Amongst the sea of spilled ink about America’s purported “STEM shortage,” and policy proposals to address this disaster by training preschoolers to code, this article stands out as one of the best counterpoints I’ve seen:
‘[Although] I certainly believe that any member of our highly digital society should be familiar with how these [software] platforms work, universal code literacy won’t solve our employment crisis any more than the universal ability to read and write would result in a full-employment economy of book publishing.’ (SOURCE)
OUCH! The article goes on describe how lower-skilled computer programming jobs are being outsourced to India, leaving a pool of higher-skilled jobs here in the U.S., which will get more cutthroat as time passes.
I’ll add the following:
- Computer coding is a dry, difficult job that few people are suited for. It requires tremendous patience, good math skills, a willingness to work brutal hours to get promoted, and it provides few (if any) opportunities for self-expression or emotionally interacting with clients. You sit in a cubicle looking at numbers and letters on a computer screen, tediously typing away and testing your software program over and over to work out the kinks. The notion that America can expand its white-collar workforce by incentivizing more people to become computer programmers rests on the flawed assumption that human beings are perfectly interchangeable widgets lacking innate strengths, weaknesses and preferences that together limit their job options. The vast majority of people just aren’t cut out to spend eight hours a day poring over computer code.
- Wages will decrease if labor supply increases. As with any other profession, computer programmer salaries are determined by supply and demand. If the STEM Shortage Chicken Littles get their way and the number of American computer programmers sharply increases, then median wages will decrease unless there’s an equivalent rise in demand for their services. Lower pay will make an already dull and difficult job not worth it for many coders, and people will start fleeing for other jobs, counterbalancing the inflow of new coders.
If we do think that there’s a shortage of computer programmers in America, then there’s a fair case to be made that the best way to fix it is to focus on retaining existing talent rather than trying to attract new entrants to the field. Complaints about age discrimination against older workers, low pay, and overly demanding work schedules seem pervasive if the news articles out of Silicon Valley are to be believed, and are supported by high rates of turnover in computer programming companies.
Links
- https://qz.com/987170/coding-is-not-fun-its-technically-and-ethically-complex/
- http://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2017/07/09/teaching-young-americans-to-be-code-monkeys/
- https://www.fastcompany.com/3058251/why-learning-to-code-wont-save-your-job
- https://techcrunch.com/2013/05/05/there-is-in-fact-a-tech-talent-shortage-and-there-always-will-be/
- http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/09/18/441122285/learning-to-code-in-preschool
- https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-programmers.htm#tab-8
(2) is supposedly only true in the short-term. Standard economic theory (beyond 101 — which deals mostly with static economies) predicts that a greater supply of labor (or a better trained labor force) will allow for greater levels of economic growth. In the short-term a programmer is harmed by there being more skilled programmers in society, but in the long-term more programmers will provide for greater economic opportunities for all. With more workers available, society can accomplish more and everyone gets wealthier as a result. Or at least that is the standard story. BTW a lot of economists think that the lack of new entrants into the labor force is keeping down economic activity. We aren’t even seeing increased wages, because per-worker productivity has remained flat for a while.
I think you are right though about most people being unsuitable for such work. I doubt anyone with an IQ below 100 could make any contribution to work in programming, and so half of the population is pretty much shit out of luck. And we are already pretty good at training people in the top-half of the IQ curve.
I agree with your 2nd point, basic supply and demand. But I have had different experience for 1st point. Most of the dev teams that I have worked with have more client facing interactions and inputs. I guess thinking back one of the biggest driver of this more collaborative environment is type of methodology the teams are using, waterfall vs agile. Waterfall is more traditional, product owner comes up with an idea and developer just codes it without having much insight, whereas agile requires product owner to more involved to validate and provide input as the developer is build the idea. And the overall more and more teams are moving towards agile.