President Donald Trump and His Daughter Ivanka To Unveil a New Federal Computer Science Initiative With Major Tech Backers (recode.net)

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President Donald Trump and His Daughter Ivanka To Unveil a New Federal Computer Science Initiative With Major Tech Backers (recode.net)

Posted by msmash on Monday September 25, 2017 @05:22AM from the up-next dept.

From a report: President Donald Trump will issue a new directive Monday to supercharge the U.S. government's support for science, tech, engineering and mathematics, including coding education, three sources familiar with the White House's thinking told Recode. To start, Trump is set to sign a presidential memorandum at the White House later today that tasks the Department of Education to devote at least $200 million of its grant funds each year to so-called STEM fields, as the administration seeks to train workers for high-demand computer-science jobs of the future. And on Tuesday, Trump's daughter and advisor, Ivanka, is expected to head to Detroit, where she will join business leaders for an event unveiling a series of private-sector commitments -- from Amazon, Facebook, Google, GM, Quicken Loans and others -- meant to boost U.S. coding and computer-science classes and programs, the sources said.

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Say what... by ILoveFatCashews · 2017-09-25 05:24 · Score: 3, Funny

Must be "Bring Your Daughter to STEM Work" day at Slashdot.
1. Re:Say what... by bobbied · 2017-09-25 09:26 · Score: 2
  
  Yea, like big donors don't get hired by both parties when they are in power. It's politics, get used to it.
  It's not like the secretary of Education is all that big of a deal....
  
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Companies want cheap workers by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-25 05:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

It doesn't matter if there are no American applicants or if there are hundreds of American applicants. As long as there is one person from India willing to do the work for 20k a year, they will pick that person.
1. Re:Companies want cheap workers by 0100010001010011 · 2017-09-25 05:50 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Then explain the multiple open job positions posted all across the country on job sites. It took me all of a week to find a new job in the 6-figure range. Yes there are Indians that claim they'll do it for $20k a year and companies get what they pay for.
  Have you considered that you don't have modern, relevant job skills if someone in India is taking them?
2. Re:Companies want cheap workers by Tablizer · 2017-09-25 05:58 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  It could be you're coming in a tad too high for the work that is up for bid.
  While some of IT pays relatively well compared to other careers, it's mostly that other careers have stagnated or shrank. Plus, IT requires constant retraining/relearning (usually on your own dime), and has agism and RSI problems associated with it. It's a risky long-term career.
  While IT has done relatively well compared to other careers, it's still fairly stagnated itself if you look at longer term trends and post-40 IT salaries. The rich get richer and the rest get squeezed. The pattern continues. The left say tax the rich to put money back into the 99%'s economy, and the right say rich-tax-cuts and "deregulation" will finally make trickle-down work "properly". Further discussion of those is the usual "culture wars" debate most have heard already.
  
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  Table-ized A.I.
3. Re:Companies want cheap workers by 0100010001010011 · 2017-09-25 06:00 · Score: 2
  
  Really? Then why is it when I change my status on LinkedIn to 'looking' I get hounded by recruiters? Why did it take applying to all of a single job listing to find a new job?
  Maybe 90% of the companies you apply to toss your resume because you don't have anything relevant on there. Any number of my peers could find a job with out any problems.
4. Re:Companies want cheap workers by 0100010001010011 · 2017-09-25 06:09 · Score: 2
  
  Then maybe you should have thought about that when you decided to never learn anything new on the job. I could word my resume any number of a dozen different ways depending on what the job position asked for. But that meant going above and beyond showing up to work every day.
  I volunteered for new projects. I learned how to do skill X and apply it to my desk job.
  Getting a college degree doesn't set you for life. It gives you a bit of breathing room and a head start until the rest of the world catches up. I graduated ~15 years ago. There is a clear divide between type A and type B workers.
  Type A seems to be the loudest that everyone is stealing their job. They can't find any jobs with their skill sets. A has sat on their hands for the last decade and turned the crank and nothing more. Forget Indians, Jenkins is stealing their jobs daily. We used to build software manually. If your only skillset you picked up is how to compile software, flash and test it your job relevancy is fading fast.
  Type B took on new opportunities. They didn't see a new technology as 'stealing' their job they used it to supplement their work. They stayed up to date on which direction their industry was going.
  When faced with being replaced by computers Dorthy Vaughan and other 'human computers' stepped up operate the computers. I wonder if her peers that didn't sat around complaining about electrons stealing their jobs.
5. Re:Companies want cheap workers by 0100010001010011 · 2017-09-25 06:12 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  live in the right place.
  The right place to live is where the job is. Our ancestors followed the food out of Africa. Grandpa went where the CCC said there was work. If you plant your feet and whine there aren't any jobs it's not the job's problem, it's yours.
  
