“So when we tell them, ‘You could get a job at a company like Facebook, you could be earning $100,000 plus, they pay for your insurance, they feed you, and you can work from home and wear casual clothes.’ They’re like, ‘What are you talking about?"
Indeed. What is he talking about?
Teaching coding to high school kids in under-performing schools is great, and may help some of them find an excellent career path they might never have thought about. But I think Carson is raising false hopes in many of the kids by exaggerating the potential impact of the program in their lives.
He seems to have totally forgotten the reality of supply and demand. It may be true that right now entry-level developers can command $40,000 a year. However, whenever it becomes well known that workers in a certain field can command high salaries, it motivates many more people to enter that field in anticipation of earning those salaries themselves. This tends to cause a glut in workers, and salaries fall as the competition for jobs increases.
One sign that this is already happening is the rapid increase in enrollments to computer science undergraduate programs over the last several years.[1] Adding thousands more to the pool of available workers will only bring salaries down farther.
The more high schools this program is successful in, the more this effect will come into play, especially if the program gets "rolled out to every high school in America" as mentioned in the article.
Also, companies naturally seek to minimize costs by looking for cheaper sources of labor through outsourcing to other countries or by bringing workers from other countries here on H-1B visas. This is already happening.[2] As time goes on, these efforts will likely be increasingly successful, and will impact entry level jobs the most.
I think it would be much fairer to the students to tell them this is one skill they might be able to base a successful career on, if they have an aptitude for it and are willing to put in the effort to get really good at it. Otherwise, he's placing unrealistic expectations that might eventually hurt the students if they don't become reality.
I don't think Ryan has forgotten the reality of supply and demand. I think it's more basic than that: he is totally overestimating the demand.
Yes, there are entry-level developer positions that pay $40,000, and more. However I think you'll find it difficult to locate many that require just six months of participation in a high school vocational training program. And you'll find even fewer in the economically depressed regions where this program may be most appealing.
Thanks to the current tech boom there is higher demand for more senior development positions, but those positions require a lot more experience and skill. Hard-to-find intangibles, not programming ability, often make these harder to fill.
It's funny that Ryan mentioned Facebook. As big a name as it is, the company only employs a few thousand people and from what I have seen, most of the developers there, even in the entry-level positions, have college degrees. At many of the big tech companies where you will be most likely to find six-figure salaries post-boom, college degrees, including those from particular institutions, are favored if not required.
We've spoken personally to Facebook's hiring team and they've confirmed they no longer require degrees for their developers. The reason is because there isn't enough computer science grads.
If you look at the job descriptions on facebook.com/careers for technical positions, all of the development roles I see listed require a) a college degree, b) a specialized skill set no entry-level candidate would bring to the table and/or c) a certain number of years of job experience.
So the question remains: just what evidence backs up your assumption that there are significant numbers of entry-level technology jobs paying above national averages for high school graduates with less than a year of vocational training? That seems to be a big part of your pitch, both to schools and to students.
Agreed. It strikes me as disingenuous. Getting hired at Facebook is probably harder (in terms of years of investment in acquiring skills) than landing a comparable job in i-banking. Yet, no-one seems to be under the impression the latter is within reach following a 6 month program.
Indeed. What is he talking about?
Teaching coding to high school kids in under-performing schools is great, and may help some of them find an excellent career path they might never have thought about. But I think Carson is raising false hopes in many of the kids by exaggerating the potential impact of the program in their lives.
He seems to have totally forgotten the reality of supply and demand. It may be true that right now entry-level developers can command $40,000 a year. However, whenever it becomes well known that workers in a certain field can command high salaries, it motivates many more people to enter that field in anticipation of earning those salaries themselves. This tends to cause a glut in workers, and salaries fall as the competition for jobs increases.
One sign that this is already happening is the rapid increase in enrollments to computer science undergraduate programs over the last several years.[1] Adding thousands more to the pool of available workers will only bring salaries down farther.
The more high schools this program is successful in, the more this effect will come into play, especially if the program gets "rolled out to every high school in America" as mentioned in the article.
Also, companies naturally seek to minimize costs by looking for cheaper sources of labor through outsourcing to other countries or by bringing workers from other countries here on H-1B visas. This is already happening.[2] As time goes on, these efforts will likely be increasingly successful, and will impact entry level jobs the most.
I think it would be much fairer to the students to tell them this is one skill they might be able to base a successful career on, if they have an aptitude for it and are willing to put in the effort to get really good at it. Otherwise, he's placing unrealistic expectations that might eventually hurt the students if they don't become reality.
[1] http://cra.org/govaffairs/blog/2012/04/undergrad-computer-sc...
[2] http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/03/30/visa-program-h...