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Are coders the next blue-collar workers?

Are coders the next blue-collar workers?
Participants take part in HTML500, a course which teaches computer coding skills, in Vancouver, B.C. Saturday, Jan. 24, 2015 (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward)

About five years ago, Heather Payne, the CEO of digital academy HackerYou, met a young girl named Carol who had volunteered to run a computer club at a school in Toronto’s west end.

The initiative was part of non-profit Ladies Learning Code, which was founded by Payne and several other women, in an effort to bridge the skills gap by teaching women, girls, and now youth in general, basic computer literacy.

Payne has kept tabs on Carol who has since learned to code and attended dozens of workshops through the organization for free, thanks to a scholarship program.

Now in her mid-teens, Carol has her entire future in front of her, one that could include a lucrative career in the fast-growing field of coding, should she choose to do so.

“Without that early exposure through a female role model … who knows if she would’ve ever gotten interested or realized that this is something that she likes,” Payne told Yahoo Finance Canada.

And it’s clear this type of digital literacy education is vital in Canada and around the world. There are already nearly 900,000 Canadians working in information and communications technology jobs across the country.

That astonishing number is expected to continue to grow as well, with at least another 182,000 on the way by 2019 and at least an additional 32,000 in 2020.

This explosion of well-paying gigs – in the U.S. the national average salary for IT positions is US$81,000 – has led some experts to call careers in coding and programming the next “big blue-collar job.”

Historically, the blue-collar job has evoked the image of a hard-hat wearing, grease-covered manual labourer.

However, many experts argue that coding – which generally doesn’t require workers to get their hands dirty, except at lunch – should be also be considered as such because it doesn’t require special skills and can be learned by just about anyone.

“It’s (like) being able to use a wrench on a bolt, if you were to compare it to the automotive industry,” Andrew, Mawer, the co-founder of Toronto-based coding bootcamp Bitmaker told Yahoo Finance Canada.

“If you’re actually interested in learning (the skills), they’re very trainable for anyone,” said Mawer, whose company was purchased by global workforce training company General Assembly last year.

Girls attend a computer coding workshop hosted by Ladies Learning Code. (CBC)
Girls attend a computer coding workshop hosted by Ladies Learning Code. (CBC)

Mawer said contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a computer science degree to get a job in the field.

“To understand the theory behind a lot of things that are going on, I would probably agree that you need to know those skills and have a fundamental (understanding of) that, but as far as the execution goes, you really don’t need to be able to solve a mathematical proof or anything,” he said.

Payne echoed this sentiment, noting that out of 445 students who have passed through HackerYou programs, only six have dropped out, about half of whom did so for personal reasons.

“In my experience running HackerYou and running our bootcamp program … we have successfully transitioned relative beginners to coding into development jobs almost every single time,” said Payne.

“Which is an incredibly small number compared to the attrition that happens in university computer science courses.”

Payne said HackerYou has seen students from a variety of backgrounds, but its programs, which focus on front-end development, or website design, have a placement rate of 97 per cent in the first three months after graduation.

“It’s certainly pretty exciting to think that you … can study something random at university, like arts or humanities, and then even spending nine weeks learning the skills of a developer and then be employable,” she said.

Likewise, Mawer said people from “all walks of life” attend Bitmaker classes, which are designed to graduate “best-in-class,” junior-level web developers, who are capable of working directly with websites, as well as the databases and internal logic that allow them to run (the back end).

Mawer said these are “well-paying jobs” that offer starting salaries of $35,000 on the “absolute low end” to upwards of $80,000, but the bulk of graduates make between $45,000 and $65,000.

Meanwhile, Payne estimated that HackerYou graduates typically earn between $45,000 and $55,000.


While these jobs may have originally been created by the tech sector, Mawer said coding positions are popping across the Canadian economy.

“Compared to the United States, I think we’re a bit slower to adopt new things. Not that much slower but a bit more hesitant,” he said.

“I’d say at first people in the technology sectors were more early adopters, but now it’s starting to branch throughout to all the Canadian economy.”

