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US Tech Firms Recruiting High Schoolers (And Younger)
ShaunC writes: Is there a glut of qualified American tech workers, or isn't there? Some companies like Facebook and Airbnb are now actively courting and recruiting high school students as young as 13 with promises of huge stipends and salaries. As one student put it, "It's kind of insane that you can make more than the U.S. average income in a summer." Another who attended a Facebook-sponsored trip said he'd "forego college for a full-time job" if it were offered. Is Silicon Valley taking advantage of naive young workers?
Mark Zuckerberg got into Harvard, he recruits heavily from people who got into Ivy League schools. Why? Because IQ tests are banned for employment purposes, and he has to use the proxy of SAT scores which allowed people to get into competitive schools. Any actual benefit of attending said schools is purely secondary. Here he's found another way to find the smart kids, and they don't have to spend $30,000 a year to prove they are smart kids. It's a win, win.
Doesn't everyone? They are cheap and willing to work long hours. That's all that matters anymore.
In 1999, my company offered an 18 year old summer intern a programming job. He turned us down to attend college. Spending 4 years doing calculus and reading The Count of Monte Cristo was not going to improve his earnings potential. Spending 4 years in a real office doing real programming would have improved his earnings potential.
Answer : yes
Next question : Is Silicon Valley taking advantage of naive parents? Coze they have to decide what's best for their kids, right?
If you want to "go max" with cheap & long, get E. Indian highschoolers who are dirt poor; they work for peanuts, literally.
Table-ized A.I.
why not nerds?
It may not have changed his earning potential, but it greatly improves his opportunities if your company lays him off, goes bust, or just sucks. Having a degree on your resume is often needed just to get past the HR filter. I've met several folks who did very well despite their lack of degrees, and all want their kids to get one. You have to really sell yourself and rely on luck much more to get that next good job if you do not have a degree.
Children used to have a childhood. If they're not busting their guts for standardized testing, they're being recruited for technology companies. Parents can do only so much about standardized testing, but they can push back against recruiters storming the school gate for future employees. If technology companies want these kids so badly, they can wait until the senior year of high school to host job fairs and scholarships.
What, did you think Google was putting tens of millions into IT education for philanthropic purposes?
Aaaahahahahaha! Hahahahaha!
ahh
sigh
Haaaaaaahahahaha! ...yeah they're planning to strip mine up and coming generations.
nothing wrong with that, most the population finds good jobs are very hard to come by. The real unemployment rate in the USA (using system bls used in the 1980s is almost 25%, Depression level. A corporate droid job is better than no job
It is amazing what companies will do to not pay higher wages. I mean holy fuck.
Oh get fucked asshole, this isn't about playing fair and providing jobs, its about corporate profits: http://pando.com/2014/03/22/re...
For IT jobs HS + on the job and or with an trade / tech / CC is all that should be needed.
they just put down degree anyways or just buy one
college does not tech the right skills needed to do jobs now days. We need to have alts that take less time and give people skills that they need.
Well when you cannot poach employees, you need to get to them first.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
http://articles.chicagotribune...
if they want to set a min level without the high cost of college and then they can take people from the teach / trades / learn on there own.
"they work for peanuts, literally"
By 'E. Indian' did you mean 'Elephants (Indian)'?
You can go to college later if you want or need to, especially if you rake in money for a few years.
Are you a shill?
You dont rake in money for a few years. Those first few years are when companies exploit the hell out of you, before you finally wise up and move on elsewhere.
Of course without a bachelors it's much, much harder to make the jump to another company.
30-something experienced coder, unix sysadmin, dba, doer-of-whatever-is-necessary... has given up looking for jobs due to excessive rejections.
Something is wrong with the way we're trying to find and select people.
but after 20+ years competing head on with cheaper Indian, Malaysian and Chinese tech workers it's more like BS + on the job + maybe a few years working for free at an internship and your dad knows a guy...
Don't like it? Form a Union and get organized or get another line of work.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
education also has to much theory and non coding jobs really don't need years of CS with big skill gaps.
Well, my company is recuiting an army of mutant squirrels! We'll see who wins!
Grow up, nothing is fair in this world. Of course employers make a profit if they are to survive. People work for money, the employer makes a profit on their work. that's how making a living works. that's how businesss works.
My last corporate droid job ended with the Fortune 500 CEO giving himself a 66% raise and laid off 10% of the workforce for having a lousy fiscal year. I guess he needed a new yacht more than I needed to pay my more mundane bills. Eight months and 60+ job interviews later, I'm working for the federal government. Oy!
"Is Silicon Valley taking advantage of naive young workers?"
See: Rhetorical.
