9 ms·

The Coders of Kentucky

78 points by dekayed 8y ago

bongo662 8y ago
I hope programs like this work and continue to help out my fellow Kentuckians. Beyond coal, factory, or retail jobs the opportunities for work in eastern kentucky and appalachia in general is bleak.
marsrover 8y ago
As someone who has worked with bootcampers that didn’t know how to code before the bootcamp, I do not understand at all how they get jobs. My only theory is that the companies hiring them don’t understand the concept of negative work. Edit: as the downvotes start coming in from the bootcamp students. Edit again: as the flags start coming in from the bootcamp students.
- dentemple 8y ago
  Do you have any actual constructive criticism to go along with your sweeping generalization?
  - marsrover 8y ago
    Yeah, companies should learn about negative work.
    - crispyambulance 8y ago
      What is "negative work" in this context? It's not a common term.
      - marsrover 8y ago
        http://wiki.c2.com/?NetNegativeProducingProgrammer http://wiki.c2.com/?NetNegativeProducingProgrammer
      - thrower123 8y ago
        It's pretty self-explanatory, no? People who produce net negative value. Not an uncommon thing, especially with untrained workers - the hope being that you can eat the inefficiency long enough that they learn and become producers.
  - sanderjd 8y ago
    Rephrasing the parent's point in a way that I think is not inflammatory: "Anecdotally, the bootcamp graduates that didn't previously know how to code who I have worked with have provided net negative value - that is the productivity cost to the rest of the team has been higher than the value they have provided - and I think companies who hire them must not be aware of this possibility." This has not been my experience, but I don't think it is invalid for someone to point out that it has been theirs. Net negative work is definitely a real thing, it just isn't my experience that it is only or mostly a bootcamp graduate phenomenon. I think anyone early in their career is likely to provide net negative value (I sure did). Companies have to make an investment in the value entry level employees will eventually create for them. This isn't new or unique, it's the case for all entry level folks in all professions.
    - wccrawford 8y ago
      It depends on the bootcamp. There's a local one at a decent university that turns out a ton of people with no real ability to program. It's not a very tough course, and so many people are able to get through it without actual aptitude by the end. On the other hand, I recently interviewed someone from an out-of-state bootcamp that was very impressive. They had been self-teaching for a while beforehand, but from the interview it was clear that they learned a lot more at the bootcamp than they had learned on their own. We have never considered hiring anyone from the local bootcamp. We are definitely considering the out-of-state person. In short, your views of coding bootcamps are going to depend on the quality of the bootcamp near you.
      - burfog 8y ago
        I feel that the market for programmer bootcamps is something like the market for used cars. As in that famous economics paper (the lemons and cherries one), bad bootcamps might get rid of good bootcamps due to costs and the buyer's inability to distinguish. Here, the "buyer" is both immediate (the student) and indirect (the potential employer). I think lots of people really want something like a BS+MS in computer science, minus the part that would be a generic liberal arts AA degree. Practical people do not wish to waste time and money on the political indoctrination courses. Two years of that stuff is 2.5% of a person's lifetime and the cost of a 3-bedroom house.
dron57 8y ago
It's an inspiring story about jobs in middle America. But can places like Kentucky really compete with outsourcing hubs like India or Eastern Europe? I think it comes down to access to education. Coastal US businesses would be happy to "outsource" work to these areas if these skillsets were widely available there. Perhaps, trade schools and coding bootcamps like the one in this article will be enough to bring these jobs.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  It’s a complicated story. I work and recruit people in a a market that is in the 50-75 range. It’s definately feasible for a larger company to hire/develop, but it’s difficult for a smaller company due to the smaller number of “fungible” mid career people. The thing that’s so offensive about the outsourcing hubs is that for bigger companies they just suppress wages with a constant flow of cheap labor with no rights. By eliminating job competition at the entry level, they are putting a wet blanket on the domestic market.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    That's one thing I think is missing from the immigration debate. If we're worried about immigrants driving down wages it'd, perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively, make a lot of sense to make it easier for people on work visas to leave their jobs without losing status. Instead we see people going after family visas. The rhetoric doesn't match the policy (well, some of the rhetoric comes from an uglier place and does match the policy, but I mean the stuff about jobs).
