Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

We live in a time where the workforce is going to have to be retrained 3 or 4 times in their lifetimes. That means that 4-year universities wouldn't work even if they were functioning correctly, which they aren't.

There's a larger question of whether this workforce can be trained that many times or not. I don't think we have a choice, so I'd rather just go out and fix the problem instead of ruminating over it. We have a very nasty tendency to ruminate and self-flagellate over structural problems instead of just going out and fixing them.

I do know that we can't use the same institutions, programs, and policies that got us into this to get us out, and I know that there is a huge population that is going to resist the necessary change.

(and btw, "fixing the problem" may not involve retraining. Hell, we might end up personally outsourcing each of our lives to several generations of folks in developing countries and picking up a profit on the difference in standards of living over the next 50 years while the average skill level in the world equalizes. Lots of possible solutions, and I'm not sure I would define the problem as simply as an obsolete workforce)

I would hardly be able to imagine programming being obsolete until we approach near technological singularity.

I take it for granted that there are problems for us programmers to solve.

On the other side of the coin programming, especially web programming, probably moves forward faster than most other professions. You may not need formal training again as the underlying concepts are usually the same but the vast majority would have to learn new methods and languages over their career.

I can see this happening in the near future with concurrency in programming, there is going to be a shift more and more towards concurrent programming where most popular languages and methods now will struggle and we will have to move towards programming in ways that the compiler can help us a lot more with concurrency as languages like Haskell have been designed to do.

Probably, but at what price? I stopped programming PHP when one of my clients asked me what I offered that somebody from India that he could hire for $3/hr didn't. While I was standing in his office, face-to-face.

There's nothing wrong with hiring $3/hr workers (I now do it myself, though not for programming.) But, as time goes forward and we develop more ways for the rest of the world to get online, we're going to have to realize that many programmers won't make it, either, especially if they expect to be paid San Francisco wages for India work.

There's nothing wrong with hiring $3/hr workers (I now do it myself, though not for programming.) But, as time goes forward and we develop more ways for the rest of the world to get online, we're going to have to realize that many programmers won't make it, either, especially if they expect to be paid San Francisco wages for India work.

You have the advantage of a reputation and similar culture. Plus, your employer can call you while you're awake, while not rudely waking up Indian programmers in the middle of the night. Indian programmers might not be any good at all or wishes to understand your need. They probably just bid on many projects without reading the requirement.

Beside, it's only temporary. The living standard will goes up and Indians will demand higher wages to support their rising expenses.

I interviewed at a small dot com where the owner told me essentially the same thing after not hiring me based on salary requirements.

I take satisfaction in noting that three years later his company's site is essentially still where it was then, with none of his plans actually implemented.

Guess those cheaper programmers didn't work out so well.

The india example has nothing to do with machines but rather global wealth disparity. The india problem as in your anecdote will disappear whenever this wealth gap closes.

The article is discussing something entirely different.

IMO programmers will never go out of style until we have real AI. And when we have real AI all humans will be last season's sentience.

programmers will never go out of style until we have real AI.

And what will be our name for an AI that programs? Will it not be "programmer"?

That's what happened last time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer

People who can't program are usually very poor at judging programmer quality and ability.

So you didn't know what your value was. That says more about you than outsourcing or anything else.

What you should have been able to say is that that $3/hr Indian worker doesn't have the experience (and therefor level of skill) that you do. If he did it's extremely unlikely that he would continue to work for $3/hr. Sure, maybe he can live a comfortable life on $3/hr in India, but if he leverages his experience to move to a first world country to make money he can become rich (provided he lives frugally in said first world country and invests his money back home). Which is why so many do it.

You coulda said "well, what are you worth per hour? Because that outsourced worker actually costs that + $3/hr when you consider the detailed spec writing you'll have to do when there's not someone in your office who knows your company and your industry and you can just talk to".

That means that 4-year universities wouldn't work even if they were functioning correctly, which they aren't.

The real benefit of a college degree is that it broadens your horizons and increases your capacity for knowledge. Sure you can do that on your own but most 18-21 year olds have trouble maintaining the focus required for self-learning.