Employers used to train people now they want schools that are not setup to do that kind of learning to teach skills that should be in a tech / trade school. But they don't like them to much and they can't use the people loaded with skill gaps coming out of some non tech schools.
I worked at a Fortune 500 company that refused to train to workers because they would get certified and make more money at a competitor. Never mind that most people got frustrated from the lack of training, trained themselves and got certified on their own time, and made more money at a competitor. Corporate dysfunction at its best.
Definitely a bad trend. I have a MSc degree, multiple certifications, project management experience and a proven track record. Yet the last three companies I interviewed with all asked the "illegal" questions - How old are you, are you married, do you have kids. My lawyer said "you can sue them, but you'd better win enough so both of us can retire because a lawsuit like that gets you on the hidden blacklist."
So with the companies hiring high school kids pretty soon the companies will start getting rid of those ancient 26 year olds because they can get cheaper kids who are "up to date" with all the latest social media fads...
On the upside, it's hard to get an H1b visa if you're in high school. Maybe it's an avenue for a few Americans to actually get a job and keep if for a few years. At least until the companies figure out another way to recruit near-slave labor.
Yea, I'm cynical. Two years of looking for work when all I hear is "you're over qualified" and "all we're hiring are entry-level people".
Tech / IT needs an apprenticeship system that can tech real skills, have on the job / hands on learning / and at least some oversight.
> For IT jobs HS + on the job and or with an trade / tech / CC is all that should be needed.
If T means technician than yeah. But you're lucky if ever rise above that. Given up a broader education for trade-school level training means you are almost certainly going to unqualified to make design or managerial decisions.
You won't be alone, we see it here on slashdot all the time - posters who deploy sheldon-cooper style logic to avoid acknowledging that the sociopolitical issues that intersect with the technical nature of our industry are both important and complicated.
I do not call effective communication (language skills), logic and deductive reasoning, civics, history (theory and application, not fact memorization), etc. a matter for employers, trade schools or universities. I call them necessary, foundational skills and knowledge that should be developed in every child regardless of future vocation. I consider the abject failure of most public schools systems to do so criminal.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Not all tech guys want to be in management and there are people who not cut out for it and end up being peters.
Good jobs are available to those that can offer themselves as good employees. You're not owed good job you merit one.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I wasn't ecstatic about all the non-major courses I had to take when my primary worry was getting a programming job after I got my degree, and I might have taken an $100K out if it was available. But now 10-15 years later I'm glad I that my formal education included a psychology class, a statistics class, a history class, and others. Maybe I would have picked all that up on my own, or maybe I'd have a giant black hole in my world view.
There's a training side to education and there's a wisdom side to education, and they're both important in the long run. Telling young people to get jobs right out of high school because being well-rounded isn't necessary for "smart" people just means it's going to be a crap shoot as to whether their decisions repeat history or learn from it.
The Supreme Court of the United States disagrees with you.
No it isn't:
The Supreme Court ruled that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, if such tests disparately impact ethnic minority groups, businesses must demonstrate that such tests are "reasonably related" to the job for which the test is required.
You can test people as long as it is "reasonably related" to the job and isn't done in a way that artificially discriminates against a protected class. Difficult, but not a ban.
But it also takes 20 of them and 50 times as long for them to end up failing and you do the work instead of them just so it will get done, and done correctly.
Karma doesn't solve anything, and if you don't understand how to word a query, your google answers suck too.
it's as if they found a way to create American H1-B's...
Ivy League Schools are about the money, not IQ.
MiT is not ivy league, but they do take some really intelligent people.
A lot of Indians work for Facebook. Every person who got hired probably outlasted a 100 applicants. Considering Facebook's reputation of also trying to hire a lot of white people, your argument just backfired on itself.
Sure not all do, but you said that it was all that is needed.
Seems like the kind of logic error that one might expect from someone with just a HS education.
I did not say just HS.
I said HS + mix of community college classes / tech schools / trade school / learning skills on the job.
For some people the full college setting is to much up front and or loaded with skill gaps.
but the issues with some of the college system is that the time tables do not fit in that well with working pros. The tech schools / trade schools / community colleges do fit in better.
if they're paying highschool kids the average yearly income in a summer then the kids are taking advantage of facebook quite frankly.
I saw this stuff happening with Nokia back in the later half of the '90s. they would hire _everyone_. literally everyone off from the yearly roster at technical university. they would literally hire highschool students for summer gigs for coding.
then they had too much people a few years afterwards and spent over a decade of getting rid of the people while being consumed by internal power struggles which greatly affected product quality.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
If you want somebody to follow standard operating procedures, sure, put them in a cube, give them a job and forget about them. If you want someone capable of writing new procedures you need to either train or apprentice them yourself or get someone else, like a university, to do it for you.