- gnarbarian 8y ago
  Off the top of my head there are a few huge advantages to outsourcing to the US: Far less of a communication barrier when you all speak English as your primary language. (communication breakdown has got to be the biggest reason outsourcing fails.) No huge time zone delta. This means you don't usually have to wait 24 hours before you get a reply to your email. Easier to fly the developers over for meetings or to show them around your facilities.
- deleted 8y ago
bmurray7jhu 8y ago
I think the author is making a mistake by assuming the biggest potential benefit would be the coders taking jobs with "tech companies" in Kentucky. Coders working outside of technology companies can still provide significant added value. Smaller, non-tech companies frequently see enormous productivity benefits by building simple building CRUD applications with a small amount of custom business logic.
- jdpigeon 8y ago
  Absolutely. One can imagine a more level playing field when things like attractive websites, SEO, and efficient internal data management are more available to small businesses.
- quanticle 8y ago
  > Smaller, non-tech companies frequently see enormous productivity benefits by building simple building CRUD applications with a small amount of custom business logic. The problem is convincing these smaller companies of that fact. Many of these smaller businesses are owned by people who are deeply suspicious of technology, often with good reason. They've been burned by slick salespeople who've promised the moon and have saddled them with software that they don't know how to understand or maintain which now has vital financial or customer data. As a result, many smaller companies (such as sole proprietorships) don't understand how far along software has come, and the role that software plays in allowing larger companies to squeeze them on margins.
maxaigner 8y ago
At some point we should wonder what other strategies Silicon Valley has. The fact that coders are encouraged to work remotely is attractive to sustain these areas of the USA, but it hampers the formation of centres of specialisation and exchange with other fields: either these graduates stay and work remotely, disconnected from both local industry[1] and the tech hubs, or they move away and worsen the unemployment problem they were supposed to combat. [1] Not to mention that coding websites and apps doesn't exactly make you an integral part of the economic tissue of Hueysville, KY, as opposed to the much-maligned coal jobs.
- ratliffchrisb 8y ago
  Yeah, that's a huge issue. The ability for the local talent to share their expertise with each other is important too. I agree, but there are solutions to the problem. More meetups and groups have been started in the area, Lexington, and some more rural areas too.
gnarbarian 8y ago
I've been working in Alaska a as consultant for the past 12 years and I make good money here at an interesting and fulfilling job with a team I mesh well with. I've also got a BS in CS. There are lots of talented programmers in places you wouldn't expect. Many of us have no desire to move to a giant megalopolis where we'd have a higher cost of living, more taxes, a two hour commute, and a poor culture fit in our community. The only way I'd consider a job working for a tech company down in America is if I could work remote around 75% of the time. It'd also have to be really interesting. There's no way I'd give up summers on the boat with my dad or unparalleled back country snowboarding in the winter. If you're looking to outsource some work to AK I can list a few resources that will help: http://akdevalliance.com http://akdevalliance.com and two popular consulting companies up here: https://www.resourcedata.com/ https://www.resourcedata.com/ http://www.wostmann.com/ http://www.wostmann.com/ Disclaimer: I did not list my consulting company.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
danschumann 8y ago
I've been wondering for a while now, seeing constant asks for charity to Appalachia, if they could just get more remote work there.
kaffee 8y ago
Seems plausible to me. Doesn't Joey Hess live in KY or TN?
skywhopper 8y ago
