What's a more likely job for a former inmate: Computer repair technician (rip out broken parts, put new parts in) or Javascript frontend engineer?
Thing is, you better start teaching them how to read and write!
60% More than 60 percent of all prison inmates are functionally illiterate. Over 70% of inmates in America's prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level. They are many years away from grasping Closures and Curry.
Source: http://www.begintoread.com/research/literacystatistics.html
What measures of literacy do you think are useful for comparing developed countries?
The United States does not report their rate but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States is when compared with http://world.bymap.org/LiteracyRates.html and various other sources not something to be happy about.
Newly arrived immigrants from parts of the world where basic education is 'optional' is a problem as well but the fact that so many people native to a region do not have basic reading and writing skills is a real source of worry in a world that relies on reading and writing for almost all interaction.
Other things that require reading ability are and that are important to a functioning society are voting and the ability to use medication.
It's been a really long time since reading/writing were optional and with the increased reliance on technology to function in society that is only getting more important.
Your implication is that France would simply lack an equivalent to the "Below Basic" group. I doubt this.
I'm sure France has an equivalent group, but I'm also sure that that group would be substantially smaller based on plenty of exposure to French citizens and American citizens.
France has one of the best education systems in Europe and if you've gone to school there it is almost un-thinkable that you would not have achieved at least basic reading and writing skills.
There are people that fall through the cracks of the education system, but even children of illegal immigrants are required to go to school (and it's free).
Marine Le Pen wants to change this by the way, that's double stupid because (1) the chances they will end up staying are fairly large and (2) if they can't read/write they will end up in crime in larger proportions than otherwise.
(People aren't taking their kids out of schools because they want them to stay uneducated...they are doing it because they disagree with what the school considers education. But they don't disagree about things like knowing the alphabet or how to read or whatever)
Anyway, my guess was that you were probably making forceful claims about anecdata and here we are.
Well, that anecdata is based on having spent a lot of time on both sides of the Atlantic and I really can't remember anybody ever in Europe that wasn't literate past the age of 10 and I've met enough people in the USA that were extremely nice but could barely write their own name that I don't feel the need to turn every comment about this subject into a paper complete with citations.
The US does not bother to report their literacy figures to the various global bodies so that makes comparing them a little bit harder than it normally would be but I'm fine to let me personal experience guide me in this, let's be happy this was about literacy and not about world history or geography.
You seem to get a lot of pleasure from these sniping sessions so consider me happy to oblige you as a target.
There was a thread linked a while back that may be of some relevance to you, let me dig it up.
edit: here you go:
If an ex-con manages to learn enough in prison to be a decent dev and land a job I hope they get paid the same as everyone else at their level.
People in computing don't care that much about your background if you are skilled. You can even work remotely for/from companies in another country.
And the good news is, good devs are rare, but the demand for them keep increasing. So if you become productive and reliable with a pinch of people skills, you are pretty much guarantied to have a job in the next 20 years. And probably a good one.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6750805
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6245316
This is all the data I've got on the state of industry; genuinely interested to hear tidbits from anybody that things aren't this ugly nowadays.
I'm not in the demographic of people dealing with problematic pasts (and very thankfully so; I don't envy those who are, at all) but I think that reasonable analysis of situations like what is described in those links is not at all too much to ask (?!), and I wouldn't want to touch an employer who deals with such situations in the way that is described in those links.
(Also, if you go through the user profiles of the usernames who wrote those two comments - based on the fact that the first comment links to the second I presume they're the same person - I must note that I observe a general pattern of cynicism which I think has an obvious cause and is sad because of its trivial avoidability.)
But the world is still running because of millions of not-so-big companies. They have IT needs too.
Actually the majority of IT jobs are NOT at IT companies, but in regular companies that need IT like anybody.
I've been working in porn during my first 5 years and nobody cared. Actually most companies didn't even checked.