4 ms·

As a Computer Science major, and programmer, and soon to be college graduate, I don't like the fact that people can go to a "coder bootcamp" and after they "gra

by _RPM 11y ago

As a Computer Science major, and programmer, and soon to be college graduate, I don't like the fact that people can go to a "coder bootcamp" and after they "graduate" from it, they expect to get the jobs that CS grads get. I don't think these people should be paid in to the same level as college graduates with CS degrees. A CS degree is the best investment to make at this time if you're not already part of a well connected network of family that can get you into old money, or work for a family member.

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
There should be a pathway for people to move into programming (not all of which requires a CS degree) as a second career. I'm lucky, I had the Post 9/11 Gi Bill to help me with that. Though I still think that boot camps, unless supplemented with serious personal projects and learning, seem to be slightly scammy feeling.
eropple 11y ago
Are you more valuable to the company hiring CS grads than the bootcamp attendee? If not, why? I can only speak for myself, but I think that I've made a decent little career out of being more valuable across a wide array of functional roles than somebody who has a freshly minted flavor-of-the-month certificate. But I've made a point of being able to do more than that in ways that employers want--I'm rarely, if ever, the best at any particular thing, but I'm good at lot of different things, and that's both valuable and hard to substitute with inferior (from an economic perspective) services. Which is to say, there's a markup for my services, but my marginal value stays fairly high even after a given problem is solved. And my CS degree helps out with that a great deal, but the degree itself is meaningless--it's what I can do for a client or an employer that matters.
gingerrr 11y ago
As an engineer in the industry for going on 6 years with no CS degree, I don't like the fact that people can go to "college" and after they "graduate" from it, they expect to get the jobs that people with half a decade of on-the-job experience get. I don't think these people should be paid in to the same level as experienced engineers with proven track records. Working in the industry is the best investment to make at this time if you're not already part of a well-connected network of college graduates that can get you into old money, or work for a family member. (The above tongue-in-cheek should NOT be read as a defense of coding "bootcamps", as I think they're leading to a glut of barely-competent programmers flooding the market, but should be read as a criticism of degree entitlement. I know my algos, can calculate time and space complexity easily and correctly, have designed several mission-critical systems that have withstood the test of time, all without the college degree. At the very least a bootcamp'd developer will have some hands-on exposure to the tools being used in the industry today. A degree does not a competent engineer make.)
KevinMS 11y ago
Since you are judging people by credentials rather than abilities let my offer you an counter argument. I think computer science majors should be disqualified from any programming jobs because all they have accomplished, if they can actually program, is that they had to be taught at great expense. Somebody who doesn't have a compsci degree but can program well has proven to potential employers that they can learn and adapt to the quickly changing development job market.
curun1r 11y ago
As someone who has hired a ton of developers, including many straight out of college, let me offer a bit of a perspective of what you've bought. Your programming abilities are extremely likely to be shit. Unless you've been programming since you were 12, the programming you've done for your CS degree has not prepared you to write code in the industry and, in fact, has probably given you a ton of bad habits that will need to be broken when you get your first job. Just an example, but I find that fresh college grads don't commit/push their work nearly as often as they need to. I find that school encourages a mentality of spending all the time you have making it as good as you can make it when it's far more valuable in the industry to share your work with coworkers as early in the process as possible. I have to watch our new-grad hires like a hawk or they'll hold their story until code freeze and commit at the last minute and make QA's job harder. The good news is that you've been taught a framework for thinking about how computer programs perform as the size of data gets huge. The bad news is that jobs where you're writing the kind of code that deals with huge data are few and far between. Sure, we've got more data than ever these days, but we're using libraries and products that have already handled much of the CS work. To echo another poster, between a CS grad, a bootcamp grad and someone with a year of professional experience, I'll take the professional experience every time. The bootcamp grad has gaping holes in his skill set...I interviewed 8 of these at a hiring event and while each of them could talk intelligently about the 4 technologies they'd been taught, not one of them had even heard the term "load balancer" or could even guess what it might be used for. The CS grad has useful knowledge, but I can teach the small portion of a CS curriculum that's applicable to the jobs I hire for. Big-O notation is a pretty simple concept and it takes two seconds to look it up for the data structures we use. And has been said elsewhere, in the real world, n is usually pretty small and the constants matter. And yes, I realize the irony of saying that because of Google, a product that required a ton of CS knowledge to create, a formal CS background is less important. Only the one with experience isn't starting from near-zero. And that's alright...I'm firmly in the camp that believes that college shouldn't be a trade school. It has value in and of itself and shouldn't be expected to teach the skills that are needed on the job. But that also means that it doesn't give you that leg up that you seem to be expecting it to. Your degree will get you in the door, but mostly because our industry is starved for talent right now, but you'll only be valuable once you've gotten real-world experience.

