I flap it open. As the bluegrass horse pastures of central Kentucky faded into the red-tinged oak trees covering the Appalachians, they started chatting. Some former coal workers resist the training programs altogether, hoping their industry will rebound. “Last 24: definitely have not looked at C#,” says Michael Harrison. He acknowledged the economic setbacks and job insecurity that coal miners face these days, and gave them some advice: learn to code. But even if they’re learning new skills, the ex-miners in the room never overtly criticize their old work—not in front of me, not in front of other ex-miners, not when it’s what paid the bills and kept their region alive for so long and they gave so many years to. Bit Source is proving that coal miners can, indeed, learn how to code, and do it well. There go the train operators. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images. Three years ago, Justice and Parrish got tired of watching out-of-work coal miners struggling to survive. Now that they graduated from training and had started building their first professional webpages, the $18-an-hour BitSource wage for junior coders still didn’t match mining. Although the industry added 4,500 jobs from 2016 to 2018, U.S. coal production decreased by 10 percent in 2019 and jobs are at risk. “Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well,” Biden said at a New Hampshire event Monday. Tim Loh. It’s gotta be. He’s the resident jokester, wearing blue Chuck Taylors and a fierce red mountain beard that hipsters can try to mimic, but would fail. He wasn’t alone. Ad Choices. That’s not how it works, but I digress. Every cross section of the country has its staple industry. The startup is called BitSource, and the surprising thing is it’s actually working. The plan would invest in assets of mining communities, "like a rich culture, natural beauty, a proven workforce, and entrepreneurial spirit.". Appalachian Miners Are Learning to Code By . Kentucky has been spending federal funds to train customer service work-from-homers, place out-of-work miners into other jobs, and a coding camp for kids. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Sep 06, 2016. Good news, coal miners: Joe Biden has a brilliant … Meet the Company Teaching Coal Miners To Code - Duration: 4:25. The bartenders. Lexington tech companies couldn’t find enough. He added later: “Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!”. He mentioned healthcare, construction, education, and tourism as promising fields. Of the coders, the only non-mine-related worker was a former crime reporter for a Virginia newspaper. Justin Hall, blue, works with coder Adriana Abshire and others. I wanted to be a part of it.”. Josh Benton, the deputy secretary of the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet in mining-heavy Kentucky, told Ohio Valley ReSource that the biggest problem is whether or not workers actually have other jobs based out of where they live. why suggest that coal miners learn to code? “That’s when we said,” Parrish recalls, “we’ve been working with tradespeople all our life.”. J. Paul Gorman, one of Appalachia’s newest coders. Former Vice President Joe Biden suggested Monday that displaced coal miners should learn to code. Ex- miners whose jobs disappeared in the downturn are learning to build websites and apps in the heart of Appalachia at a startup called BitSource. “It’s like welding. “The challenge that we face is not necessarily are the training programs effective? Appalachia’s newest startup founder might be fueled by endless reserves of renewable Rusty Justice energy. Shawn — the former reporter with a Colonel Sanders-esque beard — critiques FX’s Justified, which is set in nearby Harlan county. has proposed moving the U.S. away from fossil fuels to reduce the country’s carbon footprint. Dell monitors sat on a dozen desks, murals of Appalachians who’d made it big covered the walls. After all, coal was the back-end code of 200 years of industrial progress — the fuel that bent the steel for Ford cars and train tracks and skyscrapers, and much of the electricity to light them. The two kept thinking about what Such said about coding being a trade. Ratliff dialed the foreman back the next day. This was just patronizing. And it turns out the assessment was incredibly adept at finding the miners who could be part of the club. He, Parrish, and Hall want to fill up their buildings, create an incubator for entrepreneurs, a makerspace for craftsmen, and, someday, if they play their cards incredibly well, a bonafide Pikeville tech scene. And, like any good startup, they kicked it off by making a T-shirt. Most had heard the program’s radio ad. According to Weigel, the comment was met with silence from the audience. If so, then, yes absolutely they should learn to code. We just need playing time.”, The Rusty Justice seminar concludes for today. Let’s turn around and go back again. In fact, Kentucky is the only rural area included in the White House’s TechHire program to train people for digital jobs. And although tech scenes have cropped up in cities in the middle of the country — Boulder, Austin, Indianapolis — things still lag in truly rural areas. It’s just as important they know he’s speaking emoji when he says “sad face” in a sentence, and that they crack up at programmer memes. You gotta support your family, either you were at McDonald’s, or you made $60-$70,000 a year.”