4 ms·

I was involved in the hiring and filling of > 50 developer positions at a company, while being a tech lead. We tried hiring a few people with just bootcamps. O

I was involved in the hiring and filling of > 50 developer positions at a company, while being a tech lead. We tried hiring a few people with just bootcamps. Only a few (so hardly a representative sample), but none of them worked out. As soon as they had to try something even the slightest bit different than what they'd done in the bootcamp they were lost. There were people with degrees in unrelated fields who then did a bootcamp who were good, and almost all of the CS/CE/EE people we hired were good. I'm not saying this is always the case, but the two years of CS fundamentals seem to be valuable, AND the two years of unrelated core classes seem to be valuable. It might just be how it forces you to engage with and learn things you don't care about (because there will be times in any job you have to do that), or the people skills of having to learn to deal with professors and other students, or the pattern of constant learning and adapting it ingrains upon you, or something else entirely, but per the link, I don't think a bootcamp should ever be viewed as sufficient preparation for a career in development. It's fine in tandem with other things, but it's extremely limiting on its own.

nojvek 8y ago
There’s something to be said when you spend years building complex things from the ground up My fav set of classes that changed the way I think account things in CS. It was at UNSW in Australia. Fundamentals - we started with C. I hated C segfaults but realized the power of pointers, structs and how memory kind of worked. We built a little 8bit machine code and a little VM. Datastructures and Algos - hashes, b-trees, graphs etc. it was eye opening to hear how this had been invented before I was born and the latest and greatest databases still use their variants. We built a crawler and search engine with our own hand written database. That’s where I learnt about mmap. A lot of fun. Compilers - The whole, lexer, parser, checker, emitter pipeline. Write your own subset of C to jvm compiler. We did a simple lisp interpreter too. Advanced graphics - we built our own little 3D game engine using only OpenGL calls. Microcontrollers - literally programmed in assembly to operate a simple lift. Learnt about electrons and gates and how they make machine code work. Connecting compiler knowledge with microprocessor internals was a holy mind opener moment. There’s something to be said about “we’re gonna build mystery thing X from the ground up and connect theory to practical”. Sucks that Australia has very poor VC funding and startup ecosystem. UNSW produces some phenomenal graduates that are quickly stolen by US tech giants.
ng12 8y ago
I also think bootcamps are not very selective once you get in. In my experience it's very hard to fail out of them and there's a huge amount of hand-holding. Compare this to a CS101 course based on SICP and it's easy to see how CS degrees select for people who are able to thrive when thrown into the deep end.
sircastor 8y ago
For a counter example, I'll say that we've got 3 Bootcamp graduates on our team at work and they've all been very good. They've all moved into languages beyond what they learned in their courses. One has become a major platform contributor and has been a driving force in decisions being made. Another has been working with hardware and system deployment. They're all very driven, I've been quite impressed. Now the caveat to my statements there are that all three already had degrees, in disparate fields unrelated to CS/CE. It's an example of capable individuals being able to learn practical skills in anything.
- wongma 8y ago
  Those aren't really counterexamples. They corroborate this finding by the OP: >There were people with degrees in unrelated fields who then did a bootcamp who were good

nojvek 8y ago

There’s something to be said when you spend years building complex things from the ground up My fav set of classes that changed the way I think account things in CS. It was at UNSW in Australia. Fundamentals - we started with C. I hated C segfaults but realized the power of pointers, structs and how memory kind of worked. We built a little 8bit machine code and a little VM. Datastructures and Algos - hashes, b-trees, graphs etc. it was eye opening to hear how this had been invented before I was born and the latest and greatest databases still use their variants. We built a crawler and search engine with our own hand written database. That’s where I learnt about mmap. A lot of fun. Compilers - The whole, lexer, parser, checker, emitter pipeline. Write your own subset of C to jvm compiler. We did a simple lisp interpreter too. Advanced graphics - we built our own little 3D game engine using only OpenGL calls. Microcontrollers - literally programmed in assembly to operate a simple lift. Learnt about electrons and gates and how they make machine code work. Connecting compiler knowledge with microprocessor internals was a holy mind opener moment. There’s something to be said about “we’re gonna build mystery thing X from the ground up and connect theory to practical”. Sucks that Australia has very poor VC funding and startup ecosystem. UNSW produces some phenomenal graduates that are quickly stolen by US tech giants.

ng12 8y ago

I also think bootcamps are not very selective once you get in. In my experience it's very hard to fail out of them and there's a huge amount of hand-holding. Compare this to a CS101 course based on SICP and it's easy to see how CS degrees select for people who are able to thrive when thrown into the deep end.

sircastor 8y ago

For a counter example, I'll say that we've got 3 Bootcamp graduates on our team at work and they've all been very good. They've all moved into languages beyond what they learned in their courses. One has become a major platform contributor and has been a driving force in decisions being made. Another has been working with hardware and system deployment. They're all very driven, I've been quite impressed. Now the caveat to my statements there are that all three already had degrees, in disparate fields unrelated to CS/CE. It's an example of capable individuals being able to learn practical skills in anything.

wongma 8y ago
Those aren't really counterexamples. They corroborate this finding by the OP: >There were people with degrees in unrelated fields who then did a bootcamp who were good