Microsoft, Intel Draft 500,000+ JROTC Kids To Fight National CS Talent Shortage 67
theodp writes: It'll be interesting to see how Microsoft employees wary of empowering the military react to Wednesday's news of an Intel and Microsoft-led alliance that aims to enlist an army of JROTC high school students to fight the war for CS talent, with support from U.S. lawmakers. From the press release: Today, at the 2019 CSforALL Summit, leaders representing CSforALL and Air Force Junior ROTC announced JROTC-CS, an innovative new initiative that could dramatically increase the number of U.S. high school students taking an Advanced Placement computer science course, particularly among underrepresented populations like minority and female students. This public-private partnership is supported by an Advisory Consortium of industry and education organizations including founding members Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Capital One, Lockheed Martin, Snap Inc., the Air Force Association's Cyberpatriot, and the College Board. More than 500,000 cadets at 3,400 high schools across the U.S. and abroad participate in JROTC programs administered by each of the military services. Only 32% of these cadets have access to Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science Principles in their school, according to 2018-19 College Board data. The JROTC-CS initiative seeks to access this untapped human resource to address the national talent shortage in computing and cybersecurity and increase career opportunities for JROTC cadets, who are a highly diverse population — more than half are minority students and 40% are female. Additionally, JROTC is strongly represented in schools serving economically disadvantaged communities. [...] The JROTC-CS initiative is designed to complement the innovative, bi-partisan JROTC Cyber Training Act passed by the U.S. House of Representatives as part of the 2020 House National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on July 12.
talent shortage vs record college debt... (Score:3)
WTF talent shortage... what are all these people bemoaning epic college debt but aren't seeking out these jobs? Isn't the whole 'medieval french literature' and 'wymins studies' graduates thing a carriacature??
Re:talent shortage vs record college debt... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no shortage of talent. There's a shortage of talent willing to work for 3rd world wages.
These sorts of programs are aimed at increasing, and thus diluting, the applicant pool and tipping the market further in favor of employers.
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I've watched unused CS degrees get churned out and never used for two decades now. The kids do college then go work on their parents farms or a local factory because they don't want to leave or left and came back. Any Job in I would Apply for in my area would have a few hundred applicants with CS degrees or certifications that just have no experience.
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If they don't want to take on huge student debt they can always take unskilled jobs to sav... no wait, we opened up the borders on that one too.
Re:talent shortage vs record college debt... (Score:5, Insightful)
That is just the thing: The employers are harming themselves massively with this stupidity. Cheap coders have very low and often negative (!) productivity. Good coders are expensive, need to be treated well, but they are worth their weight in gold.
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Good coders are expensive, need to be treated well, but they are worth their weight in gold.
Would that be an African or a European coder?
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Aehm, I don't know? [....waaaahahahahhaaaaaa....]
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Dude look at the photo, ever seen a better collection of more anal retentive future bad database engineers, oh way, the group just positively reeks of bad programming, lack of real expertise, blaming others for mistake, and political infighting, the bullshit brigade.
Suck up the reality, 10 bad coders does not equal one good coder, 100 bad coders does not equal one good coder and the real reality, 1,000 bad coders does not equal one code coder. Writing code does simply not work like that, it really doesn't.
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Your argument assumes that developers are a commodity item, i.e. one is as good as another.
There is a shortage in some areas. Some technologies are very hard to hire for, e.g. embedded.
Other areas there is a glut. And few employers willing to train people who have proven they can master new things in the specific skills they want.
Software engineering has been changing for decades. It used to be extremely niche and difficult, now a lot of it is routine and easy thanks to frameworks and languages that are ext
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Ehh...sure it's easier than it used to be, but the frameworks you mention simply hide the complexity. This is why you have "Dev Leads" writing Schlmiel the Painter's algorithm, and not understanding how to write elegant code that isn't a performance nightmare or a resource hog.
This is why we need quad core processors with 8 GB of RA
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What makes more business sense? Hire an average programmer, use a giant framework and inefficient code, and pay a fee hundred bucks for some more RAM... Or spend tens of thousands a year on better developers?
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There's no shortage of PEOPLE, just of TALENT.
Those are not the same thing.
Re:talent shortage vs record college debt... (Score:5, Insightful)
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No shortage of talent either.
Yeah, ok, that's why out of hundreds of applicants we can't find a single qualified full-stack developer?
...and when we DO get an actual coder (instead of a designer calling themselves a developer) they can't actually code for shit?
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Yeah, ok, that's why out of hundreds of applicants we can't find a single qualified full-stack developer?
They're making more than you're offering somewhere else, probably just doing contract work. Pay them what they're worth and you'll attract them.