I've been a firm believer for a long time that a lot of IT jobs, including software development, but also all sorts of support and operations tasks, should be treated more like a trade, with more formalized apprenticeship tracks and training. There's value in a traditional college degree, but there's still a lot of practical skills you can only learn on the job. But there's also a lot of potential talent in the field that's not being harnessed because of the lack of a more structured pathway into these sorts of jobs. This sounds like an interesting program, but it's a shame it takes federal grants and private companies to provide something that a robust state education system ought to be covering in partnership with the corporations who would benefit from having these trained workers.
- mettamage 8y ago
  Edit: I know it is anecdata but I do want to point out that there are counterexamples under specific circumstances (read when creating CRUD apps). I just got into the job market (I studied for 8 years, 4 degrees, now graduated for good, did some serious jobs on the side). So far I disagree. I have had 5 freelance gigs: two in iOS (couple of years ago), one as a web dev coding instructor for a year (1 to 2 years ago), one in React frontend (1.5 years ago) and now 1 as a full-stack/dev-ops/semi 'data scientist' person. Computer science allows me to rise above the difficulties that I'm facing now since all I'm building are glorified CRUD apps. I am looking for a company that takes software engineering more seriously than this. Because of building glorified CRUD apps and some knowledge of soft skills + some git knowledge is all there is, then a computer science degree is overkill. For comparison: I made iphone apps during courses in my CS degree, I disabled viruses, fiddled around with concolic execution, created a computer graphics engine, created a compiler(ish) an operating system(ish), learned UML, some software architecture. How is this not enough for CRUD apps?
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  I’ll be curious to see what happens to the people who do have advanced degrees if a lot of the “traditional” jobs that require them today suddenly don’t. Will they be the next generation of PHB’s? Or will they just keep working the same jobs that they used to do? Will their pay go down as they do? Or will an entirely new sort of job emerge?
opportune 8y ago
I'm from KY. This article is great, but in focusing on these coding bootcamp graduates, it misses the much larger picture of just how much brain drain occurs for actual CS graduates (who, to be fair, are much less likely to be from Eastern KY). Right now they're taking millions in gov. money to train a small amount of people... but Kentucky graduates many more people with degrees in CS every year, by about an order of magnitude. There are basically no "good" software jobs in the state, so a lot of the good graduates leave to go work at Amazons and Googles. Training local talent is good, but you have to have more jobs than Interapt, OpenText, UPS, and GE to cultivate a local tech industry. What I think Kentucky should do is focus on brining remote workers back, for now - once there's a strong local talent pool, then you can begin courting businesses, not vice versa. I know a guy who went back to care for parents while keeping his $200k+ salary, which makes you pretty rich in Kentucky terms, and also provides a huge tax benefit to the state. I know lots of people at big west coast tech companies that would like to take their west coast salaries back home, but as is, I don't think any of us would go back to work at Interapt.
- gnarbarian 8y ago
  yes. there's a similar problem in Alaska. We do have jobs but not nearly enough compared to the quantity of developers/graduates up here. It drives down wages and most developers end up leaving. It took me years to find my first development job while being stuck in call centers and tech support roles for 4 years.
- sidlls 8y ago
  This is exactly how I feel about it. I came to the Bay Area for compensation closer to the value I provide. I stay because few other places offer the same combination of opportunity, compensation, and diversity. I'd take a 10% to 20% pay cut to live closer to family in a less expensive area, but where they live (a Midwestern city) every single one of those three things is strictly worse.
  - quiq 8y ago
    Is compensation really strictly less with a 20% pay cut? I'm from the midwest and I have a hard time wrapping my head around the compensation differences. Google-able "cost of living" calculators give me an 80k range for my midwest city salary, that works out to 35-62% cut.
quanticle 8y ago
I think the most important line of the article is: "On its first run in 2016, Interapt had 800 applicants, accepted 50 and graduated 35." Any strategy that posits IT and programming "insourcing" as a solution for the troubles of Middle America is going to have to have a strategy for the 750/800 people who don't have the chops to become a software engineer.
- cgag 8y ago
  765 assuming the graduates all found jobs.
- vonzeppelin 8y ago
  Isn't it more likely that they had a class limit of 50 and not that the 750 didn't have the chops to become a software engineer?
RickJWagner 8y ago
