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As Coding Boot Camps Close, the Field Faces a Reality Check

• deleted 9y ago
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• cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
  Off topic but that guy tilting his head in the back in the header image is the highlight of this article.
  • AWebOfBrown 9y ago
    Not if image 2 is spelling AJAX as "Ajacks". Can't be sure though.
    • throwaway2016a 9y ago
      I really hope that is either: - Talking about something else - Being ironic
      • trowawee 9y ago
        90% of jokes at DBC are programming word play jokes, so...I would not be surprised to learn they are building a storefront that sells single jacks for playing jacks.
    • nkozyra 9y ago
      The more progressive boot camps have moved on to Web Sockuts.
• ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  The rapid expansion was likely a huge part of why those coding bootcamps closed. Coding bootcamps generally aren't major educational institutions - they're usually more like recruiting agencies that happen to target people who are about 9 weeks of serious effort away from being entry-level developers. That is, they're limited by the number of high-quality applicants that they can find and vet, not by the ability to recruit teachers and refine their curriculum.
  • WindyCityBrew 9y ago
    This makes sense to me and rings true to my own experience. I went to a bootcamp and the people that did the best were those with a good deal of prior experience, and thus able to digest the most information. Students coming with zero (or close to it) programming experience/effort didn't perform well. I'm including myself in the "good deal of prior experience" group, I did fine in the class and in my subsequent jobs. My class even had students that had been web devs on less desirable stacks using the class to ramp up on rails and they did even better.
    • ThrustVectoring 9y ago
      Yeah, one of the best-served demographics is "People who attended at least 2 years of engineering school and either did not graduate or are underemployed after graduation."
• trowawee 9y ago
  "But the coding boot-camp field now faces a sobering moment, as two large schools have announced plans to shut down this year — despite backing by major for-profit education companies, Kaplan and the Apollo Education Group, the parent of the University of Phoenix." Not sure "despite" is the right phrasing here. I'm a DBC grad from about three years ago, and I know DBC had various issues, but I do suspect that there was pressure from Kaplan to expand rapidly, crank prices, and decrease the quality of the education (because that's how Kaplan made their money everywhere else they've been profitable). Kaplan bought them right before my cohort started, and there was serious concern even then that it was a bad omen. I think a lot of startups in general would do well with less pressure for rapid growth, and I suspect that the bootcamp market is much the same.
  • johnvonneumann 9y ago
    Nailed it, did an online course with Kaplan a few years back (Diploma) and was pretty chafed by the experience. The content was dated, the "teaching methods" non-existent, with pretty ridiculous qualification criteria.
  • christophilus 9y ago
    I quit the Iron Yard right after Apollo bought them/imvested in them. I have to say, the situation was similar. Reminds me of DHH's semi regular rants about the pitfalls of selling your business... It almost always is a bad move for the product, and is often regretted by the founders, despite a large windfall.
  • hamolton 9y ago
    Thank you! I remember when in High School, everyone was worried about standardized tests, Kaplan and Princeton Review were considered horrible for SAT/ACT prep. Most of the top students reported that local prep classes were much better, despite having several standardized locations throughout each city (Testmasters for Houston, KD for Dallas). It's not surprising that Kaplan, a company that relies on services that are supposed to improve performance but not actually teach, would suck at teaching skills. I think the debate should expand from just coding schools vs uni to comparing coding schools.
• dwrench07 9y ago
  Current Data Science Student at Galvenize in Phoenix here. I came from a mix of technologies (approximate knowledge, but a master of none) before settling into the data sciences (Python ecosystem). Galvenize has been precisely the challenge I was looking for and so much more. I barely got by the interview process, but picked up a Veteran Scholarship worth half my $16,000 tuition along the way. Quit my job as a Salesforce case jockey and currently trying to stay afloat with the curriculum. It's intense. As it should be. I want it that way. Otherwise everyone would be doing it. A counter argument might be that; "every one and their mother is taking a 'Data Science' title for the pay." From 2013 to now, that may have a lot of truth, but they are eventually found out I hope. As for my cohort. There is a Physics PhD, undergrads in Mathematics and Physics, an acctuary Statistician from an insurance company, a Mom, and Biology grad, and a Veteran. An elclectic group I feel. At this point, half way through, we just want to survive and not wash out. Finally, once capstone projects get rolling in a couple weeks and whom is left of us should be feeling pretty good about their accomplishment and competent to take on entry and junior level Data Science roles.
  • deleted 9y ago
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  • mikeklaas 9y ago
    Why do you feel that the graduates will be ready to a junior dev if you haven't even finished the program?
  • roel_v 9y ago
    "There is a Physics PhD, undergrads in Mathematics and Physics, an acctuary Statistician from an insurance company, a Mom, and Biology grad, and a Veteran. An elclectic group I feel." How can this work? I mean, I can understand those with a math background being there to learn the tooling and programming, but how can a mom (presumably with no prior education?) and a vet (also presumably without any other qualifications) keep up? Or, if they're teaching at the level of 'this is the slope in a linear equation', what's in it for the math guys? I just don't understand how this sort of thing works in real life.
