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The growth of undergrand CS program enrollment is pretty insane, same with bootcamps. Lots of these people have no real interest in the positions outside of pay

The growth of undergrand CS program enrollment is pretty insane, same with bootcamps. Lots of these people have no real interest in the positions outside of pay, which is fine for most careers. But in tech we put a lot of value on self learning and interest. I've definitely seen the number of new grad applicants and bootcamp grad applicants at least quadruple in the past few years. Most of these can make an Angular app or write an algorithm on a whiteboard but know nothing outside of what was taught in the school/bootcamp. I find these types really hard to work with, because software is evolving ever so fast and requires such rapid uptake of knowledge that those who aren't self motivated require a lot of reinforcement and have drastically reduced productivity on the job.

maxxxxx 9y ago
That's something I have noticed too. In the 90s most people I worked with were genuinely interested in the work and often came from very eclectic backgrounds. Almost nobody had a CS degree. Now it seems a lot of people go into programming because it pays well and looks like a good career but they don't really care for tech. I definitely found the industry more fun in the 90s but that may just be the fact it's becoming a mature industry.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  I don't think someone necessarily has to live and breathe code to be good at their job. That kind of focus is hard to maintain forever. When I was new I was constantly reading programming books and now, like, I'm still interested, but other things are going on in my life that also need my attention, you know?
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    I don't live and breathe programming either. But when I am at work I care about the technology and like to learn new stuff whereas a lot of people I see just do what they are told to do and take their paycheck home. Nothing wrong with that but I find it more fun to work with people who care.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      OK, fair enough. I agree with you; I also like to challenge myself with new things. But I like to go home at the end of the day too, you know? Sometimes I think programmer culture gets too self-flagellating.
      - maxxxxx 9y ago
        I hate the whole side-project-after-work thing. Unless you have a real business idea to pursue I think 40 hours per week of focused work is plenty. There are a lot of other cool things in life.
        emodendroket 9y ago
        Yeah, that's exactly what I'm getting at.
        CryoLogic 9y ago
        I agree completely. But in a vacuum, the developer who codes outside of work probably has more knowledge and experience than the developer who works 40h/week and goes off to other things. Even considering diminishing returns.
        emodendroket 9y ago
        Yes and no. I think somebody a little more well-rounded may have other soft skills that are also important.
        CryoLogic 9y ago
        Yeah that's true, hence in a vacuum. If you want someone to do nothing but code - the person who codes the most often will take the cake.
        emodendroket 9y ago
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    You can lead a horse to the water but you can't make him drink. It's completely okay to "just" do your job professionally. However, skill development, transfer of skills to junior developers and mentoring is a different issue - if you want to learn from me, you have to want to learn; if you're just here for the paycheck, then I'm not going to go out of my way to educate you even if (which is the case for many junior developers) you're unable to actually do your tasks properly on your own without this help. People with the desire and capacity to learn go over the "junior" phase very quickly (over a short internship or already during college) and become able to do decent work on their own; but those who don't and really need an actual prolonged "junior developer" role on the team... there's no incentive for the employer to do that, and there's no incentive for the colleagues to spend their effort if it seems wasted on someone who's not into it.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      I can see your perspective. I think we're kind of talking at cross purposes here. I think it's reasonable to expect someone who needs mentoring to pay attention and want to learn. What I don't like is this idea that you need to spend every waking hour on programming or you're just a clocker who has nothing to contribute to a serious team.
    - Clubber 9y ago
      This. Mentoring should just be pointing people in a direction and occasional code review. Go do this (for a few days). Let's see what you did. This is good, this should be that, name your variables better, etc. If you let juniors figure it out the hard way, they will learn better, or they will fail. If they fail to learn by themselves, they will never become senior.* *Shitty code bases should be given a lot of leeway on the learning curve.
