Sign of the times, so many tech jobs, so many unemployed Engineers. What?
Vexed in the city: Starved for tech talent and yet nobody to hire?
As the H-1B debate continues, the tech industry faces an odd contradiction: a skills shortage along with an applicant surplus.
by Nick Statt
Darin Wedel made headlines in 2012 when his wife, Jennifer, asked President Barack Obama during a Google+ Hangout why her husband was still out of work while H-1B visa holders continued to stream into the US.
Wedel, who graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in electrical engineering, lost his semiconductor engineering job at Texas Instruments three years earlier.
Obama pledged help. But Wedel ended up taking a temporary position in the medical field, becoming another American with an engineering or technology degree who couldn't find a job in engineering or technology.
The San Francisco Bay Area -- home to star tech companies including Google, Apple, Facebook, and hundreds of startups -- should be interested in experienced, mid-career engineers like Wedel. After all, tech companies often describe themselves as meritocracies, where skills are the only thing that matters.
But here's the rub: While tech companies are flooded with resumes, only a fraction of the applicants for these lucrative spots wind up with jobs in Silicon Valley. All the while, the industry complains it's struggling to find the right people with the right skills.
What's going on? Some say tech companies are being exceptionally picky. Fewer than half of the 12.1 million people in the US with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math -- so-called STEM-degree holders -- held jobs in STEM-related occupations in 2012, according to the latest data compiled by the Center for Immigration Studies.
Others blame H-1B work visas, which allow companies to hire skilled workers from other countries.
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