Natasha Singer

And that is essentially triple the number of students majoring in computer science since 2012.

It worked.

I mean, getting more kids to care about this and be interested in this, want to major in it, consider careers in this, really, really worked.

And for certain kids who followed the pipeline through AP Computer Science and graduated from some of the elite schools that tech companies like to hire from, they did end up with these golden ticket jobs, doing interesting work on high-profile software and making a lot of money, much more than

humanities majors who are starting out with hourly jobs.

So there's a confluence of factors.

First of all, it turns out that some of the same big tech companies who pushed schools to teach computer science and told kids coding was magic are very picky about who they hire.

And many of the young students who studied programming or software development really had no shot working at big tech firms.

Why not?

Because the hiring process at some companies has long skewed to kids who are already advantaged to begin with.

Like some of the hiring criteria, you have to pass these coding tests.

They're looking for students who have done side coding projects and built their own software.

And some of those criteria are more easily met by middle and upper class students who have money and time than lower income students who have to work full time jobs during school.

Mm hmm.

And so it has always been hard for certain students to get hired by big tech companies.

So that's one of the major factors.

Other factors that have come up more recently is that tech companies overhired during the pandemic, and now some are shedding jobs.

We also saw that some of the big tech companies over the last couple of years, like Amazon and Microsoft, have increased the number of foreign workers they hired.

because they can be paid less in some cases than Americans.

And recently, the Trump administration actually tried to limit the visas that go to these workers, in part to address this.