How To Live The New American Dream

I just got my first technical job (website integration for an online marketing network) in the last month, previously being in general office administration for 10 years. I've always been technically minded but had never pursued it as anything other than a hobby (running home servers, being family tech support etc...).

While I've found Codecademy incredibly frustrating at times (lack of response to feedback and glitchy lessons mainly), it was definitely worth using. I also bought some domains and built a couple of Wordpress sites to try and showcase my skills and interests.

I'd spent all of 2012 firing off CV's to try and get into an entry-level IT support role (which I know I could do) and didn't get a single interview. This year I managed to get in touch with a recruiter via a friend in the ad display industry and pretty soon afterwards I was put forward for an interview. That I could demonstrate my websites and willingness to learn outside of work using online courses on my CV was a definite factor.

An HTML test was a requirement in the interview, and having no idea how complex it might be, I ran through Codecademy's lessons and covered as much as I could to refresh my knowledge. This was a huge help and I did fine on the test.

I was offered the job the same day and one month in I'm loving it. I'm in a fantastic place with a great environment and working with other technically-minded people.

I think there's real value in many of these online courses and education sites (I have also played around with RubyMonk and Learn python the hard way), especially for someone like me who went straight into work rather than Uni.

However, I don't think they (or anyone) would argue that coding instruction is sufficient to revive the possibly long-gone "American Dream". It's a small piece of the puzzle.

The real problem is that while there's infinite demand for solving problems and making the world better, most people don't get jobs that provide access to that infinite demand. Those jobs only exist if you have savings to go off on your own. Otherwise, you're a subordinate supporting someone else's career, and demand for subordinate labor is going toward zero, due to technology. It's so low that if you're over 40, you're probably priced out of those kinds of jobs unless you're an executive.

Most people need to work in those subordinate jobs (to get savings and credibility) before they can create their own jobs, but those subordinate jobs are now being eaten by machines, which are just much better at reliable, cheap subordination than any human.

The gap between what the world needs (problem solving) and what people can get steady income to do (subordinate labor) has reached an unacceptable level, and it's now tearing the economy apart and shutting what used to be a bidirectionally reliable labor market down.

Providing easy access to coding resources is an admirable step in the right direction, but this is a huge problem and it's not going to be solved by one website. Given that universities with trillions of dollars (as a set) in endowments have failed to solve it, I think that this problem is going to be around for a while.

Corporate employment is not the American Dream. It's a sign that the "Dream" is over.

It gives people with even the remotest inkling of an interest in programming the opportunity to explore that interest in a hassle-free environment (much like those of who grew up in the 80's had with Speccies and C64's) and instant positive feedback is a great thing.

If however you think completing codeacademy courses makes you fit to program for a living you are dangerously (and expensively) insane.

Knowledge of a particular programming language in-depth is a tiny part of what makes you a competent programmer.

In fact once you have learnt one or two languages you can learn another pretty quickly (though mastery of the idioms can take a while).

However to me a "coder" and a programmer (software engineer/developer) are completely different beasts.

Personally I'm waiting for surgeonacademy always fancied having a go at a transplant and they do seem to spend a lot of time on the golf course!.