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Question: if the pay was such that you weren't taking a pay cut, would that have made you stay longer? What would the conditions have to be like for someone who

Question: if the pay was such that you weren't taking a pay cut, would that have made you stay longer? What would the conditions have to be like for someone who's a senior engineer to even consider making "a career change" into teaching swe for the next 10 years of their career, rather than a 2 year moonlighting stint? (Wondering what the setup had to be too make this sustainable)

bphogan 9y ago
I don't know about the original poster, but I'd have stayed teaching full time if I could have afforded it. But I was literally making half of what my students were making after a couple of years in industry. Another thing to think about is this: Just cos you know SWE really well doesn't mean you have the ability to teach it to others. Not everyone "gets" things quickly, or will understand your explanations on the first attempt, so you must be patient. Not everyone learns the same way, nor do they have the same educational experiences, so you must be kind. And not everyone has a great home life, and has a ton of distractions that prevent them from learning, so you must be empathetic. Finally, not everyone loves to code - they just want the dollars that come from a job and will do whatever it takes to get there, including lie, cheat, and do the bare minimum, so you must be firm and strong to avoid burning out and thinking they're all terrible lazy students. There are people who can do this. But they're rare. And even rarer when they see the low paychecks offered.
- brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
  It is too bad that these bootcamps can't find a way to invest real money in excellent teachers. A few of these teachers are great. The teachers are the core of the business, just like they are in a university. We all know what has happened to salaries there. I think if bootcamps and colleges keep paying teachers like they are worth less than one of the jillion dollar Vitra sofas these schools are furnished with, they deserve to fail hard. (nice sofas though) Perhaps this is one of the key areas of failure in the model? Just a suggestion. Most of these teachers really stink. These bootcamps value youth or a let's call it a"certain look" over teaching experience and teaching innovation and creative teaching techniques. They also hire a lot of sadly unqualified grads of their programs who are confused when current students submit apps that are slightly more complicated than what they are used to seeing. They have no idea how to reach out to a diverse array (no pun intended) of students, because they are usually the "tell me what to do - I just follow orders" type of student/employee themselves who are all too keen to buy into the positivity consensus so enthusiastically promoted by these bootcamps. I hope you can teach where you are appreciated one day.
christophilus 9y ago
Well, market-rate pay would be a good starter. TIY was really close. It was almost a horizontal move for me. But there are a few other things that these kinds of institutions need to solve: - How to keep your staff from burning out - How to keep your staff up to speed Both are hard problems. TIY (at the time that I taught there, anyway) was staffed by people who had 10-15 years (and more in some cases) of industry experience in a broad range of fields. If I spent the next 10 years of my career teaching, I suspect my value proposition would go down over time, as I began to have less and less relevant industry experience. One thought was that schools of this nature should be a two-sided business. Instructors would teach for a cohort (or two) and then flip over into the consultancy side of the business for some time doing real-world industrial work.
- MikeTheGreat 9y ago
  I have a genuine question: What's different about doing consultancy that allows one to keep up to date? (As opposed to teaching) My confusion comes from thinking of them both as full time jobs (so therefore where would you get the time to do extra study on the side). Would the consultancy allow you to 'learn by doing' (i.e., you pick a new technology to use and figure it out as you build and deploy it)?
  - sdenton4 9y ago
    Consulting exposes you to problems in the field; teaching is where you tell others about problems you're familiar with. If you don't have an input of new problems, you're eventually just recycling the same material...
    - brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
      But then the great teaching would have to be informed by coding's great problems. Your average consultant doesn't encounter "the great coding problems" on a daily or even yearly basis. This is why it might be better for teachers to devote themselves to seeking and researching these challenges and problems as a part of their teaching like all great teachers of any lifelong pursuit have done. If these bootcamp teachers did that, the level of teaching would rise very high. It might finally be worth its price tag, even if students didn't get jobs. I guess that is why the pro-level musicians pay so much for a summer spent with master teachers with no promise of work at the end-- it is because those teachers actually teach them something of great value at the craft that pays for itself and helps the student become an artist at what they do. And for the most part, unfortunately, software engineers are not treated by their companies as artists of value either, like these classical musicians were, at least for many years before that began to decline sharply. There is so much precedent about where this bootcamp model and this "dearth of technical talent" will lead- and these places are not good. They lead to the worker getting paid very little and there being very few low-paying jobs in the end. But this is tech, so it will happen at speed and scale like never before. I've already watched tech do everything in classical music from 1950-1990 in about five years (including the sexism and its accompanying legal battles and outcries). Well, everything except great teaching at the "camp" level.

