The Coders of Kentucky(nytimes.com) |
The Coders of Kentucky(nytimes.com) |
Right now they're taking millions in gov. money to train a small amount of people... but Kentucky graduates many more people with degrees in CS every year, by about an order of magnitude. There are basically no "good" software jobs in the state, so a lot of the good graduates leave to go work at Amazons and Googles. Training local talent is good, but you have to have more jobs than Interapt, OpenText, UPS, and GE to cultivate a local tech industry.
What I think Kentucky should do is focus on brining remote workers back, for now - once there's a strong local talent pool, then you can begin courting businesses, not vice versa. I know a guy who went back to care for parents while keeping his $200k+ salary, which makes you pretty rich in Kentucky terms, and also provides a huge tax benefit to the state. I know lots of people at big west coast tech companies that would like to take their west coast salaries back home, but as is, I don't think any of us would go back to work at Interapt.
I know several fellow southerners and midwesterners who are working at large tech firms out here. No matter how much we may love where we come from, there's simply no realistic avenue for us to go back.
Places like Kentucky already have huge tech talent pools, but the workers are currently in exile in the coasts. I'd imagine if these states focused more on bringing tech firms to their state, they'd see a lot of that tech talent return home.
This article in the Herald Leader explains and give some numbers to what you're saying https://www.kentucky.com/news/business/article181564581.html Supposedly some of the reason the group was pushed by some larger employers in the area that were hearing potential employees were turning down offers because if the job didn't turn out well in the long run there weren't many alternatives.
Obviously I get hit with dozen different taxes in Seattle, but I'm also able to reap the benefits like decent public transit and well maintained roads/sidewalks. I seriously struggle to understand where my taxes went in KY. It's a pretty abysmal situation.
There are lots of talented programmers in places you wouldn't expect. Many of us have no desire to move to a giant megalopolis where we'd have a higher cost of living, more taxes, a two hour commute, and a poor culture fit in our community.
The only way I'd consider a job working for a tech company down in America is if I could work remote around 75% of the time. It'd also have to be really interesting. There's no way I'd give up summers on the boat with my dad or unparalleled back country snowboarding in the winter.
If you're looking to outsource some work to AK I can list a few resources that will help:
and two popular consulting companies up here:
Disclaimer: I did not list my consulting company.
The problem is convincing these smaller companies of that fact. Many of these smaller businesses are owned by people who are deeply suspicious of technology, often with good reason. They've been burned by slick salespeople who've promised the moon and have saddled them with software that they don't know how to understand or maintain which now has vital financial or customer data.
As a result, many smaller companies (such as sole proprietorships) don't understand how far along software has come, and the role that software plays in allowing larger companies to squeeze them on margins.
"On its first run in 2016, Interapt had 800 applicants, accepted 50 and graduated 35."
Any strategy that posits IT and programming "insourcing" as a solution for the troubles of Middle America is going to have to have a strategy for the 750/800 people who don't have the chops to become a software engineer.
[1] Not to mention that coding websites and apps doesn't exactly make you an integral part of the economic tissue of Hueysville, KY, as opposed to the much-maligned coal jobs.
I live in rural Arkansas, and there are basically no tech jobs here. My salary is much less than it’d be in LA (where my employer is located), but is still something like four times the median family income here.
I feel like I have the best of both worlds, and wish I could help others here make it in our industry - but who wants to hire remote junior devs?
I think it comes down to access to education. Coastal US businesses would be happy to "outsource" work to these areas if these skillsets were widely available there. Perhaps, trade schools and coding bootcamps like the one in this article will be enough to bring these jobs.
Far less of a communication barrier when you all speak English as your primary language. (communication breakdown has got to be the biggest reason outsourcing fails.)
No huge time zone delta. This means you don't usually have to wait 24 hours before you get a reply to your email.
Easier to fly the developers over for meetings or to show them around your facilities.
If Kentucky was a good outsourcing hub, then the good developers would eventually just leave to find better jobs, unless the local jobs paid almost as well, in which case it doesn't make much sense to continue outsourcing to Kentucky! Borders prevent Indians and Eastern Europeans from doing this
I work and recruit people in a a market that is in the 50-75 range. It’s definately feasible for a larger company to hire/develop, but it’s difficult for a smaller company due to the smaller number of “fungible” mid career people.
The thing that’s so offensive about the outsourcing hubs is that for bigger companies they just suppress wages with a constant flow of cheap labor with no rights.
By eliminating job competition at the entry level, they are putting a wet blanket on the domestic market.
I just got into the job market (I studied for 8 years, 4 degrees, now graduated for good, did some serious jobs on the side).
So far I disagree. I have had 5 freelance gigs: two in iOS (couple of years ago), one as a web dev coding instructor for a year (1 to 2 years ago), one in React frontend (1.5 years ago) and now 1 as a full-stack/dev-ops/semi 'data scientist' person.
Computer science allows me to rise above the difficulties that I'm facing now since all I'm building are glorified CRUD apps. I am looking for a company that takes software engineering more seriously than this. Because of building glorified CRUD apps and some knowledge of soft skills + some git knowledge is all there is, then a computer science degree is overkill.
For comparison: I made iphone apps during courses in my CS degree, I disabled viruses, fiddled around with concolic execution, created a computer graphics engine, created a compiler(ish) an operating system(ish), learned UML, some software architecture.
How is this not enough for CRUD apps?
When people work together (across partisan, economic, social, etc.) divides, everybody benefits.
Kudos to everyone involved in this one.
It's an observable reality that most "pure" mathematical proofs are rather less rigorous than the best CS work, simply because peer reviewers are rather more lenient than computing machines.
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD13xx/E...
What does that have to do with the article? I really despise the media bias and overtly political tone that seeps its way into everything. I live in the South.
The real story should be the economy is booming, opportunities are omnipresent, and the American dream of working hard and progressing your way up the financial ladder of success is obtainable for everybody. Kudos for going out taking the class, learning to code, and taking control of your future and economic success.
I'm from this area of Kentucky and the fact that it went for Trump has everything to do with the subject.
I'm 36 now, and coal has been in decline for almost my entire life. Yet the area cannot move beyond it because they keep waiting for 'coal to come back'. Politicians come and lie, and say they will return them to the glory days of coal. Trump came and told the most brazen, unrealistic lies of any previous politician. And so the state went for Trump.
Coal isn't coming back, and Appalachia cannot accept this. Until they can accept this and move on, Appalachia will always be impoverished. Sure the rest of the country is having economic boom times, but Trump made Kentucky worse.
Unemployment rates and total laborforce are at lows and highs respectively since 2000 in Kentucky as of the latest bls data (look at the graph since 2000). Nonfarm wage and salary metrics are at all time record highs in Kentucky. The data suggests contrary, you may have a promising career at the NYT.
Taking the state wide average masks how bad things are in Appalachia. Eastern Kentucky cannot catch up to the rest of the state until politicians stop lying to them and lay bare the sobering reality: Coal isn't coming back.