[spiffage]

I was on an American team at the ACM world finals in 2004 and 2005 (and the top American team in 2005, which was a bad year for the US). There was very little pushing us to participate or practice, and I mostly did it because I thought the problems were more interesting than my classwork. Talking to participants from eastern Europe gave me an interesting perspective, though. It became clear that for American students, the prize was ~$10k (nice, but not a huge deal) and the cost was neglecting classwork. For an eastern-European or Chinese student, the prize was an American job. Some of those students even felt embarrassed about how hard their countries pushed these contests.

The indication that I've gotten from employers in Silicon Valley is that success in these contests is, if anything, overvalued as a signal for hiring. So the author is correct that the incentives aren't lined up to get CS students to participate in programming competitions.

I don't know whether this will be a problem for the US. It isn't right now, but you could imagine a potential future where US vs China in programming competitions becomes like chess competitions between the US and USSR during the cold war. I'm sure if that happens, the US will step up the participation incentives.