It's the technician versus engineer argument. You only actually need an engineer (or a very experienced technician with a wide range) when you want to change things, such as solve a problem or do something new. So in the short term sticking a kid in a cube with a clipboard of "how we do things here" makes sense for the company and the kid.
In the long term they could both do better.
Where I am the current vocational approach to programming means there's no "real" programmers in the place, since too tight a focus means we have no chance explaining the mathematics to them in under a couple of years. So we have scientists who "spent 4 years doing calculus", and even if their code is crap they at least can estimate and work out when their code is spitting out noise instead of answers. Following the list on the clipboard is not for everyone. You need at least a few people capable of thinking up that list.
Having dropped out of a five year EE program after 4 years to work for my brother over twenty years ago I can't say it made much of a difference in my career. I started working as a computer programmer while I was still in high school. I went to college for the same reason everyone does, to meet girls and have fun. I seriously can barely remember any programming classes, although I took enough to equal my universities' CS requirements. When I spoke to the administrators about changing to the CS major and letting me graduate, they said that I had to retake my CS101 course because I had taken it at a junior college when I was a sophomore in high school. Apparently they thought that it being six years before and from a community college that it shouldn't count. I suggested that they consider the four years of part time work I had programming, which they also couldn't accept. It seemed so ridiculous that I left in my senior year without a degree. After about five more years my university decided that although they didn't give me a degree that I might give them more money. I receive two letters a year from them asking me to donate. Why can't I remember the programming classes? Most of the programming classes had a lab and tests administered at a testing center. I would write the labs in the first two weeks of class, pass them off and take the tests, I usually lost interest in the lectures after about the third week and I would pick up more hours working. I do remember a silly humanities class where we looked at pictures of Grecian urns. So do I recommend college, of course, I still have the wife I met there and I still have fun.
the federal government does even worse things than that fortune 500 company. and they have their massive layoffs too.
but federal government job better than no job. world isnt good and it's not fair
... on this crap as they did on training the existing work force we'd be just fine.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I call them necessary, foundational skills and knowledge that should be developed in every child regardless of future vocation
Tough tits. Employers want to know why your school isn't producing kids with 4 years experience in Java with whatever specific little frameworks they personally use.
I mean it's obviously foolish to not get some proper education, and at companies you typically only learn how not to do it. A formal education can bring you the inspiration and time to become a decent programmer.
However, currently there is the rare chance of a second ".com"-bubble. Companies are hiring just about anybody and paying them insane amounts of money. It's like in that old documentary I've seen about Netscape where they all thought they'd be great... but if you look at the actual product you'll find that it's unacceptably bad, by any standard except for 1990s commercial software standards.
So, if you manage to keep your standard of living low, you can milk a company for the money. Then when it'll collapse in 1 or 2 years you can get some proper education.
Grow up, nothing is fair in this world.
When the game isn't fair, people quit playing with you. But hey, Marie Antoinette had the high score last round!
During High school I was courted by a department in a major tech company, I started working for them full time on my 18th birthday. My advice for anyone that may consider an offer, would be to make sure that the company will give a guarantee to let them attend college (and clear the time) and find out for how long. You should also be prepared to be discriminated against when you hit 20 and are better then the others a lot older then you (yes it does happen and continued to happen until I was 22.)
The big stumbling block that a lot of these teens will face is being able to move up in the company. Managers will change, HR will evolve, and the more churn there is, the more you will be forgotten about, and the more resistance you will face in trying to advance. In addition a lot of these teens have not matured enough to start working full time in a tech environment, and attending college while working will help out in that.
Any job that a typical high school geek can do basically means it's the next blue-collar job.
And once the kids are old enough to no longer fall under their parent's health insurance plan, then start demanding more money so that they can move out of the parent's house, you can fire them! Hurray, 18 year olds as high school freshmen!
Hello, under Obamacare, kids can stay on their parent's health insurance until age 26.
The theory is important. I use the skills I learned while learning theory on the job. Sometimes I even use it on the job. Lots of stuff clumped together with theory ends up in use on the job. Try writing your own networking mac/phy layer without knowing the theory, or working on embedded systems without understand concurrency, and if you don't know number theory you may hit some speedbumps with floating point number format someday. If you don't know algorithm theory you may have some of the worst performance code in the team. Try understanding modern computer security without knowing cryptography theory.
All that boring stuff, the stuff that only eggheads bother to learn, there are many companies that do that stuff as their daily job!