Theory classes like accounting, finance, database, history provide the most benefit and really don't change a lot over time. The more hands-on classes like programming (anyone use Cobol after Y2k?) Internet marketing (did you know you can PAY to be on search engines?) were a waste of time as they did quickly become outdated.

I'm something of an enthusiast... but what do you get out of a history class that you don't get out of a history book?

(if the economy was worse when I came of age, or if my family was wealthier, I probably would be some sort of history-related academic today.)

1) A good idea about which history books to read, and in what order. 2) A collection of knowledgeable colleagues with whom to discuss history 3) (optional) A pretty certificate.

"I'm something of an enthusiast... but what do you get out of a history class that you don't get out of a history book?"

Some people (myself among them) prefer to learn by initially getting taught the subject basics from a person that knows the subject matter. This allows you to get direct feedback to your questions, gives you an idea of the overall scope of the subject and sets you thinking on the right path.

For example, I find trying to learn a new programming language from scratch from a book very challenging. Whereas if I attended a basic course on it (even for a few hours or days just to cover the basics), I learn it much better and faster. I then go off and buy the necessary books/search the web to augment my knowledge. Different people learn differently. I just happen to prefer human contact at the outset, whereas others will pick you a book and teach themselves to become experts all on their own.

Any professor worth their salt will guide a debate among the classmates, and try to get students to argue about the interpretations of events, instead of spoonfeeding them from a history book.

So, what do you get? A set of different views coming from your classmates. An exposure to methods of debate. And so on.

A real four-year university provides education, not training.

> question of whether this workforce can be trained that many times

You're missing the point that roughly 25% of the population can't be trained to a modern skill in the first place. They simply aren't smart enough. A fifth of people are "functionally" illiterate. It's a real stretch to blame that on training/schooling rather than dim wits.

Fifty years ago these people could earn a decent living tightening nuts on an assembly line or picking fruit. Now they're just borderline useless as we have machines to do most of that sort of work. It takes 100 people to build a sky scraper, whereas there used to be an army of men running around with wheel barrows.

The whole point of the article and the referenced book, "A Farewell to Alms", is that people have different genetic and cultural potentials in a modern industrialized society. The book documents how the English gene pool changed (eugenic forces) leading up to the industrial revolution. It argues that the industrial revolution happened in England because the English people had become smart and disciplined enough to work in factories. English industrialists in the 1800s kept on trying to take factories to cheap third world labor, and over and over it failed because the local population couldn't hack it. Productivity was too low. It was not a matter of training.

The point here is that we are dealing with uncomfortable issues that transcend something like a "no child left behind" act. A large fraction of humanity may simply be useless to modern commerce.

Note that in addition to the functional illiterates there are a lot of people who can read basic material (eg "My dog Spot"), but who in daily life regularly run into material that they are unable to understand (like newspapers, or the instructions on medicine bottles).

I would not be surprised if the fraction of people with basic competency at reading and wrong is under 50%.

Functional literacy is about the ability to function, i.e. fill in tax forms.

In Sweden functional literacy is in the high 90% range.

It's a real stretch to blame that on training/schooling rather than dim wits.

I'm not sure that's true. There is some evidence that literacy and numeracy rates fell under New Labour. That government was characterized by high spending on "trendy" methods, rather that the basic "3 Rs". Reciting the alphabet and memorizing the times tables might be "discredited" now but it's hard to argue with the observation that the generation(s) taught that way can actually read and count...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2534296/Lower-literacy-among...

This sounds like the old fascist idea that there are groups of people who are genetically inferior and cannot participate in a modern society, so should be sterilized or otherwise removed.

Indeed. And it doesn't look like we'll be able to replace many extremely easy jobs (from an intellectual point of view) by machines any time soon : picking up garbage, taking care of old people, etc.

Yet those jobs are incredibly low paying.

Consequence: Those people can barely live above the poverty line. They are regularly on government support programs even though they are working a full time job.

Also, they can't afford and iPad or a new car. Henry Ford recognized the value of paying his workers well. Trash collectors and CNA's aren't typically paid well.

Cisco Network Administrators? :-)

I thought your question was good enough to spend some time on a blog post today

http://bit.ly/bKxsp4

Reply on news.ycombinator.com