Great article. Bipartisan win! When people work together (across partisan, economic, social, etc.) divides, everybody benefits. Kudos to everyone involved in this one.
sheeshkebab 8y ago
Software development is a semi engineering, semi math/quantitative profession. Very little of current US primary/middle, and high school education is dedicated that. A few boot camps are not going to solve the fundamental skills mismatch issues....
- closeparen 8y ago
  No, it’s not. Software engineering is about creating and communicating logical structures, which is closer to writing philosophy papers than to cranking quadratic equations or knowing the integrals of trigonometric functions. Some high school math may be incidentally useful in the analysis of algorithmic complexity, but the structural correspondence between math and programming doesn’t show up until math transitions from quantitative (numeric and symbolic computation) to qualitative (proofs) well after the end of the high school curriculum.
  - User23 8y ago
    Good proof methods are symbolic computations. Hoare logic and the predicate calculus are the two major examples I know of. In fact in my personal favorite formalism, a proof is actually rather a lot like an equation[1]. It's an observable reality that most "pure" mathematical proofs are rather less rigorous than the best CS work, simply because peer reviewers are rather more lenient than computing machines. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD13xx/EWD1300.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD13xx/E...
jdhn 8y ago
I came away from this article feeling cautiously optimistic. As the article noted, they had 800 applicants, accepted 50, and graduated 35. It's great that those 35 got jobs, but what do you do with those 750 people who couldn't get in? Do you train them in something else that requires a little bit of tech skills, such as CNC machining?
- ratliffchrisb 8y ago
  I don't know what the exact cause is, but I got the impression the reason 50 were admitted was that there was a limit to the scale of the program, not that everyone else was unqualified. The article mentioned they are admitting 90 the next year and were continuing to expand.
  - jdhn 8y ago
    That's true, I forgot to say that I'm happy that they're going to expand.
nodesocket 8y ago
> "Trump for President.” (Kentucky went 63 percent for him.) What does that have to do with the article? I really despise the media bias and overtly political tone that seeps its way into everything. I live in the South. The real story should be the economy is booming, opportunities are omnipresent, and the American dream of working hard and progressing your way up the financial ladder of success is obtainable for everybody. Kudos for going out taking the class, learning to code, and taking control of your future and economic success.
- lsadam0 8y ago
  > What does that have to do with the article? I'm from this area of Kentucky and the fact that it went for Trump has everything to do with the subject. I'm 36 now, and coal has been in decline for almost my entire life. Yet the area cannot move beyond it because they keep waiting for 'coal to come back'. Politicians come and lie, and say they will return them to the glory days of coal. Trump came and told the most brazen, unrealistic lies of any previous politician. And so the state went for Trump. Coal isn't coming back, and Appalachia cannot accept this. Until they can accept this and move on, Appalachia will always be impoverished. Sure the rest of the country is having economic boom times, but Trump made Kentucky worse.
  - dajohnson89 8y ago
    Mentioned in the article: http://time.com/4793315/donald-trump-budget-appalachian-regional-commission/ http://time.com/4793315/donald-trump-budget-appalachian-regi...
    - lsadam0 8y ago
      I had already forgotten about the Trump administration's attempt to slash the ARC. That would have been a huge economic hit to Appalachia.
  - nodesocket 8y ago
    > Trump made Kentucky worse Unemployment rates and total laborforce are at lows and highs respectively since 2000 in Kentucky as of the latest bls data (look at the graph since 2000). Nonfarm wage and salary metrics are at all time record highs in Kentucky. The data suggests contrary, you may have a promising career at the NYT. https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.ky.htm https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.ky.htm
LyndsySimon 8y ago
This is basically the life I lead, minus the boot camp. I spent five years in central Virginia instead, to get my career to the point where I could get a good remote job. I live in rural Arkansas, and there are basically no tech jobs here. My salary is much less than it’d be in LA (where my employer is located), but is still something like four times the median family income here. I feel like I have the best of both worlds, and wish I could help others here make it in our industry - but who wants to hire remote junior devs?

