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Google commits $1B in grants to train U.S. workers for high-tech jobs

• wehere1 9y ago
  always remember: the industry's involvement in CS education has less to do with philanthropy and goodwill than it does with lowering the cost of labor over the long term
  • pmorici 9y ago
    Hey, better than supporting H1B exploitation.
  • bkovacev 9y ago
    Well put. In my eyes this is simple math,they're investing now and are eliminating fees and adjustments for inflation in the future. The pool of workers will be bigger and all of the workers will be of somewhat same skill level which will eliminate the need for higher salaries + larger equity shares in order to get a high skilled worker. Their shares in the future will certainly be more valuable then 1B now, and this incentive will allow them to dictate the market.
  • cm2187 9y ago
    High labor cost just because of skill shortage may be gratifying and lucrative for the happy few but is not an efficient allocation of resources for the wider society. Increasing the skill supply is the right thing to do. Replace "developer" with any other profession to convince yourself.
    • Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago
      Nah, because I'm going to put my self-interest first. Just like Google is. So I should naturally oppose this as a developer. I benefit from a low supply of people with my skill set. Do you think google cares about "efficient allocation of resources for the wide society?" Tech companies embody the complete opposite of that mindset. The tech firms most in this forum work at bring in billions, but only require a few thousand workers. And most of the cash ends up overseas, doing nothing. It's not an efficient allocation of capital at all.
    • SapphireSun 9y ago
      You'd think that, but then you'd remember that if the population isn't making money capitalism doesn't work. People need money to buy things. The big picture is that labor is being defeated everywhere and money is accruing at the top. The whole system will break down if something isn't done.
      • stevenwoo 9y ago
        I remember talking with a friend of mine in the 90's about this and he thought we would have a revolution in this country if things didn't change vis a vis inequality. What's happening so far is the rats at the bottom of the ship are blaming the slightly different rats in the same situation for making the problem worse.
    • 8note 9y ago
      Yes, that's why we have labour unions. The cost should be high because we demand it to be so, not because of a shortage.
    • jasonlotito 9y ago
      If Google hadn't been involved with a scheme that helped keep the salaries of employees artificially lower (and by extension, affecting the rest of the industry), you might have a point. But as it stands, Google's own actions means it's imperative we question their motives. After all, if Google and others hadn't done what they did with the anti-poaching scheme, would the resulting salaries be higher for all involved?
    • baursak 9y ago
      The only people who care about efficient allocation of resources for the society are socialists and academics. Certainly CEOs with multi-million dollar annual compensations don't think they're contributing to allocation inefficiencies by negotiating their compensations. Neither do doctors and AMA, who we all love and respect. Neither do military leaders or politicians, who demand half the country's budget for military expenditures. Etc, etc. Increasing the skill supply is the right thing to do if you're Google stakeholder, or broadly speaking, a capitalist. It's much more questionable if you're in the labor force.
      • sounds 9y ago
        Or, more bluntly: Google should pay high salaries. The market will supply the skilled workers when the salaries are high enough to attract more workers. (Google does pay high salaries. If they want more skilled workers, raising their salaries is the most efficient way to get that outcome.)
        • TeMPOraL 9y ago
          They're likely betting that investing in training programs will be even more effective.
        • s73ver_ 9y ago
          Well, it's more than just pure salary. I'm sure if they changed things so that one did not have to work crazy hours while there, they could get away with paying less.
          • orangecat 9y ago
            You don't have to work crazy hours at Google. At least at the teams I was on; there were occasional reports of lousy conditions in some groups (e.g. Nest), but they were very much the exception.
      • stale2002 9y ago
        Uhh, I do NOT love the AMA. The AMA is responsible for maximum doctor quotas that drive up the cost of healthcare. The AMAs decision to artificially increase the cost of Healthcare literally kills people.
    • notyourday 9y ago
      Oh how quick we forget that we bitch about $35k/year H1Bs
    • s73ver_ 9y ago
      Neither are these companies getting lots of cheap labor and keeping the difference for themselves and their shareholders. And, more importantly, why should I care if it's an "efficient allocation of resources" when the alternative is that I no longer get a decent wage?
    • alexanderstears 9y ago
      It's not as if the skill shortage reflects some barriers to entry (like the Doctor's union deciding how many people get to go to medical school). The skill shortage reflects the difficulty of acquiring the skills, the high salaries are critical to ensuring that skilled people develop their technical skills. I don't know how much a piano teacher costs, but I know it's the right amount because that's the equilibrium. A more efficient allocation of resources would look like getting rid of 'too big to fail' banks and decreasing the rent that the finance industry extracts.
