Also as someone without formal CS education: I'm surprised too, though not alarmed. I've very rarely felt like I didn't have the right education to do my job at giantmegacorp w/ CS PhD coworkers.
The bigger problem is that I feel a bit of a cultural outsider. There are jokes, stories, language that coworkers use and I'm just not familiar with. That can promote impostor syndrome and definitely affects interviews (eg "cultural fit").
>I really don't like the idea of stamping out all single family homes and nice green areas in proximity to cities.
I don't think anyone seriously wants to replace every single family home with something more dense (even if the rhetoric indicates so). It's harmful and unnecessary. E.g.:
* There is an estimated 3-4 million housing unit deficit in CA, on 14 million total units (US Census). We'll take 4 million units to err on the extreme case.
* CA currently has 7 million single-family homes (US Census)
* Assuming 100% of that deficit is made from replacing a single family home with a quadplex, it would take 1.3 million single homes -> quadplexes to make up the 4 million unit deficit.
Even in that most extreme case, I can't imagine one quadplex per block would affect green areas or the totally legitimate choice to live a single family home.
In reality, I think most YIMBY advocates want mixed-use medium density, which requires an order of magnitude fewer buildings.
Local HOAs and similar have loud voices against these kind of projects. It might take another big voice (like Sidewalk Labs) to counter.
I've tried calling my local reps to support walkable community projects and have been told, nearly verbatim, that if the HOA doesn't like it, they won't be voting for it. Then when big tech offices started moving in, the redevelopment projects finally started too.
The bigger problem is that I feel a bit of a cultural outsider. There are jokes, stories, language that coworkers use and I'm just not familiar with. That can promote impostor syndrome and definitely affects interviews (eg "cultural fit").