78 points by dekayed 8y ago

I hope programs like this work and continue to help out my fellow Kentuckians. Beyond coal, factory, or retail jobs the opportunities for work in eastern kentucky and appalachia in general is bleak.

marsrover 8y ago

As someone who has worked with bootcampers that didn’t know how to code before the bootcamp, I do not understand at all how they get jobs. My only theory is that the companies hiring them don’t understand the concept of negative work. Edit: as the downvotes start coming in from the bootcamp students. Edit again: as the flags start coming in from the bootcamp students.

dentemple 8y ago
Do you have any actual constructive criticism to go along with your sweeping generalization?
- marsrover 8y ago
  Yeah, companies should learn about negative work.
  - crispyambulance 8y ago
    What is "negative work" in this context? It's not a common term.
    - marsrover 8y ago
      http://wiki.c2.com/?NetNegativeProducingProgrammer http://wiki.c2.com/?NetNegativeProducingProgrammer
    - thrower123 8y ago
      It's pretty self-explanatory, no? People who produce net negative value. Not an uncommon thing, especially with untrained workers - the hope being that you can eat the inefficiency long enough that they learn and become producers.
- sanderjd 8y ago
  Rephrasing the parent's point in a way that I think is not inflammatory: "Anecdotally, the bootcamp graduates that didn't previously know how to code who I have worked with have provided net negative value - that is the productivity cost to the rest of the team has been higher than the value they have provided - and I think companies who hire them must not be aware of this possibility." This has not been my experience, but I don't think it is invalid for someone to point out that it has been theirs. Net negative work is definitely a real thing, it just isn't my experience that it is only or mostly a bootcamp graduate phenomenon. I think anyone early in their career is likely to provide net negative value (I sure did). Companies have to make an investment in the value entry level employees will eventually create for them. This isn't new or unique, it's the case for all entry level folks in all professions.
  - wccrawford 8y ago
    It depends on the bootcamp. There's a local one at a decent university that turns out a ton of people with no real ability to program. It's not a very tough course, and so many people are able to get through it without actual aptitude by the end. On the other hand, I recently interviewed someone from an out-of-state bootcamp that was very impressive. They had been self-teaching for a while beforehand, but from the interview it was clear that they learned a lot more at the bootcamp than they had learned on their own. We have never considered hiring anyone from the local bootcamp. We are definitely considering the out-of-state person. In short, your views of coding bootcamps are going to depend on the quality of the bootcamp near you.
    - burfog 8y ago
      I feel that the market for programmer bootcamps is something like the market for used cars. As in that famous economics paper (the lemons and cherries one), bad bootcamps might get rid of good bootcamps due to costs and the buyer's inability to distinguish. Here, the "buyer" is both immediate (the student) and indirect (the potential employer). I think lots of people really want something like a BS+MS in computer science, minus the part that would be a generic liberal arts AA degree. Practical people do not wish to waste time and money on the political indoctrination courses. Two years of that stuff is 2.5% of a person's lifetime and the cost of a 3-bedroom house.

dron57 8y ago

It's an inspiring story about jobs in middle America. But can places like Kentucky really compete with outsourcing hubs like India or Eastern Europe? I think it comes down to access to education. Coastal US businesses would be happy to "outsource" work to these areas if these skillsets were widely available there. Perhaps, trade schools and coding bootcamps like the one in this article will be enough to bring these jobs.