  • Apocryphon 9y ago
    Then what are they supposed to do, stop growing? Sure they could stand to raise wages for existing workers across the board (and they should) but that doesn't solve the labor supply issue. Maybe some of these grants can go towards retraining existing engineers who need to acquire new skills.
    • baursak 9y ago
      > Then what are they supposed to do, stop growing? I never understood growth for the sake of growth mentality. Isn't that what's killing the planet, broadly speaking?
      • Apocryphon 9y ago
        Certainly unrestrained resource extraction and financialization of the entire economy- generating wealth for a select few with complex financial instruments that has no real purpose for the general public- are bad. But surely much of tech does provide some benefit to society. What happened to software is eating the world?
        • s73ver_ 9y ago
          But is Google doing that? And does it have to be Google?
          • Apocryphon 9y ago
            I'm not sure what you're referring to exactly. I'm not praising Google in this story- I think they're doing this strictly for business reasons- but I still think it's a positive action even if it's motivated by the bottom line. But it's inevitable that them, just like most other giant companies in the black, are going to expand sooner or later, and they will need more workers. So there's not much you can do about that. If it's not Google or Apple hiring, it's going to be Tesla or SpaceX or Kiva or these guys (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/technology/a-start-up-suggests-a-fix-to-the-health-care-morass.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/technology/a-start-up-sug...) My main point is trying to stem the demand for more workers, whether H1Bs or American citizens, is futile. And even if somehow American firms stopped demanding more tech workers, firms abroad will be as well. So why not try to train more people to become workers?
  • merpnderp 9y ago
    Programming is sufficiently hard enough, wages will always be higher than most other professions. If I could make this money just about any other way, I'd likely give it a go. But either be a PA, a doctor, or one of the lucky few who graduate law school and make good money (and I think PA's make less than most programmers I know). Otherwise be a programmer.
    • notyourday 9y ago
      $35k/year developer on H1B
      • Y7ZCQtNo39 9y ago
        Most developers aren't on H1B. There's what, tens of thousands on H1B, and hundreds of thousands of tech workers. While it's true some developers are underpaid, they are few in number and presumably of little significance on the prevailing developer wage.
        • notyourday 9y ago
          This stuff is funny to read. There are two cases: 1. H1Bs in "tech" do not affect salaries of those not on H1B so it is irrelevant that there are those who come to the US on H1B and make $35-50k/year in tech because it does not affect the market for $80k-250k/year jobs i.e. Old Navy, Gap and Banana Republic are totally different markets, Old Navy's $10 t-shirts and $25 jeans does not move upmarket and cannibalize GAP's $30 T-shirt and $80 jeans which in turn does not cannibalize BR's $120 T-shirts and $200 jeans - ask whoever shops for clothes in your family. If that's the case, we should applaud Google generating more $35-50k/year tech workers and we all should be baffled by those complaining about H1B tech imports (the number of them is rather low compared to the number of 35k-50k workers training programs would generate so if we need those workers before we train ours we should lift the caps on H1Bs) 2. H1Bs in "tech" does affect salaries of those not on H1B because it eats into the market market for $80k-250k/year jobs. In which case having a flood of $35k-50k/year workers is a problem regardless if they are coming in on H1B or from ITT Tech/GoogleJobsTrainingSchool. I would suggest we should really pick one and be consistent.
  • tptacek 9y ago
    You'd need a scanning electron microscope to detect the tiny violin playing for people complaining about labor oversupply while making integer multiples of the median US household income building up an industry premised on automating away everyone else's jobs. Stop worrying about your wages! Your job will eventually be automated away. A basic income is sure to protect you.
    • TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
      There are already places that require tons of experience to even get an IT job. Complete automation and centralization of IT jobs isn't required to strongly impact American lives. Not everyone lives in a tech hub of the country.
    • s73ver_ 9y ago
      "You'd need a scanning electron microscope to detect the tiny violin playing for people complaining about labor oversupply while making integer multiples of the median US household income building up an industry premised on automating away everyone else's jobs." So what is the exact dollar amount one has to make before they no longer are allowed to worry about whether or not they'll have a job? "A basic income is sure to protect you." Given the current political climate in the US, I can only say bullshit.
