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I am skeptical of "Developer Boot Camps". I think they over promise people that they will be skilled developers when they are done. If you go in with a degree i

by laveur 11y ago

I am skeptical of "Developer Boot Camps". I think they over promise people that they will be skilled developers when they are done. If you go in with a degree in Computer Science or something that teaches you how to program properly sure you will probably be able to get a job. But the idea to take someone that has never been a programmer and make them suitable for a job is laughable to me. It does a disservice to everyone. And to me are just a scam.

2sk21 11y ago
Fully agree. Learning the syntax of a programming language (which is about all you can hope to learn in a bootcamp) is just the first step in becoming a programmer.
throwaway13337 11y ago
Being a software developer in the modern world (web, mobile) has little to do with computer science. These skills can be taught but aren't in most modern universities. Mostly, there is argument that university is not vocational training. At the same time, most people implicitly feel the need to go to university to get a job. These developer boot camps create a new path. It's a good thing.
- santaclaus 11y ago
  Which is funny, as those exact Computer Sciencey type questions are what Google likes to throw at candidates.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Excellent point. If you want to waste 4-6 years of your life on theory, go to college. Bootcamp it or learn yourself if you want to spend 6-18 months learning and then jump into a junior position to get real experience (and get paid for it). EDIT: See my post further down for clarification on this idea. I shot this comment from the hip a bit too fast.
  - eropple 11y ago
    I don't want to rip on you, because I think you're a pretty sharp dude from your posting here, but if you think theory is a waste, I really question what sorts of Actually Hard Problems you've had to tackle. :/
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Thanks for the kind words! I'm a high school dropout and have started/ran/sold a startup, managed a division for a well-regarded consulting firm, and worked on data taking for a detector at the LHC. Perhaps the problem is that I minimize the amount of effort that goes into being autodidactic (determine the problem, determine what information and skills are needed to solve the problem, acquire said information/skills, execute, repeat). Let me correct/clarify my above post: Theory isn't a waste, per se. Is it best to spend a significant amount of time front loading knowledge one may not need? And paying a substantial premium for that experience? That's my problem with the college experience for tech professionals. I'm not a huge fan of bootcamps, but I do believe there is much to be gained by Google's efforts here. There is value we've lost in the old apprenticeship system, and I hope to see it revived over time (I owe my skill and career progression to the luck of finding quality mentors along my way). There are hard problems I want to solve that I want to have the resources (mostly time) to solve. College would not teach my those skills, but me trying to solve those problems are lessons in themselves.
      - eropple 11y ago
        YMM, of course, V, but I've used almost everything I ran into in my collegiate CS-related courses in some form or another. And I find that the stuff that I haven't directly used has contributed to my ability to solve problems--having the prerequisites to be able to assimilate into my corpus of knowledge pretty random stuff has served me extremely well. Much more importantly to me, however, I was exposed to things outside of "that computer stuff" that have made me better at being a manager, a leader, and (as hokey as it sounds) a human being. I literally can't put a price tag on it, but I would be vastly poorer as a person without a liberal education that I think gets aggressively discounted when attempting to view college in purely transactional terms. It is a much greater criticism of college, to me, that a student has to go looking for this stuff; the existence of bachelor's degrees that are functionally trade-school materials is troubling to me. I deal with a lot of technical people who are pretty aggressively ignorant of things that don't involve keyboards or oscilloscopes, and I think that is the greater failure of the American collegiate system. Don't get me wrong--I'm self-taught too, I'd been writing code for a decade-ish before I went to college, but this stuff changed my life profoundly, and I think minimizing it out of hand is downright tragic. Maybe if there was a better way to get people to acquire this a few years on (calling to mind the idea that people should have a few years of experience before getting an MBA), but there isn't right now. As far as paying a premium goes--I graduated with about $20K of debt, mostly because it was effectively free money (my total interest payments before I paid them off were less than $2K), and was getting paid through school (did Google Summer of Code twice, ran my own web dev shop, etc.). Bad choices can be made with regards to college, but that's a criticism of overly expensive (private) colleges.
- wh-uws 11y ago
  "Being a software developer in the modern world... has little to do with computer science." Is a categorical falsehood that has cost me alot of time and money. There is not one top tier technology company software team that you can get on without having a strong grasp of at least the basic fundamentals of CS (namely data structures, algorithms, and some college level math.) You will ALWAYS get passed on if you only focus on domain specific knowledge (ie. web development or mobile) to the complete detriment of theory. Why? because because eventually said tech/language/toolchain/development target/ or platform will become obsolete and good companies want to know your skillset won't die with them. I've written about this before http://www.quora.com/I-am-quite-bad-at-algorithms-but-good-with-Android-and-iOS-Is-there-a-place-for-me-at-companies-like-Facebook-Palantir-Google-etc/answer/William-Harris http://www.quora.com/I-am-quite-bad-at-algorithms-but-good-w... Anyone reading this who is interested in being a software engineer for the long haul please DO NOT discount the importance of a strong CS foundation as I did early in my career. Edit: If you downvote please explain. I have strong evidence to back these claims in the form of missed jobs opportunities at multiple name brand tech companies. You can stick your head in the mud if you like but it wont make you anymore correct.