  Maybe you're lying about the skills you do have, or at least stretching the truth lots.
  
  Or actually have relevant skills.
6. Re:Companies want cheap workers by 0100010001010011 · 2017-09-25 06:39 · Score: 2
  Your skillset.
  Simulink Embedded Coder
  ISO 26262
  DO-178C
  CANape/CANalyzer
  dSpace/ETAS Hardware in the Loop testing.
  Are the big keywords I search for. Python, Matlab, Data Analytics all turn up noise. Also a smattering of SQL, Linux, Cloud, etc knowledge that really isn't relevant to the jobs I apply to but has definitely come in handy.
  
  What area of the country you are in.
  Flyover Country. But I've found and applied to jobs across the US.
  
  Your age.
  Closer to 40 than 30.
  
  Where did you get your degree.
  Big 10.
  
  Now, are there any details that could guide me on what skills I'm missing? Nope!
  Well, I don't know what skills you have.
7. Re:Companies want cheap workers by losfromla · 2017-09-25 06:46 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Yeah, because perhaps because they don't want to share a 1 bedroom apartment with 20 other males and would instead like to have a family and a decent standard of living. We cannot win in a race to the bottom. Nobody wins that, not even the damnable H1-B workers that are taking those underpaying jobs. They are destroying the very thing they came here for.
  
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8. Re:Companies want cheap workers by 0100010001010011 · 2017-09-25 07:31 · Score: 2
  
  What ever you want to believe. But these "the sky is falling" comments are getting old. I've read slashdot for 17 years at this point and during college I have believed them. I was terrified of my 30s. That time came and went. I went out job searching and found none of the problems I had been hearing about.
  Then I figured out at work exactly 'who' those people were making these comments. They're useless warm bodies that are only kept around because it's too much of a hassle to get rid of them, for now. They graduated college and thought they learned everything they ever needed to learn and never bothered to learn anything new again. They gnash their teeth when you suggest something new. It's not India's problem it's their own. I see people in their 60s being hired back half time because they want the work and they managed to stay up to date on the technology (and in some cases they invented it).
  If you have relevant skills for 2017 you should have no problem finding a job anywhere in the US. Hell, we're hiring. Every company I know of is hiring right now because there is a shit ton of work to do. From big companies all the way down through their nth tier suppliers has a lot of work that needs to get done. Instead there are a bunch of whip repairmen whining that it's everyone else's problem they didn't bother to learn something other than how to repair whips.
  Those job listings I posted to above are real. If you're not getting them that's your problem. Not industry's.
9. Re:Companies want cheap workers by fluffernutter · 2017-09-28 02:00 · Score: 2
  
  That's why many families don't move apart. Even in the nomadic age you mentioned previously, families moved together. Humans did this because it was safest and made sense. Moving apart from your family to make more money is a fairly recent trend, like highly processed food.
  
  --
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Oh yay by computational+super · 2017-09-25 05:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

$200 million in government grants to fund offshore initiatives.

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It's a trick. Get an axe. by Anonymous Coward · 2017-09-25 05:32 · Score: 5, Insightful

As the article alludes to, most of these same tech companies just left the administration en mass after the 'very reluctant/weak/late condemnation of nazis' debacle.
This is effectively taking proposals that have already been thrown at them, and using it as an excuse to get large amounts of money from these jilted companies, and 'manage' them at their whim.
Here's what these companies should do: Create their OWN organization to manage any funds they want to use effectively, and just ignore the noises from this administration.
Better than letting DeVos have any potential control over it.
Weak Journalism by ranton · 2017-09-25 05:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

the White House later today that tasks the Department of Education to devote at least $200 million of its grant funds each year to so-called STEM fields
So how much does the Department of Education (DoE) currently devote to STEM field grants? You are looking at around a $70 billion budget, with tens of billions already going to various grants. What is even the point of releasing this kind of news if no one can even tell if it is an improvement on what we already do?