    • ra1n85 9y ago
      >"A basic income is sure to protect you." An unplanned, unsustainable, and uncommitted allowance provided to you by a group of people that seek power and do not share your interests will meet all of your future needs.
      • tptacek 9y ago
        It's like when the threat is to our own profession it finally starts to sink in.
  • dqpb 9y ago
    This sounds like fixed pie logic to me. My intuition is that the Pareto optional solution is one where nearly everyone is proficient in engineering. I see engineering as the new reading/writing. I think an engineering literate society would be more valuable and stable than our current society is.
  • zjaffee 9y ago
    Or maybe, Google just wants to train people to work on their platforms rather than moving to a competitors. I doubt google has the intention of hiring the people that graduate from these programs, they just want people to learn google apis so that they use their products over competitors. This can be seen through how companies sponsor hackathons, the courses they create on websites like udacity and so on.
• gaius 9y ago
  Great! They won't need to offshore any more work! Or rely on exploiting H1B's!
  • cletus 9y ago
    There is exploitation of H1B workers but it's not at the hands of the tech giants. Pretty much all the abuse of foreign workers on visas I've seen is at the hands of these Indian bodyshops that, given the long wait for green cards for those born in India, such jobs are tantamount to indentured servitude. Speaking as a Xoogler who was on a visa and got a green card sponsored by Google, from my own experience I and others in my position were treated very well.
  • vkou 9y ago
    As an H1B at Google, I do not feel at all exploited. I am treated... Just like my American co-workers. Nothing like the horror stories I read about non-SV tech companies.
  • jabba_d_hut 9y ago
    Too much generalization?
• wavefunction 9y ago
  I am glad to see Google doing something like this. All of humanity growing together towards a brighter future for everyone is truly our highest calling.
• SadWebDeveloper 9y ago
  So this means there are new open positions for foreigners/H1B at Google?
  • walshemj 9y ago
    No its about training US workers - they have seen the anger / nativisam stirred up by the last election and are trying to improve their pr
    • SadWebDeveloper 9y ago
      And implied that US workers aren't on par with the rest of the world, therefore it will help them get better _in the future_ but meanwhile, while the next generation of tech-savvy US workers appear they will need skilled foreigners working at google for at least the next 10 years. If my predictions are correct, seems a good time to apply for Google at this moment.
• twoquestions 9y ago
  Stated differently, "Google commits $1B to flood the market with newbie tech workers, and to grow future client businesses". The cynic in me can clearly see their interest in the effects of this grant, but thinking on it more that interest might serve us better in the long run. I just hope the community gains from that money before it makes it's way back to Google.
  • dontreact 9y ago
    Even if it's self interest, at least good to see a company thinking in very long term self interest. This aligns incentives much better with the common good.
  • jbob2000 9y ago
    I saw it totally differently. The recent election showed me that there are huge amounts of untapped labour across the US, but they lack to capital to elevate themselves. To me, this was google saying "hey, we don't need to import people for tech, we can just home grow them"
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  • Apocryphon 9y ago
    For a long time the anti-H1B segment has been critical of Big Tech for trying to undercut American tech workers instead in investing in citizens. So now they're investing in the wrong citizens?
    • twoquestions 9y ago
      Hardly, especially if they execute aggressively on the "grow future client businesses" bit. I'll admit that part of my suspicion is rooted in self-interest, but if demand for my labor grows faster than other people can supply it I'll still win out (along with many others).
      • 9y ago
• throwawaymanbot 9y ago
  Has this anything to do with the DOJ investigating tech worker visas?
• Animats 9y ago
  Actually spending $10 million. Talking about $1 billion over 5 years.
• Overtonwindow 9y ago
  Stated differently: "In light of recent criticism on its ability to import foreign, cheap labor, Google commits to improving their public image for American labor"
  • SEJeff 9y ago
    You missed something "Google commits to improving their public image with a future of cheap American labor". There you go. Perfect!
  • UncleMeat 9y ago
    How is Google importing foreign, cheap labor? Their H1B applications are public and you can check the salaries yourself. None of the majors are abusing foreign labor.
• IBM 9y ago
  Makes sense given the antitrust movement is getting stronger.
• Klockan 9y ago
  I don't understand why they don't open more remote offices instead. Around 90% of their employees are currently within the US, wouldn't it be a lot easier to find tech talent if they had a major position in other areas of the world as well?
