5 ms·

100% this! The tech world is due an implosion if this continues, you cant have people with ZERO programming experience beyond a guided 12 week bootcamp being of

by voycey 10y ago

100% this! The tech world is due an implosion if this continues, you cant have people with ZERO programming experience beyond a guided 12 week bootcamp being offered anything more than a Junior role?? This single sentence terrifies me: "At Hack Reactor, we’re trained to mask our inexperience. In our personal narratives, we purposely omit our bootcamp education." $120k+ offer for 12 weeks experience - ridiculous, I hope he lasts 2 weeks

dvcrn 10y ago
This is why you need good screening processes. I on the other hand got taught to be able humble and make compromises especially when still being a junior. Looking back at my early days, when I wanted a position that I knew would change my career, I purposely asked for a lower salary in the beginning to compensate for my junior level or other skills (language for example when I moved into a country where I wasn't fluent yet), with a clause to bump it up to the level of other people when I can prove that I am on par with them and my lacking skills aren't a problem. It also showed the company that I was serious about wanting to work with them. But man, 120k for 12 weeks of experience is insane. Sign me up for whatever bootcamp that was
- user5994461 10y ago
  Tip: You need a bootcamp in negotiations and selling yourself. Not in programming ;)
  - thrownblown 10y ago
    Good thing that's half (~6 weeks) of the curriculum at Hack Reactor!
    - JakePace 10y ago
      (citation needed)
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  120k for 12 weeks of experience is insane. Sign me up for whatever bootcamp that was It wasn't the bootcamp -- it was the self-study, and more to the point, his ability to reverse-engineer the interview process which got him that offer. Which probably says a lot more about the current gold standard, "let's see how many hoops you can jump through" interview process than about the merits of bootcamps, per se.
butreallytho777 10y ago
They never said they should get anything more than a junior role. There was no disagreeing with the label. It's a hack to get around HR auto-filters. The hiring people can then make further assessment. What world do you live in where you'd not have more than one filter on hiring? The alarms here are astounding given the other hoops that are likely to exist passed the first marker. Pretty shocking the response to some advice that is really only "step 1" to getting the job anyway
user5994461 10y ago
At HackCorp. We're trained to ask about the education, listen and hear carefully the narratives from the candidates. Well. Gotta do that when people comes with a degree from the MIT, a degree from their local university and at the same time an internship at Facebook. All in the same year, from the 3 different cities.
hinkley 10y ago
Maybe the silver lining will be a switch to a better process for hiring people that doesn't rely on two hours of quizzes or a pressure cooker hazing ritual.
jhedwards 10y ago
Sure I agree that offering more than a junior role is unreasonable, but all the HR grads I know moved into senior roles very quickly after being hired. I went to Hack Reactor, got a job, and was considered a senior dev by my manager after one and a half years. I'm in my second year now and I'm a team lead. We have a few other HR grads on our team and they are excellent developers that other engineers look up to for advice. Sure, not everyone is like that, but there are plenty of people like this who I know personally. Now what about CS grads? We've interviewed plenty of people with master's degrees in CS who don't know how to code a binary tree because "you know, I wasn't that into the data structures course..." Or if they have lots of experience they demand more money than the manager makes because, apparently, every company has to compete with Google salaries. I remember my classmates and I staying after class because there was a guest speaker coming in to talk about quad-trees and b-trees and we were SO EXCITED to learn about these things. We've taken more candidates from Hack Reactor than not because they show this passion for their work that I have personally rarely seen in CS majors. They generally require a few months of ramp-up time, but I think it's worth it, and since they are usually coming over from a different field they bring a lot to the table from their other experiences.
morgante 10y ago
I know companies which hire junior developers for $120k+, so that by itself is not the problem so much as the notion that a bootcamp graduate is not a junior developer. On the other hand, I do advise the bootcamp graduates I know to drop it from their resume after their first dev job. Programmer with 1 dev job is a much better profile than bootcamp graduate with 1 dev job.
kafkaesq 10y ago
$120k+ offer for 12 weeks experience - ridiculous, I hope he lasts 2 weeks The reality, I find, is that (if properly motivated, and possessed of sufficient native intellect) once you get your foot in the door, you can learn the ins and outs of any programming role pretty darn quickly. OK, maybe you won't be able to design a compiler or anything like that. But for most of the standard web development $foobar stuff... you can pretty much pick it up as you go. The people to be wary for (and weed out) are the outright imposters (those who blatantly lie about their capabilities), or the chronic attitude cases (which includes a great many experienced and ostensibly highly qualified people). Not the inexperienced.