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Usually the salary isn't just in bold letters on the job ad. Generally the best you will get is a range, and certainly people can try to negotiate more. If they have to have huge neon letters saying "WE WILL PAY YOU MORE, JUST ASK" it goes to the poster's point that supply is on the low end.
Hence, there is a demonstrable shortage of talent. Paying more to the same X people when those X people are all already employed doesn't magically create more people to fill jobs.
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Usually the salary isn't just in bold letters on the job ad.
Right, because the employer is trying to trick people into applying for a job that doesn't pay what it should. People have to read between the lines to figure out whether the employer is just trying to take advantage of them.
If you're looking for a full-stack developer, your entire business model probably depends on their work. Paying peanuts gets only monkeys and elephants. Try paying enough for a wizard if that's what you need. And put the pay scale in the ad so you don't waste everyone's time.
60K 60 Hour work week bay area (Score:2)
60K 60 Hour work week bay area can't find good people so we need this.
Does at least JROTC cover the loan or do you need to go in for that.
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LOL, 60k in the Bay area won't pay rent
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Does at least JROTC cover the loan or do you need to go in for that.
JROTC won't pay for college, it is a high school program.
If it hasn't changed in a long time, ROTC does indeed pay for college. One is commissioned as an officer with a required four-year term.
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If they have to have huge neon letters saying "WE WILL PAY YOU MORE, JUST ASK" it goes to the poster's point that supply is on the low end.
If. Ha. Not only does that not happen, when the army of recruiters showing up in my inbox every month does have the nerve to quote a pay scale, it's invariably lower than what I'm making now. They are NOT demonstrating a shortage of talent. Not even close.
If you want a senior engineer (I have a BS, not a BA), pay for it. When I move up, that will free up a slot for a somewhat junior developer, who will move up, which will free up a slot for a somewhat more junior developer, etc. until the last move fre
Re:talent shortage vs record college debt... (Score:4, Interesting)
... every company still thinks they can get a senior developer for pocket change.
And begrudging any training to provide one internally.
I'm reminded of that Dilbert where the PHB asks "who wants training?" A plebe raises his hand and is fired, with PHB ejaculating that he wants people who already know what they are doing.
Plebe sez "I didn't see that coming", and Wally mentions that there's a class for that.
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Oh they'll provide training...so long as you're doing it on your own time.
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They're making more than you're offering somewhere else, probably just doing contract work. Pay them what they're worth and you'll attract them.
Sure, that *might* make sense... if any of them were actually qualified enough for us to have made them an offer, but none have made it that far yet :(
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I am sorry, but you do not seem to understand YOUR job
I was a technical person, who was converted into a manager and given the responsibility to build a technical team, and I was very successful at it
FYI, expecting HR to deliver a bunch of useful resumes to you is like expecting rainbows to start puking up gold pieces
I was able to find technical resources by attending seminars where smart people are learning the skills that I need from them, building relationships, and then building a team from those relati
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+1 insightful/informative
Oh, yeah, and +1 funny for the sight-picture of pieces-of-eight spewing from an optical effect.
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Because "full-stack developer" is right up there with unicorn. The term was popularized by PHBs hoping to pay only one salary. In reality, most people tend to specialize in the subset of the full-stack they're good at, so you need more than one person. Coarsely, there's front-end and back-end developers; but of course each of those can be further subdivided.
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Similarly, I currently work with Oracle EBS apps, and anybody working in that environment MUST specialize, or just plain SUCK at everything
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Indeed. But if "managers" understood that, we would have applied CS as a proper engineering discipline a long time ago. Instead these clueless morons still believe that cheap coders actually have positive productivity, which is very far from the truth.
Conditions are such that quite a bit of actually talented and interested people go into other disciplines where they can expect to be treated better.
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Re:talent shortage vs record college debt... (Score:5, Insightful)
If there was an actual talent shortage, we'd see HR departments relaxing hard requirements for a degree and being more accepting of non-degree certs and practical industry experience. They would also be removing their emphasis on young hires in order to get talent in wherever they could find it. Diversity wouldn't be an issue, if you had the degree, certs, or experience, you'd be hired.
That none of that is the case suggests there is not a talent shortage, just a shortage of cheap talent willing to work in a crappy environment.
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There has been a big push in the industry to remove the degree requirement and I've seen it working quite well. A couple of years ago I was working with a woman who had no degree and learned everything about software development on the job at BAE.
Since it also happens to help with diversity too it's becoming quite popular. Bigger pool of candidates, often quite loyal the company who offers them training and skills.