    • deleted 9y ago
• flamedoge 9y ago
  why is it unsustainable?
  • jmcgough 9y ago
    Because dozens of bootcamps are churning out tens of thousands of candidates a year. There's only so many entry level positions to fight over, especially if they all have essentially the same skill set (full stack web).
    • grogenaut 9y ago
      Universities churn out teens of thousands of candidates every year as well. Actually there are at least a thousand universities in the us. Let's call it 30 cs students at each. That's 30k. Stanford has 574 last year in undergrad / 4
      • romanovcode 9y ago
        UNI takes around 3-4 years to complete. Bootcamps are like 12-36 weeks. People who graduate from UNI actually know some things.
        • grogenaut 9y ago
          His point was that thousands of people coming out of bootcamps were saturating the market. My point is I think the market is bigger than that or bootcamps wouldn't exist.
          • romanovcode 9y ago
            Maybe you are correct but I think that bootcamps are created for attracting people to spend their money on a premise that they will get payed very good as programmers.
          • jmcgough 9y ago
            Her point.
• donatj 9y ago
  Here in Minnesota we went from getting almost no developer applicants and unable to fill seats to a TON of absolutely under qualified applicants who went to boot camps. I'm not sure it's an improvement. We've hired a few, but only one has actually worked out.
  • rtpg 9y ago
    Do you remember from what boot camps these people were from? I understand you don't want to shame people but curious as to whether there's been much success from even the bigger, more well known camps
  • sidlls 9y ago
    Could you elaborate on what you hired the bootcamp graduates to do, what you mean by "under qualified" for the rejected candidates, and the gap between expectations and performance of the ones you did hire?
• DylanBohlender 9y ago
  It's almost as if putting huge expansionary pressure on (mostly) locally-minded organizations causes them to fail. Who knew? A couple of cherry-picked examples don't mean the coding bootcamp industry is going anywhere. IMO, there's no reason to panic until these bootcamps are being advertised alongside x-ray technician jobs during midday reruns of Judge Judy. Now, the glut of junior devs entering the market - that's something to be a smidge concerned about.
• lando2319 9y ago
  I went to 2 bootcamps The Starter League Web Dev '12 and Mobile Makers for iOS Dev '14. Neither of the bootcamps are still in existence today. I feel fortunate to have gone through them when I did. Post Bootcamp I did independent work for 5 years, Web/Mobile Dev, before joining a startup. IMO Bootcamps are great, people try and add up the cost and run the numbers, but the experience of growing and struggling through stuff with others, in an in-person environment, was enriching. If there was a Kotlin Bootcamp in my area I'd be interested in learning more.
• booleandilemma 9y ago
  Really? What about the STEM shortage?
  • gaius 9y ago
    There is no STEM shortage and hasn't been for decades. Unemployment for CS grads in the UK is 14% according to the Graun (other sources have it at only 13%). And these people want to charge you a fortune claiming they can teach you better than a 3-year degree in a few weeks.
    • dmitri1981 9y ago
      Is that for CS itself? The stats I've seen published in the past bundle lots of computer related subjects together, which massively distorts the picture.
      • gaius 9y ago
        I believe so yes. Once you consider the consolidation of the web into a few companies, and the news every week of another company outsourcing jobs to low cost locations, it's clear we are near or passed "peak tech" in the West. People paying for training should look into things that can't be outsourced.
    • jacalata 9y ago
      Best I can guess that you are referring to is their articles referring to this gov study, which says 13% unemployment across all STEM grads: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/518654/bis-16-232-graduate-labour-market-statistics-2015.pdf https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
    • stale2002 9y ago
      Then how come our salaries are so high in the bay area? There is certainly a geographic shortage at least, right? Perhaps those people in the UK need to move to a location where their skills are more in demand.
• mattnewton 9y ago
  Sort of off topic, but in the second picture the whiteboard says "Ajacks" (and not ajax, for asynchronous JavaScript and xml). Makes me wonder how fast and loose they were playing with instructors, unless this is just a staged shot, or maybe a joke I didn't get. Not that you need to know what the acronym stands for (hell, no one I know uses the technique to get xml anymore anyways!), but it is weird to see the details wrong in such a detail-oriented discipline, and wouldn't people wonder where the name came from?
  • conanbatt 9y ago
    I dont know if it was meant to be a joke but I'm laughing.
  • asciimo 9y ago
    I think it's a joke. I doubt that the instruction is exclusively verbal; they must have seen "AJAX" somewhere along the line before whiteboarding Web applications. They're just having fun.
    • Kiro 9y ago
      I doubt it.
  • tangue 9y ago
    There's a node library named like that[0], though by reading the flowchart I doubt they're using it... It's about time they're closing. https://www.npmjs.com/package/ajacks https://www.npmjs.com/package/ajacks
  • mmmpop 9y ago
    No, it's completely on-topic! These bootcamps are not teaching these people how to be effective developers when they skip the "hard stuff" and bring in the lowest common idiom in lieu of that. It's so difficult to try and re-teach people this exact concept--try explaining to someone who knows nothing but jQuery and AJAX that a promise has nothing to do with fetching data. Sure, our UX/UI guy does "AJAX" to create working prototypes of his designs before handing it off to be stuffed into React / Ionic / WhateverJS (which is quickly becoming the standard requirement for a UX person), so it's not obsolete tech by any standard. But let's not act like "boutique" web dev shops are actually still a thing... stay relevant people, especially if you're paying those sorts of fees to show up and learn how to build an Angular2 app on headless Rails in 2017.
