Nonprofit in Queens taught people to write apps, incomes rose from $15k to $72k

Awesome, though it might take a bit of air out of the tech-as-a-solution-to-jobs when one hears the qualifier "BTW, they're university-educated CS majors." (At a university with an absolutely terrible career services department, even by the low standards of career services departments.)

I&#x27;m donating my 31st birthday to this great org. Donating $150 will get you a signed copy of Without Their Permission and I&#x27;ll take the highest donor out to lunch in Queens.<p><a href="https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/donating-my-31st-help-c4q-teach-queens-to-code" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crowdtilt.com&#x2F;campaigns&#x2F;donating-my-31st-help-c4...</a>

&quot;We saw lots of people in the City University of New York system who graduated as computer science majors but weren&#x27;t going into the tech industry...It was a lot of access and network problems, and a lack of technical training.&quot;<p>This is really confusing. How do you graduate as a computer science major and lack technical training? And if that&#x27;s the case, how does such a faculty remain in business?

Just to be clear, these are people with either a BS or a BA in Computer Science, right?

Also worth mentioning:<p>CodeNow (DC and San Francisco) <a href="http://codenow.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;codenow.com&#x2F;</a> (currently appears down)<p>CodeCamp (East Palo Alto) <a href="http://www.epacoding.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.epacoding.com&#x2F;</a><p>For people in the tech industry, helping out programs like these is an awesome way to give back. Fun, engaging, direct, and makes good use of the skills you already have (i.e. in a volunteering teaching position).

Regardless of the merits of this particular case ... I&#x27;m always happy to see people improve their lots in life through education. If someone can learn to program and earn significantly more money, they should go for it.<p>However, I am concerned when people try and paint any given profession as being some kind of gold rush or as easy money. Even if programming were incredibly simple and anyone could pick it up ... if everyone making $15K learned to program, they would drag the median salary of programmers down to $15K due to over-supply. Our profession in particular really needs more quality before it needs more quantity.<p>The moral of stories like this should be, &quot;skilled jobs generally pay better than unskilled jobs&quot;, not &quot;computer programming is easy and pays exceptionally well!&quot; And at that point, I doubt that is news to anyone.

I think this is great! As someone who has a background in teaching youth living in poverty who is now a coder, I&#x27;ve often thought about swinging back around and do bootcamp style courses for older teenagers.

&quot;&quot;We saw lots of people in the City University of New York system who graduated as computer science majors but weren&#x27;t going into the tech industry,&quot; says Jukay Hsu, founder of Coalition for Queens&quot;<p>&quot;Not bad, considering 85 percent of the participants had never coded before.&quot;<p>How in the heck can you get a degree in CS while also never having any experience coding. They don&#x27;t need a non-profit they need to reform that CS department or shut it down.

Here&#x27;s a link to their demo day <a href="http://youtu.be/AS35Lxv6WRM?t=39m2s" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;AS35Lxv6WRM?t=39m2s</a>

<p><pre><code> &gt; There&#x27;s a booming tech scene in New York City with over 70,000 open &gt; jobs, but it&#x27;s always been somewhat insulated from the city itself </code></pre> What is this sentence trying to convey? The part that I do not understand is the &quot;insulated from the city&quot; bit.

If you want to support Coalition for Queens and the next Access Code program, donate now through Crowdtilt:<p><a href="https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/donating-my-31st-help-c4q-teach-queens-to-code" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crowdtilt.com&#x2F;campaigns&#x2F;donating-my-31st-help-c4...</a>

I love reading stories like this.

This is awesome, but they are not making enough.<p>I still get MBA types saying: &#x27;can you build this app for me plz?&#x27;<p>I don&#x27;t think they want it built, else they&#x27;d do it.