. That’s the magic.”. Then, a plan for profit (Justice and Parrish didn’t want a do-gooder charity, they wanted to build a real business.). During a rally yesterday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden spoke to a crowd in Derry, N.H., a town that many miners call home. Hydroseeding, for the uninitiated, happens after a strip mine is finished getting excavated. It started three years ago when Rusty Justice and M. Lynn Parrish, the owners of a Pikeville, Kentucky excavation and engineering company called Jigsaw, got tired of watching out-of-work coal miners struggling to survive. They move some of the earth back into place and grow grass to stabilize the fresh soil and make it look mountain-ish again. The federal government has pumped nearly $23 million into the region in the last two years to diversify the post-coal economy and retrain miners into jobs like installing broadband fiber. In the rain, the old structures are desolate and spooky, ghosts of a mythic industry I’ve never seen up close before. It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. A mine project manager who, after hours, brought his Xbox to Call of Duty marathons at a buddy’s house. Famous historical residents of Appalachia decorate a wall in the main workroom of BitSource. Rusty takes a seat, checks Twitter, and then calls out for everyone’s attention. May 25, 2018 - Rusty Justice doesn’t think about Michael Bloomberg very often. I wanted to make sure I’d exhausted every revenue source.” Still, he got a face-to-face interview. Well, a junior developer in Kentucky could make $60-$80,000 a year. He was right — the people in this room had won the lotto. They can’t go home again. There's no doubt you're going to be able to find some former coal miners who would make good coders. It’s a rainy Saturday morning, and Justice wants to take me around the place. “It was like waving a red flag in front of a bull’s face.”. Justice never imagined the crash would be this sudden nor this bad, but things just keep piling on. “This is heartbreaking. So, as Parrish dropped Rusty off at his house, “We said, huh, what do you think?’. “They’re going to have to close mines.”. “Don’t they need a computer science degree?” asked Justice. 'Brain-eating' amoeba may be spreading northwards, Amazon aims to lower the cost of health care by offering new medical services through an app: report, Dangerous volcano erupts after earthquake rocks Hawai'i's Big Island, Drug overdose deaths accelerating due to pandemic: CDC, Stanford frontline health care workers slam chaos in COVID-19 vaccine rollout. When BitSource started advertising the job, Justice was hoping for 50 applications. The place looked like a coding shop: a “binary canary” logo looked over the stairs, old coal sacks and tools decorated the lobby. Justice compares the disruption to the way Uber’s turning the cab industry inside out. While the coal mining industry has long supported many Appalachian communities, jobs in mines are rapidly disappearing, causing residents to lose work and leave their hometowns. He added later: “Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!” The miners underwent 22 weeks of intensive training from open-sourced coding curriculum the founders gathered online, and instructional videos on Lynda.com. They’re all going to need to be fluent in C#. Left to right, Garland Couch, Michael Harrison, William Stevens and Brack Quillen take a break outside the office. During the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump ran on bringing coal jobs back to the United States, and Joe Biden said on December 30 that miners should learn to code, as those are the “jobs of the future.” Via New York Magazine, Please Stop Telling Miners To Learn To Code: God only knows where Biden got the idea that coal mining consists of throwing the stuff into a furnace. The cashiers at the family-run grocery store. It is, are there other industries, for those displaced workers to go to work,” he said. The 2020 presidential hopeful advises coal miners to move into new industries — but it’s not that simple. Teaching Coal Miners to Code. Another question on the assessment: Would you rather overhaul an engine or give a presentation? “I finally figured out what was wrong with it.”, “I dug ground enough, and figured out how to make that work.”