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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 ofte

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.

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.