  - ken47 11y ago
    "(namely data structures, algorithms, and some college level math)" If you're smart and perceptive, then you can learn enough of these things, for the average job, by osmosis or by day-to-day exposure over the course of a career.
  - whiteboarder 11y ago
    If what you say is true, then how come the dev bootcamp hiring statistics say otherwise? Look at any of the statistics. These bootcamps graduate people making 80k-100k. That is a good salary for someone who didn't graduate with a CS degree from a top 5 tech school.
  - quaunaut 11y ago
    > There is not one top tier technology company software team that you can get on without having a strong grasp of at least the basic fundamentals of CS (namely data structures, algorithms, and some college level math.) This just in: Getting on a top tier team requires being top tier. This doesn't mean you can't teach for the rest of the industry, nor does it mean you can't go into the top tier work later. Just the path to top tier changes, from college to having solid experience and code out there. This can come from blog posts, open source, or simply working on hard problems at whatever gig you can get.
sotojuan 11y ago
> But the idea to take someone that has never been a programmer and make them suitable for a job is laughable to me. To be fair it seems like the people that go to the "top" bootcamps are not like this. I mean, App Academy has graduated Googlers, but a lot already had degrees or some industry experience.
srtjstjsj 11y ago
Depends what "job". In this OP, they jobs are front-end internship-level jobs, writing boilerplate Android front-ends to websites. This isn't "inventing a replacement for React" or "distributed systems design" stuff.
MangezBien 11y ago
This attitude, that I see frequently on HN, isn't very helpful. I taught myself to write code in a little under three months and immediately got a job as a Jr. Dev. I knew nothing about data structures or algorithms but I could write a Ruby program. Now, three years later, I am taking online classes to learn about those issues. The more advanced I got, the more I needed those "basics." Looking back at myself at 18, there is no way I would have made it through a CS course. I had no motivation for school. Now, I am doing really well and learning a ton. Saying they are a scam ignores that the students are getting a marketable skill. None of the camps say you will be an expert with understandings of how the language works but you will have enough skill to be useful.
- bigtunacan 11y ago
  Saying "you will have enough skill to be useful" is naive if you are basing it on your own personal experience of learning to "write code in a little under three months and immediately got a job as a Jr. Dev". +++ On My Personal Experience +++ I also learned to write code on my own and had a junior dev job with no college experience. I then attended college part time to get my CS degree because 1) There are a large set of potential employers that will not consider hiring if you do not have a degree; so in times of job scarcity your options will be limited. 2) The subset of employers that will hire someone without a degree is then further broken into a subset that will pay you less since they know you have less options not having a degree. +++ On Dev Bootcamps +++ 1) 12 solid intensive weeks of learning to write code may be enough to get someone an entry level job if they learn/retain enough to get through the interview process. Having this as a focused class room where assistance and guidance is provided is likely of benefit to some people; so they are not entirely useless. 2) In my experience bootcamps have either not published or have been deceptive with job placement numbers. As a for example; I know of a bootcamp that published a 100% job placement rate. This was deceptive since they did not publish that 1) More than 75% of the attendees did not complete the bootcamp and so they were not counted (only graduate placement was counted), but they still were out of pocket for tuition costs. 2) Being hired for ANY job was considered as a successful job placement, but only about 1/3rd of the graduates actually found jobs that were in the field, the other 2/3rd were counted as successes because they were employed (e.g. if you found a job as a waitress you would count towards the success metric.)
whiteboarder 11y ago
And yet the Developer Boot Camps work. Just look at the job statistics for anyone of the top ones, like Hack Reactor, Flatiron School, ect. They graduate people who get 80-100k salary jobs, within 6 months of graduating. People go to these bootcamps for the singular goal of getting a high paying job, and these programs are wildly successful at achieving this goal.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  Do they work? How many last in these jobs for a year? Two years? What's the quality of the work that comes out? How much of it has to be redone?
  - jxramos 11y ago
    Might be too early to tell. But I look forward to this sort of thing being measurable in LinkedIn after sufficient time has passed much like how they did with universities not too long ago.
- jxramos 11y ago
  I'd also like to add to the conversation that these bootcamp individuals don't exist in a vacuum. They will gain a decent network and hopefully will be already tied into an existing network. I'm a developer who has a friend who is going through the HackReactor bootcamp process and will begin this January. He's still preparing for the training by doing self study which I mentor him on over lunch hours. A focused bootcamp paired with a solid mentor should definitely produce a developer able to deliver JR tasks. Because afterall once a person lands a job they will surely continue to learn more and more, from their tasks, their colleagues, and mentors. I say let the bootcamps thrive.
jypepin 11y ago