• latchkey 9y ago
  Good riddance. Once recruiters figured out that placing these under qualified people into jobs was not a good thing, the bootcamps started to train people how to fake their resumes. Just like how people figured out that if they want a specific job, they only need to update their resume to include all the keywords in the job description. When I was hiring and screening hundreds of people, applications would show 'projects' completed on them as if they were real work. Hired.com was full of this for a while until they started blocking them there too. People would go so far as to make a domain name for a class project appear as if it was a real company. You'd go look at their github and realize they only made a few commits towards the 'project'. How is that a demonstration of skill? I'm sure a few people have come out of these bootcamps with some real knowledge and skills. But this is the edge case, not the norm. You can't shortcut your way to a well paying software engineering career by spending a ton of money.
  • dmitri1981 9y ago
    Folks gotta start somewhere. If someone is sufficiently capable and motivated to put together a basic app why not count that experience? Surely if they built it then their work is exactly a demonstration of their skill.
    • latchkey 9y ago
      It was a 'team' effort. So, when you go look at the git history of the 'project', you can see who in the team actually contributed. Usually, it wasn't the person looking for a job. Then you wonder, ok, maybe shared computer... which makes it even harder to figure out. How is that a win for people who are paying tons of money to get an 'education'? I believe strongly that software engineering is an art form that requires tons of practice to get good at. As such, you wouldn't expect a designer or artist to show up at an interview and not be able to show examples of their work. Just like a software engineer should be able to show something as well. Of course, the counter argument to that is maybe they didn't have time to work on something extra curricular. Except for the fact that the people who did the extra curricular work in high school, got into better colleges. Go figure. Even worse is that I did try to interview some of these people and it became clear that the bootcamps were about training for the minimal viable education. Leaving a lot of basic fundamentals out. I'd ask what idempotency is and get blank stares. So sad. Yes, you have to start somewhere, but that doesn't mean you are immediately prepared to get a job as soon as you graduate. That is part of the broken promise of these bootcamps.
• Method-X 9y ago
  Most coding bootcamps are a complete waste of money. Ever since I launched https://edabit.com https://edabit.com, I've noticed a ton of traffic coming from these bootcamps and I'm not sure what to think of it. On the one hand, I like the free promotion but on the other, I can't help but feel as though these people are getting ripped off (considering they can access the site for free).
  • nefitty 9y ago
    Awesome, thanks for sharing. This looks like it'll fill out some of the missing parts of freecodecamp for me!
  • mingp 9y ago
    Out of curiosity, how do you know that your visitors come from bootcamps?
    • Method-X 9y ago
      Google Analytics; most of them seem to have some sort of internal members only area set up where they link to course material.
  • allanbreyes 9y ago
    Bootcamp dropout, here. I 100% agree. I left The Starter League after the first semester when I realized the buyer's remorse of paying more per day than tuition at MIT. The prices for bootcamps simply aren't worth it, especially given the numerous online and self-paced options out there... many of which are free. How my story ended: I left the bootcamp and took a few Udacity Nanodegree programs for $200/month and (full disclosure) loved them so much that I applied for and got a job at Udacity. I really flourished in the self-paced environment, and found that I was able to learn a lot more, faster. Now, I get to go to work every day and build systems that provide affordable education for students across the globe. There are so many amazing and cheaper options out there, and I cringe when I hear about people dropping $15k+ for the same (or better) content that they can get for 100x to INF-x cheaper.
    • 9y ago
• acjohnson55 9y ago
  I think it's just natural consolidation in an early-stage market. There's only going to be room for a few major brands in the space, and then some niche players in particular regions and specialities. A lot of also-ran bootcamps are just trying to cash in in the meantime. I remain a big believer that bootcamps will continue to supply a lot of the talent in the tech world, particularly in app development. I know too many success stories to think otherwise.
• pfarnsworth 9y ago
  Same thing happened during the dotcom boom/bust. Newly-minted MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers) were coming out of the woodwork with almost no real experience, and immediately getting well-paying jobs ($80k-100k at the time). As soon as the bust hit, those certificates were worthless and those people moved away from the Bay Area in droves. They didn't have any real passion for the job, they just knew that they could make good money if they passed a few tests. We called them dot-com migrant workers, at the time. The traffic was actually pretty decent for 3-5 years on 101. I assume the same thing will happen with bootcampers, because I feel like many of them that I've met lack the passion for CS that the better programmers have. I know a few bootcampers, a couple from HackBright and a couple at my work. One of the HackBright graduates never found a job and went back to her old job which was kind of depressing considering how much she spent. But the others were decent, not great but decent. But I would prefer hiring a good fresh grad with a couple of internships under her belt over any bootcamper I've worked with, mainly because of the depth of knowledge they would bring to the table. Let's be real, how much can someone learn in 12-16 weeks, compared to someone with 4 years+?
