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I'm not the biggest job-hopper, but I've worked at 3 companies in the last 5 years in the NYC area, and have never once worked with, known anyone who's once wor

I'm not the biggest job-hopper, but I've worked at 3 companies in the last 5 years in the NYC area, and have never once worked with, known anyone who's once worked with, or knew a hiring manager who would even consider someone whose only significant background in software was a coding bootcamp. For those who've experienced it, are they hired out of desperation into firms that need manpower and have enough more senior devs. to get them up to working competency or what?

_jal 9y ago
I've worked with two folks from (Bay Area) bootcamps. Those two were fine junior developers; compare with someone just out of school. One was actually quite a bit better than someone just out of school, because he was a bit older and had real-world experience that filled in a lot of blanks. Not saying that's normal. But my very limited experience with bootcampers has been positive. Yes, they were hired for the same reason bootcamps exist: demand.
erichurkman 9y ago
We have a few folks from bootcamps. For our team, it gives us options into a pool of talent with other non-coding skills and backgrounds. For example, one of our developers from a bootcamp was an accountant, and another was a financial analyst. Both are useful skills for a fin-tech company [eShares].
icahnvalyou 9y ago
In NYC - We brought someone on from a bootcamp a few months ago. He's the best bootcamp grad we talked to BY FAR and everyone more senior wouldn't take less than triple the salary we're all taking. We're a really small team, also.
jasonshen 9y ago
All of the last 3 companies I've worked at in NYC (Percolate, Etsy, and a seed stage startup) have hired multiple engineers straight out of bootcamps. They often were hired into junior roles but if they proved themselves, they would advance. Bootcamp grads are hungry, they're usually taught how to code collaboratively and how to push code to production (skills that are usually less emphasized in CS curriculum). Bootcamps aren't going away and would imagine your experience will be less and less common over time.
- elliottcarlson 9y ago
  Same at Tumblr and Rent the Runway. As a hiring manager I have hired bootcamp grads that showed plenty of promise, and they have all worked out great.
  - swyx 9y ago
    thanks for giving bootcamp grads a chance!
- briandear 9y ago
  I specifically seek out Bootcamp grads. I once hired a CS grad 3 years ago that didn't have even basic Git/Github skills, had never used CI, among other things. He could algorithm with the best of them, but the last time I had to actually write a binary search tree was at a coding interview. Yet optimizing ActiveRecord queries or tweaking Varnish configurations -- that's something I deal with regularly. Obviously not all CS grads are clueless, but unless they spend some time independently learning something beyond the college curriculum, they're often worthless when they start their first job. A bootcamp person (I've hired from General Assembly in NYC,) can generally build a complete CRUD app without much help, including deploying it to AWS or Heroku, using SCM correctly and ensuring it's covered with tests. Of course, everyone's business has different needs. If I were working with SPARK or Ada on ultra-critical systems, at the entry level, I'd definitely prefer the CS grad, but for general web applications, the bootcamp grad often hits the ground running.
lloyd-christmas 9y ago
My brother and I both took one. He's at Goldman Sachs, and I work for a company that builds medical software. I finished my course 3.5 years ago and 75% of my class are still working as developers. Major employers include Google, Conde Nast, JPM, GS. Most people work for mid/small size companies so they could get better mentorship than the corporate life. I think one major issue people like you have is that they don't realize that most people who take these courses aren't baristas. My class average was late 20s with 5+ years of proven work experience, most frequently in high professions (law, medicine, finance). I worked in finance for 6 years. I didn't need to take "CS250" to be capable of learning data structures. I just did it on the job instead of over one semester. It's easy to train people who have a proven history of success at work. It is much harder to gamble on a 22 year old with no work experience, regardless of their degree. That's a pretty easy decision for many hiring managers.
- CloudYeller 9y ago
  Yes. Many coding boot camps are full of people who are simply very employable. I think that's part of the reason why some of their hiring stats are so good-- there's huge selection and survivorship biases in their grads. I went to a bc 4 yrs ago and several of my classmates had cs degrees or actual work exp in a software dev role. There are plenty of reasons to go to a bc besides "welp, I woke up today and felt like being an engineer"-- maybe you're working for a doomed company, or you want to change cities, you feel your growth is limited at your current gig, or you just want a break from your routine. Ymmv but it's a mistake to flat out dismiss all bc grads.
deleted 9y ago
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hessproject 9y ago
While I don't doubt some are hired out of desperation, most of the people I know hired out of bootcamps went to bigger companies that have the means (both funds and senior developers/mentors) and time to grow junior developers. While they don't have the CS background (notably data structures and algorithms), they usually have a step up on new grads in terms of collaborating on code, using modern frameworks, etc. They also generally take lower salaries than CS grads. So there's pros and cons to hiring bootcamp grads.
