Natasha Singer

I can say that like the reduced job prospects for computer science grads this year represents a stunning breakdown in the promise that tech executives have made to millions of American school kids over the last decade.

Silicon Valley's promise to kids was if you just work hard and learn to code, computer programming will be your golden ticket to a high-paying, high-powered, high-status tech job, and you will be more or less set for life.

In the early 2010s, we see tech leaders begin to publicly warn that the U.S.

economic might and global technology leadership is at risk because not enough high schools are teaching computer science and not enough students were studying computer programming.

Right.

It's urgent.

The national economic prowess and technology leadership is at stake.

And so you see tech company leaders like Eric Schmidt at Google and Brad Smith at Microsoft start saying that their companies are creating new tech jobs faster than they can find skilled workers to fill them.

And then the tech companies begin lobbying members of Congress and state lawmakers to support elevating the status of computer science in schools, funding more teacher training, getting more curriculums.

Mm-hmm.

Along the way, they're beginning to say, by the way, these are great jobs.

They're interesting jobs.

They're powerful jobs.

And then in 2013, you get Hadi Partovi, who is a well-known tech entrepreneur in Seattle who had started his career at Microsoft.

and then became an investor in companies like Uber and Dropbox.

He comes along and he starts a new nonprofit group called Code.org to promote coding in schools.

And although it's an education nonprofit, it acts very much like a startup with viral marketing methods.

Like what?

Well, the first thing they do to promote coding in schools is Code.org made a video in 2013.

I was 13 when I first got access to a computer.