Code.org co-founder and CEO Hadi Partovi ripped The New York Times for its latest report detailing how some computer science majors are having trouble finding work in the U.S.
In a post on LinkedIn, Partovi said the newspaper and its Monday episode of “The Daily” podcast were cherrypicking anecdotes “to stoke populist fears about tech corporations and AI.”
“Computer science and AI are still the best paying fields one can study,” Partovi said, adding a quote from AI pioneer Andrew Ng about how telling students not to study CS is “the worst career advice ever given.”
The podcast episode, titled “Big Tech Told Kids to Code. The Jobs Didn’t Follow” name-dropped Partovi and Code.org in a report about how a computer science education and guaranteed six-figure salary to follow was turning out to be an empty promise for recent graduates. The episode also calls out Microsoft President Brad Smith in reference to tech giants supporting computer science education.
The episode follows The Times’ story from August about how layoffs at big companies like Microsoft and Amazon, combined with tech giants’ embrace of artificial intelligence tools, was making it hard for grads to land jobs in the industry. One grad said her only interview was with fast-food chain Chipotle.
Partovi pushes back against the assertion that AI will make learning CS obsolete. If anything, it makes it more essential, he said in a piece he wrote for The Information this summer.
“We shouldn’t be confused by the short-term shifts of some employers in some industries,” Partovi wrote. “Simplified coding hasn’t decreased the value of computer science. Rather, it has increased, and the demand for computer science will grow over time.”
He said data shows CS grads have the highest median wage and the fifth-lowest underemployment across all majors.
Partovi is adding his voice alongside others tied to CS education, including leaders at the University of Washington, who are dismayed by media reports that paint a scary picture of the tech job landscape.
Magdalena Balazinska, professor and director of the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, previously joined the school’s vice director, professor Dan Grossman, in a Q&A aimed at media myth busting.
“While the job market is tighter now than it was a few years ago, the sky is not falling,” Grossman said.
“The industry will continue to need smart, creative software engineers who understand how to build and harness the latest tools — including AI,” Balazinska said.
Partovi said the Times report “highlights everything that’s wrong about journalism today.” But he did face some pushback in the comments on his LinkedIn post, including from a high school computer science teacher who called “tech bros and their investors and their sycophants the worst humans on the planet at the moment” while referencing the “invasion of LLM GenAI in education.”
Alongside his brother Ali, Hadi Partovi launched Seattle-based Code.org as a nonprofit in 2013 with a mission to spread computer science knowledge.
Partovi is a former Microsoft manager and was an early investor in companies including Facebook, DropBox, Airbnb and Uber.
Backed by nearly $60 million in funding from the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, Google and others, Code.org counts 102 million students and 3 million teachers on its platform today, with 232 million projects created by students around the world.
When Code.org turned 10 years old in March 2023, Partovi said in a Q&A with GeekWire that AI was “creating a new superpower that is only available to computer scientists” and that his organization would be “investing deeply in the space in three areas.”
“One is teaching how AI works,” Partovi said. “The second is using AI and how we teach computer science. And the third is infusing AI and computer science in other subjects of primary and secondary education. And all three of those are important, major bets as part of what we see as the next 10 years of Code.org.”
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