"The Ghana government was compelled, by contract, to pay for over 50% of the cost of Akosombo's construction, but the country was allowed only 20% of the power generated."
I'm sorry my message came a bit across like "Just copy Scandinavia, then everything will be great". Obviously that isn't the case. My point was that there's no easy solution to reduce recidivism, but if we need to start somewhere it might be better to look into incentives created by the current prison system than learning inmates to code.
That doesn't solve the whole cultural view on inmates, the social and psychological problems that placed a lot of them in the prison in the first place, etc. etc. etc.
It is two different countries and very different cultures. Just modeling US prisons on Scandinavian ones is not a solution. I could even imagine it making things worse in the short-term (a banal example would be "so the prisoners in Norwegian prisons have access to knives in the kitchen they roam freely, let's try that in San Quentin"...)
But I think we could start looking at the incentives the American prison system creates while also addressing the social issues that seems to be the root of a lot of the challenges. It is not easy and I can imagine it taking a century to solve unfortunately.
Rick Wolter seems to be quite balanced. Read the last paragraph "Life’s Not Fair".
Problem is that some people read his story and thinks. "Oh, so teaching felons programming is a great way to reduce recidivism".
This kind of be-all-end-all solution always fails. Some years ago journalists in the US loved to tell coal miners that they should "learn to code" when the mines shut down due to Washington politics. How hard could it be?
When media corporations started laying off journalists in droves a few years later, the journalists did not find "Learn to code" suggestions useful or even funny.
A more general solution to reduce recidivism should probably consist of two initiatives:
1) Educate felons when they're in prison. It doesn't have to be programming. It can be a craft, something academic, programming (if they feel like it) or some other skill. Whatever.
2) Reform the prison system, so inmates are treated as humans. E.g. with private corporations running prisons in the US, they have a strong motivation to create "recurring guests". Contrast this with e.g. prisons in Scandinavia (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IepJqxRCZY) that have the lowest rates of recidivism.
We know how to reduce recidivism. It is not an easy "learn to code" exercise. But are the US willing to make the changes necessary to create meaningful impact on the rates of recidivism - or shall we continue to be fed "pull yourself up by the bootstraps! We found one guy who did it, and so can you!" stories?
Google has a bad reputation when it comes to intra-company coordination and cooperation.
So, aside from what others have replied, what would be the purpose of hiring 1-10 thousand support people that would have no ability to actually help the customer contacting them?
"Have you tried turning it off and on again?" would be the only response they could offer.
Everybody are creating their own bubbles. People (rightfully) complain that social media reinforces peoples existing beliefs, yet, most people prefer to chat with colleagues they agree with and seldom cold calls the colleagues they disagree with the most.
When working in the office you may overhear some discussion. You may not agree with some decision, but you might have heard the talk leading up to it. You may even meet somebody you disagree with at the coffee machine and have an informal chat that changes the direction somewhat.
When everybody is working from home, a team of twelve might form 2-3 cliques and some lone riders. Finding common ground is harder, when it must happen in a formal online-meeting on Thursday at 2pm. and not while chatting over lunch or whatever. The boss loves it, because he can divide and conquer the previous "team mates".
> As someone who got their start in tech with a low-code environment (ServiceNow reporting) I have found the true value of low code is the ability for business/ops teams to create tools that serve their needs without waiting on a team of "real" developers to make time for them.
This is because a lot of so-called "real developers" nowadays think their job is to keep up with the latest fads and finding ways of chopping the business needs in a way so they fit better to the popular framework of the day.
Business quickly grow tired of hearing "that's not possible" when what the developer actually means "what you want to do is against the architecture of the framework I've decided we must use". If the business insist, the developer spends a lot of time fighting the framework.
Now, from a job market perspective, it is entirely understandable that the developer prefers to do RDD - resume driven development.
But it also makes it fully understandable that the business people wants to find ways of solving their needs, that do not include waiting on the "real developers". Hence the Excel and Access monstrosities present in every org.
Jordan Peterson (I know, I know...) made an interesting remark in one of his lectures recorded long before he became famous:
"Once you make about $60,000 a year for your family, but let's say for you personally, additional income makes zero has zero impact on your quality of life."
Smart people will on average probably be better of financially, but that doesn't transfer directly to happiness.
A characteristic of "smart people" is the ability to identify and solve problems across a range of domains. That works well when the problem is some programming task, drawing a new house, gathering data for a report you write or whatever.
But what if you identify problems you cannot solve? E.g. a smart person might realize, that the "American democracy" is fundamentally broken, but there's no way to solve this (vote all you want, the top of both parties gets their way anyway, so unless you're 100% aligned with Pelosi or Trump you're shafted). A smart person will identify the challenges their children have and will try to solve it by choosing the right school, but will fret forever that it wasn't the right choice.
A not-so-smart person will believe, that as long as his party wins the next election everything will be better. A not-so-smart person will send their children to the default school for the district where they live.
So a smart person will every day identify problems there are out of their realm to solve. They know their actions only have very limited - and perhaps even detrimental - impact on solving these things. All the while the not-so-smart people goes with the flow, doesn't worry too much, because they don't realize there was a problem to begin with.
(I'm doing "averages" here. Of course a not-so-smart and poor person might be acutely aware of their dire financial situation which reflects negatively on their happiness, but at least they're being told they have the power to change that)
Have a read about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akosombo_Dam
Then watch this documentary on the devastating effects: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora%27s_Box_(British_TV_se...
As Wikipedia says about the dam:
"The Ghana government was compelled, by contract, to pay for over 50% of the cost of Akosombo's construction, but the country was allowed only 20% of the power generated."