Fred Wilson published a post today recommending the recently unemployed to “Learn to Code If You’ve Lost Your Job”.

Learning to code is great, but the way Fred presents it as a solution for unemployed people is wrong.

Even pre-Corona, the job market has been absolutely flooded with juniors developers, even in traditionally hard-to-hire markets like NYC. AngelList is full of incredibly raw bootcamp grads, who are still months ahead of people just starting on Codecademy

With Corona, there are also a lot less dev jobs available. Most of the companies still hiring are huge companies like Google and Facebook. These companies have strict requirements, drawn out interview processes, and are less willing to take chances on atypical backgrounds.

More people should learn to code, and it really does help with generally applicable problem solving skills, but please don’t rely on it as a quick solution to financial or career issues.