bphogan 9y ago

I don't know about the original poster, but I'd have stayed teaching full time if I could have afforded it. But I was literally making half of what my students were making after a couple of years in industry. Another thing to think about is this: Just cos you know SWE really well doesn't mean you have the ability to teach it to others. Not everyone "gets" things quickly, or will understand your explanations on the first attempt, so you must be patient. Not everyone learns the same way, nor do they have the same educational experiences, so you must be kind. And not everyone has a great home life, and has a ton of distractions that prevent them from learning, so you must be empathetic. Finally, not everyone loves to code - they just want the dollars that come from a job and will do whatever it takes to get there, including lie, cheat, and do the bare minimum, so you must be firm and strong to avoid burning out and thinking they're all terrible lazy students. There are people who can do this. But they're rare. And even rarer when they see the low paychecks offered.

brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
It is too bad that these bootcamps can't find a way to invest real money in excellent teachers. A few of these teachers are great. The teachers are the core of the business, just like they are in a university. We all know what has happened to salaries there. I think if bootcamps and colleges keep paying teachers like they are worth less than one of the jillion dollar Vitra sofas these schools are furnished with, they deserve to fail hard. (nice sofas though) Perhaps this is one of the key areas of failure in the model? Just a suggestion. Most of these teachers really stink. These bootcamps value youth or a let's call it a"certain look" over teaching experience and teaching innovation and creative teaching techniques. They also hire a lot of sadly unqualified grads of their programs who are confused when current students submit apps that are slightly more complicated than what they are used to seeing. They have no idea how to reach out to a diverse array (no pun intended) of students, because they are usually the "tell me what to do - I just follow orders" type of student/employee themselves who are all too keen to buy into the positivity consensus so enthusiastically promoted by these bootcamps. I hope you can teach where you are appreciated one day.

christophilus 9y ago

Well, market-rate pay would be a good starter. TIY was really close. It was almost a horizontal move for me. But there are a few other things that these kinds of institutions need to solve: - How to keep your staff from burning out - How to keep your staff up to speed Both are hard problems. TIY (at the time that I taught there, anyway) was staffed by people who had 10-15 years (and more in some cases) of industry experience in a broad range of fields. If I spent the next 10 years of my career teaching, I suspect my value proposition would go down over time, as I began to have less and less relevant industry experience. One thought was that schools of this nature should be a two-sided business. Instructors would teach for a cohort (or two) and then flip over into the consultancy side of the business for some time doing real-world industrial work.

MikeTheGreat 9y ago
I have a genuine question: What's different about doing consultancy that allows one to keep up to date? (As opposed to teaching) My confusion comes from thinking of them both as full time jobs (so therefore where would you get the time to do extra study on the side). Would the consultancy allow you to 'learn by doing' (i.e., you pick a new technology to use and figure it out as you build and deploy it)?
- sdenton4 9y ago
  Consulting exposes you to problems in the field; teaching is where you tell others about problems you're familiar with. If you don't have an input of new problems, you're eventually just recycling the same material...
  - brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
    But then the great teaching would have to be informed by coding's great problems. Your average consultant doesn't encounter "the great coding problems" on a daily or even yearly basis. This is why it might be better for teachers to devote themselves to seeking and researching these challenges and problems as a part of their teaching like all great teachers of any lifelong pursuit have done. If these bootcamp teachers did that, the level of teaching would rise very high. It might finally be worth its price tag, even if students didn't get jobs. I guess that is why the pro-level musicians pay so much for a summer spent with master teachers with no promise of work at the end-- it is because those teachers actually teach them something of great value at the craft that pays for itself and helps the student become an artist at what they do. And for the most part, unfortunately, software engineers are not treated by their companies as artists of value either, like these classical musicians were, at least for many years before that began to decline sharply. There is so much precedent about where this bootcamp model and this "dearth of technical talent" will lead- and these places are not good. They lead to the worker getting paid very little and there being very few low-paying jobs in the end. But this is tech, so it will happen at speed and scale like never before. I've already watched tech do everything in classical music from 1950-1990 in about five years (including the sexism and its accompanying legal battles and outcries). Well, everything except great teaching at the "camp" level.