Employers of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) workers have claimed a desperate shortage of STEM workers, especially computer programmers, for many decades. These claims have been repeated year after year during booms and busts including during periods with many high profile layoff announcements. “Big Tech” STEM employers are now reporting many large layoffs of STEM workers (November 2022). This includes not only unprofitable companies with widely used products and services such as Twitter but highly profitable companies such as Amazon — which remains highly profitable as of now.
Amazon Discards STEM Workers Despite Record Profits and Alleged Shortage of STEM Workers
Highly Profitable Big Tech Colossus Amazon is one of many companies announcing huge layoffs of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) workers such as computer programmers and electronic engineers recently (November 2022).
Amazon has reported a net income of $11.3 billion in the twelve months ended September 30, 2022.
Amazon was one of many “Big Tech” companies including Google and Apple that protested President Trump’s freeze of H1-B guest worker visas — used almost exclusively for STEM workers, mostly computer programmers — in June of 2020.
Amazon is one of many major tech employers that promote the idea of shortages of engineers and encourage Americans to pursue careers in engineering. For example, Amazon has partnered with the code.org “non-profit” to promote students pursuing engineering careers:
code.org lists Amazon as a Platinum supporter, reportedly having given over $3 million in donations.
Amazon is listed as a “member” of Compete America, an industry trade group that claims desperate shortages of STEM Workers and for dicey guest worker visas like the H1-B visas, largely for computer programmers.
Conclusion
As in past layoffs, these layoffs by highly profitable companies like Amazon suggest they face no real “shortage” of STEM workers.
(C) 2022 by John F. McGowan, Ph.D.
About Me
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).