  • walshemj 9y ago
    two reasons time difference and communications
    • Klockan 9y ago
      Those are not issues when you have thousands of employees at a location, then you can base entire products there. There is plenty of people in Europe who would love to work for Google but there are so few positions here that it is almost impossible to get one unless you want to move to the US, it wouldn't be hard for Google to get ten times as many engineers here as they currently have if they just wanted to.
      • walshemj 9y ago
        And why would Goggle move a product away from its HQ - low level support maybe (but google doesn't do much support and they can just recruit in Ireland for that)
        • Klockan 9y ago
          Several products are already stationed in Europe so it is just a question of how much. Ireland does mostly support, yes, but both London and Zurich owns products.
      • ggambetta 9y ago
        There's plenty of people in Europe that work in Google's European offices. When I left in 2014, Zürich was something like 1500 people, with London and IIRC Paris having similar sizes, and many other smaller ones. That's hardly "so few positions", let alone "almost impossible to get one". Also, time zone differences (and to a lesser extent communications) were inconvenient, although there were very viable ways to work around them.
• leggomylibro 9y ago
  Great, it's about time that these companies stepped up to bring more people into their workforce. It's ridiculous to complain to legislatures about skills shortages without stepping up to bring your own resources to bear on the issue. Still, as nice as giving money to other organizations is, it would even better to see them actually training people from a diverse variety of backgrounds. They're not exactly taking any responsibility here.
  • yahna 9y ago
    It's ridiculous to whine about skill shortages while simultaneously having a strange amount of pride in your overwrought false-negative prone hiring process.
  • praxulus 9y ago
    >It's ridiculous to complain to legislatures about skills shortages without stepping up to bring your own resources to bear on the issue. Do you hold people who want to fight climate to the same standard? Is it ridiculous for an individual to support a carbon tax without voluntarily buying carbon credits on their own?
    • 0xbear 9y ago
      Carbon credits don’t really do anything for the environment. Giving up a car, picking a smaller house, not traveling, and not having kids would be meaningful steps, but that’s not really an option even for people who make their livelihood from environmental advocacy, such as Al Gore who lives in a mansion, has 4 kids, and flies everywhere in a private jet.
    • leggomylibro 9y ago
      Well it depends on the means of the individual, but basically yeah. I'd expect someone with a decent amount of disposable income to purchase renewable energy from their utilities company or a 3rd party. It's not crazy expensive compared to other discretionary expenses, and it's a pretty clear ethical obligation in the current times. Maybe Yellowstone will erupt in 80 years and it won't matter, but on balance, it's a no-brainer.
• paxy 9y ago
  Prediction – people will still bitch and whine, as always.
  • craftyguy 9y ago
    Wow, literally a self-fulfilling prediction!
• swendoog 9y ago
  Everyone hates a cynic so bring on the downvotes: I'm going to warn everyone of what's coming. Software engineer jobs will be blue collar, $40-$60k a year jobs, by 2030. The HUGE push from government, and private business, to fill the PERCEIVED lack of engineers, will come to fruition around that time. Make no mistake about it - there is NOT a lack of skilled engineers right now. There is a disinterest among business to pay higher, and higher salaries. If you are a SWE right now, save your money, and invest your time into improving YOURSELF. Have a backup plan, because I promise you, the good times are coming to an end sooner than you think.
  • Apocryphon 9y ago
    The solution to lower wages created by more workers isn't to clamp down on the supply. The solution is to unionize and to ensure that labor has leverage through collective bargaining. Trying to play gatekeeper against bringing in more workers seems as wrongheaded as arguing against building more homes in a housing crisis.
    • swendoog 9y ago
      Unions? How has that worked for every other craft industry in the US? Forgive my crass reply, but, I have only seen unions become weaker and weaker in the U.S. And even when they were "strong" they didn't protect labor interests against increases in labor supply. Globalization has wrecked a number of industries, which unions were powerless against. The strongest card in the hand of any laborer is their scarcity. Also, nobody (including myself) is advocating for "playing gatekeeper". I merely made a post warning people of what's coming. If you look closely my advice was to the individual - invest in yourself. Don't count on unions, or governments playing gatekeeper, to protect your current salary.
