Almost a decade ago, I was a bright-eyed, naive, young bloke enrolling in to General Assembly's coding bootcamp. I remember walking in to orientation day to meet the peers of my cohort and afterwards I left wondering…

"… Why is everyone else so old?"

I felt like a kid in a room full of adults who all had past lives as nurses, photographers, lawyers, pharmacists and chefs. They were all looking for a career change. I was only starting mine.

My youngest peer was 27. Most were in their 30s and 40s. Some of them had children. Some of their children had children of their own.

This wasn't an outlying experience, and it's still the case today. CourseReport's survey of 101 programming schools reported that the average age of coding bootcamp attendants is 31 years old.

There were no other high school graduates at my programming school. They were off doing something else. Where were they?

TAFE or University?

Australians know that there are two tried and tested pathways for young students finishing secondary school.

If you're academically driven ( or your cultural sphere of influence pushes you this way ) you strive for a high ATAR and pursue higher education in university. Hopefully, you study something useful and find yourself in a graduate role at some point in your mid twenties.

But if you're more of a practical, hands-on learner you hit up TAFE and jump on the tools. You might even finish high school in Year 10 to get a head start. You'll start working fast and learn on the job as an apprentice under the guide of experienced tradespeople, eventually becoming the boss of your own tool belt.

These are the traditional, safe options. Anything else is typically perceived as risky. Trades are often sold to students of lower socio-economic status for two reasons. The first being that many of the best Universities and courses are gated by ATAR requirements and according to the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE), lower SES students are more likely to underperform academically.

But ATAR-gated higher education is not the primary reason that trades are important for economically disadvantaged students.

University is expensive. The cost of tuition has more than doubled since 1990, even after adjusting for inflation. As the costs of higher education outpace inflation and the rate of inflation outpaces wage growth, year on year higher education becomes harder to pursue. We are experiencing a generational disconnect in the viability of traditional tertiary education.

It doesn't help that going to university doesn't even guarantee employment. One-in-four unemployed Australians are university degrees holders. Years ago, a university degree was considered a safe bet to kickstart your career. You could easily get a job by walking in to an office with one hand delivering firm handshakes and your diploma gripped tightly in the other. This narrative has been dying for while now, as graduates are struggling to find work in their respective fields.

On the other hand the demand for skilled tradespeople is only rising. Availability of tradies is at its lowest point in Australia since measuring began in 2003, according to a report released by the Housing Industry Association in 2022. It is projected that there will be over 100,000 unroles construction jobs in Australia in 2023 alone.

There's a reason there's a tradie shortage though. Apprenticeships suck. The working conditions suck and the pay sucks even harder. According to this piece by the ABC, a large number of trainee sparkies (and TAFE apprentices across the board) are quitting their apprenticeships citing low wages and poor working conditions as the primary factors, despite the high demand for electricians.

As of 2022, the completion rate for apprenticeships in Australia currently hovers around 55%. Even though skilled, senior tradies are easily earning more than six figures, the apprenticeships are so gruelling that many never make it past minimum wage.

But I'm not here to amend the issues of apprenticeships in the construction industry. I'd like to propose an alternative to all the young, aspiring tradesmen and tradeswomen.

Software Engineering.

Traditionally we have lumped software engineering in with all the other white collar fields that can only be accessed via a university education.

I believe that it's much more akin to a trade.

• Little upfront education is required to become a junior / apprentice
• Apprentices learn by building from design specifications
• Seniors design solutions and delegate work to apprentices
• You build things for other people and spend a lot of time problem solving
• You are rewarded for mastering a niche set of tools
• You can work as an employee, sub-contractor or even open your own shop.
• High, increasing demand for skilled workers
• Lucrative earning potential as your skills progress
• You start shouting obscenities when something doesn't work properly

Carpenters create wooden tables, engineers create SQL tables. Plumbers make water flow, engineers make data flow. You can see where I'm going with this.

Yeah mate.

Why is it important to reframe software engineering as a skilled trade?

I've talked before about when you do and don't need a computer science degree to work in tech. At SurryHQ we are helping people every day to land jobs in tech without university training. I have seen young, high school graduates break through in to junior roles completely self-taught.

It's becoming more and more acceptable to jump straight in to tech and skip the formal education, but for some reason, most of the people doing this are the ones pursuing a new career in their later adult life.

The average age of coding bootcamp attendants is 31 years old. Conversely, the ABS reports that 76% of apprentices and trainees at TAFE are aged between 15-24 years old.

So why are we still leaving software engineering out of the conversation when we talk to young Australians about alternative paths to university? We should be encouraging young students to take advantage of this cultural shift. Bootcamps, autonomous learning and trade schools (e.g TAFE) are all viable pathways.

The Tradie™ is revered in Australian mythos. Reframing software engineering as a trade changes the perception of who a career in tech "is for", particularly for those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. It may help to attract more individuals from diverse backgrounds who may not have considered a career in software engineering before.

Having alternative pathways provides more accessibility into careers in tech, which in turn creates a more diverse and inclusive industry.

All we need is a catchy, Aussie name for software engineers, like sparkies or chippies. Softies? I'll get back to you on that one.

Read more about the differences between university, bootcamps and self teaching.

Cheers, Nik