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1. Re:Weak Journalism by drew_kime · 2017-09-25 05:38 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  What is even the point of releasing this kind of news if no one can even tell if it is an improvement on what we already do?
  The difference is now you know we're doing it. Did you know before this story came out how much we were spending on STEM? No? Well you do now. Winning bigly!
  
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  Nope, no sig
Re:It's a trick. Get an axe. by MightyMartian · 2017-09-25 05:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

I'm not sure why they're paying attention to the Administration at all. Nobody else is. Congress is basically acting as if the White House was vacant (which, in a metaphorical sense, it is)

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Re:What's in it for him? by JackieBrown · 2017-09-25 05:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

What a useless and incredibly vague question. What's in it for any president/politician? Money, public service, fame, patriotism, votes, bored, or a combination?
It's bad enough reading articles with no proof accuse Trump of crazy conspiracies, but to imply without evening try to come up with a conspiracy or evil motive is just lazy.
Re:What's in it for him? by Tablizer · 2017-09-25 05:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

Votes? Heck no, most voters don't know or care about IT labor. Big corporations simply want cheap IT labor and are lobbying heavily to get it. IT is becoming a bigger part of their costs, and so they are looking for ways to reduce the costs. If they can't get cheap H1B's, then they want cheap Americans. Thus, if schools flood the market with IT workers, corporations can pay less. Many graduates may still be unemployed or unemployable, but that's NOT co's concern; they only care about profits. Unemployment and college debt is somebody else's problem in their minds. "Big Farma" did the same with farming labor: back-braking work for 3rd-world wages. Rinse, repeat, IT.

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Table-ized A.I.
Re:What's in it for him? by WheezyJoe · 2017-09-25 05:48 · Score: 4, Funny

Otherwise he wouldn't be doing it.
Easy. A computer big and huge enough that it can someday house his consciousness when his astonishingly healthy body someday craps out, so he can continue to MAGA for all time until America was won so much even his most ardent, NFL-hating MAGA fans are tired of winning. It will be huge. It will be gold. It will be huge and gold, and they will call it the "BFC T-1000" and it will rule and it will be incredible, people, believe me.

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$200M isn't going to "supercharge" squat by enjar · 2017-09-25 05:55 · Score: 5, Insightful

My town has 9 schools (1 pre-K, 4 elementary, 2 middle, 1 high school). The tab to run the district for a year is ~$65M. This works out to about $11k/student, which is pretty near the national average for school expenditures. There are about 50 million students in public schools in the US. So $200M/50M = $4/student. For a classroom of 25 kids, that's $100. Maybe you can pick up an Arduino kit. For a district that spends $11K/yr on a student, $4 is a rounding error. If this was $2B that would be $40/student, which for a classroom would be $1000, which could actually be used for technology initiatives -- buying equipment, IT staff to manage the equipment, teaching materials, hiring teachers and the like.
1. Re:$200M isn't going to "supercharge" squat by gweihir · 2017-09-25 06:01 · Score: 2
  
  Naa, $2B would still be a joke. Make that $20B per year and you start getting somewhere.
  
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Supercharge? Is that like "supersize"? by gweihir · 2017-09-25 05:56 · Score: 2

I.e. more fat, more sugar, less agility and less quality everywhere? I think I see where Trump is going with that. He is trying to re-create the success of the fast-food industry in education! Genius!

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Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Re:It's a trick. Get an axe. by cyberchondriac · 2017-09-25 06:30 · Score: 2

I'm not sure why they're paying attention to the Administration at all. Nobody else is. Congress is basically acting as if the White House was vacant (which, in a metaphorical sense, it is)
Nobody's paying attention? They can't shut up about it.