I totally understand the skepticism and I think it's a long, deep debate between coding vs computer science. I'm from Dev Bootcamp and barely knew anything before participating. I had multiple good job offers a week after "graduating" and have always been performing well, obviously according to what was expected when I finished. I was able to do useful stuff in our rails app since the first week, and although I needed a lot of mentorship I still think I was useful. I think what's important is to be realistic on expectations you have on bootcamp. You won't understand how things work after 3 months, but you will definitely know enough to get a job as a junior, and be able to continue learning. After I landed my first job, I continued to take some online classes to know more CS stuff, learn basic algorithms, etc. and now that I've been working for almost 3 years (really hard) I feel like I know better than a new grad getting out of school. I didn't when I started working obviously, but I think that those past 3 years were way more valuable in every single aspect than if I had spent 3 years in College studying CS. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say you shouldn't go to school or anything, but there is definitely a value in bootcamps, especially for people (like me) who already spent 3-4 years in College but want to make a change. I would have never been able to become an engineer without a bootcamp, because I couldn't afford another bachelor's (and tbh, didn't have the motivation for it anyways).
segmondy 11y ago
Stop it. I think it's really an uncomfortable feeling for plenty of us that someone can learn to program in a few months. It makes plenty of people in the industry free inadequate and I see this argument of yours repeated over and over. It doesn't stand. A developer and a computer scientist are two different things. There are awesome developers who are terrible computer scientists. They can build a great website/small web application in RoR or Django, fast and get the job done. The site will never scale tho. There are awesome computer scientists who can't build a great web app but can scale the hell out of it. Most companies want developers, not computer scientist. You might get asked all sorts of questions about algorithms ^& data structures, but in reality day to day problem is CRUD. Now, I would imagine Google would want more of those CS types than developer types...
- manish_gill 11y ago
  > A developer and a computer scientist are two different things. No, they are not. A good developer is someone who, by virtue of the fact that he or she has to write software whose theoretical underpinnings are rooted in CS, must be good in CS as well. It's ok if you're not a CS person, but stop generalising and saying no dev has to be. > There are awesome developers who are terrible computer scientists. They can build a great website/small web application in RoR or Django, fast and get the job done. The site will never scale tho. No. These are people who are good at gluing together a framework. If that's your definition of a developer, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but you are mistaken. Web development is not the be-all/end-all of Software development. Scalability is a very very specific topic, but it's not the only one. CS includes a vast number of things. Good developers write things like compilers, infrastructure tools, operating systems, libraries, the frameworks that you so like to use - someone wrote them, and chances are, they knew their CS. Video Games - try writing one without knowing much about Linear Algebra. See how far you get. > Most companies want developers, not computer scientist. You might get asked all sorts of questions about algorithms ^& data structures, but in reality day to day problem is CRUD. Partly agreed here. The thing is - as the CRUD things become more and more common, everyone wants in on the next stuff - Analytics, Data Science, Machine Learning! Who is going to provide that for the companies? The guy who did dev bootcamp or the guy with a CS degree under his belt who says he can learn it? Who are you going to hire?
ken47 11y ago
Hypothetical question, who would you rather have as a software engineer on your team: the MIT stats grad with little to no programming background aside from a bootcamp or the average CS grad from the average Uni?
sbov 11y ago
I found that CS theory was great, once I had the practical experience to recognize how to use it. In a sense I feel like we do things backwards. You should work in industry for a couple years, then learn the theory you learn when getting a CS degree. The software development career path isn't setup like this now, but if it were, I feel like we would all be better off.
- noxToken 11y ago
  I don't know if I completely agree with your implementation, but I definitely see where you're coming from. A lot of CS theory felt bland and only useful in academia. It felt like the theory would only be useful if I was doing research and not application. This was especially true with the data structures, discrete maths and automata. It was almost impossible for me to grasp those concepts without something concrete to back it up, and my homework/test grades in those courses reflected that. Now that I've been developing for a while, everything has fallen into place. I understand Chomsky's hierarchy, the limitations of regular expressions & stacks, time complexity, and the like. It's like development filled in this enormous gap that I had been missing.
- bcbrown 11y ago
  That's what I did, and it's worked very well for me. I have a degree in another science, then spent a couple years as an sdet. When I transitioned to a dev, I began to self-study via textbooks, lectures, and MOOCs. It took me about three years to cover all the topics included in a CS degree, and now I'm as knowledgeable as anyone I work with. I credit a lot of my ability to learn to my bachelor's degree, though. I wouldn't recommend most people skip college, and I've considered going back for a MS in CS.
- morgante 11y ago
  Interestingly, I think that is actually how it works for most elite/successful programmers. They hack around on computers in high school and get to being pretty good at programming, then go to college and pick up the theory side. Fundamentally, I think trying to get people to be developers who are only interested in money is a losing proposition.