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Some companies are starting to move that way, but I don't know that I would call it a big push yet. It's nothing like the '80s and early '90s where a degree was nearly irrelevant. Or like the late '90s when people with COBOL experience were being pulled out of retirement to fix Y2K issues.
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That's because in the mid '80s there actually was a shortage, mostly because it was an emerging field. I went from high school directly into industry because I could build a PC and I knew C. Honestly, the clown to talent ratio didn't seem any worse than what we have now, it's just that the clowns have degrees now.
Time will solve it (Score:2)
Shortage? Just wait for the AI bubble to pop. AI co's P/E ratios are unsustainable, barring a really huge breakthrough, not just incremental improvements.
The econ is overdue for a general recession anyhow. I've lived through too many boom and bust cycles to believe any state of employment is permanent. Bleep changes.
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Yeah, any program that runs a filter now and sticks it in a cube "is powered by AI".
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An even easier route to AI-BS is faking it with humans. [theverge.com]
Re: Time will solve it (Score:2)
heh now i know what they mean by âoenatural language processingâ
There is no CS shortage. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes there is a CS shortage (Score:3)
There may not be a shortage fo coders. But there is for sure a shortage of GOOD coders, which CS helps provide the base for.
The world needs as many CS understanding people as it can get, to help make sure the systems that run the world are at least kind of stable, never mind secure...
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That's all very interesting, but tell us how you *really* think!
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That would need the US to sort by math and science skill and actually test for only its best students again.
Years of advanced math and science to get them ready for college.
Remove all non academic considerations and get accepted only test and exam results.
That would bring quality back up to the needed levels to allow the US the outcompete the world again.
Code quality would go up and projects would be done on time as staff would underst
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Complete BS (Score:2)
The world does not need more "CS talent" (actually, you cannot create talent, it is something people have. so this will not work anyways). The world needs far better engineers in the CS field, but a lot less of them than the currently mostly not very good people that work as "coders". Hence this initiative will just make matters worse.
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Test all students for years.
Find the people with the needed IQ to study. People who can actually recall what they learned months and years later.
Sort for the conscientious who can work.
Have the same test for everyone under the same conditions.
The best of the best who are poor get a full scholarship due to their tested and proven academic ability.
The trick to staying a great nation over decades is then not to start advancing p
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This type of testing does not work for engineers or scientists. It does work well for creating excellent mid-level bureaucrats.
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The US would have been stuck as a below average nation of "mid-level bureaucrats" like most of the EU.
The sorting and support for the very best every generation.
Thats how the US found its best "engineers" and then allowed them the freedom to work.
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You stipulate the US achieved any real "greatness". You are wrong.
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"Talent" is hr for "employee(s)", par for a department that considers humans to be resources. Since the world runs on computers, we need more people who can learn the job.
Not necessarily do, but learn the job. Entry level coders aren't taking anyone's job, and if they do you'll be back in a year at higher pay unless you're useless.
The only way to get a better field of CS candidates is to train a whole lot more people. The good ones float, the bad ones change careers. I'd be very happy with 5% unemployment i
culture clash? (Score:2)
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we haven't faced a necessary war in the span of living memory.
Well, "we" are almost all dead, but "we" did fight a global war against two countries that attacked "us". Both without declarations of war, though I know that there are a lot of people in the world that don't understand what a big deal that is to a lot of other people in the world.
I remember being astounded that the US built up their enemies after capitulation, then I read that the Romans used to do that, so it's not unprecedented.
Why can't country invest in peace, prosperity, and progress?
For the US, there is some merit in the arguments that the Constitution only p
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code.org was a scam (Score:2)
Get the hell out kids (Score:2)
And for fucks sake VOTE! Or they'll bury you in student loan and medical debt. Hell, we're sending people to prison when they can't pay their hospital bills.
The lawmakers who support this... (Score:2)
Should be fired out of cannons.
This is so epically stupid it beggars belief.
Maybe they should be tested to determine if they have:
a) A mental age that is greater than a 5 year old
b) Their bank accounts mysteriously having screeds of cash added to them... by such sources as Microsoft.
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screeds of cash
"Screeds of cash". I like that. I tried to popularize "a cache of cash" but it turns out that I was only understood by people who count 1, 10, 11.
"Screed" is an appropriate onomatopoeia for the raptor-like sounds of predatory capitalists (I imagine the sound of that red-tailed hawk that one hears on *every single commercial* that has a bald-eagle flying).
Political workers (Score:1)
Maybe quite a number of CS workers went to do something else, because of Windows 10.
I certainly did, because I did not want to support an operating system, that spies on its users.
Now, Microsoft wants to "get 'em, while they're young (and politically naive)"? Disgusting.
Youngsters are cheap labour and easily controlled (Score:1)