      - murftown 9y ago
        > Mentoring should just be pointing people in a direction and occasional code review. Go do this (for a few days). Let's see what you did. That's one (totally fine) way of mentoring, but it's by no means the only one. A lot depends on the work environment and the relationship. I work with a couple junior engineers that are also friends, and in addition to "pointing people in a direction", code reviews, etc.: * We frequently tackle harder issues together, pair-programming style (using a shared tmux session) * In addition to code-reviewing their work, I have them code-review mine, and I walk them through my code and thought process * Talks/meetings once a week or more about architecture/up-front design for projects, in which the junior devs are often included or free to attend * We have a non-work-related Hackerspace that we attend every 2 weeks where we work on side projects / fun creative projects Certainly this situation is not possible on many development teams, but I just wanted to point out that mentoring is a wide-open thing that has many approaches and options.
  - Clubber 9y ago
    Yes, for me it's up and down. I do side projects a lot more when I'm sick of the company I'm at. Trying to get out of the grind.
    - gulperxcx 9y ago
      I can completely relate to this.
  - toomanybeersies 9y ago
    I don't think you need to spend all your spare time making side projects or learning new technologies, but I do think a certain amount of professional curiosity is required as a software engineer, just like any other programming job. I'll probably spend 15-30 minutes every day outside of work reading about new things, or tinkering around with something, even if it's just reading Hacker News, often these things I learn end up being used at work, so I gain new skills at work. It sounds like you're in the same boat. My father is a network engineer, and he'll spend time in the evening doing things related to his field, he has a very impressive home networking setup. My friends that are electrical engineers play around with electronics in their spare time. I think that for any professional, to be successful and have a good career you need to have at least some outside interest in your field. Obviously we all have hobbies, I don't sacrifice those because of work, but if you're working in a job where you have no interest you'll never get far.
  - matwood 9y ago
    > When I was new I was constantly reading programming books and now, like, I'm still interested, but other things are going on in my life that also need my attention, you know? It's not a binary thing. The fact that you were/are interested enough in technology in the past is different than someone who only did the bare minimum. I consider it more of a mindset thing.
- tejasmanohar 9y ago
  I didn't work in the 90s, but I'm with you here. I joined the industry out of interest. I didn't know a thing about pay when I started programming. As demand for developers increases and the industry becomes "mainstream", it's inevitable that we'll attract more folks who are purely in it for the high-paying job and "secure lifestyle". The job of a school teacher is to teach, but your job at a startup is to empower the company to succeed. Part of this is helping the team succeed, but a big part of this is prioritization. There's nothing wrong with prioritizing your resources on someone who is more motivated and has more growth potential by their own choice. After all, if you don't put your all into something, you can't expect others to put their all into you.
  - jschwartzi 9y ago
    The attitude that I need to devote myself to the company and forego any outside interests until the company is profitable is really unhealthy. The company I am leaving now wanted me to do that for 5 years. Imagine doing nothing but being at work for 5 years. Or imagine not dating anyone for 5 years because you're spending all your time at the office. The product is finished now, so I'm leaving, and frankly the only reason I stuck around was because finishing products looks good on a resume.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      In today's environment devotion to a company is most likely a losers game unless you have lots of equity. When they offered pensions and more job security this may have made sense.
- kokey 9y ago
  During the dotcom boom there were a lot of people attracted to the industry that were ill suited to it. I feel it's a bit like that now again. Then the dotcom crash came and many of those people lost their jobs in the industry but it had a limited impact on those who had true skill and passion for the technology. The rest had go back to the kind of careers that suited them better, like real estate agents...
- matwood 9y ago
  > Now it seems a lot of people go into programming because it pays well and looks like a good career but they don't really care for tech. This was already happening in the late 90s. Initially my undergrad was filled with people because CS paid well, but back then at least the first two classes were setup to weed those people out.
