6 ms·

Shouldn't place like these be growing instead of closing down? What did they get wrong? The demand for qualified developers isn't slowing afaik.

by keyle 9y ago

brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
There is no demand for qualified developers, only a demand for cheap, skilled labor. If there were a demand, these coding schools would not have such a devil of a time getting decent jobs for their grads.(and they do- just talk to some honest, recent grads-- it will be tough to find honest ones who are unemployed/underemployed on a public forum, if you know what I mean.) Why, if there is such a great demand, isn't the burden to educate on the employer who needs the labor? It used to be, back before we made students pay for several degrees with no employment in sight. Now, it is all the fault of the individual. The corporations are just looking for honest work here, right? ;) We all just got used to being blamed if we could not fully fund faux-careers for our LinkedIn profiles a decade before any real employment emerged for us. If these bootcamps are actually filling such a great need in the industry, why should the students pay? I get why people pay for Harvard: the connections!! (but...is even Harvard free now if you can't pay?- so there's even that too, for Harvard!) Those law students get wined and dined for free and multiple offers from great jobs without even asking, much less "applying". This is NOT the case with these bootcamps, no matter what they claim. They are all struggling to get these junior devs decent work. Their meager "connections" got used up with their first crop of students, and now the ladders have been pulled up after them. Sure, there are a very very few exceptions, as always. If a school aims to teach, they should be able to keep enrollment low, and they should be able to teach anyone from zero with an interest serious enough that they drop out of society to do it for several months of their life. Because employers would pay big money for that service, just like they do for Harvard grads. BUT THEY DON'T. Instead, they seek those who could already do it without their help, and they seek payment from them too, thereby getting the benefit of looking like they "helped" an actual ivy league grad get a job, when it was more that that grad helped them look good. I wrote a more detailed response to A CIRR.org representative on the shorter of the threads about Dev Bootcamp's recent closing, if you are interested in a deeper analysis on what these bootcamps "did wrong", or are doing wrong. Here is the link to my response to "ewisesg" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14773016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14773016
bpicolo 9y ago
"qualified developers" is probably the key word there. These bootcamps are all trying to train out a pretty specific set of basic proficiencies. That's not to say the training can't be useful, it's just to say that they all seem to be going for the same basic web development skills, and probably the majority of companies looking to employ developers and looking for more than that, or something entirely different. Could also just be saturation in general. This is not the first closing announcement in recent weeks.
- johnvonneumann 9y ago
  I think this comment nails it to be honest, I am a bootcamp grad and a lot of the time I do feel that most junior web devs are pushed into the cult of Javascript very early, React is pushed as if gospel and whilst much "emphasis" (IMO only in spoken ways) is placed on being a full-stack, I feel that there is next to no real education provided on basic back end/operations skills. So most of the grads come out as front-enders with front end skills and very little understanding of how front end decisions impact (and help in many cases) the back end and as a result, the entire stack. It makes me kinda sad tbh, because I find the back end tasks super engaging and they really fill out the gaps in your knowledge, especially as a Junior.
  - mercurysmessage 9y ago
    Is there any emphasis on teaching data structures or algorithms, or is it really just front end web?
    - trowawee 9y ago
      I don't know where the parent graduated from, but as mentioned above, I'm a DBC grad from 2014 and we were mostly taught Rails, which is entirely a backend framework. There was a decent amount of data structure work, a little bit of algorithm work, and very little ops. Students quickly and shallowly learned JS frameworks for their final projects. After 2.5 years employed, I've found that the relative lack of algo work didn't matter in the least - I'm a web dev, at least right now, and I'm not implementing algorithms. Ops/infrastructure/deployment is the area where I was most lacking, and where I've grown the most, but I don't really know where you would fit it into the curriculum, or even if it would be valuable, given how many different permutations of infrastructure you can encounter, even working in the exact same coding stack.
utnick 9y ago
