As with many things, the TechHire Initiative is actually much more complex than that.
The short answer is No, I don’t believe that the President thinks someone can be taught to take over a mid-high level skilled job after a 12 week coding course – but neither does anyone else who is part of this initiative.
What this program is actually about is creating career pathways.
To borrow a great illustrative image from the NYC Workforce Development Board:
What is being created under this grant is a better way for the available candidate pool to be assessed against the available job pool. Wherever the candidates fall on this line (no matter if they are employed, unemployed, dislocated workers, have barriers to employment., etc), they can then be coached or trained or given additional experience (or any combination thereof) to move to the next category up the ladder.
As new candidates are always entering the ladder from the bottom (by graduating from secondary school, leaving the military, etc) and exiting the top into the mid to high skilled jobs, and new jobs are being created all the time with different types of skills needed, this cycle can repeat ad-nauseum.
Employers have certain minimum requirements for mid to high-skill positions. Bootcamps and other certifications can definitely help you to get in to an entry level position, but someone with an advanced degree will always be ahead.
Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/Is-Obama-right-that-out-of-work-Americans-can-quickly-be-taught-to-code-well-enough-to-get-tech-jobs
Originally Posted On: 2016-03-08