kilroy123 9y ago
People in my life have expressed interest in becoming developers and going to bootcamps, and such. I tell them, it's not really a job, it's more of a lifestyle. You need to love learning, tinkering, and hacking. Want to go to conferences and play around with pet projects. It's a forever evolving field.
- preordained 9y ago
  I hear you on almost everything...I love tinkering, hacking, reading, pondering, side "experiments" (I think "project" is a bit grandiose for what I hack on from time to time)...but holy hell do I hate conferences and things like that. I just don't get it...most every conference I've seen could have been summed up in a quick article or powerpoint...and I don't get any personal thrills from the "live experience". That, and this is mine own super biased experience, every developer I met who was a conference nut was that guy who was obsessed with the "new shiny", who never seems to do any work that isn't greenfield and leaves others to deal with the fallout of various short-lived infatuations...yah, I'm not bitter, heh...but I'll be damned if these guys don't love their conferences;)
  - Cd00d 9y ago
    I'm from another field, but I love love love conferences. It's like an annual reunion of my peers, days of detailed talks and better questions, and vast amounts of network chat that I find interesting and valuable. I see a lot of anti-conference comments here on HN, and I don't get it. Every week I've spent at a conference has been highly illuminating and motivating, and recharged my fascination. This is all followed by presentations to the larger team of what I learned so that the benefits of the experience were broadly dispersed. 3-5 days in a new city seems like a huge win with the professional benefits. What am I missing?
    - M_Bakhtiari 9y ago
      >It's like an annual reunion of my peers, days of detailed talks and better questions, and vast amounts of network chat that I find interesting and valuable. I think that's the key. Conferences are only fun if you can actually have a meaningful connection with the people, if they are genuine peers with similar interests instead of just a bunch of people there for their own self-aggrandizement, sneaking around the corners trying to catch someone saying "dongle". Or the ones mainly frequented by socially inept nerds, like Fosdem. So conferences can often be pretty hit-and-miss.
diiaann 9y ago
I liken the bootcamp business to the mortgage lending business before the subprime crisis. In the beginning, there were plenty of candidates that were suited for careers in software engineering. Now we are at the point where each school has fewer great candidates so they market to a bigger audience.
- brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
  They have fewer great candidates (if that is even true) because the hip candidates are looking for the ladder somewhere else-- they can now see they will never get hired based on skill alone, however well developed for a beginner.(and if they had golden personal connections to add to it, they were in the first wave and/or would not be desperate for work) They all have ambitious, skilled, motivated friends who recently spent money on these bootcamps and who didn't get work that was any better than the work they took the course to get out of in the first place. Many can't find work at all. This is getting out there now, from student to student. There is now enough of a din to finally hear above the denials. But I agree, the bootcamps need to demand more of themselves so they don't end up all being hucksters to the few people who are so far away from tech in their lives, they have not yet heard that the ladder has been pulled up long ago. I hope they can learn how to innovate on a grand scale.
protonimitate 9y ago
How to you filter out those who are genuinely interested in self learning and motivated to keep up with evolving software trends vs. salary chasers? And more importantly, how can someone from a self-taught background convey that they are not just chasing salaries, but have a real interest in this stuff? I fear that there is a bias in the industry that bootcampers = salary chasers and CS undergrads = real deal, when I've seen (anecdotally) a huge uptick in people entering CS undergrad programs just for the high salaries fresh out of school.
spicytunacone 9y ago
How would you filter for a "technically curious" candidate at the junior level (I'm assuming someone who, for example, pursues a Master's or beyond demonstrates this to a degree)? It certainly doesn't help that an overwhelming amount of junior postings are more interested in the candidate being experienced with the particular stack, so, unless your interests happen to align with what's industrially pragmatic, I imagine the kid who stays overnight in the lab doing something in Haskell or some other "obscure but requires a non-trivial amount of autodidacticism" activity wouldn't be very happy about those valuable nights in their youth bearing them no fruit.

