3 ms·

The same thing happened in the 90's, my coworker's sister got a "Certificate in HTML" and promptly found a job for $80k in 1998. These people wash out, I've bee

by seibelj 10y ago

The same thing happened in the 90's, my coworker's sister got a "Certificate in HTML" and promptly found a job for $80k in 1998. These people wash out, I've been burned enough times by bootcamp grads that I won't hire them anymore

thatwebdude 10y ago
I've never found myself not knowing what I should do, or threatened by a hiring/skills bubble. When I stopped feeling like I was getting anywhere with front-end I started to take on more back-end projects and sell myself as a full-stack developer. I've never been in a situation where I've felt "man, I really should have gotten a CS degree": but what do I know; I'm just a web developer. Maybe we're not talking about web developers? No advanced engineering skills have been required to make the frontends/backends/architect a system for Fortune 500s and local businesses that I've been involved with. (I'm speaking of things I would have learned in school with CS and math principles had I been able to get past CS 101). -- college dropout with successful programming career.
thatwebdude 10y ago
About how long did it take for the washout to occur? Wanted to know for my own financial planning.
- seibelj 10y ago
  It is 100% possible to be an ace developer without a CS degree. However years of hiring experience has made my bullshit detector ring alarms with self-taught / bootcamp guys. If they have a hard-science degree it's less risky. Honestly I don't bother interviewing these people anymore without a warm introduction, it's hard enough to find good devs and the ratio of good to bad is so much worse with the self-taught crowd.
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    My bullshit detector is ringing bells as well.
i-machine-learn 10y ago
You are over generalizing. I am a bootcamp grad who specialized in undergrad in electrical engineering. I worked for a few years as a research for the one of the top tech universities in the country; I have found that I have a stronger math and physics background than many CS grads. However, many times when doing something I have been stopped by saying "wait aren't you a bootcamp grad? can you even understand this?" I'm not alone; my bootcamp had plenty of STEM majors. One of colleagues was a biomedical engineer and worked in a research lab and now works in the front end at a top firm in SF. Another was a math major at an Ivy before working full stack. The top guy at my bootcamp went to Berkeley in Biochem and was way way smarter than me. So stop generalizing. I understand that they are unaccredited institution so you get a wide variance of talent but you can't shit on everyone. To be honest, your issues probably in how you screen talent. My current company has found success in hiring bootcamp and top schools in the area (Berkeley, Stanford).
- seibelj 10y ago
  Yeah people with hard science degrees and/or from top schools, I'm less skeptical about. The guy who was a waiter 3 months ago and now saying he's a software engineer, very concerning.
- biocomputation 10y ago
  How is he over generalizing? It's just a very simple fact that 90% of the bootcamp grads can't program their way out of a paper bag. In fact, most self-trained programmers are vastly better than even the best bootcamp graduates. The problem with bootcamp grads is that they don't know what they don't know. And they don't know a lot. Undoubtedly some of them will turn out to be great programmers, but not after 3 months. Or even 6. Or even a year.
  - thatwebdude 10y ago
    I wasn't under the impression we were separating bootcamp from self-taught. I took them both to mean "no formal schooling" and "self-taught". In my brief experience with I.T. training; some knowledge already had to be assumed.

by seibelj 10y ago

thatwebdude 10y ago

I've never found myself not knowing what I should do, or threatened by a hiring/skills bubble. When I stopped feeling like I was getting anywhere with front-end I started to take on more back-end projects and sell myself as a full-stack developer. I've never been in a situation where I've felt "man, I really should have gotten a CS degree": but what do I know; I'm just a web developer. Maybe we're not talking about web developers? No advanced engineering skills have been required to make the frontends/backends/architect a system for Fortune 500s and local businesses that I've been involved with. (I'm speaking of things I would have learned in school with CS and math principles had I been able to get past CS 101). -- college dropout with successful programming career.

thatwebdude 10y ago

About how long did it take for the washout to occur? Wanted to know for my own financial planning.

seibelj 10y ago
It is 100% possible to be an ace developer without a CS degree. However years of hiring experience has made my bullshit detector ring alarms with self-taught / bootcamp guys. If they have a hard-science degree it's less risky. Honestly I don't bother interviewing these people anymore without a warm introduction, it's hard enough to find good devs and the ratio of good to bad is so much worse with the self-taught crowd.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  My bullshit detector is ringing bells as well.

i-machine-learn 10y ago

You are over generalizing. I am a bootcamp grad who specialized in undergrad in electrical engineering. I worked for a few years as a research for the one of the top tech universities in the country; I have found that I have a stronger math and physics background than many CS grads. However, many times when doing something I have been stopped by saying "wait aren't you a bootcamp grad? can you even understand this?" I'm not alone; my bootcamp had plenty of STEM majors. One of colleagues was a biomedical engineer and worked in a research lab and now works in the front end at a top firm in SF. Another was a math major at an Ivy before working full stack. The top guy at my bootcamp went to Berkeley in Biochem and was way way smarter than me. So stop generalizing. I understand that they are unaccredited institution so you get a wide variance of talent but you can't shit on everyone. To be honest, your issues probably in how you screen talent. My current company has found success in hiring bootcamp and top schools in the area (Berkeley, Stanford).

seibelj 10y ago
Yeah people with hard science degrees and/or from top schools, I'm less skeptical about. The guy who was a waiter 3 months ago and now saying he's a software engineer, very concerning.
biocomputation 10y ago
How is he over generalizing? It's just a very simple fact that 90% of the bootcamp grads can't program their way out of a paper bag. In fact, most self-trained programmers are vastly better than even the best bootcamp graduates. The problem with bootcamp grads is that they don't know what they don't know. And they don't know a lot. Undoubtedly some of them will turn out to be great programmers, but not after 3 months. Or even 6. Or even a year.
- thatwebdude 10y ago
  I wasn't under the impression we were separating bootcamp from self-taught. I took them both to mean "no formal schooling" and "self-taught". In my brief experience with I.T. training; some knowledge already had to be assumed.