. “Have you been laid off from a job in the mining industry? News Joe Biden Coding Coal 2020 Election During a campaign event on Monday, Joe Biden suggested coal miners could simply learn to code to transition to "jobs of the future." The need for a solution for coal miners continues. Researchers advise that investing in industries based in the local area can ease the transition out of mining. “Last 24, I went through the pattern lab demo,” says Garland Couch, the Xbox guy, an ex-mine manager draped in an oversized polo shirt. But if San Francisco’s 20-somethings can create apps to bring them dinner and wash their laundry, then here, the developers can scratch their own itches in a different way. As America goes digital, its bluest collar workers are facing the toughest challenge of their lives. “I’m not going to lie,” Garland tells me about his first time pushing code live to a website the team was building, “I was sitting there for 15 minutes before I had the nerve to push the button.”. The distaste started when the New York City billionaire donated $50 million to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign back in 2011, and continued when he poured in another $30 million this year. It can happen two hours from the nearest airport, in a place where building a new road requires sawing a mountain in half, by people who have different politics, accents and hobbies than the end-users. Ratliff was one of the lucky ones. The coders are getting it — they’re building websites, closing contracts. They filed into a glass-walled conference room along with a gang of other Kentucky entrepreneurs, to speak with the space’s 29-year-old co-founder Nick Such. The foreman said he got it. But Jonathan … Then, three days later, Parrish pulled up at his partner’s house. A former Coca-Cola bottling plant is the new home to BitSource. Do the coal miners want to learn to code and are interested in computers? Parrish is worried even about the effect of U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez coming to shake the coders’ hands, or reporters like me coming to do stories. The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our lives—from culture to business, science to design. The optimism surrounding the place doesn’t make the sight of Eastern Kentucky hurt any less. Cause this was a hub of activity, it had an energy all of its own. He does this several times a week, often waxing inspirational or trying to find out what the coders are up to, even if it drives him crazy that he can’t see or understand their progress. “We need to do something.”, In the weeks that followed, they lined up the details. Inside, Awesome had all the visual shorthand of Silicon Valley: ping pong table, programmer books, entrepreneurs typing at rented desks. “Appalachia has been exporting coal for a long time,” says Justin Hall, the company’s president. Some displaced coal workers do transition into other fields or industries, but critics say that the jobs that former coal workers usually find tend to pay only $12 to $15 dollars per hour as opposed to the approximate $75,000 a year salary that coal workers had while working in the mines. “Mark Zuckerberg says you teach them to code and everything will be great,” said Bloomberg. And Silicon Valley has shown that the digital economy doesn’t have to be created in the same place that it’s consumed. They began driving about 500 miles from Chicago every weekend to teach him and others in the community how to code. Justice segues into motivational mode. But at the mines, who knows if the job would last two months, or two weeks? Terms like “startup” and “incubator” conjure up images of apple laptops, flannel shirts, Doc Martens, and $5 espressos. “The rest is kinda history…. Then, after those 22 weeks, Justice and Parrish would put up three dollars for every one from the government and build a coding team that could take on real, paying work. And others find it too daunting to learn a complicated new skill late in life. That’s what they’re gonna be. I think we’re proficient, but we’re not yet efficient. And someone had to turn him around at the end of every row. It was time to go and prove Bloomberg wrong. But Rusty’s unease with Bloomberg turned into a gut-deep animus last year, when the self-confessed hillbilly—if you’re from this part of the world that’s a self-identifier, not an insult—sat down for his weekly, three-hour, Saturday morning news-reading session. Piles of coal fill a piece of land near the office. By the end of the first week, all 10 coders had built an HTML page — be it a tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan or University of Kentucky basketball. It’s Friday, and that means team lunch. Then came an email with a BitSource job offer. First, a name (they picked BitSource, after realizing that a coder’s “bit” could be a play on bituminous coal.) “I’ve missed a lot of my children growing up. It is, are there other industries, for those displaced workers to go to work,”, Some former coal workers resist the training programs altogether. Other than taking chewing tobacco breaks, it’s their one social activity (no happy hours when everyone commutes an hour each way to work, or has kids to get back to). And miners are already technical workers, machine operators, drafters, engineers. It makes me feel like a dinosaur, really, wandering around. “We just don’t want all the notoriety to give the false illusion that we developed all the skills.”, Rusty is less cautious, and thinks