4 ms·

bootcamps - the best way of driving both wages and software quality down

by mfukar 10y ago

gravypod 10y ago
I don't think bootcamps turn out lower quality developers and I don't think they will drive wages down. Currently they are web focused but I think the bootcamp style is far better at teaching programming/computer information then the current university enviroment. We might well see a bootcamp one day that does cover a different spectrum of computing then currently dominated by such schools (Realtime/Trading/Firmware/Embeded/DSP).
- cholantesh 10y ago
  >We might well see a bootcamp one day that does cover a different spectrum of computing then currently dominated by such schools (Realtime/Trading/Firmware/Embeded/DSP). Most of those fields seem pretty advanced (can't speak for DSP or trading, but realtime and embedded software both seem fairly intimidating to me). Do you feel that someone totally green to software would be able to ramp up in the time advertised by the average bootcamp (2-3 months)?
JackFr 10y ago
credentialism - the best way of inflating wages with artificial scarcity,
- treehau5 10y ago
  why is it artificial? Credentials are everywhere. You need credentials to be an account, a physician, a teacher, a lawyer, a dentist, a chiropractor, a (insert various iteration of crazy welding techniques) welder, a steel fabricator (AISC), a child services worker, heavy machinery operator, if you are an engineer and want to work for the public, you have to get licensed, and the list can go on and on. And I am really, really thankful that the above jobs require credentials.
  - randomdata 10y ago
    Some of those are only at the discretion of the employer/commissioner. For instance, your teacher and engineer examples. When the government is the employer, they have decided they want to hire only within the pool of those who have certain credentials. If you want to hire someone for private works, you are free to make your own choices and suffer the consequences if you choose wrongly. I think it is fair to say that is not artificial. That is market choice. Some of your other examples, like lawyers and dentists, however do seem artificial. There is no legal option to hire someone without credentials (at least in the jurisdictions I am close to), even when the buyer understands the risks and poses no external risk to others. I don't know about this heavy machinery thing. As a farmer, all I need to drive my 30,000 lbs. (when dry) combine down the road is a standard automobile license, and nothing at all once I'm off the public roads. Nobody thinks twice about that. Even more curiously, I do not need any credentials to produce food that people willingly stick into their mouth! You'd think that would be orders of magnitude more worrisome than many of the other careers you pointed out – especially given the difficulty of tracing food origins as a consumer – yet nobody bats an eye.
  - innocentoldguy 10y ago
    I think the difference is that credentials as a doctor, lawyer, dentist, chiropractor, etc. tend to be all-encompassing for those professions. In software, credentialing is extremely narrow (i.e. credentials for subsets of Cisco's offerings, or Microsoft's). Other than college degrees, there really isn't any type of broad credentialing available in the computer industry. Credentials are also short-lived. Does anybody really care if someone is a C.N.E. anymore? Computer credentials are also a for-profit business model, rather than an organized body that ensures a certain degree of competency is met. For example, being a board certified physician requires a lot more than simply passing a bubble test, which is what a lot of credentials in the computer industry consist of. I think credentialing does demonstrate a certain degree of competency, but it also does create an artificial scarcity, since many, many, many people out there have the same skills, or better, but just don't feel the need to obtain credentials.
    - treehau5 10y ago
jameskegel 10y ago
That's a very non-inclusive way of thinking, and it is hard to imagine that it benefits the community as a whole. What if you substituted developers, in this situation, for doctors?
- mfukar 10y ago
  I'd rather die of an abscessed tooth than visit a doctor out of whatever the equivalent of bootcamps would be. I'm grateful to society I don't have to.
  - beat 10y ago
    Not me. If some quack who went to a six month "doctor bootcamp" can remove the abscessed tooth that would otherwise kill me, I'd hand him the pliers and beg for help. Because there's a need, and that need is vital.
    - mfukar 10y ago
      Accomplished and well-trained doctors (or, humans)) make enough mistakes as it is.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- loco5niner 10y ago
  doctor bootcamps - the best way of driving both wages and healthcare quality down. As someone that values quality healthcare that sounds pretty scary...
- innocentoldguy 10y ago
  Actually, the equivalent of bootcamps does exist in the medical realm. For example, a dentist can take a six-week course on breast augmentations, and then perform boob jobs on the side. There are many "cosmetic surgeons" out there who are dentists, ENTs, and general practitioners, who have no formal training in plastic surgery. That's why it is important to look for a board certified plastic surgeon, rather than a board certified dentist who does plastic surgery.
wakkaflokka 10y ago
I feel like this is a common fear in many disciplines. Clinical psychology PhD's thinking PsyD's reduce the quality/wages of their profession (this was a huge contention among psych professors during undergrad), MD's thinking expanded practice privileges for NP's or PA's reduce quality/wages of their profession (and related, anesthesiologists worrying that CRNA's and AA's reduce their wages), PhD-educated machine learning/CS experts worrying that 2-year online data science masters reduce the quality/wages of their profession, etc. I mean, I have the same fear in many ways. Just pointing it out because I find it interesting. I guess the question is - is it reality or not?
- mfukar 10y ago
  Sure - at this time wages are high and it's a fear. 5, at most 10, years from now it will be reality. I'm willing to set a reminder on my calendar and revisit this thread.
innocentoldguy 10y ago
> bootcamps - the best way of driving both wages and software quality down I'm not sure that's true, other than the obvious issue of supply vs. demand, where wages are concerned. As for quality, I've worked with college-trained programmers who wrote awful code, and I've worked with self-taught programmers who wrote amazing code. Some of the best programmers I've ever worked with were self-taught. I never attended a bootcamp, but I have mentored for Rails Girls, Girl Develop It, and a bootcamp or two. In my experience, bootcamps are good places to learn how to write certain types of code. They don't help much in the way of theory, algorithms, or other low-level details, but for teaching people how to write typical business applications, they are a pretty good place to start, I think. I also think bootcamps are good at weeding out those with no aptitude or desire for programming. My wife attended a bootcamp, and there were two types of people who attended with her. Those who took the task seriously, studied the materials, read the books, and practiced, practiced, practiced, and those who thought that paying the $5,000 to $10,000 was all the effort they had to apply, and that someone else would magically load their minds with the requisite information, once they had achieved that monetary apex. The first types got jobs. The latter types did not.
- madenine 10y ago
  Nailed it with the two types of people. In my experience, a lot of it came down to how people approached the program. It was either: "I have n weeks to learn as much as I can in order to catch up and be competitive with people with formal education and more experience" or "In n weeks I will have the skills needed to get a job in this field" Most of the complaining about the program came from the 2nd group. People in the 1st group got better jobs, faster.