aczerepinski 11y ago
A smart/motivated/curious person can learn an awful lot about ANY subject in ~1000 hours. Are you skeptical about bootcamps, or about mankind's capacity to acquire new skills?
elliotec 11y ago
It worked really well for me. It's not a scam, and it may be laughable but its reality. The fact is there are a lot of job openings for developers and these guys are taking advantage of it. A 12 week program is certainly enough to prepare someone for real, practical applications in development, especially if the student has done self study before and after and has ambition. From what I've seen, often times a CS degree does the exact opposite.
russelluresti 11y ago
I don't think you need a computer science degree to be a programmer, but I share your concern about Developer Boot Camps. I interview developers pretty often for my company and I've come across about a handful of people whose only education in development was one of these bootcamps; none of them were anywhere close to being ready for even an entry level position. So I become super skeptical when people are being asked to pay $13k for a 3 month program that may not actually land them a job. That's a LOT of money. I'd like to see GA's historical track record - how many of their graduates have received offers within 6 months? Within a year? What were the average starting salaries they received? Based on my limited exposure to the graduates of these types of bootcamps, I don't think I'd recommend this type of program to anyone, despite having Google's name attached to it.
- whiteboarder 11y ago
  It depends on the school. The very best ones like Hack Reactor have a 99% rate for people getting jobs within 6 months, averaging at 100k. The "average" ones are closer to 75k average starting salary.
  - russelluresti 11y ago
    I haven't come across anyone from Hack Reactor yet, but if the numbers they put on their website are true, then that's pretty impressive. I did a bit of research and found a Quora answer regarding GA's success with its Web Development program here: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-hiring-rate-for-graduates-of-the-General-Assembly-web-development-immersive-6-months-after-graduation https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-hiring-rate-for-graduates-...
  - blumkvist 11y ago
    What? How is this possible? Entry level web developer with a starting salary of $100k... and a guarantee... That looks like a straight up lie.
    - whiteboarder 11y ago
      It is factually correct, but perhaps a little misleading. Hack Reactor indeed has these statistics, but their application process is probably the most difficult/selective of any of the bootcamps. The people going into the program, are usually, already quite good. As an example, I have a friend who graduated from General Assembly, didn't feel quite prepared, so did Hack Reactor AS WELL. (ie, 2 separate bootcamps, one right after the other). On top of, of course, a college degree (albeit non-CS) It is kind of like how Harvard has very good hiring stats. Is Harvard really that good, or does their admissions process just select for people who are almost certainly going to be successful, no matter what college they go to.
laveur 11y ago
I see a lot of comments. So Let me clarify I know developing and CS are not the same. I myself am a college dropout. I have no degree but I spent many years in college starting when I was 16. It took me roughly 5 years after I dropped out to get someone to take a chance on me. The point I am trying to make is you can not be taught the basics in such a short time. The theory is so important to what we do. We don't need to turn out people that can code. We need to turn out people that can push our craft further. We are not a commodity!
electrozoic 11y ago
Boot camps have been awesome for my business niche: fixing Android apps that other developers have failed at and abandoned. If more boot-camp graduates come on the job market, it will be even easier for me to demonstrate the value of my services.
walshemj 11y ago
CS degrees teach CS not how to program properly you sort of expected to either know it all ready or teach your self as you go along.
walshemj 11y ago
And the cost $13.5K for 12 weeks (a single term) is about what it costs for a year at Oxbridge £9k
bdcravens 11y ago
I agree on the point that programs that are selling a dream are a disservice. I do know of many CS grads that were woefully unprepared to write production code until they had a few weeks of real learning. Myself, I have no CS degree, and have been a professional developer since 1999, in multiple languages, and have had the opportunity to run user groups, speak at conferences, serve as technical editors in many big name programming books, and more. I'm FAR from exceptional; I'd say I'm only mildly above average in terms of intellect and skill. My point is that a great career can come by many paths.
driverdan 11y ago
> It does a disservice to everyone. And to me are just a scam. You're flat out wrong and you're doing a disservice to yourself and the industry by dismissing them out of hand. I've talked to quite a few people who have gone through bootcamps or hired people from bootcamps. Many come out completely capable of filling a junior dev role. We hired a junior dev straight out of a bootcamp and she has been great. Not only is she competent but she adds a different perspective to the team which is valuable. One caveat though. Not everyone is suitable for a bootcamp. You have to be an intelligent, fast learner who wants to continue learning and is aware of your limitations. Employers have to have reasonable expectations too. You can't expect someone from a bootcamp to be committing code on their first day, first week, or possibly even first month (depending on the complexity of your code base). At first they will take much longer on tasks than a CS major or someone with experience. But they've clearly shown a willingness to learn and learn quickly so it doesn't last.
itslennysfault 11y ago
I taught 3 cohorts of the Web Development Immersive program at General Assembly and most of my students are in the work force and doing great. I don't know about any other programs, but I do know the course that I taught was very effective. For more info see my other comment on the main thread.

