March 12th, 2015

Obama’s $100M Program Against The Tech Talent Shortage

President Obama is taking the shortage of technology workers in the US seriously: his new TechHire program will invest “$100 million in new Federal investments to train and connect more workers to a good job in technology and other in-demand fields”.

Next week at the SXSW conference, 10x cofounder Altay Guvench will discuss a major issue in technology in has talk, The Tech Talent Shortage: Problems and Solutions. Tech workers are in higher demand than ever: Wired reports that half a million tech jobs in the US await fulfillment. Women and minorities are especially underrepresented among the existing tech workforce: comprising of only about 15%.

This has prompted President Obama to launch the The TechHire Initiative, a $100 million program for “creating pathways to better, high-paying tech jobs and meeting urgent employer demand across the U.S.”. The program seeks to recruit people from less traditional places, especially women, minorities, veterans and the disabled.

The TechHire Initiative gives silent support to PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel’s campaign against the necessity of traditional college degrees in technology work (see Plug In, Turn On, Drop Out: Thiel’s Case Against College):

At its core, TechHire aims to convince local governments, businesses, and individuals that a four-year degree is no longer the only way to gain valuable tech skills. “It turns out it doesn’t matter where you learned code, it just matters how good you are at writing code,” Obama said. “If you can do the job, you should get the job.” [Wired]

Check out the White House’s TechHire Fact Sheet here.

Visit the TechHire homepage here.

 

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