lettergram 9y ago
My team specifically went to several bootcamps (three I believe) and interviewed at least 30 different people. Of them, only two of them barely passed the interview(s). The one person we ended up hiring had previous experience in a very relevant field and we felt would add perspective. We recognized they would need some work and we all took / take time after work to work with them. They've improved a lot and now are a pretty potent developer (six months after we hired them). I think that's probably a standard experience. Perhaps a 5% pass rate for new junior developers from bootcamps, followed up with a known need to develop them further. That's fine though, because we can pick them up at a much lower rate (initially) and grow them. Those people are usually much more loyal, and will have a lower turn over. As long as their salary grows consistently with their competency.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
relganz 9y ago
Wow, you must not know anyone in NYC tech
- ng12 9y ago
  I think there's some other world of NYC tech (maybe those oh-so-hip DUMBO companies?) but I have had the same experience. We get a flood of resumes from bootcamp grads whenever we post an opening for web dev or full stack and historically have found them difficult to hire.
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  Of all of the replies to my initial question, wherein I already confessed my insularity, yours is the only one I haven't upvoted.
pcsanwald 9y ago
I've hired 5 people from flatiron school, all of which worked out very well. desperation had nothing to do with it, I found the folks there were very helpful with matching potential candidates to what I was looking for. Additionally, I found candidates to have more diverse backgrounds on average and that was a positive thing for me. Of course, anyone coming out of a bootcamp (or undergrad if they have no work experience) is going to be a relatively inexperienced hire, and not all companies have the inclination/ability/experience/desire to support these kinds of hires and the mentorship they require. I've been a hiring manager for a very long time, and my opinion is that it's foolish to dismiss any potential source of candidates, especially one where you are not directly competing with google/facebook/amazon/goldman sachs. Many people from flatiron have engineering or math degrees, and realized after school they loved to code. Also, back in the day, when I was a sophmore in college, someone hired me to be a sysadmin when the only experience I had was running the network in my college dorm for 6 months. Within a very short time I was writing all kinds of code, learning a ton, and making small but meaningful contributions. I've worked as a software engineer ever since. My first boss took a risk on me, and it worked out really well for him, and me. Some of the best hires I've ever made had skillsets that didn't, on paper, line up very well, but they turned out great. These experiences are why I'm willing to take risks in hiring. I think most hiring managers are far too narrow minded when it comes to this stuff, although I understand why that's the case, too.
alistairSH 9y ago
I hired a bootcamp graduate a few years ago. He worked out pretty well and is still with the company. We (the interviewers) did spend a lot more time discussing him than other candidates that same year. He interviewed extremely well, had a compelling story about why he took the path he took, but we hadn't hired somebody without a 4-year STEM degree in ages. He was persistent, didn't get scared off by our hesitation, and we decided that his persistence was a strong enough additional signal to take the risk and make an offer.
potatolicious 9y ago
I've worked the last 5-6 years in the NYC area also - and I've seen plenty of companies that hired bootcamp grads, and have worked at one myself. My anecdotal observation is that bootcamp grads favor consumer tech companies where the product (or sub-product) isn't very technologically complex, and has room for (very) junior developers. It does not take a senior dev nor a CS degree to stand up Rails and produce by-the-numbers CRUD workflow apps. I think the reasons for hiring bootcamp grads are varied, but they are much cheaper than degreed candidates, get the job done (for junior-level work at least), and are "hungrier" than degreed candidates - especially compared with candidates from pedigree schools who sometimes perceive themselves as being above junior-level grunt code. Anecdotally everyone I've hired from a bootcamp has worked out, but it's worth noting that the pickings can be slim. I reviewed two graduating classes for candidates and would say maybe 1/4 of them even come close to being interviewable.
tannhauser23 9y ago
From my cohort several grads got jobs at Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Facebook right out of the bootcamp, and several more who have migrated to those companies after a year or two. When I was interviewing right out of bootcamp, there were hiring / engineering managers who told me straight up that their companies would never hire bootcamp grads and that they didn't know any 'reputable' eng orgs that did either. Which was hilarious given that I knew people at the top companies whose only software background was in bootcamps. Part of the reason is that most of my friends took the bootcamp experience off their linkedin after working for a year or two. It wasn't relevant anymore, and there were always people who think bootcamp grads only get hired out of desperation.