by laveur 11y ago

2sk21 11y ago

Fully agree. Learning the syntax of a programming language (which is about all you can hope to learn in a bootcamp) is just the first step in becoming a programmer.

throwaway13337 11y ago

Being a software developer in the modern world (web, mobile) has little to do with computer science. These skills can be taught but aren't in most modern universities. Mostly, there is argument that university is not vocational training. At the same time, most people implicitly feel the need to go to university to get a job. These developer boot camps create a new path. It's a good thing.

santaclaus 11y ago
Which is funny, as those exact Computer Sciencey type questions are what Google likes to throw at candidates.
toomuchtodo 11y ago
Excellent point. If you want to waste 4-6 years of your life on theory, go to college. Bootcamp it or learn yourself if you want to spend 6-18 months learning and then jump into a junior position to get real experience (and get paid for it). EDIT: See my post further down for clarification on this idea. I shot this comment from the hip a bit too fast.
- eropple 11y ago
  I don't want to rip on you, because I think you're a pretty sharp dude from your posting here, but if you think theory is a waste, I really question what sorts of Actually Hard Problems you've had to tackle. :/
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Thanks for the kind words! I'm a high school dropout and have started/ran/sold a startup, managed a division for a well-regarded consulting firm, and worked on data taking for a detector at the LHC. Perhaps the problem is that I minimize the amount of effort that goes into being autodidactic (determine the problem, determine what information and skills are needed to solve the problem, acquire said information/skills, execute, repeat). Let me correct/clarify my above post: Theory isn't a waste, per se. Is it best to spend a significant amount of time front loading knowledge one may not need? And paying a substantial premium for that experience? That's my problem with the college experience for tech professionals. I'm not a huge fan of bootcamps, but I do believe there is much to be gained by Google's efforts here. There is value we've lost in the old apprenticeship system, and I hope to see it revived over time (I owe my skill and career progression to the luck of finding quality mentors along my way). There are hard problems I want to solve that I want to have the resources (mostly time) to solve. College would not teach my those skills, but me trying to solve those problems are lessons in themselves.
    - eropple 11y ago
      YMM, of course, V, but I've used almost everything I ran into in my collegiate CS-related courses in some form or another. And I find that the stuff that I haven't directly used has contributed to my ability to solve problems--having the prerequisites to be able to assimilate into my corpus of knowledge pretty random stuff has served me extremely well. Much more importantly to me, however, I was exposed to things outside of "that computer stuff" that have made me better at being a manager, a leader, and (as hokey as it sounds) a human being. I literally can't put a price tag on it, but I would be vastly poorer as a person without a liberal education that I think gets aggressively discounted when attempting to view college in purely transactional terms. It is a much greater criticism of college, to me, that a student has to go looking for this stuff; the existence of bachelor's degrees that are functionally trade-school materials is troubling to me. I deal with a lot of technical people who are pretty aggressively ignorant of things that don't involve keyboards or oscilloscopes, and I think that is the greater failure of the American collegiate system. Don't get me wrong--I'm self-taught too, I'd been writing code for a decade-ish before I went to college, but this stuff changed my life profoundly, and I think minimizing it out of hand is downright tragic. Maybe if there was a better way to get people to acquire this a few years on (calling to mind the idea that people should have a few years of experience before getting an MBA), but there isn't right now. As far as paying a premium goes--I graduated with about $20K of debt, mostly because it was effectively free money (my total interest payments before I paid them off were less than $2K), and was getting paid through school (did Google Summer of Code twice, ran my own web dev shop, etc.). Bad choices can be made with regards to college, but that's a criticism of overly expensive (private) colleges.
wh-uws 11y ago
"Being a software developer in the modern world... has little to do with computer science." Is a categorical falsehood that has cost me alot of time and money. There is not one top tier technology company software team that you can get on without having a strong grasp of at least the basic fundamentals of CS (namely data structures, algorithms, and some college level math.) You will ALWAYS get passed on if you only focus on domain specific knowledge (ie. web development or mobile) to the complete detriment of theory. Why? because because eventually said tech/language/toolchain/development target/ or platform will become obsolete and good companies want to know your skillset won't die with them. I've written about this before http://www.quora.com/I-am-quite-bad-at-algorithms-but-good-with-Android-and-iOS-Is-there-a-place-for-me-at-companies-like-Facebook-Palantir-Google-etc/answer/William-Harris http://www.quora.com/I-am-quite-bad-at-algorithms-but-good-w... Anyone reading this who is interested in being a software engineer for the long haul please DO NOT discount the importance of a strong CS foundation as I did early in my career. Edit: If you downvote please explain. I have strong evidence to back these claims in the form of missed jobs opportunities at multiple name brand tech companies. You can stick your head in the mud if you like but it wont make you anymore correct.
- ken47 11y ago
  "(namely data structures, algorithms, and some college level math)" If you're smart and perceptive, then you can learn enough of these things, for the average job, by osmosis or by day-to-day exposure over the course of a career.
- whiteboarder 11y ago
  If what you say is true, then how come the dev bootcamp hiring statistics say otherwise? Look at any of the statistics. These bootcamps graduate people making 80k-100k. That is a good salary for someone who didn't graduate with a CS degree from a top 5 tech school.
- quaunaut 11y ago
  > There is not one top tier technology company software team that you can get on without having a strong grasp of at least the basic fundamentals of CS (namely data structures, algorithms, and some college level math.) This just in: Getting on a top tier team requires being top tier. This doesn't mean you can't teach for the rest of the industry, nor does it mean you can't go into the top tier work later. Just the path to top tier changes, from college to having solid experience and code out there. This can come from blog posts, open source, or simply working on hard problems at whatever gig you can get.