  • aedron 9y ago
    I can't believe how much this looks like 1999. Remember "Will code HTML for food"? Prepare to see a lot of JavaScript developers hanging around the back of Home Depot...
  • gaius 9y ago
    Newly-minted MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers) I had MCSE back in the day (my org wanted n of them so it could become a gold partner of Microsoft or something, and the perks such as MSDN subs and 10 support calls were nice). What killed it was "braindumps", people weirdly undermining their own certification by posting the questions they could remember online, until databases of all the questions were built up, at that point you could literally just memorise the exam, or blatantly cheat in some locations. That was why it was worthless; but someone who had actually learnt the material the old-fashioned way would be competent.
• WhitneyLand 9y ago
  Can someone remind me why boot camps were even a thing? What employer wouldn't be more impressed by a work sample? One possible plan: 1) Define success before doing anything. Pick specific companies or a specialty you want to end up with first. 2a) Take the three months (or however long you can afford to invest) and work backwards. Figure out the most impressive and relevant project that can be reasonably be accomplished in that time. Make sure it's part of a hot trend because the time spent is probably the same regardless. 2b) In parallel, network and build the best quality contacts you can in your target area. Blog about any interesting observations made as the project progresses. Come right out and say in your posts that you are doing this in hopes of building skills, experience, and proof of your abilities, and say where you want to end up. 3) When its done, make it public online make sure it presents with visual appeal and with cogent explanations. Ask for feedback from your contacts, because that's your excuse to show off: "sure was challenging but I was able to go from zero to learning and building this in three months!". Ask for feedback because it's your chance to ask about openings and interviews. Ask for feedback because you really will need it. How does somebody new make a good project choice, when taking into account everything that would actually be impressive and help land a job would require years of experience to know? You can't without feedback or validation, so don't make the mistake of choosing solo. Just ask people who are in the target area to help you decide. Lots of people would be willing to give input and it's more chances for networking and follow up conversations.
  • gfodor 9y ago
    I agree this is probably a 1000x more effective way to get hired at engineering firms that are seeking out top talent. I think a big reason coding bootcamps exist is because the mental model is that "pay money -> software job" -- it's an appealing idea, and doesn't necessarily mean the person is not going to put in the effort, but it's broken. I think it makes logical sense to someone that if they are going to pay lots of money for something, they think they are going to ultimately have an advantage over someone who took the path you mentioned, which is basically "free" other than opportunity cost. Surely, they must be getting something valuable for their money. Think of similar things like SAT test prep or other forms of job training that actually do legitimately teach trade skills that result in job placement that are hard to learn without experienced mentors, in person training, or expensive equipment. Unfortunately, the reality is the opposite in software engineering due to the nature of what we do and what makes people really good. You don't need much other than a computer, an internet connection, and focused time to build something noteworthy enough to cause potential employers to notice. The person above who built something from scratch on their own stands out head and shoulders above the sea of applicants from coding boot camps who have only done coursework.
• 9erdelta 9y ago
  I think traditional education, university, has a lot of flaws. But I also think one reason college/university has been around for a "long" time is that the system has merit. That merit in my mind being grading rigor, deadlines, classmates, and office hours. I haven't done a bootcamp, but I've done quite a few MOOC courses so my opinion is based on equating the two. This might not be a valid assumption. To me, MOOCs and I'd imagine Bootcamps are good to get an intro to something new, but they can't replace rigorous study of a defined base of fundamentals...i.e. a course of study. What seems like a real opportunity are programs like OSU post-bacc in comp sci, and GA Tech comp sci masters. I've been toying with OSU for about 2 years now, and haven't commited to it yet because they don't have some of the courses online that I'd like to take (computer graphics). And I haven't done the masters program at Tech yet because I don't want to get into that without a more solid foundation. To me, more schools with post-bacc in comp sci and expanded course offerings (online) would find themselves flooded with demand. Recently I signed up at UCLA Extensions...It is almost the right thing, but still has a limited offering and isn't quite the right fit.
  • xor1 9y ago
    Which courses are you doing at UCLA extension? I'm hoping to get into the GA Tech Master's eventually, but I know it's extremely competitive, especially as someone who doesn't have a CS degree.
    • 9erdelta 9y ago
      Fundamentals of Software Development. If you are familiar with loops, if/else, simple functions that don't return anything or take any arguments, and using printf...I'd say give this class a pass. It is trivial really unless you are 100% unfamiliar with programming. Unfortunately, I didn't make that judgement until after the date where I could be refunded.
