Underdog Devs: supporting formerly incarcerated and disadvantaged aspiring devs

You have gone from saying

- "you actually have to be smart to be a good developer", to

- "Incompetent people sliding by is hardly limited to programming", to

- "I have no idea how someone totally incompetent could break through".

The original statement was not "totally incompetent people can break through". The original statement was "Are developers the new blue-collar workers?" And your response assumes that blue-collar workers are not smart. In fact, it seems like you think blue collar workers are "totally incompetent" since you created an equivalency between "blue collar workers", "not smart", then "incompetent", and lastly "totally incompetent." That is incredibly ignorant and prejudiced.

This is a biased data set of course but you will see similar patterns across the board. Even people with degrees, it's getting hard to break in because most companies have realized that hiring senior developers is better value for money.

In tech, you are also constantly tested regardless of how many years of experience you have. This doesn't happen in other field at the same frequency so you don't get to slack off if you want to switch jobs.

Yes, and guess where they learned it from? Regurgitation and handing in "something" on time can pretty easily get you a degree, even at a top tier school. That will get you further at most organizations than a resume with completed software projects and no college degree. Once you are in, it's easy to do enough to avoid getting fired. No one wants to take the blame for a bad hire.

After a few years, they're a mid-level engineer and maybe they make good looking diagrams. They answer all of their emails, they show up for the meetings that actual engineers don't want to attend. They have a purpose and fill a role, even if they still fundamentally don't understand what's going on.

No matter where you go, or how high up the chain you get, they will be on every team and in every meeting. What they lack in technical understanding they cover with political and social skills. Which also means they will be your management.

They started adding tests after this approach failed, and they're making the same mistake in a different way. Having the motivation to grind leetcode is not the same as having the motivation to finish a software project. You'll end up with a lot of people who really want the money, and will suffer any number of hoops, but in the end they really hate the work.

Like not everyone needs to pass a FAANG hiring crap shoot. You can give someone useful skills with which they can earn a living.

As for accountants, well there are levels here too. Bookkeeping being one entry-level route. "Accountant" also means many things, like it's often conflated with "consultant" in, say, a Big Four (is it still Big Four?) case.

Lawyers actually do have a path to practice law without getting a law degree via a sort of apprenticeship program. It's not often used but it does exist.

And then there's doctors. If you ignore college and just focus on medical school plus required on-the-job training (ie residency program, possibly a fellowship), it can take 6-12 years to fully train a doctor.

Whatever you may think of us software engineers, we're nowhere near the same level as a doctor in terms of required training. And that's all there is to it. I mean no one figures out how to remove an appendix when they're 12 in their parents' garage.

But the US criminal "justice" system is really a human rights abomination for all the well-documented reasons (eg incarceration rate, racial bias, institutional rape, unjustifiably long sentences for possession of substances that are now legal in ~15 states, etc) but the big one is scarlet letter cruelty that most Americans seem to be OK with.

I am of course talking about the nefarious "are you a felon?" question on job and other applications. I'm of the view that once someone has served their time, you should no longer hold it over their head such that they can't get many jobs, rent an apartment, etc.

We should all be concerned about that if we care at all about recidivism. Unfortunately many Americans take a purely punitive view.