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Woz Wants To Retrain You For a Career in Tech (cnet.com)

Posted by msmash on from the interesting-developments dept.

Steve Wozniak wants you to work in tech, and he's going to help you do it. From a report: The Apple co-founder is launching Woz U, a digital institute aimed at helping folks not only figure out what type of tech job they might be best at, but train for it. "People often are afraid to choose a technology-based career because they think they can't do it. I know they can, and I want to show them how," Wozniak said in a statement Friday. Woz U starts off as online programs, but there are plans to build campuses in 30 cities around the world. Those cities will be announced within the next 60 days, Shelly Murphy, corporate relations for Woz U told CNET. In a press statement, Wozniak said Woz U will start as an online learning platform focused on both students and companies that will eventually hire those students. Woz U is based out of Arizona, and hopes to launch physical locations for learning in more than 30 cities across the globe. At launch, the curriculum will center around computer support specialists and software developers, with courses on data science, mobile applications and cybersecurity coming in the future.

35 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. A Noble Idea by DaMattster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I like Woz, I really do. He's a good and decent human being with noble intentions but the problem is not a lack of qualified people. There are lost of qualified IT professionals that are getting passed over. The problem is one of economy because enterprises are going to India, The Phillipines, China, and Singapore for their IT needs. Some of it is offshoring, some of it is outsourcing, and a great deal of it is the importation of labor. It does not make sense to train for a career that is dwindling in the US. Companies complain that they cannot find qualified people here. This is not quite the truth. It is more like they cannot find people who are willing to work for pennies on the dollar. A better use of funds for job training would be to teach people to become advanced electricians, carpenters, skilled laborers. The job growth is in the trades. The pay is even better than entry level white-collar jobs.

    1. Re:A Noble Idea by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 4, Informative

      I've been in IT for 30 years or so. I want to be retrained to not be in IT anymore, and its partly because of what you said. People don't care about qualifications anymore, they care about bodies, and lower cost bodies means hiring more of them, even if they are useless. It is rare that I find someone that is actually good at what they do.

      And if WOZ is training people for today's jobs, many of those jobs wont exist in 6 years.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    2. Re:A Noble Idea by jamesdood · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I was at the event last night with Woz, and I can say this is more about skill sets in developing technology that just "teaching people to write code" The focus is more on innovation and engineering, building folks with the skills to do jobs that may not even exist yet. If all you are doing is learning to code, then yes, you will be supplanted by someone who can code cheaper... You must differentiate yourself from the pack if you wish to be seen as more valued than the next person. Personally I think it will be great if this is successful as there is a dearth of skilled folks to work on cutting edge projects.

      --
      *narf!*
    3. Re:A Noble Idea by DaMattster · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Pews Social Trends research is *heavily* backed by the universities because they stand to lose money if people no longer need degrees. I would advise caution about using research studies because you have to see what angle they have. The US Department of Labor sees the largest job growth in trades. There are people earning six figure salaries that are skilled laborers.

    4. Re:A Noble Idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Nobel idea? It's a for-profit school that is filling the niche that ITT once occupied before they were shut down. It sounds like its just another Phoenix University or Kaplan school which seem to exist primarily to get students to run up huge amounts of federal student loan debt. This is basically like when a celebrity lends his or her brand to some product like perfume or clothing line. The celeb has shit to do with the actual production, and I doubt Woz has any involvement with the course curriculum.

      Seriously, the only thing students are going to learn are how to fill out student loan application forms and how to get fucked up the Woz-U with a useless degree.

    5. Re:A Noble Idea by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There are lost of qualified IT professionals that are getting passed over.

      Because I don't need and IT professional. CS and IT hasn't had shift towards the trades that all other degrees have had for a while.

      When you're building a house you only need so many civil engineers and architects. At some point you need a fleet of plumbers, electricians and general contractors. That's where the engineering and IT work is at my company. Right now people are trying to cut the corner by outsourcing and it's having predictable results.

      I don't need a BS CS major. I don't even need a AS. I want a 16 year old that is eager to be in "IT" and I can converse with in English. That's it. I would hire a dozen if my manager would allow it but we're stuck outsourcing to India for the time being.

      IT and CS need to come to a realization that part of your job does not need a college education. It needs the skill sets that can be learned in 10-16 week vocational tech training. Every single other industry has a stake in that space but for some reason CS majors insist that the entirety of their job must be done by people with a CS degree.