      • Apocryphon 9y ago
        Doctors, actors, pro athletes. There are many types of guilds and professional associations beyond unions. Furthermore, if tech is about disrupting everything, including the nature of work itself (through on-demand) and even the nature of human relations itself (through social media), then surely some attempt could be made to better labor relations by inventing a better type of union. It's especially rich to hear "no, it can't happen, it's always failed in the past" comments wrt labor unions come from workers who work in an industry that's supposedly all about innovation. I wasn't trying to attack you for your original comment, in any case. You actually offer good advice. But my general sentiment is that we shouldn't try to restrict the labor market- it seems as wrongheaded as trying to fight gentrification by limiting house construction just because some of those units will be luxury condos instead of affordable housing- and that lowered wages could be fought by the presence of a tech union that protects tech workers.
• bradleyjg 9y ago
  I'd be more impressed if they committed to hiring employees that don't already have the skills they are looking for and doing on the job training. That would be far more effective both in terms of actual skills transfer and in terms of future career trajectory than Yet More Retraining Programs untethered from any actual employer or employment opportunities. We've been doing the latter since at least the Kennedy administration to little effect.
  • dyarosla 9y ago
    What criteria determines who should get a position then? What salary should those positions command? Sounds pretty handwavy. Edit: responders to this comment seem to miss that the parent comment is suggesting Google hire new individuals and train them, not find talent in their workforce and do training there. Thats the unrealistic part- creating a secondary application process for individuals without the skills -- when they already reject a ridiculous number of people with many of the skills.
    • drharby 9y ago
      Who determines who should get a training slot? What kind of subsistence shouls that training command? The commitment of capital to tanglible jobs that lead towards ojt is not handwavy at all. That said, i bet the tax breaks from the schooling is substantial
    • blackguardx 9y ago
      On the job training was pretty standard in the tech industry in the past. I worked with a guy at an HP (oldest high-tech co. in CA) spinoff that was the head embedded software architect and worked his way up from the machine shop in the '70s. He started out manning a drill press and learned to program when they started using NC (numeric control) machine tools. Do you think Google lets anyone to work their way up from front desk admin or barista?
      • was_boring 9y ago
        This is basically how my mother was trained as a programmer. She got a job, was literally handed a stack of books and reference material and started figuring shit out. She changed careers before I can really remember her at that job, but I too am self-taught in this field (but I trained myself at home). The whole idea of companies not investing in their people is relatively new.
• 0xFFC 9y ago
  What they mean by high tech specifically ? Android dev, web dev, etc qualifies as high tech job?
• Top19 9y ago
  As much as something like this is appreciated, the history of job retraining programs are filled with over promises, under-commitments, and disaster, stretching back to the 1970’s. There is no need to train more CS people. There is a need for recovering the “grand bargain” between employers and employees that began in the 1940’s and was slowly unwound beginning in the mid 1970’s. The reason that business schools exist on university campuses in the first place is because they were supposed to train business leaders to aspire to the same ideals as a university: knowledge, development of character, the search for truth to create a better word, etc. If people knew how much harder they work today for fractions of a chance at a reward that is now 3x expensive, gestures like this would be seen for what they are, a band-aid in place of a tourniquet. BTW if you’re upper-middle class, know life is now pretty good, but your economic base is being slowly eroded as well and there will be a time when your economic fall will come. *- - - - EDIT: Keep in mind, this is the same company whose head of HR (Laszlo Bock) literally says he does not believe training helps at all develop people. This sounds like I am taking him out of context but I kid you not. I wish I was at home so I could find the physical page numbers, but he says it in his book “Work Rules!” from a couple of years ago. It’s at the beginning of the chapter where he talks about the New York Yankees.
  • rgbrenner 9y ago
    Keep in mind, this is the same company whose head of HR (Laszlo Bock) literally says he does not believe training helps at all develop people. Laszlo Bock stepped down in July of last year. Eileen Naughton is the head of HR: http://fortune.com/2016/07/27/google-eileen-naughton/ http://fortune.com/2016/07/27/google-eileen-naughton/ https://qz.com/744740/googles-hugely-influential-head-of-human-resources-is-stepping-down/ https://qz.com/744740/googles-hugely-influential-head-of-hum... He works here now: http://www.humu.com/ http://www.humu.com/
  • aswanson 9y ago
    That "grand bargain" is over, and never returning. The economy is global, cutthroat and changes on a dime. Every man/woman is in a mercenary situation today, whether they're aware of this fact or not.
• Apocryphon 9y ago
  To the critics in this thread- maybe it's time to consider unionizing tech workers after all?
  • marnett 9y ago
    I agree but how? Or would co-op consulting shops make more sense?
