If we’re to visualize the future as a big approaching tidal wave, there are 2 sides to that tidal wave. Naturally, we all want to be on the crest of the wave, not the ones waiting on the shore to get smacked and washed away.
Careerwise, we’re handed few assurances from the top. When you look around you see the end of lifetime employment, big industries killing jobs with automation, and the once prestigious Bachelor’s Degree taking you no further than it would folded into a paper airplane.
“So how can I, a person of average means and intelligence, take my future by the reins?”- A young graduate asks the universe. “Do you even code, bro?” it seems to respond.
Learning to code has surpassed college as basic cost of entry to middle class. Schools and businesses push it. Politicians and celebrities (who of course, deeply understand the plight of the middle class) have stepped up to their Twitter podiums to encourage it too.
Coding is where the money is, they say. A hip, universal language. Anybody can do it. Even you, shmuck.
Whenever I see a propagandic push to think or do something, I always ask- who benefits?
Well first, a huge amount of virtual and classroom courses.
The online courses for coding are beautifully designed. They gamify the learning process with fun sounds, visuals and prized to make it more addictive than Candy Crush. And to their credit, some of them advocate their students for placement afterwards.
“Wow, if I learn to code, I’m king of the hill. They’ll be fighting over me, and I will be safe for life.”
Hold on a sec… How good are you? Are you as good as the guys who have been coding since they could type? They are looking for those same jobs.
If you’re not, are you such a fast and constant learner that you can squeak by?
But from I gather, most courses never get you past the elementary level of skill. Consider a recent US immigrant studying English language. Learning the ABC’s and assembling a few sentences, piece of cake. By 4th grade you got to put it all together, and compose some stuff. And it gets real.
It’s true, especially with these gamified and virtual learning processes, most anyone can get to that 3rd grade level. Maybe a little further.
Getting to career level however takes heaps of practice and a certain kind of brain. As with any language, if you didn’t start coding early, you will be fighting an uphill battle slamming up against the native job applicants.
Add to the mix a world where the boss can instantly replace you with an overseas contractor at half the price, competent don’t cut it. You got to be competitive. And being competitive means you’re on a constant treadmill to maintain your worth.
To be clear, there is merit to learning for the joy of it. I know people who study code purely for the mental exercise.
But many people aren’t learning coding later in life aren’t in it for learning’s sake. They do it with the promise of self betterment and stability. You don’t see the same push to study any number of fascinatingly useless topics.
In fact, coding is being trumpeted partly in backlash to the universities’ emphasis on Humanities degrees which didn’t get many people hired. While nobody could argue a Comp Sci degree is less professionally useful than say, English Lit, could the former also be blanketed in false assurances?
The second push is from employers who want better hiring choices, and also to expand the job descriptions of their existing employees.
This one would seem to be a no brainer. Articles claim there is a skills gap, with way more jobs than web developers. When the market needs you so bad, employment should be a cinch.
As long as you can justify your worth with an alphabet soup’s worth of coding languages, you can make six figures. But dispense with any illusions you will be safe from reorganization or broader technological shifts.
The shadow of automation and outsourcing lingers. Companies are not looking to hire more people than they have to. And you can’t blame them: In our current model of society they simply have no short term incentive to do so.
Case in point: Take a look at what “internships” degraded into over the last 10 years. Rather than helping to shape raw material into career level product it’s too often an excuse to hire semi formed developers at embarrassing below market (or non existent) rates to do their dirty work.
And finally, singing the “learn to code” gospel from the comforts of Twitter, we have our elites. Some of these folks are living very decadent, sheltered lives. When times are tough in the economy the blame finger tends to point upward, and it’s not in their interest to seem out of touch at best, or responsible at worst.
So as the middle class economy vanishes, they aim to appear active and concerned for the plight of these unfortunate people they have zero contact with. Coding is a good deflection, subtly turning the blame on those who haven’t coded their way out of hardship.
“Let them learn code” appears to be the new “Let them eat cake”.
In summation: Learning to code is not a bad thing. It will unlock doors, much the way learning Spanish or Chinese will. And for a problem solving oriented mind, it makes for a wonderful intellectual sandbox job or no job.
However, it’s not for everybody. And the singular insistence it is the salvation of the average American makes for a misguided, condescending and harmful advice.
Like religion, it’s a shiny object dangled in front of the most disillusioned, or desperate with a promise of eternal redemption. Even in our supposedly secular society, religious themes seem to pop up like weeds.
Now stop reading this and go code something. I hear your future depends on it.