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

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.

Comments

A Noble Idea

[DaMattster]

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.

Re:A Noble Idea

[Archangel Michael]

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.

Re:A Noble Idea

[jamesdood]

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.

Re:A Noble Idea

[DaMattster]

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.

Re:A Noble Idea

[0100010001010011]

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.

Re:A Noble Idea

[Jzanu]

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]"

Re:A Noble Idea

[somenickname]

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.

Re:A Noble Idea

[Tough Love]

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.

Re:A Noble Idea

[somenickname]

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.

Yet someone else taking advantage of Woz

[mschuyler]

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.