Is college needed for tech?

Interesting:

Ms. Glen, in a statement, called the tech industry “our pipeline to the middle class” and added, “It’s our job to develop the work force these fast-growing companies need so people from our schools and our neighborhoods have a real shot at these good-paying jobs.”

At least one other city official appears to share that view: The report was managed by Carl Weisbrod before he left HR&A, a real estate consulting firm, to accept Mr. de Blasio’s appointment as chairman of the city’s Planning Commission.

The report’s author, Kate Wittels, the director of HR&A, said “the spectrum of tech-related occupations — from programmers to sales reps — is creating well-paying and quality jobs for New Yorkers at all levels of educational attainment.”

Tech companies in the city employ about 140,000 people and as many as 150,000 others have tech jobs in other companies, the report estimates. About 44 percent of those jobs do not require a college degree, but on average, they pay about 45 percent more than the typical hourly wage in the city, according to the report.

Mr. Rasiej said that premium was partly because tech jobs paid better and partly because technology companies tended to pay more than companies in some other big industries in the city, such as health care and retailing.

Many of the tech jobs are with large banks and media companies that have relatively high pay scales. At Citi, more than 10 percent of the company’s 17,000 jobs in the city are tech positions, said Melissa Stevens, who is the head of Internet and mobile banking for Citi.

Ms. Stevens said she had “a huge team,” many of whom were not trained as computer scientists or engineers. She added that she too was “not a technologist.”

Indeed, she said she started at the bank 16 years ago in the human resources department and moved to the digital side of the company just eight years ago.

“Really, in an industry like ours, technology is at the heart of everything we’ve done,” she said.

Many of the most lucrative opportunities are in programming, a field where demand for talent outstrips the current supply, said Avi Flombaum, the dean of the Flatiron School, which trains people in software coding.

Mr. Flombaum, who dropped out of college several years ago to create programming for a hedge fund, said all but two of the 126 graduates of his 12-week course have found work. Their average starting pay, he said, was $82,000.

Some of the students at the Flatiron School did not attend or finish college and others are older adults looking to switch careers, Mr. Flombaum said. “There are more programming jobs than there are programmers right now,” he said.

Mr. Flombaum, who said he took advantage of a $250,000 grant from the city to move to larger quarters near Wall Street, gave the administration of former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg high marks for encouraging the development of the tech industry. Asked what he wanted from the de Blasio administration, Mr. Flombaum said, “Stay out of the way in terms of legislation or new laws.”