maxxxxx 9y ago

That's something I have noticed too. In the 90s most people I worked with were genuinely interested in the work and often came from very eclectic backgrounds. Almost nobody had a CS degree. Now it seems a lot of people go into programming because it pays well and looks like a good career but they don't really care for tech. I definitely found the industry more fun in the 90s but that may just be the fact it's becoming a mature industry.

emodendroket 9y ago
I don't think someone necessarily has to live and breathe code to be good at their job. That kind of focus is hard to maintain forever. When I was new I was constantly reading programming books and now, like, I'm still interested, but other things are going on in my life that also need my attention, you know?
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  I don't live and breathe programming either. But when I am at work I care about the technology and like to learn new stuff whereas a lot of people I see just do what they are told to do and take their paycheck home. Nothing wrong with that but I find it more fun to work with people who care.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    OK, fair enough. I agree with you; I also like to challenge myself with new things. But I like to go home at the end of the day too, you know? Sometimes I think programmer culture gets too self-flagellating.
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      I hate the whole side-project-after-work thing. Unless you have a real business idea to pursue I think 40 hours per week of focused work is plenty. There are a lot of other cool things in life.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        Yeah, that's exactly what I'm getting at.
      - CryoLogic 9y ago
        I agree completely. But in a vacuum, the developer who codes outside of work probably has more knowledge and experience than the developer who works 40h/week and goes off to other things. Even considering diminishing returns.
        emodendroket 9y ago
        Yes and no. I think somebody a little more well-rounded may have other soft skills that are also important.
        CryoLogic 9y ago
        Yeah that's true, hence in a vacuum. If you want someone to do nothing but code - the person who codes the most often will take the cake.
        emodendroket 9y ago
- PeterisP 9y ago
  You can lead a horse to the water but you can't make him drink. It's completely okay to "just" do your job professionally. However, skill development, transfer of skills to junior developers and mentoring is a different issue - if you want to learn from me, you have to want to learn; if you're just here for the paycheck, then I'm not going to go out of my way to educate you even if (which is the case for many junior developers) you're unable to actually do your tasks properly on your own without this help. People with the desire and capacity to learn go over the "junior" phase very quickly (over a short internship or already during college) and become able to do decent work on their own; but those who don't and really need an actual prolonged "junior developer" role on the team... there's no incentive for the employer to do that, and there's no incentive for the colleagues to spend their effort if it seems wasted on someone who's not into it.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    I can see your perspective. I think we're kind of talking at cross purposes here. I think it's reasonable to expect someone who needs mentoring to pay attention and want to learn. What I don't like is this idea that you need to spend every waking hour on programming or you're just a clocker who has nothing to contribute to a serious team.
  - Clubber 9y ago
    This. Mentoring should just be pointing people in a direction and occasional code review. Go do this (for a few days). Let's see what you did. This is good, this should be that, name your variables better, etc. If you let juniors figure it out the hard way, they will learn better, or they will fail. If they fail to learn by themselves, they will never become senior.* *Shitty code bases should be given a lot of leeway on the learning curve.
    - murftown 9y ago
      > Mentoring should just be pointing people in a direction and occasional code review. Go do this (for a few days). Let's see what you did. That's one (totally fine) way of mentoring, but it's by no means the only one. A lot depends on the work environment and the relationship. I work with a couple junior engineers that are also friends, and in addition to "pointing people in a direction", code reviews, etc.: * We frequently tackle harder issues together, pair-programming style (using a shared tmux session) * In addition to code-reviewing their work, I have them code-review mine, and I walk them through my code and thought process * Talks/meetings once a week or more about architecture/up-front design for projects, in which the junior devs are often included or free to attend * We have a non-work-related Hackerspace that we attend every 2 weeks where we work on side projects / fun creative projects Certainly this situation is not possible on many development teams, but I just wanted to point out that mentoring is a wide-open thing that has many approaches and options.
- Clubber 9y ago
  Yes, for me it's up and down. I do side projects a lot more when I'm sick of the company I'm at. Trying to get out of the grind.
  - gulperxcx 9y ago
    I can completely relate to this.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  I don't think you need to spend all your spare time making side projects or learning new technologies, but I do think a certain amount of professional curiosity is required as a software engineer, just like any other programming job. I'll probably spend 15-30 minutes every day outside of work reading about new things, or tinkering around with something, even if it's just reading Hacker News, often these things I learn end up being used at work, so I gain new skills at work. It sounds like you're in the same boat. My father is a network engineer, and he'll spend time in the evening doing things related to his field, he has a very impressive home networking setup. My friends that are electrical engineers play around with electronics in their spare time. I think that for any professional, to be successful and have a good career you need to have at least some outside interest in your field. Obviously we all have hobbies, I don't sacrifice those because of work, but if you're working in a job where you have no interest you'll never get far.
- matwood 9y ago
  > When I was new I was constantly reading programming books and now, like, I'm still interested, but other things are going on in my life that also need my attention, you know? It's not a binary thing. The fact that you were/are interested enough in technology in the past is different than someone who only did the bare minimum. I consider it more of a mindset thing.
tejasmanohar 9y ago
I didn't work in the 90s, but I'm with you here. I joined the industry out of interest. I didn't know a thing about pay when I started programming. As demand for developers increases and the industry becomes "mainstream", it's inevitable that we'll attract more folks who are purely in it for the high-paying job and "secure lifestyle". The job of a school teacher is to teach, but your job at a startup is to empower the company to succeed. Part of this is helping the team succeed, but a big part of this is prioritization. There's nothing wrong with prioritizing your resources on someone who is more motivated and has more growth potential by their own choice. After all, if you don't put your all into something, you can't expect others to put their all into you.
- jschwartzi 9y ago
  The attitude that I need to devote myself to the company and forego any outside interests until the company is profitable is really unhealthy. The company I am leaving now wanted me to do that for 5 years. Imagine doing nothing but being at work for 5 years. Or imagine not dating anyone for 5 years because you're spending all your time at the office. The product is finished now, so I'm leaving, and frankly the only reason I stuck around was because finishing products looks good on a resume.
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    In today's environment devotion to a company is most likely a losers game unless you have lots of equity. When they offered pensions and more job security this may have made sense.
kokey 9y ago
During the dotcom boom there were a lot of people attracted to the industry that were ill suited to it. I feel it's a bit like that now again. Then the dotcom crash came and many of those people lost their jobs in the industry but it had a limited impact on those who had true skill and passion for the technology. The rest had go back to the kind of careers that suited them better, like real estate agents...
matwood 9y ago
> Now it seems a lot of people go into programming because it pays well and looks like a good career but they don't really care for tech. This was already happening in the late 90s. Initially my undergrad was filled with people because CS paid well, but back then at least the first two classes were setup to weed those people out.

