“Anyone can learn to write code. Very few can write good code.” -Former Tech Lead

Strive to write good software via intelligent design and collaboration with your peers and you will continue to make great money.

They can't find enough engineers at the rates they currently pay. The realistic take is probably somewhere in between.

It's the same take.

Well... one of two things is true: that's either possible, or it's impossible. If it's possible, then no amount of us being upset or disappointed in it is going to change things - we'll be the last generation of well-compensated programmers, and probably the last generation or programmers who don't do that job while studying for a "better" job on the side. If it's impossible, they'll continue to smash things and thrash around like a bull in a china shop, leaving devastation and destruction in their wake as they demand to have their way for decades and centuries to come, making our lives miserable the whole time (or they'll come to their senses and realize they were being unreasonable, but my money is on the former).

So no student loan debt and making 70k after 4-5 years, whats the downside? Especially if they can work from home.

So, like they do in Europe?

their comment was in no way "nasty", it's a bit of a sideways comment to imply so, and you are completely ignoring the real motivation behind something like this and the problems with company's complaints on having a supposed shortage of STEM candidates.

the whole STEM "crisis" is born out of companies wanting people already trained to do the job they want them to do rather than training them. and more specifically, companies want software engineers already trained specifically how they want.

movements like this have had a detrimental effect on other roles that society needs. so yes, someone is offering free educational resources, but that someone is a massive multinational corporation whose scale drives them to seek benefits from society, and not the other way around. and amazon's size and influence yields them a lot of power. there is also a larger societal problem in that we cannot solve humanity's problems through technology alone, which STEM efforts completely ignore.

"Amazon Future Engineer" is a remarkably poor name for your free CS educational resources.