sotojuan 11y ago

> But the idea to take someone that has never been a programmer and make them suitable for a job is laughable to me. To be fair it seems like the people that go to the "top" bootcamps are not like this. I mean, App Academy has graduated Googlers, but a lot already had degrees or some industry experience.

srtjstjsj 11y ago

Depends what "job". In this OP, they jobs are front-end internship-level jobs, writing boilerplate Android front-ends to websites. This isn't "inventing a replacement for React" or "distributed systems design" stuff.

MangezBien 11y ago

This attitude, that I see frequently on HN, isn't very helpful. I taught myself to write code in a little under three months and immediately got a job as a Jr. Dev. I knew nothing about data structures or algorithms but I could write a Ruby program. Now, three years later, I am taking online classes to learn about those issues. The more advanced I got, the more I needed those "basics." Looking back at myself at 18, there is no way I would have made it through a CS course. I had no motivation for school. Now, I am doing really well and learning a ton. Saying they are a scam ignores that the students are getting a marketable skill. None of the camps say you will be an expert with understandings of how the language works but you will have enough skill to be useful.

bigtunacan 11y ago
Saying "you will have enough skill to be useful" is naive if you are basing it on your own personal experience of learning to "write code in a little under three months and immediately got a job as a Jr. Dev". +++ On My Personal Experience +++ I also learned to write code on my own and had a junior dev job with no college experience. I then attended college part time to get my CS degree because 1) There are a large set of potential employers that will not consider hiring if you do not have a degree; so in times of job scarcity your options will be limited. 2) The subset of employers that will hire someone without a degree is then further broken into a subset that will pay you less since they know you have less options not having a degree. +++ On Dev Bootcamps +++ 1) 12 solid intensive weeks of learning to write code may be enough to get someone an entry level job if they learn/retain enough to get through the interview process. Having this as a focused class room where assistance and guidance is provided is likely of benefit to some people; so they are not entirely useless. 2) In my experience bootcamps have either not published or have been deceptive with job placement numbers. As a for example; I know of a bootcamp that published a 100% job placement rate. This was deceptive since they did not publish that 1) More than 75% of the attendees did not complete the bootcamp and so they were not counted (only graduate placement was counted), but they still were out of pocket for tuition costs. 2) Being hired for ANY job was considered as a successful job placement, but only about 1/3rd of the graduates actually found jobs that were in the field, the other 2/3rd were counted as successes because they were employed (e.g. if you found a job as a waitress you would count towards the success metric.)

whiteboarder 11y ago

And yet the Developer Boot Camps work. Just look at the job statistics for anyone of the top ones, like Hack Reactor, Flatiron School, ect. They graduate people who get 80-100k salary jobs, within 6 months of graduating. People go to these bootcamps for the singular goal of getting a high paying job, and these programs are wildly successful at achieving this goal.

s73v3r 11y ago
Do they work? How many last in these jobs for a year? Two years? What's the quality of the work that comes out? How much of it has to be redone?
- jxramos 11y ago
  Might be too early to tell. But I look forward to this sort of thing being measurable in LinkedIn after sufficient time has passed much like how they did with universities not too long ago.
jxramos 11y ago
I'd also like to add to the conversation that these bootcamp individuals don't exist in a vacuum. They will gain a decent network and hopefully will be already tied into an existing network. I'm a developer who has a friend who is going through the HackReactor bootcamp process and will begin this January. He's still preparing for the training by doing self study which I mentor him on over lunch hours. A focused bootcamp paired with a solid mentor should definitely produce a developer able to deliver JR tasks. Because afterall once a person lands a job they will surely continue to learn more and more, from their tasks, their colleagues, and mentors. I say let the bootcamps thrive.

