<p>Tech work continues to be volatile on the micro (company) level. Important to work in a city with good alternatives.</p>
<p>That’s the Nokia people they laid off.</p>
<p>I’d rather hire a STEM major. Usually, they have general education requirements to graduate anyway if someone wants to hire people with liberal arts education.</p>
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<p>Depends. </p>
<p>Many who aren’t strong or interested in intellectual learning for its own sake go into STEM do so because they not only excel in that area, but also hate the heavy reading/writing loads associated with humanities/social science courses. They tend to have their equivalent of “rocks for jocks” or “Physics for poets”. </p>
<p>Some actual titles of non-major courses geared mostly for STEM majors to fulfill humanities/social science requirements I’ve seen on some campuses include “The History of the Automobile”, “Computers and Society”, etc…etc…etc. From perusing the syllabi of such courses, the reading/writing loads tended to be on the very light side compared with humanities/social science courses geared for majors. </p>
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<p>The degree title (BA versus BS) is meaningless in terms of whether it is a “liberal arts degree” or “targeted toward students intending to proceed to graduate school” (which are not mutually exclusive categories) without the context of the granting school.</p>
<p>For example, all math majors graduating with bachelor’s degrees from Berkeley earn BA degrees, whether or not their undergraduate study choices were designed for preparation for graduate school in math.</p>
<p>^^^ It’s the same at Penn (or at least it used to be).</p>
<p>And all degrees granted by the service academies are BS degrees due to the significant engineering core curriculum.</p>
<p>What CEO’s (Microsoft, Intel, Facebook, etc.) really want are more H-1B Visa’s so they can employee more foreign workers. ;)</p>
<p><a href=“Tech Demands More H-1B Visas As Critics Cry Foul”>http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/tech-demands-more-h-1b-visas-critics-cry-foul-n77161</a> </p>
<p>That would be foreign tech trained workers.</p>
<p>Well, here is the real problem with the H-1B visa system, as described in the article linked in #27:</p>
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<p>The following gives a list of the top H-1B visa employers and the pay levels. Note the outsourcing companies crowding the top of the list, and their relatively low average pay compared to the direct hire companies like Microsoft, Google, Qualcomm, Intel, Oracle, and Amazon.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx”>http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx</a></p>
<p>^^^ Which doesn’t change my (rather flippant) point that these CEO’s are much more interested in H-1B Visa’s than hiring liberal arts majors. ;)</p>
<p>Anyway, back to CEO’s >> :x :x :x >> Liberal Arts Majors!</p>
<p>Hire STEM kids for STEM jobs. Why would tech firms want liberal arts grads? Because not all the jobs are STEM. They require the savvy to comprehend STEM concepts- and then other skills. My humanities kid is in tech, her humanities sis is also interviewing for tech. I was SS and ended up in tech. Takes all sorts to make a company actually function.</p>
<p>I know engineers who are unemployed for 10 years. I just wish these companies would hire them at half price.</p>
<p>And let them prove themselves but no H1 visa is often touted. Even the POTUS often say we need more STEM majors because we have to hire foreign workers.</p>
<p>There’s no such thing as a STEM kid. When I hired boatloads (or planeloads) of aerospace engineers, I didn’t want chemistry majors. When I hired actuaries ( and potential actuaries) I needed math majors, not biologists. When a pharma company hires researchers, they don’t need aerospace engineers.</p>
<p>And to add to lookingforward’s fine post- when a Cisco or Apple need someone in their investor relations group they don’t need an engineer- they need someone with strong finance skills who writes well. When they’re hiring someone for their comp and benefits team they don’t need a computer scientist. </p>
<p>Etc.</p>
<p>You guys have drunk the kool aid on STEM and its alleged power to make sure a kid never gets downsized, is never unemployed for more than a week, and is the ticket for a well lived life.</p>
<p>Bill Gates used to LOVE to hire anthropology and sociology majors to help developers understand how people work in small groups, teams of colleagues vs. a team headed up by a strong and charismatic leader, etc. … it seemed to work out ok for them.</p>
<p>In supporting functions yes. But people tend to misrepresenting like this article. It didn’t say Tech CEO love liberal arts major for tech jobs, while certainly music majors can do computer science but you don’t go out and advertise for CS jobs for music majors.
Many times in real life people misrepresenting like for example one of my neighbors often touted she is high tech managers. Well I later on discovered her on linden basically doing contract work in human resources for HP. She was never a manager even.</p>
<p>Bill Gates ran out of good ideas when there were no longer any left to steal/buy cheap. </p>
<p>Post #35 it’s Linkedin not linden . Thanks to iPhone auto correct.</p>
<p>"In supporting functions yes. "</p>
<p>Who cares, though? They are still jobs, and often good ones. </p>
<p>“Many times in real life people misrepresenting like for example one of my neighbors often touted she is high tech managers. Well I later on discovered her on linden basically doing contract work in human resources for HP. She was never a manager even.”</p>
<p>Lol! That’s often what very highly placed people do – they decide to set their own pace and do contract work! Your conclusion doesn’t make any sense. I can name dozens of people who were vps or directors at companies and now do contract work. Frankly I’m aiming to do that myself in a few years. </p>