Spooky23 8y ago
It’s a complicated story. I work and recruit people in a a market that is in the 50-75 range. It’s definately feasible for a larger company to hire/develop, but it’s difficult for a smaller company due to the smaller number of “fungible” mid career people. The thing that’s so offensive about the outsourcing hubs is that for bigger companies they just suppress wages with a constant flow of cheap labor with no rights. By eliminating job competition at the entry level, they are putting a wet blanket on the domestic market.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  That's one thing I think is missing from the immigration debate. If we're worried about immigrants driving down wages it'd, perhaps somewhat counter-intuitively, make a lot of sense to make it easier for people on work visas to leave their jobs without losing status. Instead we see people going after family visas. The rhetoric doesn't match the policy (well, some of the rhetoric comes from an uglier place and does match the policy, but I mean the stuff about jobs).
gnarbarian 8y ago
Off the top of my head there are a few huge advantages to outsourcing to the US: Far less of a communication barrier when you all speak English as your primary language. (communication breakdown has got to be the biggest reason outsourcing fails.) No huge time zone delta. This means you don't usually have to wait 24 hours before you get a reply to your email. Easier to fly the developers over for meetings or to show them around your facilities.
deleted 8y ago

bmurray7jhu 8y ago

I think the author is making a mistake by assuming the biggest potential benefit would be the coders taking jobs with "tech companies" in Kentucky. Coders working outside of technology companies can still provide significant added value. Smaller, non-tech companies frequently see enormous productivity benefits by building simple building CRUD applications with a small amount of custom business logic.

jdpigeon 8y ago
Absolutely. One can imagine a more level playing field when things like attractive websites, SEO, and efficient internal data management are more available to small businesses.
quanticle 8y ago
> Smaller, non-tech companies frequently see enormous productivity benefits by building simple building CRUD applications with a small amount of custom business logic. The problem is convincing these smaller companies of that fact. Many of these smaller businesses are owned by people who are deeply suspicious of technology, often with good reason. They've been burned by slick salespeople who've promised the moon and have saddled them with software that they don't know how to understand or maintain which now has vital financial or customer data. As a result, many smaller companies (such as sole proprietorships) don't understand how far along software has come, and the role that software plays in allowing larger companies to squeeze them on margins.

maxaigner 8y ago

At some point we should wonder what other strategies Silicon Valley has. The fact that coders are encouraged to work remotely is attractive to sustain these areas of the USA, but it hampers the formation of centres of specialisation and exchange with other fields: either these graduates stay and work remotely, disconnected from both local industry[1] and the tech hubs, or they move away and worsen the unemployment problem they were supposed to combat. [1] Not to mention that coding websites and apps doesn't exactly make you an integral part of the economic tissue of Hueysville, KY, as opposed to the much-maligned coal jobs.

ratliffchrisb 8y ago
Yeah, that's a huge issue. The ability for the local talent to share their expertise with each other is important too. I agree, but there are solutions to the problem. More meetups and groups have been started in the area, Lexington, and some more rural areas too.

gnarbarian 8y ago

I've been working in Alaska a as consultant for the past 12 years and I make good money here at an interesting and fulfilling job with a team I mesh well with. I've also got a BS in CS. There are lots of talented programmers in places you wouldn't expect. Many of us have no desire to move to a giant megalopolis where we'd have a higher cost of living, more taxes, a two hour commute, and a poor culture fit in our community. The only way I'd consider a job working for a tech company down in America is if I could work remote around 75% of the time. It'd also have to be really interesting. There's no way I'd give up summers on the boat with my dad or unparalleled back country snowboarding in the winter. If you're looking to outsource some work to AK I can list a few resources that will help: http://akdevalliance.com http://akdevalliance.com and two popular consulting companies up here: https://www.resourcedata.com/ https://www.resourcedata.com/ http://www.wostmann.com/ http://www.wostmann.com/ Disclaimer: I did not list my consulting company.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

danschumann 8y ago

I've been wondering for a while now, seeing constant asks for charity to Appalachia, if they could just get more remote work there.

kaffee 8y ago

Seems plausible to me. Doesn't Joey Hess live in KY or TN?

skywhopper 8y ago

I've been a firm believer for a long time that a lot of IT jobs, including software development, but also all sorts of support and operations tasks, should be treated more like a trade, with more formalized apprenticeship tracks and training. There's value in a traditional college degree, but there's still a lot of practical skills you can only learn on the job. But there's also a lot of potential talent in the field that's not being harnessed because of the lack of a more structured pathway into these sorts of jobs. This sounds like an interesting program, but it's a shame it takes federal grants and private companies to provide something that a robust state education system ought to be covering in partnership with the corporations who would benefit from having these trained workers.