jypepin 11y ago

I totally understand the skepticism and I think it's a long, deep debate between coding vs computer science. I'm from Dev Bootcamp and barely knew anything before participating. I had multiple good job offers a week after "graduating" and have always been performing well, obviously according to what was expected when I finished. I was able to do useful stuff in our rails app since the first week, and although I needed a lot of mentorship I still think I was useful. I think what's important is to be realistic on expectations you have on bootcamp. You won't understand how things work after 3 months, but you will definitely know enough to get a job as a junior, and be able to continue learning. After I landed my first job, I continued to take some online classes to know more CS stuff, learn basic algorithms, etc. and now that I've been working for almost 3 years (really hard) I feel like I know better than a new grad getting out of school. I didn't when I started working obviously, but I think that those past 3 years were way more valuable in every single aspect than if I had spent 3 years in College studying CS. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say you shouldn't go to school or anything, but there is definitely a value in bootcamps, especially for people (like me) who already spent 3-4 years in College but want to make a change. I would have never been able to become an engineer without a bootcamp, because I couldn't afford another bachelor's (and tbh, didn't have the motivation for it anyways).

segmondy 11y ago

Stop it. I think it's really an uncomfortable feeling for plenty of us that someone can learn to program in a few months. It makes plenty of people in the industry free inadequate and I see this argument of yours repeated over and over. It doesn't stand. A developer and a computer scientist are two different things. There are awesome developers who are terrible computer scientists. They can build a great website/small web application in RoR or Django, fast and get the job done. The site will never scale tho. There are awesome computer scientists who can't build a great web app but can scale the hell out of it. Most companies want developers, not computer scientist. You might get asked all sorts of questions about algorithms ^& data structures, but in reality day to day problem is CRUD. Now, I would imagine Google would want more of those CS types than developer types...

manish_gill 11y ago
> A developer and a computer scientist are two different things. No, they are not. A good developer is someone who, by virtue of the fact that he or she has to write software whose theoretical underpinnings are rooted in CS, must be good in CS as well. It's ok if you're not a CS person, but stop generalising and saying no dev has to be. > There are awesome developers who are terrible computer scientists. They can build a great website/small web application in RoR or Django, fast and get the job done. The site will never scale tho. No. These are people who are good at gluing together a framework. If that's your definition of a developer, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but you are mistaken. Web development is not the be-all/end-all of Software development. Scalability is a very very specific topic, but it's not the only one. CS includes a vast number of things. Good developers write things like compilers, infrastructure tools, operating systems, libraries, the frameworks that you so like to use - someone wrote them, and chances are, they knew their CS. Video Games - try writing one without knowing much about Linear Algebra. See how far you get. > Most companies want developers, not computer scientist. You might get asked all sorts of questions about algorithms ^& data structures, but in reality day to day problem is CRUD. Partly agreed here. The thing is - as the CRUD things become more and more common, everyone wants in on the next stuff - Analytics, Data Science, Machine Learning! Who is going to provide that for the companies? The guy who did dev bootcamp or the guy with a CS degree under his belt who says he can learn it? Who are you going to hire?

ken47 11y ago

Hypothetical question, who would you rather have as a software engineer on your team: the MIT stats grad with little to no programming background aside from a bootcamp or the average CS grad from the average Uni?

sbov 11y ago

I found that CS theory was great, once I had the practical experience to recognize how to use it. In a sense I feel like we do things backwards. You should work in industry for a couple years, then learn the theory you learn when getting a CS degree. The software development career path isn't setup like this now, but if it were, I feel like we would all be better off.

noxToken 11y ago
I don't know if I completely agree with your implementation, but I definitely see where you're coming from. A lot of CS theory felt bland and only useful in academia. It felt like the theory would only be useful if I was doing research and not application. This was especially true with the data structures, discrete maths and automata. It was almost impossible for me to grasp those concepts without something concrete to back it up, and my homework/test grades in those courses reflected that. Now that I've been developing for a while, everything has fallen into place. I understand Chomsky's hierarchy, the limitations of regular expressions & stacks, time complexity, and the like. It's like development filled in this enormous gap that I had been missing.
bcbrown 11y ago
That's what I did, and it's worked very well for me. I have a degree in another science, then spent a couple years as an sdet. When I transitioned to a dev, I began to self-study via textbooks, lectures, and MOOCs. It took me about three years to cover all the topics included in a CS degree, and now I'm as knowledgeable as anyone I work with. I credit a lot of my ability to learn to my bachelor's degree, though. I wouldn't recommend most people skip college, and I've considered going back for a MS in CS.
morgante 11y ago
Interestingly, I think that is actually how it works for most elite/successful programmers. They hack around on computers in high school and get to being pretty good at programming, then go to college and pick up the theory side. Fundamentally, I think trying to get people to be developers who are only interested in money is a losing proposition.

aczerepinski 11y ago

A smart/motivated/curious person can learn an awful lot about ANY subject in ~1000 hours. Are you skeptical about bootcamps, or about mankind's capacity to acquire new skills?