bootcamps - the best way of driving both wages and software quality down

by mfukar 10y ago

bootcamps - the best way of driving both wages and software quality down

I don't think bootcamps turn out lower quality developers and I don't think they will drive wages down. Currently they are web focused but I think the bootcamp style is far better at teaching programming/computer information then the current university enviroment. We might well see a bootcamp one day that does cover a different spectrum of computing then currently dominated by such schools (Realtime/Trading/Firmware/Embeded/DSP).

cholantesh 10y ago
>We might well see a bootcamp one day that does cover a different spectrum of computing then currently dominated by such schools (Realtime/Trading/Firmware/Embeded/DSP). Most of those fields seem pretty advanced (can't speak for DSP or trading, but realtime and embedded software both seem fairly intimidating to me). Do you feel that someone totally green to software would be able to ramp up in the time advertised by the average bootcamp (2-3 months)?

JackFr 10y ago

credentialism - the best way of inflating wages with artificial scarcity,

treehau5 10y ago
why is it artificial? Credentials are everywhere. You need credentials to be an account, a physician, a teacher, a lawyer, a dentist, a chiropractor, a (insert various iteration of crazy welding techniques) welder, a steel fabricator (AISC), a child services worker, heavy machinery operator, if you are an engineer and want to work for the public, you have to get licensed, and the list can go on and on. And I am really, really thankful that the above jobs require credentials.
- randomdata 10y ago
  Some of those are only at the discretion of the employer/commissioner. For instance, your teacher and engineer examples. When the government is the employer, they have decided they want to hire only within the pool of those who have certain credentials. If you want to hire someone for private works, you are free to make your own choices and suffer the consequences if you choose wrongly. I think it is fair to say that is not artificial. That is market choice. Some of your other examples, like lawyers and dentists, however do seem artificial. There is no legal option to hire someone without credentials (at least in the jurisdictions I am close to), even when the buyer understands the risks and poses no external risk to others. I don't know about this heavy machinery thing. As a farmer, all I need to drive my 30,000 lbs. (when dry) combine down the road is a standard automobile license, and nothing at all once I'm off the public roads. Nobody thinks twice about that. Even more curiously, I do not need any credentials to produce food that people willingly stick into their mouth! You'd think that would be orders of magnitude more worrisome than many of the other careers you pointed out – especially given the difficulty of tracing food origins as a consumer – yet nobody bats an eye.
- innocentoldguy 10y ago
  I think the difference is that credentials as a doctor, lawyer, dentist, chiropractor, etc. tend to be all-encompassing for those professions. In software, credentialing is extremely narrow (i.e. credentials for subsets of Cisco's offerings, or Microsoft's). Other than college degrees, there really isn't any type of broad credentialing available in the computer industry. Credentials are also short-lived. Does anybody really care if someone is a C.N.E. anymore? Computer credentials are also a for-profit business model, rather than an organized body that ensures a certain degree of competency is met. For example, being a board certified physician requires a lot more than simply passing a bubble test, which is what a lot of credentials in the computer industry consist of. I think credentialing does demonstrate a certain degree of competency, but it also does create an artificial scarcity, since many, many, many people out there have the same skills, or better, but just don't feel the need to obtain credentials.
  - treehau5 10y ago

