[hollywood]

Let ‘em write code!

[Myrddin]

Those welders make about $100k per year. They will need a CS degree plus security certs and clearances to land jobs in the software development field. They will have competition from H1B "coders" from foreign countries with far more experience than a freshly laid off welder.

I've only been in the field for 40 years with skills writing in 40 common languages hosted on UNIX, Linux, Windows and embedded systems. OS kernels, device drivers, DSP, general apps, GUI and database including web, Qt, X11 and even classic old "curses" full screen character UIs. It's still a tough market with a full toolkit.