My hunch is location, iron yard had a bunch of locations in 3rd and 4th tier markets where there just aren't that many programming jobs. Even in Austin which is probably one of the better markets they had, entry level coding jobs are somewhat scarce compared to demand for them
- heartbreak 9y ago
  I think they were even based out of a 4th tier market in Greenville, SC.
  - oddevan 9y ago
    They were. They've done a lot for and been very active in the tech scene around town, so I have no idea how successful/unsuccessful their other campuses have been.
- hamandcheese 9y ago
  This is definitely part of it. They had a location in Orlando. The only companies here large enough to be able to train entry level coders are the exact same companies who wouldn't hire a junior without an accredited degree in a relevant field - basically large military contractors. The consultancy I used to work for passed on quite a few Iron Yard candidates because we were too small to have a place for them.
- bdcravens 9y ago
  Houston: Lot of .NET here (oil and healthcare), but I believe IY here was teaching Ruby and React.
rtpg 9y ago
I imagine that the simplest explanation is that costs end up killing these programs. Good educators cost a decent amount of money, so if you have a high quality bar you're looking at a lot of (mostly fixed) costs. Add building rent + admin costs. Public schooling costs $10k/pupil on average, and I imagine most of these code schools have a slightly higher bar.
- christophilus 9y ago
  That sums it up pretty well. I took a pay-cut to work at TIY. I did it for reasons other than money, obviously. But it's hard to find senior engineers who: 1. Are willing to put their career on hold to teach 2. Are capable of communicating in that capacity 3. Can deal with the intensity of a code-bootcamp for very long
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 9y ago
1. People who can effectively teach others to program well enough to secure professional employment may have better options than teaching open-enrollment entry-level programming classes. 2. Because of that, and for any of a number of other reasons, we may generally be overestimating how effectively these kinds of schools are educating people. 3. It's an open secret that hiring in the technology industry isn't based on aptitude, but rather on credentials and hazing rituals. Something like 3 decades of cultural development have trained developers that the most important risk they face in hiring is accepting someone underqualified, rather than passing on someone who is in fact qualified. Given all these problems, it's not surprising that a school with a model of charging a 4-5 figure tuition in exchange for attempting to increase the likelihood of graduates employment would fail.
- eropple 9y ago
  Regarding #1, an Iron Yard competitor offered a six-month contract for $45,000, 1099, here in Boston (with "an option" to re-up, at the same rate). It would not exactly be difficult to beat that number by doing almost anything else. Another was talking about $80K/year...in freaking Ohio. I would love to teach more than I do, and I'm starting to work on some web courses because I've learned from corporate training that I'm good at it, but the money doesn't make sense at all.
  - swyx 9y ago
    would it be more interesting if phrased as a form of sabbatical rather than a full teaching career?
    - eropple 9y ago
      I can make more contracting though, while working about half the hours. Maybe I'd consider it if I owned the company. Other than that...eh.
  - bschwindHN 9y ago
    > $80K/year...in freaking Ohio I don't get this sentence, is this good or bad? I grew up in Ohio and for the majority of people I know there, they would be absolutely thrilled at that salary. The cost of living is nowhere near SF levels. The "freaking Ohio" part, yeah I can understand that for a lot of parts of Ohio, but it's highly dependent on where in the state you're talking about.
taneq 9y ago
> The demand for qualified developers isn't slowing afaik. Does anyone in industry really count a 6-month course, no matter how intensive, as 'qualified'? It's hard enough breaking into your first job after a 3-4 year degree, most places still want more experience for their 'graduate' positions. I can't imagine it'd be easier for someone changing tracks mid-career with only a few months' coding experience.
- watwut 9y ago
  There are plenty of easy position throug. The other industry problem is that we like to pretend that every position is super difficult and requires genius. And once we attract someone on that proposition, genius developer finds himself doing repetitive work and moving buttons there and back - all the while less experienced junior with three months js learning would be happy, challenged and perfectly suitable.
  - taneq 9y ago
    I've certainly seen this in past jobs. They advertise for smart, creative people and that's what they get. The job is to maintain some awful 5-year-old web app, changing fonts and twiddling fields around to please an internal customer. I read a great quote once to the effect that a scalpel isn't better than a bread knife, it's just a different knife, for a different job. Don't hire a scalpel to cut bread.

