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by throwaway729 3428 days ago
This "rural communities don't need tech" narrative is tiring and false.

"Tech" is more than Google. How many engineers do you think John Deere hires? How many scientists does Monsanto have on staff? How many lines of code go into the average modern factory?

If I had a dime for every time I talk to a farmer/laborer who plants fields full of GM crops and/or harvests those fields with impressive machinery, and then insists that "tech" is a useless industry. Or CNC mechanics who insist "tech" is a fad. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

Rural america needs tech more than ever before. They'll learn to leverage tech built in coastal cities, or they'll become so irrelevant that not even high tariffs can save them.

> is if for every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American workers from a community that's average income is less than the national median.

I came from rural America. So do lots of software engineers in coastal and especially non-coastal cities. There's nothing stopping those people from getting an education and joining a big tech company. Literally. Nothing.

Seriously. Even in poor rural communities without high school CS courses, you can sit your ass down at a computer, learn to code, then fill out college applications.

The one exception is maybe lack of access to higher education. And the GOP is an odd choice if that's your primary problem...

2 comments

> There's nothing stopping those people from getting an education and joining a big tech company.

"There's nothing stopping somebody from the ghetto from getting an education and joining a big tech company".

In both cases, sadly there is. And I think what the OP is suggesting ("for every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American workers") is a step towards remedying this.

> In both cases, sadly there is

If you read further, I state the obvious: "The one exception is maybe lack of access to higher education. And the GOP is an odd choice if that's your primary problem..."

> And I think what the OP is suggesting ("for every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American workers") is a step towards remedying this

Huh?

Google et al. already do this. If you're a competent programmer, you can find a tech job. Tech companies don't discriminate against rural hires...

Is your suggestion that Google should hire a bunch of completely untrained and totally unqualified rural folk as software engineers, purely because they're from a rural part of the country, and train them on sight?

Wouldn't improving K12 STEM education and making college more accessible make a lot more sense? Google isn't a school, and education isn't their core competency.

It's one thing to say "we should be more supportive of STEM education and make college more accessible".

It's completely another to insist that Google over-look college educated immigrants because some rural Americans weren't given the opportunity to attend an IIT.

Would that be some sort of like economic affirmative action? There is some truth to the idea that we're born into an economic class in America. Its also probably less morally hard to swallow than racial affirmative action while having somewhat of the same effect.
As a former Kansan, I have to agree. We need more technology investment in the Great Plains and sooner rather than later. I can't see how anyone assumes there's no need for it out there.