kilroy123 9y ago

People in my life have expressed interest in becoming developers and going to bootcamps, and such. I tell them, it's not really a job, it's more of a lifestyle. You need to love learning, tinkering, and hacking. Want to go to conferences and play around with pet projects. It's a forever evolving field.

preordained 9y ago
I hear you on almost everything...I love tinkering, hacking, reading, pondering, side "experiments" (I think "project" is a bit grandiose for what I hack on from time to time)...but holy hell do I hate conferences and things like that. I just don't get it...most every conference I've seen could have been summed up in a quick article or powerpoint...and I don't get any personal thrills from the "live experience". That, and this is mine own super biased experience, every developer I met who was a conference nut was that guy who was obsessed with the "new shiny", who never seems to do any work that isn't greenfield and leaves others to deal with the fallout of various short-lived infatuations...yah, I'm not bitter, heh...but I'll be damned if these guys don't love their conferences;)
- Cd00d 9y ago
  I'm from another field, but I love love love conferences. It's like an annual reunion of my peers, days of detailed talks and better questions, and vast amounts of network chat that I find interesting and valuable. I see a lot of anti-conference comments here on HN, and I don't get it. Every week I've spent at a conference has been highly illuminating and motivating, and recharged my fascination. This is all followed by presentations to the larger team of what I learned so that the benefits of the experience were broadly dispersed. 3-5 days in a new city seems like a huge win with the professional benefits. What am I missing?
  - M_Bakhtiari 9y ago
    >It's like an annual reunion of my peers, days of detailed talks and better questions, and vast amounts of network chat that I find interesting and valuable. I think that's the key. Conferences are only fun if you can actually have a meaningful connection with the people, if they are genuine peers with similar interests instead of just a bunch of people there for their own self-aggrandizement, sneaking around the corners trying to catch someone saying "dongle". Or the ones mainly frequented by socially inept nerds, like Fosdem. So conferences can often be pretty hit-and-miss.

diiaann 9y ago

I liken the bootcamp business to the mortgage lending business before the subprime crisis. In the beginning, there were plenty of candidates that were suited for careers in software engineering. Now we are at the point where each school has fewer great candidates so they market to a bigger audience.

brooklyn_ashey 9y ago
They have fewer great candidates (if that is even true) because the hip candidates are looking for the ladder somewhere else-- they can now see they will never get hired based on skill alone, however well developed for a beginner.(and if they had golden personal connections to add to it, they were in the first wave and/or would not be desperate for work) They all have ambitious, skilled, motivated friends who recently spent money on these bootcamps and who didn't get work that was any better than the work they took the course to get out of in the first place. Many can't find work at all. This is getting out there now, from student to student. There is now enough of a din to finally hear above the denials. But I agree, the bootcamps need to demand more of themselves so they don't end up all being hucksters to the few people who are so far away from tech in their lives, they have not yet heard that the ladder has been pulled up long ago. I hope they can learn how to innovate on a grand scale.

protonimitate 9y ago

How to you filter out those who are genuinely interested in self learning and motivated to keep up with evolving software trends vs. salary chasers? And more importantly, how can someone from a self-taught background convey that they are not just chasing salaries, but have a real interest in this stuff? I fear that there is a bias in the industry that bootcampers = salary chasers and CS undergrads = real deal, when I've seen (anecdotally) a huge uptick in people entering CS undergrad programs just for the high salaries fresh out of school.

spicytunacone 9y ago

How would you filter for a "technically curious" candidate at the junior level (I'm assuming someone who, for example, pursues a Master's or beyond demonstrates this to a degree)? It certainly doesn't help that an overwhelming amount of junior postings are more interested in the candidate being experienced with the particular stack, so, unless your interests happen to align with what's industrially pragmatic, I imagine the kid who stays overnight in the lab doing something in Haskell or some other "obscure but requires a non-trivial amount of autodidacticism" activity wouldn't be very happy about those valuable nights in their youth bearing them no fruit.