elliotec 11y ago

It worked really well for me. It's not a scam, and it may be laughable but its reality. The fact is there are a lot of job openings for developers and these guys are taking advantage of it. A 12 week program is certainly enough to prepare someone for real, practical applications in development, especially if the student has done self study before and after and has ambition. From what I've seen, often times a CS degree does the exact opposite.

russelluresti 11y ago

I don't think you need a computer science degree to be a programmer, but I share your concern about Developer Boot Camps. I interview developers pretty often for my company and I've come across about a handful of people whose only education in development was one of these bootcamps; none of them were anywhere close to being ready for even an entry level position. So I become super skeptical when people are being asked to pay $13k for a 3 month program that may not actually land them a job. That's a LOT of money. I'd like to see GA's historical track record - how many of their graduates have received offers within 6 months? Within a year? What were the average starting salaries they received? Based on my limited exposure to the graduates of these types of bootcamps, I don't think I'd recommend this type of program to anyone, despite having Google's name attached to it.

whiteboarder 11y ago
It depends on the school. The very best ones like Hack Reactor have a 99% rate for people getting jobs within 6 months, averaging at 100k. The "average" ones are closer to 75k average starting salary.
- russelluresti 11y ago
  I haven't come across anyone from Hack Reactor yet, but if the numbers they put on their website are true, then that's pretty impressive. I did a bit of research and found a Quora answer regarding GA's success with its Web Development program here: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-hiring-rate-for-graduates-of-the-General-Assembly-web-development-immersive-6-months-after-graduation https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-hiring-rate-for-graduates-...
- blumkvist 11y ago
  What? How is this possible? Entry level web developer with a starting salary of $100k... and a guarantee... That looks like a straight up lie.
  - whiteboarder 11y ago
    It is factually correct, but perhaps a little misleading. Hack Reactor indeed has these statistics, but their application process is probably the most difficult/selective of any of the bootcamps. The people going into the program, are usually, already quite good. As an example, I have a friend who graduated from General Assembly, didn't feel quite prepared, so did Hack Reactor AS WELL. (ie, 2 separate bootcamps, one right after the other). On top of, of course, a college degree (albeit non-CS) It is kind of like how Harvard has very good hiring stats. Is Harvard really that good, or does their admissions process just select for people who are almost certainly going to be successful, no matter what college they go to.

laveur 11y ago

I see a lot of comments. So Let me clarify I know developing and CS are not the same. I myself am a college dropout. I have no degree but I spent many years in college starting when I was 16. It took me roughly 5 years after I dropped out to get someone to take a chance on me. The point I am trying to make is you can not be taught the basics in such a short time. The theory is so important to what we do. We don't need to turn out people that can code. We need to turn out people that can push our craft further. We are not a commodity!

electrozoic 11y ago

Boot camps have been awesome for my business niche: fixing Android apps that other developers have failed at and abandoned. If more boot-camp graduates come on the job market, it will be even easier for me to demonstrate the value of my services.

walshemj 11y ago

CS degrees teach CS not how to program properly you sort of expected to either know it all ready or teach your self as you go along.

walshemj 11y ago

And the cost $13.5K for 12 weeks (a single term) is about what it costs for a year at Oxbridge £9k

bdcravens 11y ago

I agree on the point that programs that are selling a dream are a disservice. I do know of many CS grads that were woefully unprepared to write production code until they had a few weeks of real learning. Myself, I have no CS degree, and have been a professional developer since 1999, in multiple languages, and have had the opportunity to run user groups, speak at conferences, serve as technical editors in many big name programming books, and more. I'm FAR from exceptional; I'd say I'm only mildly above average in terms of intellect and skill. My point is that a great career can come by many paths.

driverdan 11y ago

> It does a disservice to everyone. And to me are just a scam. You're flat out wrong and you're doing a disservice to yourself and the industry by dismissing them out of hand. I've talked to quite a few people who have gone through bootcamps or hired people from bootcamps. Many come out completely capable of filling a junior dev role. We hired a junior dev straight out of a bootcamp and she has been great. Not only is she competent but she adds a different perspective to the team which is valuable. One caveat though. Not everyone is suitable for a bootcamp. You have to be an intelligent, fast learner who wants to continue learning and is aware of your limitations. Employers have to have reasonable expectations too. You can't expect someone from a bootcamp to be committing code on their first day, first week, or possibly even first month (depending on the complexity of your code base). At first they will take much longer on tasks than a CS major or someone with experience. But they've clearly shown a willingness to learn and learn quickly so it doesn't last.

itslennysfault 11y ago

I taught 3 cohorts of the Web Development Immersive program at General Assembly and most of my students are in the work force and doing great. I don't know about any other programs, but I do know the course that I taught was very effective. For more info see my other comment on the main thread.