Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Accelerating Effort To Bring CS To More Than 133,000 US Schools
theodp writes: In addition to a monetary commitment of $10 million in cash and donations to Code.org, Amazon reports it's also accelerating the effort to bring computer science to all U.S. high schools by having employees spend time at Code.org, while maintaining employment at Amazon. According to the company's Day One blog, Amazon has lent its employees to help the tech-bankrolled nonprofit "gather data about computer science programs, or lack thereof, at every single school across the country." (There are over 133,000 schools in the United States.) Amazon added: "Putting this data on a map and combining it with what we know about the school's population, lets us see whether access to computer science courses are concentrated in wealthier schools or schools that are less diverse, and will help us bring access to the schools that need it most. [...] It will also ultimately support the much-needed pipeline for workers who are well versed in computer science."
Earlier, Code.org noted it was compiling the national database for use by the nonprofit and the CS community to "make our shared vision [for every school to teach computer science] a reality," but didn't note the involvement of Amazon, which committed $50 million last fall to the White House's new computer science push (part of a larger $300 million tech sector commitment). Execs from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Infosys occupy four of Code.org's nine board seats and have contributed $33+ million to the nonprofit (Facebook has kicked in another $10+ million). Hey, it's what parents want!
Earlier, Code.org noted it was compiling the national database for use by the nonprofit and the CS community to "make our shared vision [for every school to teach computer science] a reality," but didn't note the involvement of Amazon, which committed $50 million last fall to the White House's new computer science push (part of a larger $300 million tech sector commitment). Execs from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Infosys occupy four of Code.org's nine board seats and have contributed $33+ million to the nonprofit (Facebook has kicked in another $10+ million). Hey, it's what parents want!
And the purpose is, as always, to flood the market and drive wages down.
Got to have an insurance policy, in case something crazy happens like we stop importing so many from low wage countries.
I'm of the opinion that we're in the middle of an inflating Second Dotcom Bubble. Having lived through the First one, I'm seeing similar patterns, one of which is, "We need more computer science students!" I think it would be beneficial for everyone to have a basic understanding of how computers work below the consumer level, especially now that things are so abstract and "Just Work(TM)" But, let's call it what it is...an attempt to push AWS adoption. Big hardware and software companies have done this for years...Sun practically gave away workstations and servers to universities in the hopes that people would buy them in their businesses later. Apple, same thing. And, Microsoft/Google are nearly giving away O365 and GSuite for the same reasons.
I see a lot of comments saying they're trying to drive salaries down by flooding the market. While I'm sure that's true to some extent, offshoring and visa programs have already done this. I also see comments on topics like this that basically treat development as some sort of priesthood that outsiders can't join. Reality is that we're 400 levels abstracted away from real hardware in most cases these days. Especially with "code monkey" type projects like front-end JavaScript or CRUD applications, we're almost at the gluing-Lego-blocks-together level of simplicity. Go beyond that and it's exponentially harder, but these Dotcom Bubble startups and cloud providers don't need CS geniuses for the next round of expansion.
The industry would be better served by teaching some of the basics to get the interested students hooked, publicly state that there are actually long-term opportunities in development and IT that aren't going to end up in India in 5 years, and make available entry-level positions that pay a reasonable starting salary. Students aren't dumb, and especially when they're paying huge sums for a degree, they're going to go with what they perceive as a safe career path. Current students who have IT and developer parents are probably seeing first-hand to some extent the effects of downward pressure on salaries, outsourcing and offshoring. I love my job in systems engineering and am good at it, but I work for a multinational company and know that I'm one MBA's spreadsheet and PowerPoint away from being kicked out when the CIO hires Infosys or similar.