they just need to keep digging, keep plowing, keep seeding. Getting down to this final group of candidates had been tough. Vines cover a coal operation closed for two or three decades. COVID-19 recovery spending could catalyze transformative change, but time is running out, What the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests have achieved so far, 'Christmas Star,' not seen in 800 years, will light up on longest night of the year, There's an environmental disaster happening in your washing machine. And could they actually sit in a chair for eight hours a day? Other than being handy with an iPhone, and tracking their truck fleet on iPads, neither of them knew a thing about software. Instead, Lafer recommended training people and investing in industries that have to stay local. 4:25 . Now the challenge is one that’s very typical to startups: how to scale. Garland rubs his brow and shakes his head. There go the machinery vendors and mechanics. But then things got really weird when he starting talking about coal miners. But BitSource has to work. Ratliff brings up his son’s high school football victory the night before. Rusty Justice thought he might know miners a little better than some fancy tycoon in New York did. For decades, miners have been middle-class breadwinners making $60–80,000 a year, with a mortgage and a fishing boat and a truck and kids in new Nikes at basketball practice. The coders swivel back to their computers, and Michael announces weekend plans to no one in particular: “Looks like I better learn C#.”. They’d driven up from Pikeville, turning onto the Mountain Parkway, cutting down through the shale mountains, and chatting like always. The Secret Dilemma Facing America's Coal Miners | NBC Left Field - … Rusty and Lynn soaked it all in. They find the toothless guy, the trailers with shotguns racked up on the wall and the yard strewn with diapers and beer cans, and they film some dude saying weird shit in a backcountry accent that needs subtitles to comprehend, they give it an ominous title like “A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains,” and they leave. Shawn Hopkins, a former newspaper reporter, helps Paul Gorman look over a section of code. “He says, this is uncomfortable, but it’s not that bad,” Hall recalls. Conversely, if everything worked, they would all make money, and the miners would have some of the first coding jobs in Appalachia. We drive out through Pike County, down the side of a mountain on a gravel road, until we reach the 1920’s-era duplex houses of a former company coal camp called Stone. “I will if you will,” Justice said. Billyjack Buzzard enrolled in Mined Minds' program that promised to give out-of-work coal miners a new start by teaching them how to write computer code. It’s like being at the stadium, all those people come together and they create this atmosphere? Aug 25, … Proposals to retrain coal miners have received bipartisan support, and The U.S. Department of Labor announced a grant of nearly $5 million for working training programs in Appalachia this year. One day at standup, he said as much, but added that back at the strip mines, he once had to take his lunch break in four feet of sludge up to his chest. By Kevin Collier. Then Less, Unix, and Git. “I think we can do this, and I didn’t want to think I left something and it became something really special. | Th, Sesame Street creates Muppets to help refugees, CDC report reveals ways Head Start child care programs have prevented COVID-19 outbreaks, Foreign students are still stranded in the United States due to the coronavirus pandemic. EPA clean air regulations have power plants changing over to natural gas, there’s greater regulation of strip mining, and a series of cities, universities, and state pension plans are divesting themselves from coal. So "Teach coal miners to code" is roughly equivalent to saying "Teach gas streetlamp mantle fitters to refurbish carburetors". But they’re not nostalgic either. A mine down in Harlan County was hiring. They met Marvin Laucher, Ms. Laucher’s brother, the former coal miner, now their main instructor. The great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn — The dawn of a new era? February 2, 2016, 7:01 PM EST Updated on February 3, 2016, 5:34 PM EST Appalachian Miners Are Learning to Code By . “I am blue collar,” Justice tells me later. Don’t you go thinking — not for even a second — that BitSource has found the answer. For those hoping to preserve the community they’ve long been a part of, options may seem few and far between. Former newspaper reporter, helps Paul Gorman look over a section of code construction, education, and gave a..., for those hoping to preserve the community they ’ re going to have to stay.! Newbies, and tourism as promising fields told Ohio Valley ReSource j. Paul Gorman teach coal miners to code over a of. Smart suit eat crow for once won the lotto wandering around updates whether! Back into the red-tinged oak trees covering the Appalachians, they were not going be. 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