• gfodor 9y ago
  Attention code boot campers: if you literally have any other relevant experience for a software engineering job, my advice is to just leave the code camp off your resume and focus on that. And then, your experience from the code camp will come through positively in the actual technical interview process. Hiring managers are under a deluge of underqualified code boot camp candidates, who are trying to effectively get past resume screens using all sorts of tricks. The blow back from that (I'm speculating here) is that code boot camp folks are probably often being screened out early at a lot of places since its just too difficult to assess them on paper based on the extensive grooming their resumes and github profiles get by their mentors at these bootcamps. Instead, my advice would be to clearly label the work you've done at a code camp in your README files and include a link to your github. Explicitly call out on your resume projects you have done on your own, and talk about those in your cover letter. If you have literally any other projects or experience related to software engineering include those on your resume and emphasize them! But highlighting your code camp and trying to tout it as "highly selective" and "accepts only top 1% of applicants" and all that stuff may be doing more harm than good at this point. The well has been poisoned by enough under-qualified people applying that ultimately need to be screened out via an on-site interview, which is time consuming and considered a failure of the hiring process, since they have been set up to pass the resume screen and the initial phone screens. So my advice is to just leave it off, consider the knowledge a secret asset, and don't risk inadvertently damaging your own application! All it takes is for a company to be burned once or twice by misleading applications from a coding boot camp candidate to just auto-screen out all resumes from them in general. It sucks, but I found myself looking at resumes that seemed genuinely good, but as soon as the boot camp was listed there, I no longer had trust in what I was looking at. So be mindful, there may be folks out there who would have normally had you interview but didn't just because of past negative experiences with others from your code camp, or other boot camps altogether!
  • trowawee 9y ago
    Why would I believe, as a bootcamp grad, that you're going to be able to put aside your already-admitted bias when I make it to the table for the interview, or if I make it through the hiring process? Why would I want to work with a coworker who thinks "their resume looks great, but they're a bootcamp grad, so it must be a lie"? How can I be confident that you won't throw some bullshit about me being a bootcamp grad at me when we inevitably disagree about some question? I'd rather put it on my resume and take my chances.
• good_vibes 9y ago
  Got to go to DevMtn for free in 2016. Got kicked out for smoking weed and they gave me a full refund out of pity. Learned enough to work 2 dev jobs in Utah, enough to realize what I really wanted out of life vs. what I thought I wanted. Buying a Jeep soon and will be working remotely while roaming North America in 2018. Hobbies include: photography, writing, painting, hiking, design, animal rescue.
• ZGF4_ 9y ago
  It's easy to bash these code camps saying they don't do a good job at teaching people the "real stuff" like traditional education does. People graduating with CS degrees are probably on average better than a boot camp grad but they likely spent 8x the time and money. And most of then still need a lot of investment from their first employer. Education is broken on both ends. Spending 4 years teaching yourself will get you way farther than a CS degree will. Code boot camps need to focus on teaching people how to self learn because that's really the only thing separates average engineers from great ones.
  • johan_larson 9y ago
    > Spending 4 years teaching yourself will get you way farther than a CS degree will. For the extremely disciplined, maybe. For the rest, no. Traditional schooling helps in two ways. First, they point the way to the important and useful stuff. If you're coming in knowing nothing, it's hard to figure out what to study. A good school will tell you. Second, they make demands. They set assignments and exams, grade what you did, and hold you accountable. They push you harder than you would push yourself, and that's really useful for anyone who is less than perfectly self-motivated, which is most of us.
• james1071 9y ago
  No surprises here - there is a conflict between making money and providing high quality education/training. Turning away customers is bad for business,but essential to keep up standards.
  • speedplane 9y ago
    One of the biggest differences between bootcamps and traditional schools is that bootcamps often measure (and market) their success by job placements. Most large universities have entirely different incentives, often based on honors from research programs and large funding grants. If your goal is to get a good job and you don't have a strong background, then these bootcamps are a fantastic resource.
• Alacart 9y ago
  Who gives a shit where or how you learned to code. What a stupid and indirect way to filter candidates. Just show me what you've done. Send me repo links, production code, or even just the end result with some sort of proof that you actually built it. That's the best part about any craft - practicing or building something creates tangible results. If you don't already have a portfolio, get to work on that before you start applying.
  • colllectorof 9y ago
    The sad reality of software engineering is that the wast majority of code everyone writes is not something they would want to show in an interview. Even if they legally could, which is rarely the case for commercially developed software. Heck, even reasonably good software can produce a very negative impression. Utilitarian code can be seen as ugly or overly simplistic. Elegant conceptual stuff often runs the risk of grinding against biases and preconceptions of the particular reviewer.
    • Alacart 9y ago
      Your first argument is true, but I would argue that if you already know what you're doing, you can write some demo portfolio code specifically to show off your skills in very little time. Make that code pleasant to read, free of legal constraints, and be ready and able to talk about it. You probably will spend at least 40 hours a week at your job and it will dramatically affect your life. That's worth spending a few days, maybe even a few weeks preparing for so that you can get one you like. For your second argument, I know what you mean, but that's also totally subjective, dictated by chance, and would apply equally across the board for all candidates. Even if that happens, it sort of naturally levels itself out competition-wise. Also, remember that you're evaluating the employer too - do you want to work for someone who chooses employees that way? Would you want to work with someone who has a closed mind and an axe to grind about certain concepts? I wouldn't trust people like that to make good decisions that will make the company succeed, thereby keeping me employed - let alone providing opportunities to advance. Plus they sound like they'd be a pain in the ass to work with.
