The Coders of Kentucky

I&#x27;m from KY. This article is great, but in focusing on these coding bootcamp graduates, it misses the much larger picture of just how much brain drain occurs for actual CS graduates (who, to be fair, are much less likely to be from Eastern KY).<p>Right now they&#x27;re taking millions in gov. money to train a small amount of people... but Kentucky graduates many more people with degrees in CS every year, by about an order of magnitude. There are basically no &quot;good&quot; software jobs in the state, so a lot of the good graduates leave to go work at Amazons and Googles. Training local talent is good, but you have to have more jobs than Interapt, OpenText, UPS, and GE to cultivate a local tech industry.<p>What I think Kentucky should do is focus on brining remote workers back, for now - once there&#x27;s a strong local talent pool, then you can begin courting businesses, not vice versa. I know a guy who went back to care for parents while keeping his $200k+ salary, which makes you pretty rich in Kentucky terms, and also provides a huge tax benefit to the state. I know lots of people at big west coast tech companies that would like to take their west coast salaries back home, but as is, I don&#x27;t think any of us would go back to work at Interapt.

I&#x27;ve been working in Alaska a as consultant for the past 12 years and I make good money here at an interesting and fulfilling job with a team I mesh well with. I&#x27;ve also got a BS in CS.<p>There are lots of talented programmers in places you wouldn&#x27;t expect. Many of us have no desire to move to a giant megalopolis where we&#x27;d have a higher cost of living, more taxes, a two hour commute, and a poor culture fit in our community.<p>The only way I&#x27;d consider a job working for a tech company down in America is if I could work remote around 75% of the time. It&#x27;d also have to be really interesting. There&#x27;s no way I&#x27;d give up summers on the boat with my dad or unparalleled back country snowboarding in the winter.<p>If you&#x27;re looking to outsource some work to AK I can list a few resources that will help:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;akdevalliance.com" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;akdevalliance.com</a><p>and two popular consulting companies up here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.resourcedata.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.resourcedata.com&#x2F;</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wostmann.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wostmann.com&#x2F;</a><p>Disclaimer: I did not list my consulting company.

I think the author is making a mistake by assuming the biggest potential benefit would be the coders taking jobs with &quot;tech companies&quot; in Kentucky. Coders working outside of technology companies can still provide significant added value. Smaller, non-tech companies frequently see enormous productivity benefits by building simple building CRUD applications with a small amount of custom business logic.

I think the most important line of the article is:<p><i>&quot;On its first run in 2016, Interapt had 800 applicants, accepted 50 and graduated 35.&quot;</i><p>Any strategy that posits IT and programming &quot;insourcing&quot; as a solution for the troubles of Middle America is going to have to have a strategy for the 750&#x2F;800 people who <i>don&#x27;t</i> have the chops to become a software engineer.

At some point we should wonder what other strategies Silicon Valley has. The fact that coders are encouraged to work remotely is attractive to sustain these areas of the USA, but it hampers the formation of centres of specialisation and exchange with other fields: either these graduates stay and work remotely, disconnected from both local industry[1] and the tech hubs, or they move away and worsen the unemployment problem they were supposed to combat.<p>[1] Not to mention that coding websites and apps doesn&#x27;t exactly make you an integral part of the economic tissue of Hueysville, KY, as opposed to the much-maligned coal jobs.

I hope programs like this work and continue to help out my fellow Kentuckians. Beyond coal, factory, or retail jobs the opportunities for work in eastern kentucky and appalachia in general is bleak.

This is basically the life I lead, minus the boot camp. I spent five years in central Virginia instead, to get my career to the point where I could get a good remote job.<p>I live in rural Arkansas, and there are basically no tech jobs here. My salary is much less than it’d be in LA (where my employer is located), but is still something like four times the median family income here.<p>I feel like I have the best of both worlds, and wish I could help others here make it in our industry - but who wants to hire remote junior devs?

It&#x27;s an inspiring story about jobs in middle America. But can places like Kentucky really compete with outsourcing hubs like India or Eastern Europe?<p>I think it comes down to access to education. Coastal US businesses would be happy to &quot;outsource&quot; work to these areas if these skillsets were widely available there. Perhaps, trade schools and coding bootcamps like the one in this article will be enough to bring these jobs.

I came away from this article feeling cautiously optimistic. As the article noted, they had 800 applicants, accepted 50, and graduated 35. It&#x27;s great that those 35 got jobs, but what do you do with those 750 people who couldn&#x27;t get in? Do you train them in something else that requires a little bit of tech skills, such as CNC machining?

I&#x27;ve been a firm believer for a long time that a lot of IT jobs, including software development, but also all sorts of support and operations tasks, should be treated more like a trade, with more formalized apprenticeship tracks and training. There&#x27;s value in a traditional college degree, but there&#x27;s still a lot of practical skills you can only learn on the job. But there&#x27;s also a lot of potential talent in the field that&#x27;s not being harnessed because of the lack of a more structured pathway into these sorts of jobs. This sounds like an interesting program, but it&#x27;s a shame it takes federal grants and private companies to provide something that a robust state education system ought to be covering in partnership with the corporations who would benefit from having these trained workers.

Great article. Bipartisan win!<p>When people work together (across partisan, economic, social, etc.) divides, everybody benefits.<p>Kudos to everyone involved in this one.

Seems plausible to me. Doesn&#x27;t Joey Hess live in KY or TN?

I&#x27;ve been wondering for a while now, seeing constant asks for charity to Appalachia, if they could just get more remote work there.

Software development is a semi engineering, semi math&#x2F;quantitative profession. Very little of current US primary&#x2F;middle, and high school education is dedicated that. A few boot camps are not going to solve the fundamental skills mismatch issues....

&gt; &quot;Trump for President.” (Kentucky went 63 percent for him.)<p>What does that have to do with the article? I really despise the media bias and overtly political tone that seeps its way into everything. I live in the South.<p>The real story should be the economy is booming, opportunities are omnipresent, and the American dream of working hard and progressing your way up the financial ladder of success is obtainable for everybody. Kudos for going out taking the class, learning to code, and taking control of your future and economic success.