Now you can get a great tech job without a $100,000 college degree

Now you can get a great tech job without a $100,000 college degreeNow you can get a great tech job without a $100,000 college degreeIts going to get easier to get those coveted top-paying tech jobs.Certain tech companies like IBM are starting new-collar job initiatives to break away from the homogenized company cultures where employees all come from the same schools and demographics. Instead of focusing on whats on paper, companies like IBM are more concerned with what applicantscan do. Sam Ladah, IBMs head of talent organization, told Fast Company that currently about 10% to 15% of IBMs workers are being hired fromthese non-traditional backgrounds.IBM starts young too- the company funds high school computer science initiatives in Oakland and Arizona aimed at underrepresented demographics in tech.The public sector is getting more involved too. In 2015, the White House started the TechHire Initiativein 20 U.S. cities to get more Americans rapidly trained into these high-paying tech jo bs.Apprenticeship programs like LaunchCode were highlighted as part of this. Former President Obama made the stakes to increasing job pipelines very clear When these tech jobs go unfilled, its a missed opportunity for the workers, but its also a missed opportunity for your city, your community, your county, your state, and our nation.These pipelines become especially important as other ones dry up. For instance, the tech industry has relied on immigrant workers to fill many coding jobs, which is going to be harder according to new changes in einwanderung rules under President Donald Trump.In new guidelines released over the weekend, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said that computer programmers would no longer automatically qualify for H-1B visas. The USCISwould no longer generally consider the position of programmer to qualify as a specialty occupation.Economic argument for technology jobs as vocational trainingThe numbers are on the wall. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Sta tistics projected that by 2020, there will be 1.4 million new computer science jobs, but only 400,000 computer science students. Theres not just a culturalimperative todiversifying tech companies, theres an economic imperative for businesses to start finding new pipelines, or else they risk getting left behind.For workers choosing careers, the tech industry is where the moneys at. In 2013, the Obama administration said that information technology workers earned about 74% more than the average worker.The rise ofskills-based hiring initiatives is showing us that its never too late to change careers, and that you dont need fancy paper to do it. In fact, tech companies, coding boot camps and high school initiatives are saying that this is not a unique skill it can be taught to anyone with a ready mind to learn.