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Ivanka Trump and Google's CEO Announce a Tech Job Training Initiative (cnbc.com) 52

At a roundtable event in Dallas, Tex. Thursday alongside Ivanka Trump, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced new job training opportunities through a White House initiative. From a report: Google will sign the "Pledge to America's Workers," a White House initiative that calls on employers to expand education programs for American workers, Pichai said in a statement prior to the event. As part of the commitment, Pichai said the company provide 250,000 training opportunities for Americans in technology skills over five years. Google had previously signed the pledge through its membership in the trade group the Internet Association, but Thursday's announcement further strengthens that commitment. Google already has a national skills training program called "Grow with Google," which provides free resources to learn various online skills. In a blog post Thursday, Google announced plans to expand that program to 100 community colleges in the U.S. by 2020. At the roundtable, Trump said the pledge is meant to fill job opportunities with young workers as well as help reskill workers later in their careers.
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Ivanka Trump and Google's CEO Announce a Tech Job Training Initiative

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  • by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @01:17PM (#59266140)

    Corporations campaign & lobby relentlessly for lower taxes & smaller government. They've also slashed their apprenticeship & training programmes to train & on-board new employees, then they complain that the candidates for their jobs are under-educated & poorly trained.

    Now they want government to fund their apprenticeship & training programmes & pay still lower taxes. So who pays for all this new government spending & expansion of apprenticeship & training programmes?

    They're also campaigning & lobbying relentlessly to replace effective, tried & education programmes (humanities) with vocational training programmes, e.g. code.org, for children in K-12 education. Literacy (reading & writing), history, numeracy, & science knowledge (which all include critical thinking, problem-solving, & creative skills) are essential & highly valuable to have & pre-requisites for learning to design & code, & yet the USA is performing badly in this respect. Shouldn't their future employers be campaigning & lobbying for better basic education?

  • by ardmhacha ( 192482 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @01:27PM (#59266240)

    The previous story was about gender pronouns, now one with Ivanka Trump in the title.

    I predict lots of heat but little light in the comments of both stories.

    • "It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn." —Robert Southey
  • Wait (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dunbal ( 464142 ) * on Thursday October 03, 2019 @01:40PM (#59266330)
    There's a shortage of "tech" workers?
    • Sure. Field Produce Gathering Technician and Washroom Cleaning Technician are two of many examples.

    • by jrumney ( 197329 )

      There is a shortage of tech workers willing to work on Ivanka Trump's new line of voting machines which she just got trademark approval for from China.

  • Based on stated projections, AI will be displacing workers faster than they can be effectively retrained; not to mention how fast AI will make inroads into coding.

  • Nonsense (Score:3, Informative)

    by Diddy Alliddy ( 6287670 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @01:55PM (#59266428)
    No one will be trained. This is a photo opp. Sundar is sucking up to the administration while it's still in power.
  • by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @02:11PM (#59266544) Homepage Journal

    Grifters got to grift, I guess.

    Remember "Trump University"?

  • by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Thursday October 03, 2019 @02:15PM (#59266566)

    What are these 250,000 "training opportunities" exactly?

    I see a couple of issues with this. First, No matter how much people say otherwise, not everyone can learn how to code. The JS frameworks and other web languages make things relatively easy, but you still need some core skills around logic and problem deconstruction even if it's as simple as gluing JavaScript LEGO together. Forcing more people into the crowded semi-skilled developer market who aren't qualified is just going to make the industry worse overall. You are not going to take a factory worker or coal miner and instantly turn them into a genius developer...or even a competent one. Look at how many companies outsource CRUD application development to the lowest bidder, and look at what comes back. This is what you'll get from an army of untrained coders.

    Second, our industry doesn't need more vendor-sponsored education. We need to grow up as a
    "real" profession. Put continuing education requirements in the hands of a professional organization rather than enriching vendors who create certifications that push their view of the IT landscape exclusively. In return, give employers the assurance that anyone passing these requirements is actually qualified, has real experience and isn't a risk to hire. This is the way the medical profession works. Hospitals don't question whether someone coming out of medical school is qualified to start their residency...they've made it through a system designed to admit only academic stars, made it through years of stuffing medical knowledge into their brains, and passed their first step of their licensing exam. Everyone coming out of med school is identically trained and qualified. This is very different from IT and dev, where you have people with huge knowledge gaps. Companies hiring have to resort to trivia contests to figure out who's lying to them...medical residents are just matched with one of their choices of hospitals based on interest and fit. Knowledge and competency is a given.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • But the way Google/Microsoft/Apple/etc are acting, they seem to think that everyone can learn to be a programmer. That's the problem here.

        And as the parent said, not only is not everyone a good candidate to be a programmer, some people should never even try to become one. There's already enough code monkeys out there, doing piles of barely-working crap using libraries bolted on top of other libraries they barely understand.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • We need to grow up as a "real" profession. Put continuing education requirements in the hands of a professional organization

      In my State it requires a license and 300 hours of formal training to wash hair professionally. If that's what you have in mind, be warned that I'll fight that protectionism tooth and nail.

      With that out of the way, does CompTIA meet your standards for vendor neutral certification?

    • "Everyone coming out of med school is identically trained and qualified."

      Whaaaat ..?!
  • Thanks, Google - there is now no doubt where you stand.
  • Sloppy Seconds (Score:2, Insightful)

    by o_ferguson ( 836655 )
    "Do no evil - unless she's hot and the President already banged her."
  • Don't Be Evil (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Chromal ( 56550 )
    Don't Be Evil also includes not collaborating or even willingly standing in the same room with illiberalism, corruption, aristocracy, barbarous, or criminal regimes or their cronies.
  • As an ex-Googler, I can't imagine the internal shitstorm this unleashed. Good on Sundar to remind SJWs that he's the one running the company.

  • We don't need more "tech workers". We already have plenty.

    Further, we're handing out tech job H1-Bs to people from countries that pay for their education faster than new jobs are created, who then take jobs at less than those who have to pay off student loans can afford to accept.

    If you're bringing in new workers faster than jobs open, it's clear that, even if no new grads at all get jobs, they're still displacing existing workers. So there are still MORE available, IF tech employers would pay them a livi

  • They had a $500 training program for help desk support and dropped it early and provided no placement for most of the graduates. My little brother completed the program and several of the promised modules had been cut alongside placement. Of course you figured that out AFTER you paid for and invested significant time in the program.

  • So Google supports Trump? Fuck Google. And, as always: Fuck Apple just because.
    • So Google supports Trump? Fuck Google. And, as always: Fuck Apple just because.

      Seconded.

    • by iamacat ( 583406 )

      It's not appropriate for Google to support or oppose Trump. Although democracy is no panacea for good society, turning it into a banana republic where tech companies and corporate press choose leaders does nothing to improve things. Google should stick to providing reliable utilities and let individuals vote as they choose. However training Americans to do useful trades should be encouraged.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] Ex-Google/ex-Facebook TechLead exposes H-1B visa abuse in Silicon Valley, and his experiences working at Facebook.
  • You think this will change employers demanding graduates be "Full stack" programmers fresh out of university? The problem isn't the lack of social justice diversity programs to help under privileged techies. It's the corporations schlepping in Pajeets and refusing to provide on job training for the existing American workforce. Hey Trump! Remember when you said you were gonna secure our border?

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