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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.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Sunday September 24 2017, @03:16PM (1 child)
But let's not stop there. Even if we suppose the premise of the story is true, that certain high tech companies are deliberately educating/training new workers in order to increase the supply of programmers and keep the cost of their labor down, what exactly is supposed to be the problem?
The problem is that they're lying about it, to everyone including the government, and pushing for programs to get more people to learn these skills to help drive wages down. Basically, they want to externalize their costs: it's not like these companies are volunteering to educate all these kids themselves, starting from grade school and going through college (or at least pay for all these costs themselves); they want the rest of society to take on that burden. Getting an education is a risk: someone has to pay for it, generally the taxpayer up through high school, and then a combination of the student (and family) and the taxpayer through college (state universities get certain subsidies), plus alumni donations. That cost is an investment in a career these days, but if it doesn't pan out, not only does the taxpayer lose, but the student (who generally shoulders most of the cost probably) gets stuck with a giant debt they can't repay any time soon and which can't be discharged in a bankruptcy. Why should employers get these free source of labor at almost no cost to themselves? The high salaries are compensation to the students for their investment and risk.
What's special about programming that we should protect high wages in this area and prevent additional people from enjoying the benefits of such jobs?
What's special about programming that we need to subsidize employers to help them reduce labor costs for this one profession? Why don't we do this for doctors or nurses? Or what about managers and CEOs?
It's of benefit to end customers who can have the products of these programmers for a cheaper price.
Programmer salaries are only a tiny portion of the cost of any product, since programming is part of NRE (non-recurring engineering). If you want to reduce costs, it'd be more effective to reduce management costs; that can be done with salary caps for executives. You could also reduce the costs of HR; those people don't do anything useful anyway, so why should they get paid more than minimum wage? There's lots of places in corporations where money is being wasted and people are being overpaid; why are you focused on programming?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 24 2017, @10:40PM
In other words, that their motives are impure. Why do we care?
Labor isn't free. They still have to pay for it in wages and benefits.
I'll note that this has been done for a long time with doctors and nurses. I've read of immigrant Indian medical professionals in the late 80s, IIRC. Education for managers and CEOs is in great oversupply. That's not the restriction on those careers.