    • Apocryphon 9y ago
      Why not try both? The point is that the status quo is untenable, corporate power is going to commodify devs just as they have done to workers in many other industries, and you might as well try fixing about it rather than getting disrupted like so many other dinosaur entities that tech has done to.
      • stale2002 9y ago
        The status quo is untenable??? I am not sure what world you live in, but the world that I live in is one where software engineering salaries and jobs have continued to increase over the last 5, despite all these bootcamp grads and the large increase in CS majors.
        • jimmaswell 9y ago
          The tech labor shortage seems to me to be essentially a fabrication invented by tech companies to encourage further oversaturation. I just cannot believe jobs are growing faster than the workforce when my experience has been this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15461080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15461080 The status quo is untenable because it's a bubble. There are far too many junior programmers.
          • stale2002 9y ago
            Hmm, I am a couple years out of college and therefore fit the definition of "senior developer", so perhaps you are right, and I just haven't noticed the effects yet. But right now, things are really really good for developers who only have a couple years of experience. But perhaps that is going to change as all these junior devs become senior.
• thatonechad 9y ago
  Universities need to start focusing on skills instead of general education. Imagine the amount of skills you could learn if you didn't have to take 60 hours of nonsense credits and focus on skills you require. Programming / Networking / Hardware need a new type of University that is similar to Trade colleges but focus primarily on the skills and nothing more. The first 1-2 years could focus on the foundations while the next 2 years focus around solid design principles and actually developing projects (real or fake).
  • demygale 9y ago
    Name a giant in this industry, that person benefitted from a liberal arts education.
    • thatonechad 9y ago
      I'm sure all the gender studies classes has helped the vast majority of tech students become better developers
      • s73ver_ 9y ago
        Given all the stuff that's happening lately with people like Susan Fowler, a whole lot of developers could have benefitted from more of those. Of course, that's completely ignoring that there is far, far, far more to "liberal arts" than gender studies.
        • hobofan 9y ago
          I think it's more the people around them that would have benefitted from it.
          • s73ver_ 9y ago
            That too. Everyone would benefit!
        • Klockan 9y ago
• dna_polymerase 9y ago
  Yeah, more bootcamp trained JS-"artisans" and Ruby-"artists" for all of us! If they wanted to do good, invest in the school system, use your power to monitor Betsy DeVos and call her out for the bullshit to come from her. If Google could raise interest in STEM in High Schools already that would be way more organic.
  • speedplane 9y ago
    Don't think there is anything wrong or ignoble teaching people JS. It's an excellent start.
• polishTar 9y ago
  Better link: https://blog.google/topics/causes-community/opportunity-for-everyone/ https://blog.google/topics/causes-community/opportunity-for-...
• 2close4comfort 9y ago
  They just want cheap labor! There is nothing altruistic about Google and their commitment to their fellow man. They merely want children (teach a kid scratch so they can be enslaved for a lifetime!) and people in lower income countries to take up where the people here need more inorder to live here. And if Google were to be honest they need people who want to live in the bay area and are willing to enslave themselves to do it! And now that the flow of new blood was cut off now Google again needs fresh souls...so they are coming for anyone who can type, and wants to move the CA and live in their Hooverville.
  • perpetualcrayon 9y ago
    I say let them attempt to improve peoples' lives. I doubt it will make you feel any better, but I don't think there will be a place in the world for a private company the size of Google (comparatively speaking). Imagine a world where individuals will be starting up companies in their garage with a scale equivalent to Fortune 50 companies of today.
• perpetualcrayon 9y ago
  I think not only do we need to be thinking about getting people "prepared" with new skills, but also about smooth lateral movement across industries. In a lot of cases these are probably viewed as the same thing but, for example, I would ask: When was the last time a Senior Java Developer was a candidate for a Senior FrontEnd Web Developer position? I think the future is going to be a lot less about being hired for "jobs" with "companies". Instead it's going to be substantially more about "projects" being done by "groups / organizations". The groups / organizations being assembled / disassembled with high frequency.
• TuringNYC 9y ago
  I wish Google could spend just a fraction of that money employing technical writers to better document their technologies. So much of the documentation is outdated or flat out broken. Even stock sample projects right on the Android Studio sometimes fail to work. Oh, and remember the mess Gradle was in 2015/2016? How much money could it possibly cost to better document some of the major tools?
• Mc_Big_G 9y ago
  Before you go patting Google on the back, consider this. They stole money from engineers by colluding with the other big players to keep engineering salaries artificially low and now want to use some of that money to train more workers to create more supply which lowers salaries even further.
