Google Summer of Code in 2022 – No longer limited to students
Suppose Google dropped all pretense and offered full-time work to any qualified applicant willing to work for minimum living wage—a 21st century workfare program.  What would those numbers look like?  What are the costs of the overheads?  Suppose Google is able to draw managers ("mentors") from the upper end of the same applicant pool.  What's the upper bound on programmers after arriving at an equilibrium by iteration?  Knuth estimates 2% of the world has what it takes to be a programmer.  Is that a reasonable upper bound for such a program, considering that the existence of the program will by incentive probably double or quadruple the number of working programmers in the world, but also keeping in mind that the most of the world's existing and aspiring programmers won't be interested in minimum wage long-term?