_jal 9y ago

I've worked with two folks from (Bay Area) bootcamps. Those two were fine junior developers; compare with someone just out of school. One was actually quite a bit better than someone just out of school, because he was a bit older and had real-world experience that filled in a lot of blanks. Not saying that's normal. But my very limited experience with bootcampers has been positive. Yes, they were hired for the same reason bootcamps exist: demand.

erichurkman 9y ago

We have a few folks from bootcamps. For our team, it gives us options into a pool of talent with other non-coding skills and backgrounds. For example, one of our developers from a bootcamp was an accountant, and another was a financial analyst. Both are useful skills for a fin-tech company [eShares].

icahnvalyou 9y ago

In NYC - We brought someone on from a bootcamp a few months ago. He's the best bootcamp grad we talked to BY FAR and everyone more senior wouldn't take less than triple the salary we're all taking. We're a really small team, also.

jasonshen 9y ago

All of the last 3 companies I've worked at in NYC (Percolate, Etsy, and a seed stage startup) have hired multiple engineers straight out of bootcamps. They often were hired into junior roles but if they proved themselves, they would advance. Bootcamp grads are hungry, they're usually taught how to code collaboratively and how to push code to production (skills that are usually less emphasized in CS curriculum). Bootcamps aren't going away and would imagine your experience will be less and less common over time.

elliottcarlson 9y ago
Same at Tumblr and Rent the Runway. As a hiring manager I have hired bootcamp grads that showed plenty of promise, and they have all worked out great.
- swyx 9y ago
  thanks for giving bootcamp grads a chance!
briandear 9y ago
I specifically seek out Bootcamp grads. I once hired a CS grad 3 years ago that didn't have even basic Git/Github skills, had never used CI, among other things. He could algorithm with the best of them, but the last time I had to actually write a binary search tree was at a coding interview. Yet optimizing ActiveRecord queries or tweaking Varnish configurations -- that's something I deal with regularly. Obviously not all CS grads are clueless, but unless they spend some time independently learning something beyond the college curriculum, they're often worthless when they start their first job. A bootcamp person (I've hired from General Assembly in NYC,) can generally build a complete CRUD app without much help, including deploying it to AWS or Heroku, using SCM correctly and ensuring it's covered with tests. Of course, everyone's business has different needs. If I were working with SPARK or Ada on ultra-critical systems, at the entry level, I'd definitely prefer the CS grad, but for general web applications, the bootcamp grad often hits the ground running.

lloyd-christmas 9y ago

My brother and I both took one. He's at Goldman Sachs, and I work for a company that builds medical software. I finished my course 3.5 years ago and 75% of my class are still working as developers. Major employers include Google, Conde Nast, JPM, GS. Most people work for mid/small size companies so they could get better mentorship than the corporate life. I think one major issue people like you have is that they don't realize that most people who take these courses aren't baristas. My class average was late 20s with 5+ years of proven work experience, most frequently in high professions (law, medicine, finance). I worked in finance for 6 years. I didn't need to take "CS250" to be capable of learning data structures. I just did it on the job instead of over one semester. It's easy to train people who have a proven history of success at work. It is much harder to gamble on a 22 year old with no work experience, regardless of their degree. That's a pretty easy decision for many hiring managers.

CloudYeller 9y ago
Yes. Many coding boot camps are full of people who are simply very employable. I think that's part of the reason why some of their hiring stats are so good-- there's huge selection and survivorship biases in their grads. I went to a bc 4 yrs ago and several of my classmates had cs degrees or actual work exp in a software dev role. There are plenty of reasons to go to a bc besides "welp, I woke up today and felt like being an engineer"-- maybe you're working for a doomed company, or you want to change cities, you feel your growth is limited at your current gig, or you just want a break from your routine. Ymmv but it's a mistake to flat out dismiss all bc grads.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

hessproject 9y ago

While I don't doubt some are hired out of desperation, most of the people I know hired out of bootcamps went to bigger companies that have the means (both funds and senior developers/mentors) and time to grow junior developers. While they don't have the CS background (notably data structures and algorithms), they usually have a step up on new grads in terms of collaborating on code, using modern frameworks, etc. They also generally take lower salaries than CS grads. So there's pros and cons to hiring bootcamp grads.