mettamage 8y ago
Edit: I know it is anecdata but I do want to point out that there are counterexamples under specific circumstances (read when creating CRUD apps). I just got into the job market (I studied for 8 years, 4 degrees, now graduated for good, did some serious jobs on the side). So far I disagree. I have had 5 freelance gigs: two in iOS (couple of years ago), one as a web dev coding instructor for a year (1 to 2 years ago), one in React frontend (1.5 years ago) and now 1 as a full-stack/dev-ops/semi 'data scientist' person. Computer science allows me to rise above the difficulties that I'm facing now since all I'm building are glorified CRUD apps. I am looking for a company that takes software engineering more seriously than this. Because of building glorified CRUD apps and some knowledge of soft skills + some git knowledge is all there is, then a computer science degree is overkill. For comparison: I made iphone apps during courses in my CS degree, I disabled viruses, fiddled around with concolic execution, created a computer graphics engine, created a compiler(ish) an operating system(ish), learned UML, some software architecture. How is this not enough for CRUD apps?
commandlinefan 8y ago
I’ll be curious to see what happens to the people who do have advanced degrees if a lot of the “traditional” jobs that require them today suddenly don’t. Will they be the next generation of PHB’s? Or will they just keep working the same jobs that they used to do? Will their pay go down as they do? Or will an entirely new sort of job emerge?

opportune 8y ago

I'm from KY. This article is great, but in focusing on these coding bootcamp graduates, it misses the much larger picture of just how much brain drain occurs for actual CS graduates (who, to be fair, are much less likely to be from Eastern KY). Right now they're taking millions in gov. money to train a small amount of people... but Kentucky graduates many more people with degrees in CS every year, by about an order of magnitude. There are basically no "good" software jobs in the state, so a lot of the good graduates leave to go work at Amazons and Googles. Training local talent is good, but you have to have more jobs than Interapt, OpenText, UPS, and GE to cultivate a local tech industry. What I think Kentucky should do is focus on brining remote workers back, for now - once there's a strong local talent pool, then you can begin courting businesses, not vice versa. I know a guy who went back to care for parents while keeping his $200k+ salary, which makes you pretty rich in Kentucky terms, and also provides a huge tax benefit to the state. I know lots of people at big west coast tech companies that would like to take their west coast salaries back home, but as is, I don't think any of us would go back to work at Interapt.

gnarbarian 8y ago
yes. there's a similar problem in Alaska. We do have jobs but not nearly enough compared to the quantity of developers/graduates up here. It drives down wages and most developers end up leaving. It took me years to find my first development job while being stuck in call centers and tech support roles for 4 years.
sidlls 8y ago
This is exactly how I feel about it. I came to the Bay Area for compensation closer to the value I provide. I stay because few other places offer the same combination of opportunity, compensation, and diversity. I'd take a 10% to 20% pay cut to live closer to family in a less expensive area, but where they live (a Midwestern city) every single one of those three things is strictly worse.
- quiq 8y ago
  Is compensation really strictly less with a 20% pay cut? I'm from the midwest and I have a hard time wrapping my head around the compensation differences. Google-able "cost of living" calculators give me an 80k range for my midwest city salary, that works out to 35-62% cut.

quanticle 8y ago

I think the most important line of the article is: "On its first run in 2016, Interapt had 800 applicants, accepted 50 and graduated 35." Any strategy that posits IT and programming "insourcing" as a solution for the troubles of Middle America is going to have to have a strategy for the 750/800 people who don't have the chops to become a software engineer.

cgag 8y ago
765 assuming the graduates all found jobs.
vonzeppelin 8y ago
Isn't it more likely that they had a class limit of 50 and not that the 750 didn't have the chops to become a software engineer?