• peter303 9y ago
  At the annual Denver Startup Week I notice about a third to half of the startup industry is incestuous, that provides facilities for developers to work better. These are mainly code academies and coworking spaces. I feel if the tech industry ever ever has one of its periodic down turns, then this it could rapidly implode with all these developer services. The reality is about half of the workers entered the tech industry since its last major down turn during 2000 - 2003 and live in the fairy tail land that it could not happen to us. Welcome to economic reality, suckers.
  • speedplane 9y ago
    Don't count on that. If an economic downturn happens, it's entirely possible that the less experienced, but less expensive developers will do well. It may be the experienced one will feel the hurt.
    • ryandrake 9y ago
      We don't have to guess... What happened to each group during the last two tech/economic downturns (2000-2003 and 2007-2009)?
      • speedplane 9y ago
        In the tech bubble of the early 2000s, everyone got burned. In 2007-2009, few in tech were burned. Not sure that's relevant.
        • peter303 9y ago
          In recent downturns people without college degrees got burned. HR could ask for more credentials, even if they were less relevant than experience. Its just its been so long since the last IT downturn, the newbies feel invincible.
  • gaius 9y ago
    These are mainly code academies and coworking spaces In a gold rush, sell shovels.
• k__ 9y ago
  In Germany we have multiple alternatives. You can study computer science and software engineering at universities. (Bachelor/Master of Science/Engineering) You can study it at universities of applied science. You can study it (without degree only state-certificate) at a school. (Staatlich geprüfter Informatiker) And you can also do an apprenticeship in software development. (Fachinformatiker für Anwendungsentwicklung) All are mostly free of charge OR you will even get paid doing them and you got an officially recognized paper that tells the world that you know stuff.
• johan_larson 9y ago
  The US Navy gets some IT work done by Information Systems Technicians. It's not clear from the job description, but they seem to be something between software developers and sysadmins. They have 24 weeks of training, which is comparable to a long civilian bootcamp. Anyone know if they're any good? https://www.navy.com/careers/information-and-technology/information-technology.html#ft-training-&-advancement https://www.navy.com/careers/information-and-technology/info...
  • fapjacks 9y ago
    And you get loaded up with a bunch of very relevant people skills like management skills, and it will teach you all the je ne sais qois about yourself that you normally see in commercials for the military. Stuff like discipline and perseverance and drive. There are few other places in the world that will hand a teenager as much responsibility, trust, and purpose. There are some kids out there handling millions of dollars' worth of equipment. Plus, you can travel, you'll get into the best shape of your life, and they'll even give you a free pair of boots.
  • ryanwaggoner 9y ago
    Was in the navy, not as IT, but I had friends who were. Way, way, way more on the sysadmin and traditional "IT" side than software dev. I doubt most of them could code at all, other than things like simple bash scripts. Zero CS fundamentals.
• veza 9y ago
  If you go to a bootcamp you loose the struggle. The struggle to choose your domain: Web, Mobile, Embedded, Databases etc. The struggle to choose the programming language(s) / technologies to learn. The struggle to choose in which order and from where to learn them (for free). The struggle to choose your Code Editor / IDE. That's a lot of time spent learning about technologies to make the right decision for you, and googling for answers. But guess what you'll be doing as a Software Engineer :) I didn't go to one but I imagine those decisions are being made for you. But I know about the struggle, and I remember it with pleasure and satisfaction.
  • fapjacks 9y ago
    Let's face it: People that go to bootcamp on the whole are not in the same set of people that have passion for programming. Most of those people discovered very early on their passion for computers, and either went to school for it, or are self-taught and don't need a bootcamp. I'm not saying it's impossible to meet someone that didn't know they looooved programming until they were 35. I'm just saying that most of the people in bootcamp are after the promise of salary to the exclusion of having a passion for computers.
• andrewwharton 9y ago
  I'm going to go with the assumption that the "Ajacks" written on the board in the second photo is meant to be a pun/joke?
• cribbles 9y ago
  This is very similar in content and sentiment to the item linked in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14831918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14831918, so I'd like to echo my comments from that thread: > Two specific coding bootcamps that 1) had been acquired by for-profit education conglomerates and 2) underwent relatively rapid expansion into second and third tier tech markets went out of business. > As evidence of a larger trend, this article cites a single quote from the CEO of "a private lender and an alternative accreditor for the fast-growing boot camp sector." This is unpersuasive. This article quotes Ryan Craig of University Ventures vs Rick O'Donnell of Skills Fund, to nearly the same effect. So: big name closures of two bootcamps with similar pain points and acquisition contexts, vs. seemingly healthy expansion and unchanged placement rates for schools like Flatiron (mentioned in the article), Hack Reactor, App Academy, General Assembly, and so on. Further consolidation in the field wouldn't surprise me, but are we really observing a trend worth reporting on?
