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Education Businesses Software United States

Virginia To Produce 25K-35K Additional CS Grads As Part of Amazon HQ2 Deal (loudounnow.com) 165

Posted by BeauHD from the more-the-merrier dept.
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!
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Virginia To Produce 25K-35K Additional CS Grads As Part of Amazon HQ2 Deal More

Virginia To Produce 25K-35K Additional CS Grads As Part of Amazon HQ2 Deal

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  • So like the Foxconn deal? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Pretend you'll add jobs, but really you want to import workers from Asia while reaping corporate welfare?

    The placement of HQ deux and trois near Wall Street and Pennsylvania Ave is no coincidence.

  • In my neck of the woods these are mostly H1-Bs (Score:5, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday November 17, 2018 @11:23AM (#57660758)
    Well, technically it's a different program, but here's how it works:

    Already trained programmer comes over from India, goes to "school" and at the same time works for a company who's sponsoring them. Ordinarily the programmer couldn't keep up with a full time school and work load, but they've already been trained in their country. Meanwhile the programs are closed to Americans, and even if they weren't again, nobody can keep up with 40+/week at a job + 300/400 level class workloads unless they already know the material.

    The company gets cheap labor, the school gets a quick influx of cash from a student who doesn't need any time from his professors. Everybody wins except the American worker who's out a job (or at least has lost 30% of his/her wages due to reduced demand, yep, supply & demand works both ways folks) and the American student who is competing for a limited spot in 300+ level courses with somebody who already took the course.

    • Re:In my neck of the woods these are mostly H1-Bs (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Saturday November 17, 2018 @11:25AM (#57660770) Journal
      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 (Score:4, Insightful)

        by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Saturday November 17, 2018 @11:35AM (#57660812)

        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.

        • >But that's exactly what Industry wants.

          Nope. When we hire, we are looking for people who can think and do.

          • >But that's exactly what Industry wants.

            Nope. When we hire, we are looking for people who can think and do.

            Unfortunately, a lot of companies want that but at cut rate prices. As the labor market tightens the cheapskates will lose talent; and whine thay can't get any or people don't turn up for interviews. If you hadn't treated them like crap when you had the upperhand they wouldn't turn around and do the same to you.

            • >But that's exactly what Industry wants.

              Nope. When we hire, we are looking for people who can think and do.

              Unfortunately, a lot of companies want that but at cut rate prices. As the labor market tightens the cheapskates will lose talent; and whine thay can't get any or people don't turn up for interviews. If you hadn't treated them like crap when you had the upperhand they wouldn't turn around and do the same to you.

              Fear not, after a year or so, most of these graduates will find out what its like to work in the field, and most will decide that they don't like it.

              Trying to imagine these kids working in an industry where you don't get to take the day off when the Weather Channel forcasts snow, or when your employer thinks that a 40 hour week is only for department supervisor and above. We had trouble getting the kids to work even 40 hours. Gotta have those mental health days off, yaknow.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by gmack ( 197796 )

                Or they quiet and go work for a less trendy company who doesn't make such insane demands on their time. Working long hours has an adverse affect on code quality. If employees are regularly working more than 40 hour weeks, something is seriously wrong with the management.

                Up here, employers are now competing on quality of life rather than just higher paychecks.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by rtb61 ( 674572 )

              Interesting thing about the low end of the market and lots of skilled labour, like piranha they go after the sharks by becoming franchise associations. Creating a school of suppliers to tackle the major suppliers ie employee owned companies tackling the share holding slow flat greedy whale sharks. The core of providing computer support services, on both large and small scale, defined around the nature of particular tech support franchisers, that combination of providing all digital services, in all market a

          • 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...

            • >But we'd have to fully fund our schools and have training programs to use them.

              You think only the US has schools?

              • I don't even know what would make you say that, but let me be a little more blunt: I'm saying the American Right wing no longer invests in schooling in America because they can get cheap, already trained workers overseas and bring them here. This is why college is so expensive now: we cut federal and state funding starting in the mid 90s and continued up until the mid 2000s only stopping when it was all but gone.
                If companies didn't have cheap labor from overseas they wouldn't have allowed that to happen

            • all anyone can remember about Marx is that Stalin and Mao borrowed his books for rhetoric...

              Don't forget Bernie Sanders.

          • Nope.

            One point of data says what? (That's figurative, by the way.)

            • Nope.

              One point of data says what? (That's figurative, by the way.)

              More than generalizing the whole industry as behaving the same.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by plopez ( 54068 )

            I've heard that many times. But once out working for the company all is drones doing things that are basically COBOL in drag.

        • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

          by 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.

      • 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"

        lol, you think they said please.

    • Oh, if anyone's wondering why they go through (Score:4, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday November 17, 2018 @11:29AM (#57660788)
      all that rigamarole it's because they've already hit the cap on every other visa program they can get workers from. It's an end run around the normal limits.

