is the cacophony of social media and infotainment - that can be chaotic at best and completely manipulated by those in power at worst.

Fortunately those can now all be replaced by data scientists.

Yeah somehow I don't think that will be the same...unless we are talking rogue data scientists?