
The Coders of Kentucky - dekayed
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/opinion/sunday/silicon-valley-tech.html
======
opportune
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.

~~~
ratliffchrisb
Very true. UK, U of L, and many other schools in the state produce solid devs.
And you're right a lot of the better grads leave for better jobs. But I
wouldn't agree that there are no "good" jobs here. The salary is lower, but
you probably come out ahead in CoL terms. There have been some startups doing
well recently in Lexington and from what I understand Louisville is only doing
better. The place I work, Badger Technologies, is doing some pretty awesome
things and has some open positions.

This article in the Herald Leader explains and give some numbers to what
you're saying
[https://www.kentucky.com/news/business/article181564581.html](https://www.kentucky.com/news/business/article181564581.html)
Supposedly some of the reason the group was pushed by some larger employers in
the area that were hearing potential employees were turning down offers
because if the job didn't turn out well in the long run there weren't many
alternatives.

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gnarbarian
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.

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bmurray7jhu
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.

~~~
quanticle
> _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.

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quanticle
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.

~~~
vonzeppelin
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?

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maxaigner
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
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.

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bongo662
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.

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LyndsySimon
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?

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dron57
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
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
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).

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jdhn
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
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
That's true, I forgot to say that I'm happy that they're going to expand.

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skywhopper
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
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?

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RickJWagner
Great article. Bipartisan win!

When people work together (across partisan, economic, social, etc.) divides,
everybody benefits.

Kudos to everyone involved in this one.

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

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

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sheeshkebab
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
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
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/E...](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD13xx/EWD1300.html)

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nodesocket
> "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
> 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
Mentioned in the article: [http://time.com/4793315/donald-trump-budget-
appalachian-regi...](http://time.com/4793315/donald-trump-budget-appalachian-
regional-commission/)

~~~
lsadam0
I had already forgotten about the Trump administration's attempt to slash the
ARC. That would have been a huge economic hit to Appalachia.

