Microsoft: Give us better staff

The next "space race" will be in the world of computer science, according to Microsoft's president and head lawyer Brad Smith, who wants more students to pick up the subject (and presumably fill his company's ranks).

"Kansas is primed to play an important role," Smith told the US state's Wichita Herald.

"From agriculture to general aviation to biomedical research, the state is home to fields that depend on computer science and computational thinking. These fields and others offer computing jobs in Kansas that pay on average $72,128 – roughly 70 percent higher than the average Kansas salary of $42,020. Unfortunately, there are more than 3,000 unfilled computing jobs in the state."

Smith suggests that the remedy to this issue is ramping up spending on training people to be ideal Microsoft workers.

"Meanwhile, nations as large as China and as small as Estonia are taking steps to ensure that computer science education is available to all of their students," he says.

"That puts our future workforce at a disadvantage in the increasingly globalized economy. But this is about more than jobs. Like the moon shot of more than a half-century ago, it’s about national security as well, by preparing students for the increasingly computerized military and for jobs that can respond to and prevent debilitating cyber attacks." ®