The Rise of the Digital Middle Class

Ms Bruce

When I was 17, my Math Teacher Ms. Bruce asked me if I wanted to learn how to control computers. My mind was blown. “What? I can command this amazing machine to do anything I can dream up? … I’m freaking in.”

Her simple invitation to a small elective programming class at my high school fundamentally altered the path of my life, and it all started with this …

program Hello;
begin
  writeln ('Hello, world.')
end.

Being Middle Class is Great

Being Middle Class means you can afford a home, own a car and comfortably take care of your family. It means you can put in a day of hard work and get a day of fair pay.

Being Middle Class is the American Dream, but fewer and fewer people are in this group. The Middle Class is shrinking at an astonishing rate.

In 1971, 61% of American adults lived in middle-income households. In 2015, that number had dropped to 50%. (1)

The Rise of the Digital Middle Class

I believe we are seeing a phenomena that will reverse this trend: The creation of the Digital Middle Class.

What defines the Digital Middle Class? People who …

1. Don’t have a technical University Degree (Computer Science, etc)
2. Write code or use code to accomplish objectives
3. Earn $45,000 (entry-level) to $134,000 on average (2)
4. Only need a laptop and a connection to the Internet to accomplish work tasks

There are two key things happening here:

1) Massive growth in coding jobs

The key here is the growth in the number of these jobs. There are going to be 1,000,0000 job openings by 2022. These jobs are in every industry. (3)

2) The ability to learn coding online affordably

Coding is a computer-based skill, which lends itself extremely well to being taught online. To learn this amazing skill, all you need is a cheap laptop and a broadband Internet connection. There is no need to travel physically to a classroom, which means online schools like Treehouse can offer an effective online curriculum for a fraction of the cost of a University Degree.

Online coding schools can also continually update their curriculum to reflect the demands of the job market, in near real-time. The agility is necessary to effectively teach someone how to code — it is of no use to learn outdated technologies.

Software is Eating the World

What is causing this explosion in jobs?

As Marc Andreesen famously penned: “Software is eating the world.”

Almost everything you interact with in the future will have code in it. Clothes, appliances, shoes, roads, backpacks, doors, phones, umbrellas, chairs, lights, vehicles and more. You name it, it’ll be connected to the Internet and will be running code. This is also called the Internet of Things or IoT.

All of these things need programmers to write and maintain their code. I personally believe that the Bureau of Labor’s projections for the number of job openings is vastly conservative.

Here’s a simple example …

The 1977 GM Oldsmobile Toronado

The first car to use code was the 1977 General Motors Oldsmobile Toronado which had around 50,000 lines of code.

The business research firm Frost & Sullivan estimated that cars will require 200–300 million lines of code in the near future. (4) For every one line of code in the Oldsmobile, that is 6,000 lines of code in cars of the near future.

Mobile Penetration is Skyrocketing

Another massive driver for job growth is the phenomenal growth in mobile users globally. And you guessed it: mobile phones need more and more software, which means we need a huge amount of mobile developers.

In 1995 there were 80,000,000 mobile phone users, which was 1% of the world’s population. Now, it’s a staggering 5,200,000,000 which is 73% of the world. (5)

This is Real

I’d like to close by showing you the real world story of Bryan Knight. He’s an awesome example of the new Digital Middle Class …

I believe people like Bryan, the Digital Middle Class, will be a major driver of the world economy in the future. It’s an awesome time to be alive.

Annotations

1. Pew Research defines Middle Class as “earning between two-thirds and double the median household income”
2. Hired.com State of US Salaries Report
3. Code.org statistics
4. ieee.org
5. KPCB Internet Trends 2015 Report