Some of my best programming was very early on. Scientific concepts are really appealing at an early age and once imbibed stay for a lifetime. Congrats to those making this transition! With knowledge as readily available as it is today, this is truly a welcome change!
I suspect it's more complicated than your sanctimonious sermon implies.
So I'd better update my statement to make things more clear.
Raising your score in a single type of test is easy - just do a lot of that sort of test as practice. Raising your actual intelligence is a lot harder.
The sort of things used by lazy fad driven HR idiots are until you tell them to either do their job or get out of the way.
I'm no pychologist, but I'm been told by some that at least in the field of education IQ tests are pointless and can vary widely with the same child over several years. It was described to me in the 1980s as being nothing but a measure of how good people are at doing that sort of test and translating poorly to other situations. It's still an artifact of that time that only remains due to management fads.
Actually, experience with managing the system itself gives insight into how it could be managed better. Managerial types use a lot of verbose garbage to cover up their histrionic narcissism, like you've done here, to justify that feelings and consensus matter more than the facts and the truth. It's ok to defend group work and such, but when the ideology becomes more important than reality, you end up with a chernobyl.
Burned at 21, but that's ok because they'll get replaced by a 14 year old version of themselves.
...that as the Western World has campaigned against children working long hours in underdeveloped nations, here we are encouraging our kids to work insanely long hours tethered to a keyboard grinding out code.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Tech companies want to make sure the Zuckerbergs make a gazillion dollars, but tech wages get driven down. 501(C) organization like FWD.us are all about getting "immigration reform" which includes a lot more H1B, which means you distort the intellectual capital market by bringing in more workers and thus driving down pay. Why pay money to an american with school loans when you can lobby government to get someone who can work for less as an H1B serf.
Paying kids is a new twist on this game. So, why even pay people who have careers, lets pay our employees even less by hiring children?
It is a race to the bottom, and make no mistake, it is so the rich can get richer. I don't want to sound like an "occupy wall street" loony, but don't workers deserve reward for their work just as much as industrialists. 40 years ago, CEOs only made a few hundred times more than their average employee, and that was scandalous.
These guys complain about the "economy," but that facts are clear, the U.S. economy was better when we had more wealth distribution, stronger unions, and a growing middle class. They want us to be China, and unless we figure out how to stop it, we will be.
Tech skills are in high demand so it makes sense that large tech companies will begin targeting high schoolers. Having a college degree is not necessary, however it would prove incredibly useful in the long run.... especially as one tries to advance their career or move to a different company. The solution for these large companies is to come up with a work/study program so that these young tech workers have the opportunity to attain a college degree while working at the company. This works out advantageous to both the company and the employee; the company gets a skilled college-educated worker and the employee gets a college education. Furthermore, if the company pays for the program then the young employee doesn't need to take out any loans to pay for the exorbitant cost of college... making it a win/win! A little background on myself; I attained my Bachelors degree as a full-time student and when I entered the job market I was able to negotiate into my hiring contract that my employer would cover my Masters degree as I continue my education part-time. This worked out great as I am currently taking my final course and will have my Masters at the end of August.
Sounds more like a modern take on the traditional apprenticeship system than "taking advantage" of students. Why should these kids have to go to college to get a bit of paper proving they have skills they can already demonstrate?
"At least" 26, as long as they don't get insurance via some other method or get married. According to my new insurance info, they now support your children perpetually, so long as they stay in college or if they get stuck in Active Duty of the military while they're covered. Once you're past 26 and lose coverage, you can never get it back though.
It's also nice that they got rid of some stuff like life time limits.
Child Labor laws moron. They're just taking advantage of a cheap labor group nothing more. This has nothing to do with "intelligent minds."
http://www.wamda.com/application/rapyd/assets/mfm_012/upload/investing_employees_med.jpg
Enough said... ;-)
There are 10 types of people in the world; those who understand binary and those who don't.
I sort of agree with what your company did.
I was working at a Fortune 500 company, who spent a lot of money sending us to the best training programs money could buy. However, their annual review cycle was bogus (a lot of people got no raise at all) and my department was very political. With improved skill set, I just jumped for a gig that pays me 25% more - biggest hike I've ever had, on top of 100K+ salary I was already making.
Training employees is a double-edged sword. If the company treats you well then trained employees would do wonders. Otherwise, it makes them easier to find gigs at a competitor.
Probably good for teens to know the tech industry treats workers as disposable - they'll be used and discarded, and next year another cohort will come along for the same treatment. Good to know up-front that the computer industry no longer allows people to have careers.
Isn't that what this is? A search for the prodigy before others have a chance to snatch them up?
I'm not going to say you're wrong, but everything I've read, as well as my brief search indicated that you're cut off at 26...college or not. Do you have any reference indicating otherwise?