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Publicity Stunt For Ivanka by LostInTaiwan · 2017-09-25 06:35 · Score: 4, Interesting

I don't understand why Ivanka is involved with this project. Sure, we need more women in STEM, but I feel that Ivanka has always been more about the superficial feel good cosmetic of sales and marketing, antithetic to unglamorous logic driven grunt work of STEM. Oh', I forgot, she is the president's daughter.
Other may disagrees, but I look at this as a $200 million dollar public funded campaign effort to groom Ivanka for the Trump dynasty.
Slowly we drift into the idiocracy. . . .
No kids until the companies bring the jobs by rsilvergun · 2017-09-25 06:43 · Score: 3, Interesting

why the hell would I let my kid go into IT. There's no jobs except for the top math wizs, and there's always jobs for those guys. This is just another transparent attempt to lower wages for the few folks left who have jobs.

End the H1-B and J1 programs first, then us parents will talk about giving you our kids. Until then my kid's going into Medical because they have a bloody Union (the AMA) and have so far resisted mass importation of cheap labor.

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Re:What's in it for him? by pr0fessor · 2017-09-25 07:02 · Score: 2

IT jobs in my area of the US are far and few but the number of people with degrees working in other fields is staggering. I've not kept in close contact with everyone I went to college with but of those that I do keep in touch with none actually work in a tech related field. My brother has a cs degree and does maintenance for the local school district.
People sometime ask why I've stuck in my position for so long because there is no real opportunity for advancement. It's not that I don't get offers it's that they want me to relocate and for barely over what I currently make into areas with a much higher cost of living.
Government picking winners and losers... by mi · 2017-09-25 07:30 · Score: 2, Interesting

President Donald Trump will issue a new directive Monday to supercharge the U.S. government's support for science, tech, engineering and mathematics, including coding education
Whether it is lead by Trump or Obama, government should not — indeed, must not — involve itself in the markets, including the higher education market. Not the government of a free country, anyway...
The Central Planning, that Statists like so much, is both inefficient and opressive.

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In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Does a hissy fit on Twitter count as suicide? by shanen · 2017-09-25 08:25 · Score: 2, Insightful

These days I just hope that General Kelly can keep #PresidentTweety from reading any of these discussions. Might make Trump apoplectic. In simplified Trump-speak, the Donald might throw another hissy fit.
Trump's frequent hissy fits just embarrass all of us and make Putin laugh. Actually, a severe seizure could kill him, and I think Pence could be an even worse leading occupant (insofar as Pence's brain seems to be made of lead).
Oh yeah. About the story. Trump knows nothing, NOTHING. Sergeant Schultz would be so proud.
"Hey, Donald. They ain't disrespecting the flag. They're disrespecting YOU."
General Kelly better tighten up the leash.

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Re:What's in it for him? by Grismar · 2017-09-25 08:57 · Score: 2

By now, it's not so much imply as it is extrapolate or induce.
Re:It's a trick. Get an axe. by hey! · 2017-09-25 09:20 · Score: 3, Insightful

Yes, you have succinctly described the "new normal": people can't stop talking about stuff they aren't really paying attention to.

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cuts $9.2B dollars, wants credit for $.2B increase by happyjack27 · 2017-09-25 09:43 · Score: 5, Insightful

okay so let me get this straight, trump cuts 9.2 billion dollars from the DOE's budget, wants credit for $200M that he didn't even fund - he's just saying that of the money already allocated to grants, this much should go to STEM.
Meanwhile, when obama was president, he proposed a 4 billion dollar inceare in DOE's budget to go specifically to CS education, but that didn't pass because of republicans.
So the net score is: Obama +4 billion (blocked by republicans), Trump -9.2 billion (republicans love it).
And he wants to sell this as him supporting STEM?!?
Re:Better Solution by hey! · 2017-09-25 12:32 · Score: 2

You think you can force people into STEM and they'll all turn out to be good at it?
I think we can look at Indian IT workers to see how that will go. India has its share of talented people, and because India is huge that translates to a lot of very talented people. But the demand for IT talent there has produced three classes of people:
(1) People who have a natural talent for the work.
(2) People who by dint of effort have learned to be good at the work.
(3) People who by dint of effort have learned to be good at passing tests.
The harder you push, the further down this list you reach.

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