lettergram 9y ago

My team specifically went to several bootcamps (three I believe) and interviewed at least 30 different people. Of them, only two of them barely passed the interview(s). The one person we ended up hiring had previous experience in a very relevant field and we felt would add perspective. We recognized they would need some work and we all took / take time after work to work with them. They've improved a lot and now are a pretty potent developer (six months after we hired them). I think that's probably a standard experience. Perhaps a 5% pass rate for new junior developers from bootcamps, followed up with a known need to develop them further. That's fine though, because we can pick them up at a much lower rate (initially) and grow them. Those people are usually much more loyal, and will have a lower turn over. As long as their salary grows consistently with their competency.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

relganz 9y ago

Wow, you must not know anyone in NYC tech

ng12 9y ago
I think there's some other world of NYC tech (maybe those oh-so-hip DUMBO companies?) but I have had the same experience. We get a flood of resumes from bootcamp grads whenever we post an opening for web dev or full stack and historically have found them difficult to hire.
lr4444lr 9y ago
Of all of the replies to my initial question, wherein I already confessed my insularity, yours is the only one I haven't upvoted.

pcsanwald 9y ago

I've hired 5 people from flatiron school, all of which worked out very well. desperation had nothing to do with it, I found the folks there were very helpful with matching potential candidates to what I was looking for. Additionally, I found candidates to have more diverse backgrounds on average and that was a positive thing for me. Of course, anyone coming out of a bootcamp (or undergrad if they have no work experience) is going to be a relatively inexperienced hire, and not all companies have the inclination/ability/experience/desire to support these kinds of hires and the mentorship they require. I've been a hiring manager for a very long time, and my opinion is that it's foolish to dismiss any potential source of candidates, especially one where you are not directly competing with google/facebook/amazon/goldman sachs. Many people from flatiron have engineering or math degrees, and realized after school they loved to code. Also, back in the day, when I was a sophmore in college, someone hired me to be a sysadmin when the only experience I had was running the network in my college dorm for 6 months. Within a very short time I was writing all kinds of code, learning a ton, and making small but meaningful contributions. I've worked as a software engineer ever since. My first boss took a risk on me, and it worked out really well for him, and me. Some of the best hires I've ever made had skillsets that didn't, on paper, line up very well, but they turned out great. These experiences are why I'm willing to take risks in hiring. I think most hiring managers are far too narrow minded when it comes to this stuff, although I understand why that's the case, too.

alistairSH 9y ago

I hired a bootcamp graduate a few years ago. He worked out pretty well and is still with the company. We (the interviewers) did spend a lot more time discussing him than other candidates that same year. He interviewed extremely well, had a compelling story about why he took the path he took, but we hadn't hired somebody without a 4-year STEM degree in ages. He was persistent, didn't get scared off by our hesitation, and we decided that his persistence was a strong enough additional signal to take the risk and make an offer.

potatolicious 9y ago

I've worked the last 5-6 years in the NYC area also - and I've seen plenty of companies that hired bootcamp grads, and have worked at one myself. My anecdotal observation is that bootcamp grads favor consumer tech companies where the product (or sub-product) isn't very technologically complex, and has room for (very) junior developers. It does not take a senior dev nor a CS degree to stand up Rails and produce by-the-numbers CRUD workflow apps. I think the reasons for hiring bootcamp grads are varied, but they are much cheaper than degreed candidates, get the job done (for junior-level work at least), and are "hungrier" than degreed candidates - especially compared with candidates from pedigree schools who sometimes perceive themselves as being above junior-level grunt code. Anecdotally everyone I've hired from a bootcamp has worked out, but it's worth noting that the pickings can be slim. I reviewed two graduating classes for candidates and would say maybe 1/4 of them even come close to being interviewable.

tannhauser23 9y ago

From my cohort several grads got jobs at Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Facebook right out of the bootcamp, and several more who have migrated to those companies after a year or two. When I was interviewing right out of bootcamp, there were hiring / engineering managers who told me straight up that their companies would never hire bootcamp grads and that they didn't know any 'reputable' eng orgs that did either. Which was hilarious given that I knew people at the top companies whose only software background was in bootcamps. Part of the reason is that most of my friends took the bootcamp experience off their linkedin after working for a year or two. It wasn't relevant anymore, and there were always people who think bootcamp grads only get hired out of desperation.