RickJWagner 8y ago

Great article. Bipartisan win! When people work together (across partisan, economic, social, etc.) divides, everybody benefits. Kudos to everyone involved in this one.

sheeshkebab 8y ago

Software development is a semi engineering, semi math/quantitative profession. Very little of current US primary/middle, and high school education is dedicated that. A few boot camps are not going to solve the fundamental skills mismatch issues....

closeparen 8y ago
No, it’s not. Software engineering is about creating and communicating logical structures, which is closer to writing philosophy papers than to cranking quadratic equations or knowing the integrals of trigonometric functions. Some high school math may be incidentally useful in the analysis of algorithmic complexity, but the structural correspondence between math and programming doesn’t show up until math transitions from quantitative (numeric and symbolic computation) to qualitative (proofs) well after the end of the high school curriculum.
- User23 8y ago
  Good proof methods are symbolic computations. Hoare logic and the predicate calculus are the two major examples I know of. In fact in my personal favorite formalism, a proof is actually rather a lot like an equation[1]. It's an observable reality that most "pure" mathematical proofs are rather less rigorous than the best CS work, simply because peer reviewers are rather more lenient than computing machines. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD13xx/EWD1300.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD13xx/E...

jdhn 8y ago

I came away from this article feeling cautiously optimistic. As the article noted, they had 800 applicants, accepted 50, and graduated 35. It's great that those 35 got jobs, but what do you do with those 750 people who couldn't get in? Do you train them in something else that requires a little bit of tech skills, such as CNC machining?

ratliffchrisb 8y ago
I don't know what the exact cause is, but I got the impression the reason 50 were admitted was that there was a limit to the scale of the program, not that everyone else was unqualified. The article mentioned they are admitting 90 the next year and were continuing to expand.
- jdhn 8y ago
  That's true, I forgot to say that I'm happy that they're going to expand.

nodesocket 8y ago

> "Trump for President.” (Kentucky went 63 percent for him.) What does that have to do with the article? I really despise the media bias and overtly political tone that seeps its way into everything. I live in the South. The real story should be the economy is booming, opportunities are omnipresent, and the American dream of working hard and progressing your way up the financial ladder of success is obtainable for everybody. Kudos for going out taking the class, learning to code, and taking control of your future and economic success.

lsadam0 8y ago
> What does that have to do with the article? I'm from this area of Kentucky and the fact that it went for Trump has everything to do with the subject. I'm 36 now, and coal has been in decline for almost my entire life. Yet the area cannot move beyond it because they keep waiting for 'coal to come back'. Politicians come and lie, and say they will return them to the glory days of coal. Trump came and told the most brazen, unrealistic lies of any previous politician. And so the state went for Trump. Coal isn't coming back, and Appalachia cannot accept this. Until they can accept this and move on, Appalachia will always be impoverished. Sure the rest of the country is having economic boom times, but Trump made Kentucky worse.
- dajohnson89 8y ago
  Mentioned in the article: http://time.com/4793315/donald-trump-budget-appalachian-regional-commission/ http://time.com/4793315/donald-trump-budget-appalachian-regi...
  - lsadam0 8y ago
    I had already forgotten about the Trump administration's attempt to slash the ARC. That would have been a huge economic hit to Appalachia.
- nodesocket 8y ago
  > Trump made Kentucky worse Unemployment rates and total laborforce are at lows and highs respectively since 2000 in Kentucky as of the latest bls data (look at the graph since 2000). Nonfarm wage and salary metrics are at all time record highs in Kentucky. The data suggests contrary, you may have a promising career at the NYT. https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.ky.htm https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.ky.htm

LyndsySimon 8y ago

This is basically the life I lead, minus the boot camp. I spent five years in central Virginia instead, to get my career to the point where I could get a good remote job. I live in rural Arkansas, and there are basically no tech jobs here. My salary is much less than it’d be in LA (where my employer is located), but is still something like four times the median family income here. I feel like I have the best of both worlds, and wish I could help others here make it in our industry - but who wants to hire remote junior devs?