      What I wish was folks would elect politicians who would do something about it. 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, and it's not like he's unaware, he talked about it during the campaign. Here we are 2 years in and not a damn thing's changed. He said some mean things and there was talk of less immigrants coming, but that didn't show up in the numbers or my wages.

      • What have you got against other people's spouses?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        If spouses can't work then you won't get the skilled labour you need. This fantasy that good people will come to work for a few years by themselves and then go home is unrealistic. You want good people, you have to offer them a good deal.

      • What I wish was folks would elect politicians who would do something about it. 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, and it's not like he's unaware, he talked about it during the campaign. Here we are 2 years in and not a damn thing's changed. He said some mean things and there was talk of less immigrants coming, but that didn't show up in the numbers or my wages.

        You didn't think that Trump and the Republicans work for you did you?

        Dood! There's money to be made, and baksheesh to be reeled in. As long as the party of the Moral High Ground can tell you what you want to hear, and then do as they dam well please, and still get your vote, this is what you'll get. Trump 2020 - do not disappoint them!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gmack ( 197796 )

        Cutting back on H1-Bs and their spouses only moves more jobs offshore.

        It was clear to anyone who had half a brain that Trump could never deliver on most of his promises and that many of his promises would have counterproductive results if implemented.

        Meanwhile, I live in a country that allows more immigrants than the US, I often find myself in offices full of recent immigrants from India, China and eastern Europe and I still have employers trying to out bid each other to get me on board.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        "it's not like he's unaware, he talked about it during the campaign" Oh what faith you have in Trump's intellectual abilities. He doesn't recall ever saying that during the campaign. Stop attributing powers and abilities to him he has not.

      • Why are you so eager to put other people out of work?

    • FREE LUNCH IN TULSA (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Tulsa Remote will offer a $10,000 grant, free working space, discounted rent and more to talented people who will move to and work remotely from Tulsa for a year.

      https://www.kansas.com/news/business/article221592120.html

      Tulsa World. Nov. 13, 2018.
      free
      — What?! That's right, the Kaiser foundation is going to pay people $10,000 to live in Tulsa for a year

      The George Kaiser Family Foundation has come up with another bright idea — a bold and creative plan that is sure to catch a lot of attention.

      The f

      • Heard it was available for 20 people. If so, that's not a lot of incentive to apply. My guess is that you've got more than 20 applications already.

        • My guess is that you've got more than 20 applications already.

          Only from folks whose experience with the place is limited to flying over it.

        • Heard it was available for 20 people. If so, that's not a lot of incentive to apply.

          That's an appropriate number for a pilot program.

          Tulsa's too high crime for my tastes, but I'm sure its much lower that the rate in which lots of the targeted population live. And it's a shall issue concealed carry state, so you've at least got a fighting chance if you so choose.

          • And it's a shall issue concealed carry state

            If they carry on with the program, a great addition might be a handgun of your choice foreach person that takes them up on the offer, and three security cameras.

          • Tulsa's too high crime for my tastes

            That's the least of its problems; the bad part is north Tulsa which throws me off the average immensely.

        • My guess is that you've got more than 20 applications already.

          My guess, it that the 20 "winners" are politically well connected and were planning on moving to Tulsa anyway.

          And will have been selected, before the "program" was even announced.

          20 folks are a gimmick . . . 2000 would be a program.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I agree. Unless the students are 3rd generation U.S. citizens, (this is, their grandparents
      were born on U.S. soil) this is just going to be abused exactly the way you've stated. And
      no, I'm not racist. It takes 3 generations to fully embrace American culture, values, and ideals.
      I'm also applying what is applied in other countries - just try to go to India and you'll see the
      same 3-generation rule there are well.

      CAP === 'conjunct'

      • My great grandparents came over legally from Ireland and Scotland in the 1890s. They had fully embraced American Culture not too long after, and well before they even earned their citizenship.

        And after their arrival, they simply referred to themselves as Americans without the from elsewhere prefix.

      • Unless the students are 3rd generation U.S. citizens...

        Depends entirely on their culture and their reasons for immigrating here.

  • Salaries! Salaries! Salaries! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by 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!

  • 25K-35K Additional CS Grads still with loans easy to hit and NO RISK to the state.

  • Oh, no. They are going to take theodp's jerb. This guy is so fixated on CS education.. Ridiculous.

  • Or a crazier idea... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pollux ( 102520 ) <speter@tedat[ ]et.eg ['a.n' in gap]> on Saturday November 17, 2018 @11:38AM (#57660822) Journal

    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.

    • Might even need a fewer developers if they didn't hire a bunch of new kids right out of college who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag. I can't even really see how a company like Amazon would even use 25,000 programmers. They can't possibly have that much code, and the code they do have is probably rather complicated and probably can't even be understood by new CS grads.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's not even that complicated. Amazon could pay to train people, but why bother when cities are falling over themselves to offer billions of dollars in bribes?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

      Based on what I heard from people who had worked at Amazon, it's not even pay that's the problem, it's the work life balance.

      With this plan they'll have a huge pool of new graduates who's willing to put in however many hours their manager asks of them.