Shouldn't place like these be growing instead of closing down? What did they get wrong? The demand for qualified developers isn't slowing afaik.

by keyle 9y ago

Shouldn't place like these be growing instead of closing down? What did they get wrong? The demand for qualified developers isn't slowing afaik.

brooklyn_ashey 9y ago

There is no demand for qualified developers, only a demand for cheap, skilled labor. If there were a demand, these coding schools would not have such a devil of a time getting decent jobs for their grads.(and they do- just talk to some honest, recent grads-- it will be tough to find honest ones who are unemployed/underemployed on a public forum, if you know what I mean.) Why, if there is such a great demand, isn't the burden to educate on the employer who needs the labor? It used to be, back before we made students pay for several degrees with no employment in sight. Now, it is all the fault of the individual. The corporations are just looking for honest work here, right? ;) We all just got used to being blamed if we could not fully fund faux-careers for our LinkedIn profiles a decade before any real employment emerged for us. If these bootcamps are actually filling such a great need in the industry, why should the students pay? I get why people pay for Harvard: the connections!! (but...is even Harvard free now if you can't pay?- so there's even that too, for Harvard!) Those law students get wined and dined for free and multiple offers from great jobs without even asking, much less "applying". This is NOT the case with these bootcamps, no matter what they claim. They are all struggling to get these junior devs decent work. Their meager "connections" got used up with their first crop of students, and now the ladders have been pulled up after them. Sure, there are a very very few exceptions, as always. If a school aims to teach, they should be able to keep enrollment low, and they should be able to teach anyone from zero with an interest serious enough that they drop out of society to do it for several months of their life. Because employers would pay big money for that service, just like they do for Harvard grads. BUT THEY DON'T. Instead, they seek those who could already do it without their help, and they seek payment from them too, thereby getting the benefit of looking like they "helped" an actual ivy league grad get a job, when it was more that that grad helped them look good. I wrote a more detailed response to A CIRR.org representative on the shorter of the threads about Dev Bootcamp's recent closing, if you are interested in a deeper analysis on what these bootcamps "did wrong", or are doing wrong. Here is the link to my response to "ewisesg" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14773016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14773016

bpicolo 9y ago

"qualified developers" is probably the key word there. These bootcamps are all trying to train out a pretty specific set of basic proficiencies. That's not to say the training can't be useful, it's just to say that they all seem to be going for the same basic web development skills, and probably the majority of companies looking to employ developers and looking for more than that, or something entirely different. Could also just be saturation in general. This is not the first closing announcement in recent weeks.

johnvonneumann 9y ago
I think this comment nails it to be honest, I am a bootcamp grad and a lot of the time I do feel that most junior web devs are pushed into the cult of Javascript very early, React is pushed as if gospel and whilst much "emphasis" (IMO only in spoken ways) is placed on being a full-stack, I feel that there is next to no real education provided on basic back end/operations skills. So most of the grads come out as front-enders with front end skills and very little understanding of how front end decisions impact (and help in many cases) the back end and as a result, the entire stack. It makes me kinda sad tbh, because I find the back end tasks super engaging and they really fill out the gaps in your knowledge, especially as a Junior.
- mercurysmessage 9y ago
  Is there any emphasis on teaching data structures or algorithms, or is it really just front end web?
  - trowawee 9y ago
    I don't know where the parent graduated from, but as mentioned above, I'm a DBC grad from 2014 and we were mostly taught Rails, which is entirely a backend framework. There was a decent amount of data structure work, a little bit of algorithm work, and very little ops. Students quickly and shallowly learned JS frameworks for their final projects. After 2.5 years employed, I've found that the relative lack of algo work didn't matter in the least - I'm a web dev, at least right now, and I'm not implementing algorithms. Ops/infrastructure/deployment is the area where I was most lacking, and where I've grown the most, but I don't really know where you would fit it into the curriculum, or even if it would be valuable, given how many different permutations of infrastructure you can encounter, even working in the exact same coding stack.

