Virginia To Produce 25K-35K Additional CS Grads As Part of Amazon HQ2 Deal (loudounnow.com)

theodp writes: Developers! Developers! Developers! To make good on the proposal that snagged it a share of the Amazon HQ2 prize, the State of Virginia is also apparently on the hook for doubling the annual number of graduates with computer science or closely related degrees, with a goal to add 25,000 to 35,000 graduates (Amazon's HQ2 RFP demanded info on "education programs related to computer science"). To do that, the state will establish a performance-based investment fund for higher education institutions to expand their bachelor's degree programs, and spend up to $375 million on George Mason University's Arlington campus and a new Virginia Tech campus in Alexandria. The state will also spend $50 million on STEM + CS education in public schools and expanding internships for higher education students.

Amazon is certainly focused on boosting the ranks of software engineer types. Earlier this month, Amazon launched Amazon Future Engineer, a program that aims to teach more than 10 million students a year how to code, part of a $50 million Amazon commitment to computer science education that was announced last year at a kickoff event for the Ivanka Trump-led White House K-12 CS Initiative. And on Wednesday, Amazon-bankrolled Code.org -- Amazon is a $10+ million Diamond Supporter of the nonprofit; CS/EE grad Jeff Bezos is a $1+ million Gold Supporter -- announced it has teamed with Amazon Future Engineer to build and launchHour of Code: Dance Party, a signature tutorial for this December's big Hour of Code (powered by AWS in 2017), which has become something of a corporate infomercial (Microsoft recently boasted "learners around the world have completed nearly 100 million Minecraft Hour of Code sessions"). Students participating in the Dance Party tutorial, Code.org explained, can choose from 30 hits like Katy Perry's "Firework" and code interactive dance moves and special effects as they learn basic CS concepts. "The artists whose music is used in this tutorial are not sponsoring or endorsing Amazon as part of licensing use of their music to Code.org," stresses a footnote in Code.org's post. So, don't try to make any connections between Katy Perry's Twitter endorsement of the Code.org/Amazon tutorial later that day and those same-day follow-up Amazon and Katy Perry tweets touting their new exclusive Amazon Music streaming deal, kids!

Comments

Salaries! Salaries! Salaries!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because $4billion+ in tax breaks wasn't enough, let's make sure there's excess developers to keep salaries nice and low! Because at Amazon, it's all about the lowest prices... for everything but executives!

Re:In my neck of the woods these are mostly H1-Bs

[JaredOfEuropa]

In other words: "Please pay to train our workforce. And please make sure you train enough of them to drive the hourly wage down a bit, we're not running a damn charity here"

Re:In my neck of the woods these are mostly H1-Bs

[david.emery]

What we'll get from programs like this are "coders who know the latest buzz-technology", but not "designers who know how to think and learn." But that's exactly what Industry wants. They don't -invest in human capital-, they just look for disposable staff who happen to know this year's fad.

Or a crazier idea...

[Pollux]

How about Amazon just pay their employees more?

This is just another brazen example of a company who is privatizing profit and socializing risk. In a normal free economy (low supply + high demand = higher cost), if there's a scarcity of qualified employers, then the employee either needs to raise salaries, or train under-qualified employees. But Amazon prefers to put that cost on the state of Virginia. Virginia will artificially inflate their CS grads, with the cost of both modifying their educational resources and reducing labor pools that may be better suited or in greater demand elsewhere. All the while, Amazon saves on the cost of training, keeping more profit, rather than invest in their company and their employees.

And the moment Virginia reneges on their agreement, or fails to deliver on continued demands that will undoubtedly continue to flow from Amazon corporate in the subsequent years, becomes the moment where Amazon closes up shop and moves elsewhere. There is no loyalty or community to this agreement, only corporate demand and political capitulation.

Re:Just what we need

[guruevi]

I've found it hard to hire high quality CS people. Even at premium rates I only got a handful of applicants and most of them didn't have any experience (some had a degree but then went on and did basically data entry).

The problem the US has is that anyone can pass an engineering education, the standards have been lowered due to all sorts of social improvement/engineering and equality of outcome programs. If you HAVE to graduate x% across all sorts of arbitrary dimensions, the standards are lower for everyone.

I have people graduating with a CS/EE degree that know a little C don't know Python, can't even program an Arduino.

Re:In my neck of the woods these are mostly H1-Bs

[Anonymous Coward]

..but not "designers who know how to think and learn." ...

You mean like 99% of the existing fauxgrammers who know a little Python and think that makes them Mr Robot?

You have an unrealistically high expectation of 'Murican programmers.

There's no shortage of those in America

[rsilvergun]

But we'd have to fully fund our schools and have training programs to use them. With India you don't just get somebody who's trained, you get somebody trained on their own dime. They have to do compete in the screwed up economy over there. This is all part of the race to the bottom that Marx warned us about, but all anyone can remember about Marx is that Stalin and Mao borrowed his books for rhetoric...

Re: Oh, if anyone's wondering why they go through

[mangastudent]

His executive orders tend to be reversed by the courts in SF or Seattle right away.

Exactly. Even if he's undoing a pure (and illegal) Obama executive order like DACA, it gets put on hold until it makes it to the Supreme court, should they deign to hear the case.

But quoting the author:

Trump promised, but he still hasn't even reverse Obama's executive order letting H1-B spouses work. He could do that with a stroke of a pen

As we're noted, he cannot in practice end it with "a stroke of a pen", so his administration is doing it through the normal rules making process. It should come into effect in 1-2 months based on my searching just now and memory.

Of course, the 9th Circuit might nullify it anyway, but it'll be in theory harder to sustain.