• WalterBright 9y ago
  It's never been easier to get training in all sorts of things, for free. For example, I'm currently taking MIT's 6.002 electronics course because I never learned circuit analysis properly. It's on youtube, it's free, I watch it anytime. There's the Khan Academy, too.
  • s73ver_ 9y ago
    Yeah, but there's no certificate. And, despite what everyone wants to believe, most employers still want that certificate or degree. They're not gonna accept "I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube" as an alternative.
    • WalterBright 9y ago
      In the programming biz, they often will if you've got a track record to back it up. Contributing to open source projects is a route to getting such a track record. If you already have a degree, just in the wrong field, you don't need to get another degree. Just get the training by whatever means. Heck, my degree is in mechanical engineering, yet I had jobs writing software.
      • weirdstuff 9y ago
        In my own experience a track record is meaning less and less, and employers are really starting to fixate on credentials. It's very weird and disconcerting to a fellow like myself who likes to believe an impressive record should speak for itself. But apparently it's not speaking as loudly as it used to. There really is a "cult of the degree" and I really don't get it. Is the field getting saturated and employers are finding it necessary to erect barriers? Does this, an average, make good fiscal sense? I would think successful, relevant experience is something (that when verified) would reduce risk for businesses.
    • kamaal 9y ago
      >>They're not gonna accept "I watched a bunch of videos on YouTube" as an alternative. Soon they will. If the internet people come at cheaper prices. There isn't much difference between people who watch a lecture on the internet vs those who watch it live.
• jorblumesea 9y ago
  How does flooding the market with developers that will never be able to pass their interviews help them? I guess it will increase the amount of people in the 1% by expanding the size of that pool? Just seems like Google out of all companies has a need for the best, not just blue collar code slingers. Many people with 4 years CS degrees from good schools do not get hired.
  • hobofan 9y ago
    Maybe the want to free up "good" developers that work jobs requiring a lower skill level, by providing a better fitting low skill person for the job? (Not to be taken too seriously)
    • FLGMwt 9y ago
      I'll take you seriously. $1bn is a lot of money when put towards education and Google can make 5+ year investments when it comes to tech talent.
      • speedplane 9y ago
        It's a nice sum of money, but education is extremely expensive, it's probably less than you think. It's enough to pay roughly, for 7000 to go to college, or maybe 50,000 people to take a one semester programming bootcamp. A great start, but it's not exactly transformational.
  • sulam 9y ago
    A couple misconceptions seemed buried in here. First of all, plenty of Google engineers are doing “boring” work that can be done by coding school grads. Secondly, Google declines qualified candidates roughly 50% of the time according to people who work there. The hiring process is far more random than we’d like to imagine it is when you have a “high bar”.
    • jorblumesea 9y ago
      > First of all, plenty of Google engineers are doing “boring” work that can be done by coding school grads. Google's hiring process does not reflect this at all. Even entry level positions have very high bar. Boring has nothing to do with it, Google wants the best. > Secondly, Google declines qualified candidates roughly 50% of the time according to people who work there. That's not random, that's just setting a really high bar. Have you been through a Google interview? Their phone screen questions are equivalent to many companies' "hardest" interview problems.
• slosh 9y ago
  How about a billion to high tech trains
• s73ver_ 9y ago
  How many of these grants are going outside of already tech heavy areas? How many of them are going to coal country, or to the Rust Belt? It's great that they're doing this, but unless they're going to be doing it in the places that are hurting, not much is going to change.
• brudgers 9y ago
  I wonder how long it would take for Google to spend an extra $1 Billion by bringing janitorial, food service, and other non-technical jobs in-house instead of contracting it out to the lowest bidder. To put it in perspective, $1 Billion is 10,000 times $100,000. Or 1000 $100,000/year jobs for ten years before discounting for the time value of money. Instead, big chunks of the money will get siphoned off to administrators and technical instructors and computer manufacturers and lots of other areas that already have plenty of money. A billion dollars is less than half the annual budget of University of Nebraska for serving ~50,000 students [1]. Back of envelope turns $1 Billion into ~22,000 student years which is in the same people-helped ballpark as the 10,000 worker years, with the difference being that those 10,000 worker years come with actual jobs at $100,000 a year. And the 10,000 worker years are offset by the current cost of contracting out the work and the value that work returns to Google's bottom line. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Nebraska_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Nebraska_system
  • fraserharris 9y ago
    They aren't doing this for charity - they are doing it to ensure a steady supply of technical hires. Technical jobs are profit centers; non-technical contracted services are cost centers.