utnick 9y ago

My hunch is location, iron yard had a bunch of locations in 3rd and 4th tier markets where there just aren't that many programming jobs. Even in Austin which is probably one of the better markets they had, entry level coding jobs are somewhat scarce compared to demand for them

heartbreak 9y ago
I think they were even based out of a 4th tier market in Greenville, SC.
- oddevan 9y ago
  They were. They've done a lot for and been very active in the tech scene around town, so I have no idea how successful/unsuccessful their other campuses have been.
hamandcheese 9y ago
This is definitely part of it. They had a location in Orlando. The only companies here large enough to be able to train entry level coders are the exact same companies who wouldn't hire a junior without an accredited degree in a relevant field - basically large military contractors. The consultancy I used to work for passed on quite a few Iron Yard candidates because we were too small to have a place for them.
bdcravens 9y ago
Houston: Lot of .NET here (oil and healthcare), but I believe IY here was teaching Ruby and React.

rtpg 9y ago

I imagine that the simplest explanation is that costs end up killing these programs. Good educators cost a decent amount of money, so if you have a high quality bar you're looking at a lot of (mostly fixed) costs. Add building rent + admin costs. Public schooling costs $10k/pupil on average, and I imagine most of these code schools have a slightly higher bar.

christophilus 9y ago
That sums it up pretty well. I took a pay-cut to work at TIY. I did it for reasons other than money, obviously. But it's hard to find senior engineers who: 1. Are willing to put their career on hold to teach 2. Are capable of communicating in that capacity 3. Can deal with the intensity of a code-bootcamp for very long

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tptacek 9y ago

1. People who can effectively teach others to program well enough to secure professional employment may have better options than teaching open-enrollment entry-level programming classes. 2. Because of that, and for any of a number of other reasons, we may generally be overestimating how effectively these kinds of schools are educating people. 3. It's an open secret that hiring in the technology industry isn't based on aptitude, but rather on credentials and hazing rituals. Something like 3 decades of cultural development have trained developers that the most important risk they face in hiring is accepting someone underqualified, rather than passing on someone who is in fact qualified. Given all these problems, it's not surprising that a school with a model of charging a 4-5 figure tuition in exchange for attempting to increase the likelihood of graduates employment would fail.

eropple 9y ago
Regarding #1, an Iron Yard competitor offered a six-month contract for $45,000, 1099, here in Boston (with "an option" to re-up, at the same rate). It would not exactly be difficult to beat that number by doing almost anything else. Another was talking about $80K/year...in freaking Ohio. I would love to teach more than I do, and I'm starting to work on some web courses because I've learned from corporate training that I'm good at it, but the money doesn't make sense at all.
- swyx 9y ago
  would it be more interesting if phrased as a form of sabbatical rather than a full teaching career?
  - eropple 9y ago
    I can make more contracting though, while working about half the hours. Maybe I'd consider it if I owned the company. Other than that...eh.
- bschwindHN 9y ago
  > $80K/year...in freaking Ohio I don't get this sentence, is this good or bad? I grew up in Ohio and for the majority of people I know there, they would be absolutely thrilled at that salary. The cost of living is nowhere near SF levels. The "freaking Ohio" part, yeah I can understand that for a lot of parts of Ohio, but it's highly dependent on where in the state you're talking about.

taneq 9y ago

> The demand for qualified developers isn't slowing afaik. Does anyone in industry really count a 6-month course, no matter how intensive, as 'qualified'? It's hard enough breaking into your first job after a 3-4 year degree, most places still want more experience for their 'graduate' positions. I can't imagine it'd be easier for someone changing tracks mid-career with only a few months' coding experience.

watwut 9y ago
There are plenty of easy position throug. The other industry problem is that we like to pretend that every position is super difficult and requires genius. And once we attract someone on that proposition, genius developer finds himself doing repetitive work and moving buttons there and back - all the while less experienced junior with three months js learning would be happy, challenged and perfectly suitable.
- taneq 9y ago
  I've certainly seen this in past jobs. They advertise for smart, creative people and that's what they get. The job is to maintain some awful 5-year-old web app, changing fonts and twiddling fields around to please an internal customer. I read a great quote once to the effect that a scalpel isn't better than a bread knife, it's just a different knife, for a different job. Don't hire a scalpel to cut bread.