jameskegel 10y ago

That's a very non-inclusive way of thinking, and it is hard to imagine that it benefits the community as a whole. What if you substituted developers, in this situation, for doctors?

mfukar 10y ago
I'd rather die of an abscessed tooth than visit a doctor out of whatever the equivalent of bootcamps would be. I'm grateful to society I don't have to.
- beat 10y ago
  Not me. If some quack who went to a six month "doctor bootcamp" can remove the abscessed tooth that would otherwise kill me, I'd hand him the pliers and beg for help. Because there's a need, and that need is vital.
  - mfukar 10y ago
    Accomplished and well-trained doctors (or, humans)) make enough mistakes as it is.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
loco5niner 10y ago
doctor bootcamps - the best way of driving both wages and healthcare quality down. As someone that values quality healthcare that sounds pretty scary...
innocentoldguy 10y ago
Actually, the equivalent of bootcamps does exist in the medical realm. For example, a dentist can take a six-week course on breast augmentations, and then perform boob jobs on the side. There are many "cosmetic surgeons" out there who are dentists, ENTs, and general practitioners, who have no formal training in plastic surgery. That's why it is important to look for a board certified plastic surgeon, rather than a board certified dentist who does plastic surgery.

wakkaflokka 10y ago

I feel like this is a common fear in many disciplines. Clinical psychology PhD's thinking PsyD's reduce the quality/wages of their profession (this was a huge contention among psych professors during undergrad), MD's thinking expanded practice privileges for NP's or PA's reduce quality/wages of their profession (and related, anesthesiologists worrying that CRNA's and AA's reduce their wages), PhD-educated machine learning/CS experts worrying that 2-year online data science masters reduce the quality/wages of their profession, etc. I mean, I have the same fear in many ways. Just pointing it out because I find it interesting. I guess the question is - is it reality or not?

mfukar 10y ago
Sure - at this time wages are high and it's a fear. 5, at most 10, years from now it will be reality. I'm willing to set a reminder on my calendar and revisit this thread.

innocentoldguy 10y ago

> bootcamps - the best way of driving both wages and software quality down I'm not sure that's true, other than the obvious issue of supply vs. demand, where wages are concerned. As for quality, I've worked with college-trained programmers who wrote awful code, and I've worked with self-taught programmers who wrote amazing code. Some of the best programmers I've ever worked with were self-taught. I never attended a bootcamp, but I have mentored for Rails Girls, Girl Develop It, and a bootcamp or two. In my experience, bootcamps are good places to learn how to write certain types of code. They don't help much in the way of theory, algorithms, or other low-level details, but for teaching people how to write typical business applications, they are a pretty good place to start, I think. I also think bootcamps are good at weeding out those with no aptitude or desire for programming. My wife attended a bootcamp, and there were two types of people who attended with her. Those who took the task seriously, studied the materials, read the books, and practiced, practiced, practiced, and those who thought that paying the $5,000 to $10,000 was all the effort they had to apply, and that someone else would magically load their minds with the requisite information, once they had achieved that monetary apex. The first types got jobs. The latter types did not.

madenine 10y ago
Nailed it with the two types of people. In my experience, a lot of it came down to how people approached the program. It was either: "I have n weeks to learn as much as I can in order to catch up and be competitive with people with formal education and more experience" or "In n weeks I will have the skills needed to get a job in this field" Most of the complaining about the program came from the 2nd group. People in the 1st group got better jobs, faster.