Communications of the ACM
As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding For Career Change
"The good jobs were all in computer science," says Savannah Worth, an English major in college who now works as a software developer.
Credit: Matt Edge / The New York Times
People from diverse walks of life are switching careers as they seek a future in the burgeoning U.S. technology industry, with emphasis on learning coding and data analysis. The drive to develop technical skills is accelerating as companies in nearly every industry implement some kind of digital initiative, either by necessity or to keep pace with their peers. Many companies currently are offering lucrative salaries and perks to people with mastery over cloud computing, mobile apps, data analytics, and other tools for reducing business costs, customer outreach, and automated decision-making.
In March, the White House announced the TechHire initiative to coordinate the efforts of the federal government, cities, corporations, and schools to train people for the thousands of jobs currently available in the tech sector. Coding "boot camps" such as Hack Reactor and Galvanize will graduate about 16,000 students in 2015, equaling about 33 percent of the estimated number of computer science graduates from U.S. universities, according to a recent Course Report survey. "These are skilled and ambitious people who are seeking an on-ramp to the tech industry," says Galvanize CEO Jim Deters.
Course Report co-founder Liz Eggleston says most students are in their 20s and 30s, with the typical pupil being a "29-year-old career changer."
From The New York Times
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