

DARPA: U.S. Geek Shortage Is National Security Risk - cwan
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/darpa-us-geek-shortage-is-a-national-security-risk/#ixzz0cjjwvDR5

======
colah
>The Pentagon’s far-out research arm Darpa is soliciting >proposals for
initiatives that would attract teens to >careers in science, technology,
engineering and math >(STEM), with an emphasis on computing.

_Teaching_ these subjects to teens would probably be a good start.

I'm being serious. The junk that is taught in most schools (and I'm Canadian:
our education system is supposedly better than the US) and absurdly labeled
these subjects is a huge part of the problem.

Math is taught like magic. Experiments have been banned from the science
classroom. Computer science classes teach typing.

I'm exaggerating a little: math occasionally gets explanations, science may
occasionally have a very simple experiment, computer science students may
learn some programing. But those are the exception, not the rule.

It's utterly broken.

~~~
andreyf
Complaining is easy, but how do we fix it? Alan Kay has some ideas:
<http://vpri.org/html/work/tlpiese.htm>

In essence, he believes the power of computers is as a medium for
experimentation. If you make it easy for kids to simulate models from axioms,
they'll be able to think better. One might call that "programming", but it's
really quite a bit more than what people do now.

~~~
rick_2047
_Complaining is easy, but how do we fix it?_

Um.. in this case fixing is also pretty easy.Just start with making a
curriculum which is more inclined towards experimentation and research. Tell
students to find things out by them selves instead of spoon feeding them. Tell
them the syntax of the language and then keep lab _open_ (open as in anyone
can come in and do programming) so that they can work on interesting things.
And above all, GRADE them on these experiments. Start off with keeping them as
extra credit and graduate that to making it a part of curriculum.

PS:May be one day I would have money and will open up something like "South
Harmon Institute of Technology" from the movie "Accepted". Where mind is
allowed to stroll freely in the depths of thoughts not drown in books and
formulas.

~~~
andreyf
Aren't you simplifying this just a little too much?

------
stakent
Maybe this has something to do with "National Security Risk"?

"Students were evacuated from Millennial Tech Magnet Middle School in the
Chollas View neighborhood Friday afternoon after an 11-year-old student
brought a personal science project that he had been making at home to school
..." [http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jan/15/students-
evac...](http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jan/15/students-evacuated-
school-chollas-view/)

Found via <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1056904>

------
lisper
If there's a geek shortage, why are there so many unemployed and underemployed
geeks?

~~~
potatolicious
Because there's a difference between a geek and an employable geek.

There, I said it, it's not going to be a popular opinion, especially since I'm
a Canadian expat in the USA "stealing your jerbs". I know _many_ others like
me, who are being well above average rates to work in this country, whose very
employment carries steep legal and bureaucratic overhead for our employers.
Yet Canadians, Indians, Europeans, etc etc, are still being imported by the
planeloads. I know for a fact that our HR department scours American schools
for qualified graduates constantly, yet we can't fill spaces quick enough.

I've thought about this some, and my conclusion is that a lot of American
geeks just don't work very hard - you have the people who hang out on
Digg/Reddit all day. Yeah, they're geeks, but how many languages do they know?
Can they build a site from back to front? Do they know their algorithms?
People on HN need to realize that they're a vanishingly small minority of the
set of all geeks, and that as a crew are in general much more ambitious and
capable than most. There's a long way between "I like computers" and "I'm
willing to pour ungodly amounts of time into learning computers". For every
geek who takes the time to learn all the toolkits and languages to get
employed, there are 500 others who couldn't be bothered, and will complain
endlessly about undeserving foreigners stealing jobs rightfully theirs.

In other words, for every geek who knows Python inside and out, is up to date
on all the latest web technologies, has experience building large scalable
systems, etc etc... there are 500 others who can only write VB, and will
endlessly complain that they're not employed, or that they're not being paid
enough. Unfortunately no "geek employment" number will ever be able to
separate the two.

~~~
geebee
"a lot of American geeks just don't work very hard"

Another perspective could be that (most) Americans who work hard don't become
geeks, because the rewards aren't commensurate with other professions.

If you're interested in reading some support for this position, you might
check out a recent RAND study that concluded that "cience and technology
performance, but said the slow growth of U.S.-born technical workers "will
change when the earnings and attractiveness of S&E (science and engineering)
careers improve."

A summary is available here:

[http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2009-07-08-science-
engi...](http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2009-07-08-science-engineer-
jobs_N.htm)

The full RAND study is at:

<http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241/>

------
nostrademons
Does this mean that if we're ever in a shooting war, the military's first
priority will be to get all the geeks out of harm's way?

------
joe_the_user
Hmm,

When I read this, it seemed like there was a disconnect between the out-
sourcing trend and this desire for more computer geeks.

Interestingly, when I recently read BLS website on programmer jobs prospects,
they projected a decrease. You can find a reference to this projection here:
[http://education-
portal.com/articles/Mastercam_Programmer_Jo...](http://education-
portal.com/articles/Mastercam_Programmer_Job_Outlook_and_Info_About_Starting_a_Career_as_a_Mastercam_Programmer.html)

But now, the very recently updated BLS website paints a rosy picture.

<http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos303.htm>

Woo, spooky. Maybe the BLS is listening to darpa at least... WTF!

~~~
joe_the_user
Weird, reading more carefully, the BLS projects more software engineers but
fewer programmers. Fooled me since personnel directors are the only people
I've heard distinguish the two job types.

~~~
blackguardx
I think software engineers are generally jobs that require a B.S. Programmers
might simply be someone with an A.S. or no college doing non-complex
programming tasks. Much of this work is being outsourced.

~~~
nostrademons
I've heard the distinction as "software engineering is a creative profession,
requiring professionals to exercise a large degree of judgment in building
working systems from ambiguous requirements. Programmers take an existing spec
and then translate that into code."

I'm not sure how useful this distinction is, as every job I've held had highly
ambiguous requirements and a lot of trade-offs involved in building a working
system from them. It kinda makes me wonder though - a colleague who'd been a
PM at both Google and Microsoft said the difference was "Microsoft expects PMs
to produce a spec that's thrown over the wall to engineers, who throw it back
if there's any ambiguity. Google expects their engineers to have opinions
about the product and to resolve most of the details themselves, only
consulting the PM if there's something big where they need additional data." I
wonder if Microsoft hires programmers and Google hires software engineers?

~~~
robryan
I've always hated this attempted separating of the roles of programmer and
software engineer. You are taking people best suited to programming and giving
them the job of creating a specification which is then given to lower paid
code monkeys proficient in Java to churn it out.

I'd kind of cheapens the craft when people look at it in this way, my AI
lecturer last year was describing the different roles in creating an AI system
and saying that that the job you want is a knowledge engineer is the position
you want and the programmer is just a nobody who translates it all into code.

~~~
nostrademons
I think that you don't often find _both_ software engineers and programmers in
the same organization, if that organization subscribes to this distinction.
Either you have _only_ software engineers, or you have programmers + software
architects.

------
rick_2047
Correct me if I am wrong but dont they mean a computer science nerd rather
than a geek? I mean geek is someone eccentric with a single minded approach to
anything from comics to radios. But a nerd is a obsessive personality with a
single minded approach towards his field.