      Hell I would hire someone that could grok Python and just write documentation. I don't even need them to understand it. Turn my trash into perfectly valid Google Style documentation. That would take a huge weight off of my shoulders and improve code around the company. Maybe they might pick up some Python on the way. That's the sort of work that tradesmen give to the grunt apprentices. Doctors have moved to train physician assistants, RNs, and a host of other positions to do most of their job so they can concentrate on what they were trained to do.

      As long as the gray beards insist that the only people that can replace them have BS degrees then the company will find the cheapest "BS" degree they can and hire them. Mechanical engineers have had mechanical engineering technologists for a while and they're amazing. It would take me twice as long to do something they do and it would be half as good. It doesn't mean I don't have a job it means I get to concentrate on the engineering.

      If you want to see CS and IT shift back to the US then you need to sell your manager on hiring 16 year olds to do your tedious work so that you can concentrate on the hard bits of it. And when those hard bits become the tedious bits, train them and move on. Rinse and repeat. If you're a manager looking for 'cheap labor' start talking to the local voctech high schools. Factor in rework and communication 'costs' and pay them well for their age. You'll come out loads ahead. They'll have relevant job experience for the future and you'll have cheap labor. If you have someone set to retire in 5 years just have the 16 year olds shadow them and do any work that they can.

    6. Re:A Noble Idea by Jzanu · · Score: 2

      They are open about methodology so read it and make specific complaints to them. Otherwise, would you also complain about the Heritage foundation report which confirms the need for advanced education at the same time? Specifically " The income advantage offered by a college degree is nearly double what it was just a generation ago. And it is the full bachelor’s degree that counts: Even someone with a two-year associate degree can expect just 29% more in annual income than a person who holds only a high-school diploma.[2]"

    7. Re: A Noble Idea by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      I keep hearing that, I'll get back to you when it actually happens.

    8. Re: A Noble Idea by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      think you need "digital laborers" to make copies of the finished product.

      I don't "need" them. They'd just make my job a lot easier and produce higher quality content than what we're getting out of India.

      You should be constantly handing your work off to someone else so you can focus on the next thing. If you're just a peon turning a crank you are going to get replaced.

    9. Re:A Noble Idea by sootman · · Score: 1

      Very well said. Agree a thousand percent.

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    10. Re:A Noble Idea by somenickname · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I agree with you in spirit but not in practice. I work for a small company and we had a top-notch, experienced EE doing design *and* soldering work for a while. Once we hired a technician to do the soldering work, the EE's productivity increased dramatically. I don't think the same can be said for many/most software jobs. I can't hire cheap labor to do my dirty work because there is no part of the process that can be pushed onto people with underwhelming qualifications. There is no equivalent of "the guy who solders my boards".

      We hire interns whenever we can but, I've long thought that maybe I spend more time helping the intern than I would if I'd just written it myself. And, when the intern leaves, it's actually pretty common to just rewrite what they did. So, it's almost certain that they are, at best, a cheap prototype vehicle.

      The tedious work in computer science is actually what a technician is *least* qualified to do. You want a 16 year old kid to create your Makefiles? Fuck that. You want a 16 year old kid to grok your network? Fuck that. Those are hard things to do and there is a reason that people make a lot of money doing them: If you are good at doing that level of tedious stuff, you are worth a lot of money. It's actually very hard to do.

      So, no, we aren't going to see a huge surge of technicians in CS. We've already seen it. It's called offshoring. And the quality of software (and support) has dramatically decreased because of it. Cheap labor and quality software are not compatible ideas. A product that involves creative thought does not lend itself to technicians. And that's what offshoring gives you: Technicians.

    11. Re:A Noble Idea by Tough+Love · · Score: 2

      I am more than a little mystified about how all the reported efforts to produce more coders seems to just result in more web script monkeys and turn-the-crank process junkies. From where I sit, the kind of "deep tech" developer who possesses the skills needed for improving the basic infrastructure underpinning the information economy seems to be a vanishing species. To put it concrete terms: massive increase in Javascript hacks. Gradual die-off of C/C++ hacks.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    12. Re:A Noble Idea by AlexChernetz · · Score: 1

      ...but for some reason CS majors insist that the entirety of their job must be done by people with a CS degree.

      Not necessarily true. I was a CE major. Where I work there's an ME who knows far more about our system than I do. We have a new developer who's been doing a great job ramping up and her background hasn't been in CS until recently. This is changing. We should encourage it.

