I suspect that most laymen find our line of work to be kind of trivial and think that success in this field is more related to youth than intelligence. To them, "coding" is more akin to carpentry (a trade) than physics (a science).
Also, pointing out that not every coal miner can learn to code is seen as culturally insensitive and perpetuating the stereotype that rural people are dumb. Which I understand, but a little honesty could have seen these resources better leveraged to help these people in different ways.
Your suspicions are exactly opposite from what I can tell talking to a number of blue-collar people. A lot of the ones I’ve talked to seem very apprehensive about learning anything technical involving a computer, and it all seems kind of mystical in there eyes. Honestly I think a lot of what holds people back is a lack of confidence and a willingness to learn more than anything else.
I wouldn't say it's an unwillingness to learn so much as a paralyzing fear of failure, which they believe (rightfully so) is inherent in the learning process.
Is carpentry really that easy to master? Practical arts all require lots of practice. The only thing that makes coding very different is all the abstraction (so more like machine design than wood assembly).
I used carpentry very deliberately. It's a skill that's seen to require practice, but is still very accessible. Most able-bodied people can build stuff with wood. In fact, most of our grandfathers (assuming American) probably did wood working as a hobby.
It used to be taught to grade school kids. I distinctly remember building adirondack chairs, picnic tables, and benches in wood shop, from dimensional lumber, for use in local parks. Thirteen year old kids can build practical objects using wood, with guidance.
While physics is voodoo. Even genuinely intelligent people have difficulty grasping it.
CS probably lies somewhere in-between, intellectually, but is seen as something that can just be taught to any person and they can be productive.
indeed, I'll stick to coding. Tried a number of times to do some wood work, a simple mitre joint is way harder than you'd think. But then there are few true carpenters left, its mostly low skilled work e.g. framers.
Knew a guy who could do the most precise joins, its a skill people seem to be born with, or its grown somehow. If the only jobs in demand demanded the ability to construct a dovetail joint, I'd be in big trouble.
Honestly, the classicist/entitled bullshit about what we (technologists) do is completely unearned. What most of us do isn’t special and the gate-keeping many people in this industry do to prevent others from entering this industry (and I’m guilty of it too at times) is unearned.
I’m glad Amazon is doing things like this. I’m glad programs are encouraging coal miners to learn a new skill.
Programming wasn’t always seen as white collar work.
I have a pretty good tech job, my title includes the word “engineer” but I don’t think that is deserved. My coworkers seem to view this as a prestigious position but I’m not convinced.
From my perspective this not much different than building pickups in Detroit in the 60s. I bet that seemed like a pretty awesome job back in the glory days.
In reality most technologists are in manufacturing and we will eventually be replaced by robots.
I agree. There was a time it was normal for an organization to invest in its employees. Perhaps it's cheaper to externalize the costs of retraining for smaller firms. But perhaps for larger employers it is starting to make economic sense. I hope this becomes a real trend.