• phatbyte 9y ago
  As someone who interviewed dozens of bootcampers I can give some insight. 1) Most of the bootcamps teach the basic of front-end, and a lot of them, teach by doing without explaining a lot of basic concepts. They are basically money grabbers and throw these people out of the door as fast as possible to get their money back. 2) A lot of the students are in for the money, not for the love of the job. Sorry, but it's true. I don't mean to include everyone, but out of 30 students, only 2 kept working in my previous company, they weren't good developers, but they loved the job and kept learning and improving themselves. Nothing wrong with pursuing a good paycheck, but in developers world in order to keep being relevant in the next 2/3 years you need to keep sharping your skills. 3) The best developers I worked with are the self-taught guys/girls who learn on their own before they even hit the college. The most boring developers I work with, the the ones who only learn to code while in college and never developed any interested to learn before that. But the most horrible devs I work with came from boot camps. Not their fault, it's just how bad these bootcamps are.
  • curun1r 9y ago
    > The best developers I worked with are the self-taught guys/girls who learn on their own before they even hit the college I think this is the crux of the issues I had with bootcamp candidates. They were reasonably strong in the areas that they'd been taught, but there were gaping holes in their knowledge wherever they hadn't been taught. They could explain how to build a site with a Node backend and an Angular front end, but they couldn't explain why any of the decisions they'd been taught were good ones. And there were fairly basic concepts that were completely alien to them...of the 20 or so I interviewed, not one had even heard the term 'load balancer', let alone could tell me why I might need to use one. They had no notion of 'threading' or what it meant for a piece of code to be 'thread-safe' because they were only taught Node and its concurrency model. Even then, not one of them had heard of 'nextTick' or understood the event loop beyond the fact that it would call their callback function with the results. Their experience felt like a facade that was designed to seem impressive than it actually was. And all the areas where a developer with a traditional background would have thought, 'huh...I wonder how that works?' and then spent 2 hours figuring it out were completely unexplored. This is why I think developers coming out of college are significantly more likely to be better at software development...not necessarily because the education they got in school was better, though I do believe an education starting with first principles and teaching you to figure out the solution from there is a better approach, but because the people that choose to study that in school are self-selecting for curiosity in the subject. They're the ones that hit something they don't know and go learn it rather being told what to learn. And they're the ones that spent at least 2 years following those tangents to get a more well-rounded education. Because any developer who only knows what they've been taught in courses, be they bootcamp or a traditional CS degree, is not going to have what it takes to learn on the job.
• issa 9y ago
  I realize everyone is generalizing but it's easy to lose sight of something really simple: Different jobs require different skills. Not everyone on the team needs to know how to make complicated architecture decisions or write the most efficient sorting algorithm. Personally, I'm happy when there is someone on my team who can do the things I find boring...even if they don't have a "passionate" interest in learning more.
  • h0undawg 9y ago
    > Not everyone on the team needs to know how to make complicated architecture decisions depends on what you work on. on my team everyone does need to (at least with guidance). that said, we only really hire those with significant experience OR college grads who have already proven themselves as interns on the team.
• eighthnate 9y ago
  These boot camps are just this decades iteration of the "tech/programming schools" of the 2000s. In the 2000s, tons of programming schools were created to exploit the lax student loan programs. They would bring in countless people and charge then $10K or $20K or even more to teach "programming" that you could realistically learn on your own. But it was so easy for people to get student loans and it was so easy for these schools to get people low-end programming jobs, that they made a killing off of it. After the financial crisis and the crackdown on ineffective "programming/tech" schools ( especially their student loan programs ), these guys rebranded and remarketed themselves into "boot camps" which take a portion of your future wages. When times are good, pretty much anyone who can type of a keyboard can get a job, but when a recession comes, these "boot camps" graduates are the first to be let go. So my guess is that these boot camps expect a recession soon and are cashing out. Maybe they are the canary in the coal mine. Maybe the tech bubble is going to pop soon. Given how much they charge (10 to 15%) of the wages for the first few years of their graduates, I doubt they would leave so much money on the table unless they feel a shift in the economy or hiring is coming in the near future.
• bichiliad 9y ago
  Two things: Firstly, I work with a ton of people who came out of the Recurse Center (formerly Hacker School) and I've been consistently impressed by them. It seems to be a pretty self-paced thing, so maybe the people who do well there are the sorts of people who are excited about what they're learning, and I'm sure there's a layer of filtering at the hiring level. Just my personal experience. Secondly, I think that while learning specific skills (app development, web development, etc) are really good things, they should totally be a layer on top of a core foundation of good computer science concepts. "Learning web development" ideally means "learning how to apply the concepts I know to the web environment", not "learning how to build a website The Right Way™". I totally blame inflexibility in these bootcamps not from their inability to adapt their course material fast enough, but on their lack of good conceptual foundations.
  • wallflower 9y ago
    I've met some alumni of the Recurse Center. They were all career programmers or hackers prior. It is not a boot camp like the ones mentioned in this article. https://www.recurse.com/not-a-bootcamp https://www.recurse.com/not-a-bootcamp
    • bichiliad 9y ago
      That's a fair point and a distinction I didn't entirely understand.
• brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
  Another reality check for the boot camps: students are finally getting wise to some of the issues. A major camp in NYC decided not to offer another web dev course because enrollment was so low. As the raging issues in tech with respect to ageism, sexism, and racism get more play, prospective students think twice before leaping. I can only offer NYC observations, and not an official study, but employers won't hire much over 35 here. And if you are a woman or of color to boot--- forget it, its like trying to be a famous actor in terms of opportunity for you. The bootcamps are more than happy to take the money of people of color, women, and over age 35 beginners without a word to newcomers who ask these questions before they enroll- these concerns are brushed aside. What is worse is that if you look at the employees at several of these boot camps, the faculty is under 35, and often 95- 100percent white and male. Often, if there are women employed there, the women are not just young, but the youngest. Or perhaps they have a woman faculty member, but she is kept off their website. (specific NYC example- can't name names, but just look at the boot camps' websites in nyc and you will find the one. - the one with no women listed as faculty- they do have one woman- they just keep her from public view on their website) This kind of blatant discrimination looks very amateur in NYC where companies who have already been sued try to be a bit more subtle about discriminatory practices) these bootcamps staff themselves in a mini replica of this industry as a whole- not w an eye toward positive change re:inclusion. But they preach it all day long. Perhaps they think they are really helping without taking a good look at themselves. I'm trying to err on the charitable side. And I'm not saying no one at all hires women or people of color or people over 40, but nearly all the boot camp founders tend to be middle aged and then hire staff and faculty who are under 40, white and mostly male. If asked, I'm sure the words "culture fit" would get uttered. I'm frustrated at watching too many exceptional programmers in these categories who have lots of valuable experience get passed over for younger, whiter, and more male folks w no experience. A former restaurant server with zero teaching experience/ability/empathy should not be hired as faculty at a bootcamp over a CS grad w teaching experience who former students love. I was "taught" by such a person at one of the top bootcamps. He and many others there had no clue how to teach. Their idea of teaching is to verbally code up a project while a student listens. He was not an exception - he was the rule there. The lawsuits are already in the pipeline, and that will provide an official data set soon. Whoever escapes these will get to move the model forward and hopefully do something about these issues and drive some positive change- not just give it lip service.
• alistproducer2 9y ago
  I've always had a problem with the phrase "learn to code." It assumes just being able to encode a thought in a programming language is good enough. It isn't. Having a thought worth encoding is what separates "super junior" devs from ones who actually know what they're doing. Being able to formulate worthwhile, efficient solution to problems takes more than 12 weeks to learn. There's no substitute for time and experience. One of the reasons traditional college works well is that it forces you to spend a long period (~4 years) immersed in the discipline: thinking and reasoning about computer problems. Do you come away from that with everything you'll need to make production software? No. That still necessitates experience. You will, however, be able to learn from that experience more efficiently because you've got the fundamentals. I work at a large company that absorbs tons of MIS/CIS grads. The non-CS grads that excel are the ones that are constantly hungry to teach themselves new things but for the most part they suck compared to the CS people. I can only imagine how much worse these bootcamp folks must be.
• werber 9y ago
  I would love to see bootcamps for QA for people who just want to quickly get a decent job
• TechNut 9y ago
  I got started in software through the Flatiron School. I spent three months learning a lot about development in general and iOS development in particular. I came out of it ready for an apprentice-like level of work: skilled enough to get paid, best fit for a company offering mentorship. It was not a three-month CS degree, nor did it pretend to be. Comparing a person who changed careers as an adult to someone who started studying the subject in college is disingenuous. Also, comparing a person who needs guidance, colleagues and to start making money soon to a person who has 6 months or a year to spend learning on their own is similarly suspect. The fact is that if you came to software development by traditional school or self-teaching, these programs weren't trying to help people like you. Understand that people with different backgrounds can still contribute even if they don't contribute in the way you do. As for the ability of folks coming out of these programs, it's a bad idea to equate all bootcamps with each other or all people within a program. A few years ago, there was a gold rush to this industry, so there will be jokers in the deck. Still, there are many talented, hard-working people for whom these programs were the best option. You don't have to hire them, but take them seriously. P.S. - Traditional education and self-teaching do not have bulletproof records, either. I've spoken to lawyers who are disappointed in the ability of most Ivy League grads they interview. I've also spoken with many folks who tried to teach themselves software development but never built a full skill set.
• rvr_ 9y ago
  Many of us like to compare software development with other engineering disciplines. I like to compare it to playing music. Sure you can learn to play some simple songs in a couple of months, but it takes lots of effort to master an instrument. Like musicians and sports players, there is no easy way to become really good as a software developer if you don't start as early as possible and dedicates your life to it. Coding bootcamps are just trying to sell a short path where it is not possible to have one.
• aganderson 9y ago
  The article talks about the closure of a couple of bootcamps and then holds up a few others as examples of ones that are getting it right. However, it fails to give any solid evidence that any of these exemplar schools are any more stable/less likely to close than DBC and IY. Are they profitable or propping themselves up with VC money while trying to find product/market fit? If they're profitable, how profitable (and for how long)? What did they do to get there (layoffs, campus closures, pivots to a new focus)? The quality of their grads aside, I wouldn't be surprised at all if some of the schools mentioned in the article also end up closing their doors in the next year.