    13. Re:A Noble Idea by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      There is no equivalent of "the guy who solders my boards".

      There absolutely is. My local voctech high school is training them.

      You want a 16 year old kid to create your Makefiles? Fuck that.

      Why not? Make is probably the first thing that I'd teach them. It drives everything else.

      You want a 16 year old kid to grok your network?

      Why not? I was about that age when I got into our school's network. Our IT admin went with 'security through obscurity'. You just had to enter your own proxy server. And at the library I found out that I could check my mail and log into IRC from the 'telnet only' card catalog machines.

      you are good at doing that level of tedious stuff, you are worth a lot of money..

      Not really.

      it's almost certain that they are, at best, a cheap prototype vehicle.

      Yeah. And if they didn't exist your 'cheap prototype' would still be done by the lowest paid engineer and still need to get done. That's exactly how they should be used, cheap idea and protoype generators.

      We've already seen it. It's called offshoring.

      Offshoring has an entire different set of problems. It has everything to do with communication. There were times I had enough trouble communicating my idea to peers with advanced degrees in the same location. They were brilliant but had ESL and so there was a communications gap. And that's with people I knew were competent.

      I've seen it take a week just to convey a simple thought of what what needed. It's something I could have gotten across to a 16 year old standing next to me in a few minutes. I would absolutely hire a dozen people that went through a Python bootcamp to do work. I only ask that they have the same native language as myself and that I can talk to them in person at least once a week. Beyond that I don't have any need for a BS graduate.

    14. Re:A Noble Idea by somenickname · · Score: 3, Informative

      I genuinely admire what you're doing and really wish that a vocational "Software Engineering Drudgery" degree would be a thing but, I just don't see how it's possible. The drudgery requires just as much logic skills as the product. I would almost say that the best software teams are the ones who make their smartest guys build the infrastructure (including Makefiles, networking, etc). Everything else floats on that raft. I sure as hell don't want my raft built by a 16 year old.

      I say this as a guy who dropped out of college as a junior at the age of 18. 20 years later, my lack of degree has had *zero* effect on my ability to get a job but, I'm acutely aware of how bad I was at doing... well... anything... at the age of 18.

      I'd love to have a vocational software assistant but, software is complex enough that I barely trust experienced co-workers to write it, let alone a 16 year old kid.

    15. Re:A Noble Idea by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      Metrics. "Every call is answered by a qualified technician in 30 secs or less on average"

      "Qualified" meaning, can read a script off a teleprompter, and then blame the customer.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  2. when will they learn by TimMD909 · · Score: 1

    Not everyone is capable doing technology work. Of those who wish to that work, many choose not to, shrinking the pool of available workers even lower. I wish the powers that be would understand that. But tech is cool now, and everyone's trying to get a piece.

    1. Re:when will they learn by Jzanu · · Score: 1

      It has little to do with "cool" instead this is the route to higher incomes due to disparity in valuation of productive activity. What you are talking about isn't the target either. This program has a focus on engineering applications and infrastructure work. There is still room for development in these fields and the target is much larger.

      Income inequality is rooted in differences in skill development not some imagined super power or talent and the larger world economy depends on developing workforces that adapt to technology. A mechanic now needs to understand integrated semiconductor electronics for the most advanced cars, and similar skill increases are demanded in all professions.

      Honestly there is nothing value-added about most software produced for consumer applications, and the forefront is in research itself. That field is more distant but accessible to people who pursue intense advanced studies in technology.

    2. Re:when will they learn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Agree. Even now there are too many people in tech, that are not really capable of doing what they should be doing. That leads to sub-par solutions all across the board. More of those people will just lead to even more of this. The thing that would help is finding the people who are actually good enough and empower them. But as the "business" people aren't about to relinquish power that will never happen at a large enough scale.

  3. Close enough for a slogan. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

    Teaching out the Woz U to get you learnin' up the wazoo.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  4. I know they can, and I want to show them how by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

    Possibly relevant.

  5. HR wants a 4 year piece of paper in CS for ADMIN w by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    HR wants a 4 year piece of paper in CS for ADMIN work. They like to Passover people who go to schools like this. Even out side of tech this HR BS hurts trades and the trade school credits don't transfer

  6. Re:HR wants a 4 year piece of paper in CS for ADMI by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    People who go the trade schools get passed over by HR types.