      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.

      I've not heard of any major tech company close a dev office completely (besides mergers and bankruptcies). They expand to new areas while keeping their old offices.

  • Even with a lot of incentives for being a CS grad, I have personally seen that a lot of people just do not like being in a pure CS major. I honestly have no idea how they could possible double the number of grads...

    Maybe sixth super high bonuses for every successful CS grad? Maybe.

    Or maybe you redefine the requirements for what a CS major needs to take... I suppose that might do it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      We pretty much have already anybody competent and qualified and a lot of semi-competent ones getting that degree. The only way to increase these numbers is to give the degree to the incompetent. That actually will produce "graduates" with massively negative productivity. There is a reason any STEM field has high standards for its graduates. Apparently, CS does still not qualify as "serious".

      • I totally agree with you, that the only way to really increase numbers are to include a lot of people who are just not good at CS... so why would Amazon even want such people?

        It lends a lot of veracity to what others were posting, that it's just a ploy for Amazon to get more H1-B workers.

        More programmers for Alexa I guess!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          H1-B, or generally lowering salaries for CS graduates. The latter would be an incredibly stupid thing to do, because it would just mean even more smart people stay away from CS.

          Personally, I can only recommend CS or IT-related studies these days for people that both have an engineering mind-set and are way above average. All others are going to be treated like Morlocks that have no value and are easily interchangeable. It is an utter disgrace.

  • This is how Government Solves problems folks (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SirAstral ( 1349985 ) on Saturday November 17, 2018 @01:10PM (#57661110)

    I know many of you have valid complaints about this system but this is how these problems are solved when you get government involve. This is not an anti-government rant either. There are some things you need government to solve and there are things that you don't need government to solve. This problem is not a problem you need government to solve.

    For everyone saying Free-Market is dead, this is its replacement. The gerrymandering of resources and products from behind the scenes using slight of hand and and a couple of rhetorical platitudes. The Free-Market is not just something this generation of Americans hate, but also something that has been long killed off by the previous generation that "espoused" it.

    No business or government likes or wants a free-market because they have little to no control in them. They have to compete with the choices that consumers are making and in order to gain that control, they will create a problem that does not exist, but matches closely enough with one to make it appear valid. The same strategy of convincing citizens that governments need to build massive armies to protect them only to use them as a police force is the same strategy here. Make a NON problem up so that control or a gimmick can be introduced to remove liberty or suppress consumers/citizens in some way that is not immediately apparent.

    There is no enterprise as industrious as Government when it comes to solving problems that never existed. America has most definitely either become or is headlong into being an Oligarchy. I cannot think of a single area of life from Taxes to Food where a business has not sweet talked (bribed) government into creating a regulation that serves them instead of protecting the citizen and this "deal" is just one more example of the thousands of examples that are out there.

  • All this nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Beeftopia ( 1846720 ) on Saturday November 17, 2018 @01:40PM (#57661192)

    All this nonsense, and the tax breaks/subsidies, while the headquarters were always going to go in close to his residences :)

    Bezos is a brilliant guy no question, but this shows how effective a negotiator he is, and how ineffective, outside of military force, politicians are.

  • Because current numbers already contain all the semi-competent and you cannot "produce" smart people...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The education will reflect the demographics of the surrounding community.
      Take in lots of really random people.
      Educate them with lots of new ideas. New ways to teach computers. Robot kits and new GUI. Computer ethics and less of that complex old math.
      Expect the education to work for this generation as its a new way of educating.
      See what the tests and exams show.
      Work out that using merit to select students first would have been a good idea. Past decades showed that too.
      New data shows more new money
  • Just change the titles on the degrees before you print them up
    Gender Studies/Computer Science
    Art History/Computer Science
    Sports Medicine Therapy/Computer Science
    Political Science/Computer Science
    etc, etc, etc, problem solved. Everyone knows a college degree is just proof an individual is educated and can do any job.

    The government is going to create/accomplish something by investing (giving a bunch of other peoples money to their buddies) in said project. lolololololol

    If you don't believe me just fi

  • Sounds like a Great Leap Forward for software

    The Great Leap Forward was an economic and social campaign by the Communist Party of China. The campaign was led by Chairman Mao Zedong and aimed to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a socialist society through rapid industrialization and collectivization. However, it is commonly considered to have caused the Great Chinese Famine.

    Backyard furnaces were small steel blast furnaces used by the people of China during the Great Leap Forward (

    • The big issue for the famine not the furnaces but the grossly incompetent management of the collectivesed farms. They did things like over plant and plough too deep based on idiotic communist theories. Then the management claimed huge success despite failures, and sent the food to the cities. Some 30 million starved to death. Hundreds of millions would have been desperately, chronically hungry.

      It was Dilbert ^ 2, or maybe 2 ^ Dilbert. But involving life and death. I'd like to think that western cultu

  • But, I am fairly sure they have zero intention of hiring any of these (imaginary) CS graduates.

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