by _RPM 11y ago

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago

There should be a pathway for people to move into programming (not all of which requires a CS degree) as a second career. I'm lucky, I had the Post 9/11 Gi Bill to help me with that. Though I still think that boot camps, unless supplemented with serious personal projects and learning, seem to be slightly scammy feeling.

eropple 11y ago

Are you more valuable to the company hiring CS grads than the bootcamp attendee? If not, why? I can only speak for myself, but I think that I've made a decent little career out of being more valuable across a wide array of functional roles than somebody who has a freshly minted flavor-of-the-month certificate. But I've made a point of being able to do more than that in ways that employers want--I'm rarely, if ever, the best at any particular thing, but I'm good at lot of different things, and that's both valuable and hard to substitute with inferior (from an economic perspective) services. Which is to say, there's a markup for my services, but my marginal value stays fairly high even after a given problem is solved. And my CS degree helps out with that a great deal, but the degree itself is meaningless--it's what I can do for a client or an employer that matters.

gingerrr 11y ago

As an engineer in the industry for going on 6 years with no CS degree, I don't like the fact that people can go to "college" and after they "graduate" from it, they expect to get the jobs that people with half a decade of on-the-job experience get. I don't think these people should be paid in to the same level as experienced engineers with proven track records. Working in the industry is the best investment to make at this time if you're not already part of a well-connected network of college graduates that can get you into old money, or work for a family member. (The above tongue-in-cheek should NOT be read as a defense of coding "bootcamps", as I think they're leading to a glut of barely-competent programmers flooding the market, but should be read as a criticism of degree entitlement. I know my algos, can calculate time and space complexity easily and correctly, have designed several mission-critical systems that have withstood the test of time, all without the college degree. At the very least a bootcamp'd developer will have some hands-on exposure to the tools being used in the industry today. A degree does not a competent engineer make.)

KevinMS 11y ago

Since you are judging people by credentials rather than abilities let my offer you an counter argument. I think computer science majors should be disqualified from any programming jobs because all they have accomplished, if they can actually program, is that they had to be taught at great expense. Somebody who doesn't have a compsci degree but can program well has proven to potential employers that they can learn and adapt to the quickly changing development job market.

curun1r 11y ago

As someone who has hired a ton of developers, including many straight out of college, let me offer a bit of a perspective of what you've bought. Your programming abilities are extremely likely to be shit. Unless you've been programming since you were 12, the programming you've done for your CS degree has not prepared you to write code in the industry and, in fact, has probably given you a ton of bad habits that will need to be broken when you get your first job. Just an example, but I find that fresh college grads don't commit/push their work nearly as often as they need to. I find that school encourages a mentality of spending all the time you have making it as good as you can make it when it's far more valuable in the industry to share your work with coworkers as early in the process as possible. I have to watch our new-grad hires like a hawk or they'll hold their story until code freeze and commit at the last minute and make QA's job harder. The good news is that you've been taught a framework for thinking about how computer programs perform as the size of data gets huge. The bad news is that jobs where you're writing the kind of code that deals with huge data are few and far between. Sure, we've got more data than ever these days, but we're using libraries and products that have already handled much of the CS work. To echo another poster, between a CS grad, a bootcamp grad and someone with a year of professional experience, I'll take the professional experience every time. The bootcamp grad has gaping holes in his skill set...I interviewed 8 of these at a hiring event and while each of them could talk intelligently about the 4 technologies they'd been taught, not one of them had even heard the term "load balancer" or could even guess what it might be used for. The CS grad has useful knowledge, but I can teach the small portion of a CS curriculum that's applicable to the jobs I hire for. Big-O notation is a pretty simple concept and it takes two seconds to look it up for the data structures we use. And has been said elsewhere, in the real world, n is usually pretty small and the constants matter. And yes, I realize the irony of saying that because of Google, a product that required a ton of CS knowledge to create, a formal CS background is less important. Only the one with experience isn't starting from near-zero. And that's alright...I'm firmly in the camp that believes that college shouldn't be a trade school. It has value in and of itself and shouldn't be expected to teach the skills that are needed on the job. But that also means that it doesn't give you that leg up that you seem to be expecting it to. Your degree will get you in the door, but mostly because our industry is starved for talent right now, but you'll only be valuable once you've gotten real-world experience.