Mawer said the mining sector has been among those championing the integration of information technology positions.

In fact, Bitmaker and Barrick Gold are hosting a hackathon next month in Toronto to unearth Canadians with digital skills who can help them streamline their operations. Mawer said this is something Barrick is comfortable with as it’s used to pursuing workers with technical talent, and this is simply another type.

“Instead of working with your hands on actual mining equipment, they’re working with their hands … (on) a computer, building out a platform that they want to see to help things run more efficiently,” Mawer noted.

Mawer said coding skills will be “super valuable” as workers across all fields may soon be asked to create programs themselves or be able to convey ideas to people who work with programming directly.

Despite this growing opportunity, it may be premature to call coding the next great blue-collar job just yet, especially when Canada could be facing a talent shortage of 180,000 information communications and technology workers by 2019.

The problem is, unlike manual labour, coding jobs are not currently accessible to all, Payne said.

According to CRTC data from 2013, 14 per cent of homes don’t have a computer and 16 per cent don’t have Internet access.

Without early exposure, many children may not get a chance to cultivate a love for computers.

While middle-class families don’t have the same issues with access, Payne said many parents may still not be identifying digital literacy as an area of emphasis.

However, she said this is quickly changing, as millennials become parents.

But that may not be enough.

Payne said basic programming skills need to be introduced to kids during primary education. So far, only B.C. and Nova Scotia have put coding into school curriculums.

Payne understands it’s tough to change the system.

She said it’s a two-step process where teachers first need to be taught to code, before they can show students.

But she said it’s the most effective and equal approach.

“It’s definitely the best way to solve the problem because every single child goes to school, so it’s the best way to get every child exposed,” she said.

“Whether or not they have a computer at home. Whether or not their parents know anything about coding or programming.”

She said developing digital literacy at an early age is also important because the tech industry remains male-dominated.

Mawer shares Payne’s desire for greater investment in coding programs at schools, but understands the challenges involved.

“Things in the technology sector change so rapidly it is very difficult to keep the curriculum current, far more than say English, history, geography or even math,” he said.

“Those things change at a much, much slow pace than anything in the technology field.”

He recalled taking computer science courses in school that we’re extremely dated and that may have, in fact, actually “discouraged” people from pursuing jobs in the field.

Mawer said coding careers have also been stigmatized, as many students have the preconceived notion that they need to be good at math to become a programmer or developer.

“They don’t really consider it an option to them. They (don’t) stop to think, ‘well, how much math is really involved?” he said.

“A lot of the things you would be dealing with as a junior web developer don’t involve complex math, it’s just really just addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Just basic math.”

Mawer said students face another hurdle if they opt to take computer science in university as means to getting into the industry. These degrees require a “significant” amount of theory, and have upper-level math and physics requirements in Grade 12. Computer science programs also have some of the highest drop-out rates.

There’s also a need to bring existing workers up to speed by teaching them to code, which is something Canadian corporations need to consider, according to General Assembly spokeswoman Marissa Arnold.

“Why lay off employees that you know are a cultural fit, just so you can compete with Google or Facebook for developer talent, when you can likely retrain the employees that you know are already a fit?” she told Yahoo Finance Canada.

However, the cost of training is also an obstacle preventing coding from becoming the next blue-collar job, according to Payne.

The average annual tuition for an undergraduate degree is $6,373, according to Statistics Canada, while a bootcamp at HackerYou costs $8,500 and can range from $2,250 to $10,500 for similar offerings at Bitmaker.

Despite all the barriers, technology and work continue to evolve at an increasingly faster rate, and it depends on employers, governments and Canadians at large whether or not the opportunity for coding to become the source of a good and well-paying job for the masses will pass them by.

“We’re going to see technology creeping into every single job and see people my age – I’m almost 30 – no matter what job they’re doing that, it’s going to involve some sort of coding or programming,” said Payne.

“The sooner people realize this and make the shift … the better – because we’re definitely heading in that direction.”

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