    • samfisher83 9y ago
      They are getting tons of apps from top schools like harvard, stanford, etc. I don't think they will have any problem hiring people. Maybe this would help some small company a lot more that can't afford pay google salaries. Also If you believe the Pareto principle most of people at google probably aren't that important to their successes.
      • losteric 9y ago
        Their goal is to increase the supply and diversity of good engineers, likely decreasing salaries in the long run. It's about damn time!
• nerpderp83 9y ago
  This is absolutely lovely news.
• triangleterd 9y ago
  hy
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• eatbitseveryday 9y ago
  Google is often criticized for not hiring developers who "still need more work", and instead hires experienced people. Hiring less capable people and training them internally would make some sense to me.
  • FLGMwt 9y ago
    I'm not Google, but my guess is they'd rather invest in the market to let it float the "experienced" people rather than take a gamble on a known "inexperienced" person and attempt to train them. Maybe this is shitty, maybe it isn't, but it's probably more economical.
• salpalpable 9y ago
  Hey, I'm looking for that career change, I got some diversity points. How do we get in on this?
• synicalx 9y ago
  You know, I'm actually really impressed with Google for speaking with their money on this. There's a lot of "why don't these hicks just get a real job", but no one really seems interested in furthering that sentiment. There's popular opposition to Trump's promise to give people jobs by resurrecting industries that a lot of people (probably Google as well) would rather see stay dead. But there's no denying people need jobs, and formal education ain't cheap. Now we've got a tech giant backing that up with cold hard cash. It would be great to see other companies getting on board and putting some dough in the ring or at least offering some kind of internship/work experience programs for people coming out of an education funded by these grants.
• ovrdrv3 9y ago
  mkdir plan git add $1B git commit -am "train US workers for high tech jobs" git push (please PR for a better git joke)
• afpx 9y ago
  Google spends what, upwards of $10B a year on software engineer salary and benefits? So, seems like a good deal. If they can spend $1B and decrease salary’s and benefits by at least 10% over a few years, they get return on investment.
  • alpb 9y ago
    Why would salaries or benefits decrease?
    • carlmr 9y ago
      Law of supply and demand. More supply, steady demand => More bargaining power on the side of the company.
    • tiggybear 9y ago
      Your paid based on your leverage not how much your output is worth. If supply of workers with your skills goes up, your leverage to negotiate goes down and so does your wages. Labor does not get to share in economic growth, they get to split an ever decreasing share of profits. The more people that are available to sell their labor, the more pieces that shrinking pie has to be cut into.
  • thebarknight 9y ago
    This was exactly my thought as well
• ehudla 9y ago
  Someone cares to try to put this story in political perspective?
• thewhitetulip 9y ago
  But nobody wants to address the mounting student loan problem!! Degrees don't come for free, technical graduates don't come for free, students have to go to college for that and in US you need a LOT of money for that. This is the chicken and egg problem where nobody wants to address the real problem an everyone is going around giving superficial solutions.
  • ucaetano 9y ago
    Student loans are only a problem to students doing one or more degrees in low-2nd and 3rd tier schools with few job market prospects. The rate of student loan defaults is actually inversely proportional to the amount owed.
    • thewhitetulip 9y ago
      I don't say that student loans aren't getting refunded, I am saying that you need to take a loan to study. That's the problem.
• Chiba-City 9y ago
  Start with basic observations. Tool acquisition is not tool mastery. Tool mastery does not mean jobs for or at Google. Janitors are not getting IPO payouts for lives of leisure. Cold war coastal higher education, city living and corporate trading prowess have drained many interior communities of their best brains throughout decades of deindustrialization and deskilling. Some better nerds here can hardly imagine perfectly smart people who cannot yet touch type or turn a spreadsheet into a group calendar. Our miraculous simple decision support tools are still opaque to majorities of Americans. Only Americans far outside Google will create value to create jobs. That takes planning for any possible sweat equity or financial investment. We have generations of people to train with tools. The boy genius prizes for ever new tooling are not really separate concerns. Cultivating and harvest new boy geniuses from the field is expensive. They don't exactly grow on trees. Google like Apple or Microsoft had to discover and rediscover their own relevance. They cultivate their markets now with intensive growth. This is a good move.