by voycey 10y ago

dvcrn 10y ago

This is why you need good screening processes. I on the other hand got taught to be able humble and make compromises especially when still being a junior. Looking back at my early days, when I wanted a position that I knew would change my career, I purposely asked for a lower salary in the beginning to compensate for my junior level or other skills (language for example when I moved into a country where I wasn't fluent yet), with a clause to bump it up to the level of other people when I can prove that I am on par with them and my lacking skills aren't a problem. It also showed the company that I was serious about wanting to work with them. But man, 120k for 12 weeks of experience is insane. Sign me up for whatever bootcamp that was

user5994461 10y ago
Tip: You need a bootcamp in negotiations and selling yourself. Not in programming ;)
- thrownblown 10y ago
  Good thing that's half (~6 weeks) of the curriculum at Hack Reactor!
  - JakePace 10y ago
    (citation needed)
kafkaesq 10y ago
120k for 12 weeks of experience is insane. Sign me up for whatever bootcamp that was It wasn't the bootcamp -- it was the self-study, and more to the point, his ability to reverse-engineer the interview process which got him that offer. Which probably says a lot more about the current gold standard, "let's see how many hoops you can jump through" interview process than about the merits of bootcamps, per se.

butreallytho777 10y ago

They never said they should get anything more than a junior role. There was no disagreeing with the label. It's a hack to get around HR auto-filters. The hiring people can then make further assessment. What world do you live in where you'd not have more than one filter on hiring? The alarms here are astounding given the other hoops that are likely to exist passed the first marker. Pretty shocking the response to some advice that is really only "step 1" to getting the job anyway

user5994461 10y ago

At HackCorp. We're trained to ask about the education, listen and hear carefully the narratives from the candidates. Well. Gotta do that when people comes with a degree from the MIT, a degree from their local university and at the same time an internship at Facebook. All in the same year, from the 3 different cities.

hinkley 10y ago

Maybe the silver lining will be a switch to a better process for hiring people that doesn't rely on two hours of quizzes or a pressure cooker hazing ritual.

jhedwards 10y ago

Sure I agree that offering more than a junior role is unreasonable, but all the HR grads I know moved into senior roles very quickly after being hired. I went to Hack Reactor, got a job, and was considered a senior dev by my manager after one and a half years. I'm in my second year now and I'm a team lead. We have a few other HR grads on our team and they are excellent developers that other engineers look up to for advice. Sure, not everyone is like that, but there are plenty of people like this who I know personally. Now what about CS grads? We've interviewed plenty of people with master's degrees in CS who don't know how to code a binary tree because "you know, I wasn't that into the data structures course..." Or if they have lots of experience they demand more money than the manager makes because, apparently, every company has to compete with Google salaries. I remember my classmates and I staying after class because there was a guest speaker coming in to talk about quad-trees and b-trees and we were SO EXCITED to learn about these things. We've taken more candidates from Hack Reactor than not because they show this passion for their work that I have personally rarely seen in CS majors. They generally require a few months of ramp-up time, but I think it's worth it, and since they are usually coming over from a different field they bring a lot to the table from their other experiences.

morgante 10y ago

I know companies which hire junior developers for $120k+, so that by itself is not the problem so much as the notion that a bootcamp graduate is not a junior developer. On the other hand, I do advise the bootcamp graduates I know to drop it from their resume after their first dev job. Programmer with 1 dev job is a much better profile than bootcamp graduate with 1 dev job.

kafkaesq 10y ago

$120k+ offer for 12 weeks experience - ridiculous, I hope he lasts 2 weeks The reality, I find, is that (if properly motivated, and possessed of sufficient native intellect) once you get your foot in the door, you can learn the ins and outs of any programming role pretty darn quickly. OK, maybe you won't be able to design a compiler or anything like that. But for most of the standard web development $foobar stuff... you can pretty much pick it up as you go. The people to be wary for (and weed out) are the outright imposters (those who blatantly lie about their capabilities), or the chronic attitude cases (which includes a great many experienced and ostensibly highly qualified people). Not the inexperienced.