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posted by martyb on Sunday September 24 2017, @11:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the Programming-Jobs dept.

Commentary from The Guardian

The rationale for this rapid curricular renovation is economic. Teaching kids how to code will help them land good jobs, the argument goes. In an era of flat and falling incomes, programming provides a new path to the middle class – a skill so widely demanded that anyone who acquires it can command a livable, even lucrative, wage.

This narrative pervades policymaking at every level, from school boards to the government. Yet it rests on a fundamentally flawed premise. Contrary to public perception, the economy doesn't actually need that many more programmers. As a result, teaching millions of kids to code won't make them all middle-class. Rather, it will proletarianize the profession by flooding the market and forcing wages down – and that's precisely the point.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday September 24 2017, @03:54PM (1 child)

    by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Sunday September 24 2017, @03:54PM (#572345) Journal

    I agree with what you've written for the most part. If tech companies need more workers, it makes sense for them to work with educators to create those workers. In my neck of the woods, there's a very real shortage of CNC operators. So, local factories created an initiative to work with community colleges to create CNC training programs. I've been looking at the one here in town. It's a full-time seven week course. There are also some other subjects this consortium has encouraged the community college to make available. Another one that caught my eye is “mechatronics,” which involves assembly line robot service/repair and retooling.

    That's what it looks like when there's a real shortage. There are practical courses offered that do not pretend to take every jerk who can register for classes and turn her into the person with 20 years experience who can look at a CAD drawing, meditate on it for a few minutes, then fire up the CNC mill and produce a perfect prototype on the first try. Or hell, look at somebody's sketch, then work up the CAD drawing and take it from there. I don't really know the practical day-to-day of factory work (yet, maybe).

    Additionally, there's a diversity of equipment they'll be teaching. I think after graduating the CNC program, I'd be qualified to at least have some clue what the hell I'm doing on CNC mills from about 8 different manufacturers.

    I also take a look at the marketing for the course, and it's very minimal. I don't see a diverse cast of smiling faces. There's just the odd regular joe operating a CNC mill. There's nothing exciting or hyped about it. We have factories here, and they need CNC operators. Plain and simple.

    Also note the lack of Narratives with CNC operators. There is no Narrative in the media that we need more CNC operators. There is no Narrative in the media that only cisfemales need apply for these new CNC operator positions. Finally, there is no Narrative that, when the cisfemale CNC operators fail to precipitate out of the æther, that it must needs be the fault (blame to create divisiveness) of all assigned males regardless of body parts who have been operating CNC mills since they were kids and have a love of CNC mill operation. The Narrative would tell us that every assigned male CNC operator is collectively and severally accountable for some culture of pervasive sexual harassment, even though the only examples this Narrative could find are in the boardroom and not on the factory floor.

    With programming, we see something a bit different. We have 3 week bootcamps. It will take me 7 weeks at the local college before they can turn me loose on a CNC mill, and nobody's promising me that I'll be a rockstar CNC operator. However, I'm supposed to believe that all it takes is 3 weeks in a bootcamp or maybe just an hour of code before somebody who's never used a command prompt before will have the same level of skill it's taken me decades to achieve.

    Then there's the sexual harassment. Obviously, we have a programmer shortage because all those misogynerds who can't get laid are chasing these cisfemales who are chomping at the bit to learn the secret voodoo to open a command prompt out of the field! The whole thing is contrived horseshit.

    Finally, one way I can really tell there's a CNC operator shortage and not a programmer shortage is that if I decide to take that 7 week course, I will probably be making $5/$10/even $15 more per hour in a year or two (assuming I'm any good at CNC operation) than I make now!

    Why are programmer wages not going up? I only have a 101 level understanding of economics, but I'm fairly certain that if there's a shortage of some good or service and demand is increasing, the price of that good or service goes up!

    Disclaimer: Keeping with tradition, I did not read TFA. It could very well be a crap article.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 25 2017, @03:51AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 25 2017, @03:51AM (#572539) Journal
    This is a good point. It seems an awful ineffective way to make more workers and lower wages. My feeling is that if we have nefarious motives, the nefarious motives are probably status signalling with respect to their hiring practices. "We're not bad people for hiring hordes of immigrants because we're paying actual money to make native programmers." Goes with the narrative better FWIW.

    Disclaimer: Keeping with tradition, I did not read TFA. It could very well be a crap article.

    I did read the article, and yes, it could well be a crap article. ;-)