  7. He missed a classic opportunity - by sheramil · · Score: 1

    - to name it Wossamotta U - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    "Our praise for you will never cease. / All hail magenta and cerise."

  8. Re:I already have a career in "Tech" by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1
    I'll concur.

    While I have a degree in EE, and have often held a position of software engineer, the majority of that work has been explaining to lower level CS software engineers what and how to write, not writing code. Although I have done more than my share of that too.

  9. Yet someone else taking advantage of Woz by mschuyler · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yet someone else taking advantage of Woz, I'm guessing, getting him to invest in an IT Tech University scam knowing full-well he would be enthusiastic about such an endeavor. He certainly won't be managing or really 'heading up' such a project in any meaningful way, having said more than once that he is not a 'managerial type.' I have always had the fear that one day I would awaken to the news that Woz was completely broke, having trusted glib promoters with his entire fortune.

    --
    How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
  10. Re:I already have a career in "Tech" by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

    Seven years is more than enough time to repay loans and to buy a house with cash. Then get a job at a dorky company at just above minimum wage and retire comfortably.

  11. Woz is 280 in dog years... by neurosys · · Score: 1

    Woz hasn't done anything relevant in 40 years. The few things he DID do were only brought to us by the vision and tenacity of Jobs. Everyone loves the big teddy bear and all, but he is way out of his league. He should just go back to posting hi travels on his social media, doing events, photo-ops and cameos on TV. He just needs to move along... he simply isn't relevant anymore.

    1. Re:Woz is 280 in dog years... by fluffernutter · · Score: 1

      I don't know much about him, but he seems to be the type that wants to do something that is legitimately good for everyone. It's hard to be relevant in the current climate when you are that type of person.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  12. Yes, but by Latent+Heat · · Score: 1

    Woz is still with us?

  13. Re:A Noble Idea - INTERNS! by gabrieltss · · Score: 1

    My company has been trying to hire Americans and found several good ones. Our problem is pretty much all of them don't want to move to a Midwest smaller size town (about 30,000-40,000 people). They want to be in the "big cities". We have gone to having a VERY successful intern program. We bring in about 4-6 IT interns and hire half of them every year for the last 3 years. We have been getting HIGH quality interns from local universities in the state. We have been releasing the Indian contractors we had as we back fill with interns. The scary part - ALL our American interns have run circles around the Indian contractors we had who supposedly had so much experience.

    --
    The Truth is a Virus!!!
  14. Re:A Noble Idea - INTERNS! by gabrieltss · · Score: 1

    No, we were offering some senior level people 6 figures. We brought one mid to senior level person in in last year in the 80K - 90K range.They brought me in 6 years ago in the 90K range. That is GOOD Money in the midwest!

    --
    The Truth is a Virus!!!
  15. Re:I already have a career in "Tech" by Osgeld · · Score: 1

    where I live, 96.2k a yea is like twice the median income of my state, I don't live a lavish lifestyle but I got a nice plot of land with a decent house of appropriate size, pay all my bills on time and have leftovers to either stash in the pot or buy things I want ... within reason

    another "Tech" misnomer, you got to live in outlandish places to be in it, I work for a 6.2 billion dollar a year multinational, I dont make 96k a year, but I live in a state where the median is 47k. lets be realistic for a moment, the median for the entire united states is 57-59k, not making 120 and living in a box van in the parking lot sillicon valley, new york or other extreme outliers

  16. Re:I already have a career in "Tech" by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

    Yeah. Twenty years after graduation, few of my former classmates that I keep in touch with are employed by choice. Most have gone into some sort or another of quasi-retirement, especially if they have a working spouse.

  17. Re:A Noble Idea - INTERNS! by Richard+Dick+Head · · Score: 1

    Its a tough sell for an experienced engineer...buying a house is pretty much out of the question in this scenario, since you're likely the only game in town. If the company needed to cut heads then the engineer would have to uproot quickly. Given your average 2-3 year stint, add in all the extra costs associated with moving twice, and the guaranteed long unemployment stretch afterward since lots of the inexpensive tech hub city jobs aren't interested in relocators, it makes less sense than you might think than just based on the salary and location alone.

    For interns it makes more sense...they're probably able to move there for next to nothing with their few pieces of Ikea dorm furniture, and they'll bounce on their own terms in 2-3 years.

    --
    The real path to male liberation