Just another day in Paradise
I recently ran into a former co-worker while interviewing for a job. He still has the same job and making the same amount of money when we worked together nine years ago. Meanwhile, these damn Fortune 500 tech companies keep laying me off every so often. I had multiple jobs at very different companies and make 80% more money than him.
Back in the dotcom era it was trendy to get a high school dropout into your future failed company, even if that meant convincing some kid to drop out of school, travel cross country, and join your startup.
After the erroneous bullcrap you spouted here I had to correct you on -> http://developers.slashdot.org...
APK
P.S.=> Do us, and yourself, a HUGE favor - don't open your mouth about something you CLEARLY HAVE NO CLUE ABOUT, misinforming others... apk
Outright SCHOOLED pal (don't talk about things you have NO CLUE on) -> http://developers.slashdot.org...
APK
P.S.=> People like you TRULY make me ill - you misinform others like mad, speaking out your ASS, on things you clearly have no idea on in the 1st place (that example was enough for me & I had to prove my point with hard facts, in an application AND from an industry trade journal too vs. your bullshit)... apk
You're showing myself you don't by the bullshit of yours I had to correct you on -> http://developers.slashdot.org...
* Don't talk out your ass like that again, or I'll keep sending you "back to school" (you clearly need it, instead of talking about things you have CLEARLY, no clue on!).
APK
P.S.=> What a TOTAL BULLSHIT ARTIST you are, unbelievable... apk
YOU (& you slammed YOURSELF into it) -> http://developers.slashdot.org...
* CLUE/New NEWS/NewsFlash: Don't talk out your ass like that again, or I'll keep sending you "back to school"... you need it.
APK
P.S.=> Unbelievable - do us, and yourself, a HUGE favor: Don't open your mouth on things you have NO CLUE on - which by this point? I actually suspect you don't *HAVE* any degree in CS actually after that... apk
SOMEONE's money -> http://developers.slashdot.org...
APK
P.S.=> Do us, and yourself, a HUGE favor - don't open your mouth about something you CLEARLY HAVE NO CLUE ABOUT, misinforming others... apk
You SURE you have a CS degree? I'm pretty sure you don't after this -> http://developers.slashdot.org...
APK
P.S.=> Do us, and yourself, a HUGE favor - don't open your mouth about something you CLEARLY HAVE NO CLUE ABOUT, misinforming others... apk
This is "no mere theory" either - it's fact with concrete, verifiable, & undeniable proof -> http://developers.slashdot.org... FROM 2 VALID SOURCES (an existing program I wrote AND an industry trade journal, a competing one to Pascal/Delphi, where DELPHI utterly smoked VB & even MSVC++ (in BOTH math & strings work, which face it - EVERY program pretty much works with & does to a degree), ALL vs. your UTTER bullshit, boy...
APK
P.S.=> Do us, and yourself, a HUGE favor - don't open your mouth about something you CLEARLY HAVE NO CLUE ABOUT, misinforming others... apk
I once read this...
Is it better to train your people and then have them leave, or not train them and have them stay?
I'm just listing what my insurance does. Prior to this change, they covered your children until a hard cut off of 27. Once the Obama change came out, they changed it to 26, but will continue to cover as long as they stay in college or active duty. I assumed it was part of Obama Care to continuously cover your children, but I guess not?
But you are thinking logically, not like a PHB.
Table-ized A.I.
Little is black and white. Most common, is a spectrum of gray. But since the discussion was simplified binary to terms of good job vs. bad job, so too I simplified my answer to good employee vs worthless employee. You can complicate it if you want but the principle still carries most of the weight. If your skills are as common as dust, or as needed as a heat lamp in the Sahara at mid-day you will not be a good employee, you should not expect a good job.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
See subject-line: Try THAT something to go with your bullshit -> http://developers.slashdot.org...
(Downmod it again as you did here already http://slashdot.org/comments.p... & I'll just post it again - there are no AC limits for me unlike most ac's so you know)
Yes - sockpuppets work for that "hit & run" downmod + disproving the "I can't downmod in a post and make it stick" outright BULLSHIT spouted here when all it takes is a fake account/sockpuppet with modpoints... & we all know that much - huge problem on /. that, hit & run downods + no justifications of them!
Do it again: Show us what you're REALLY made of pal, trying to effetely "hide that" from others seeing it (along with your blunders in it I exposed...)
I'll just come over the top of you again, reposting it, with NO limits on how many times I can.
APK
P.S.=> Utterly amazing - you showed us all you talk OUT YOUR ASS on things you have NO CLUE on, which also makes me SEVERELY DOUBT you are a coder, period... apk