9 ms·

I'm not quite sure where I stand on the regulation vs. lack thereof when it comes to these types of operations either, but between working in a hiring capacity,

I'm not quite sure where I stand on the regulation vs. lack thereof when it comes to these types of operations either, but between working in a hiring capacity, serving as a mock-interviewer, being courted as a potential instructor, and being friends with both instructors and unsuccessful graduates (across ~5 years) from my local, now defunct code camp - there are a lot of folks who go into these programs, often going into non-trivial debt, and coming out with nothing to show for it. I will never forget watching a grown man cry in a mock interview because he could not solve FizzBuzz. I made sure they understood the relevant operators, the problem, inputs and expected output, gave ample time, kept things very casual and relaxed, and told them to ask any questions they needed. This was practice, after all. I suppose I would cry too, if I wasted months and ~20,000, likely banking on a great new life as a programmer. At the same time I've worked with great entry-level developers who used the code camps to jump from "bad" positions, e.g. young dead-ended professionals, folks with complimentary degrees but no job prospects in that industry, etc. The common thread with these folks is either prior background programming, a personal support network of programmers, or both. What kind of regulation would help for this? Mandated entrance exams with a hard-cutoff?

saidajigumi 7y ago
If you've spent months and $20k, now "wasted", in a school environment then I have serious questions about the school's feedback and gating systems. Why wasn't this individual given unambiguous signals about their progress (i.e. insufficient)? Even hard stops because they "failed a required class" or similar?
- tibbon 7y ago
  Oh wow, I could talk for hours about this. From what I've heard at a lot of schools, the teachers would like to "fail" people or have higher standards for entry - but management and sales (I mean, admissions) push back hard. A student leaving is money lost. A student just not doing well afterward is something that they can write off as some glitch. They'd rather have the latter. Or they want the instructors to do superhero efforts to get the student to pass. The teachers know within a week or two who is going to have real problems with the material. The schools do not want them to put assessments in place that would have them leave, because they want money.
  - austenallred 7y ago
    That's the nice thing about the aligned incentives of Lambda School.
    - tibbon 7y ago
      I'd like to know more about that. It sounds like a great idea!
      - austenallred 7y ago
        Students pay $0 unless they get hired in a software role making $50k/yr or more. So it’s not in our best interest to string someone along who can’t write fizzbuzz. We use mastery-based progression so realistically that person wouldn’t progress past the first week or two, then would repeat until he or she had mastered the content.
  - mieseratte 7y ago
    From what I understand, the system I saw had originally started with good standards. The first few small classes came out of the program fine, got internships and Junior positions at a variety of local firms. Then had grew bigger groups, lowered the bar for students, increased prices, reduced scholarships, more focus on financing via loans, and then changed the curriculum in response to the requests of local industry. On paper they all have reasonable explanations. Bigger groups? Well we just have so many more people applying! After all, they evangelized the hell out of the program, getting both graduates and local well-known business leaders to speak about the wonders of the program. Lowering the bar and offering loans? Well they're just opening it up to folks from non-traditional and more varied backgrounds. Don't want to be classist or whatever the hell else -ist! I'm self-taught, I sure didn't want to be one to pull the gate up behind me, and what's more I saw folks from non-traditional backgrounds do well. There is some validity to this. Changing the curriculum in response to your local board of industry advisors? Great idea! The students will be even more likely to land roles afterwards because those doing the hiring are telling us what their actual needs are. Well what it turned into was a tale of too many cooks. You have an already small time frame with which to teach core material further reduced to satisfy an advisor. Teaching Java and Spring? Why not throw in some Android! Well we'd be in remiss to not touch on Scala, oh and Clojure too! Because they need exposure to other languages! So now you have a three-month camp for someone that needs to learn Java basics of Spring, basics of their build tool, Gradle, so throw in some Grovvy, oh and basics of Hibernate... which means basics of databases. Oh, don't forget this is all being run on their shiny new MBPs so there's the whole systems administration jackassery. So why not then throw in a week of Android, another week of Scala and Clojure, when they barely understand syntax as a concept to further confuse them. So that's 12 weeks minus 4 weeks for the capstone gives you 8 weeks for all that I just listed, only 6 weeks for the core material. As I write this out, I'm even more amazed at the folks who came out of that and landed anything. Thankfully for a few of my friends and colleagues the front-end courses were a bit more focused and seemed to produce more working candidates. Sometimes a shyster comes along and hoodwinks people, sometimes you have incompetence, sometimes both. Either way it's the students left holding bag.

saidajigumi 7y ago

If you've spent months and $20k, now "wasted", in a school environment then I have serious questions about the school's feedback and gating systems. Why wasn't this individual given unambiguous signals about their progress (i.e. insufficient)? Even hard stops because they "failed a required class" or similar?

tibbon 7y ago
Oh wow, I could talk for hours about this. From what I've heard at a lot of schools, the teachers would like to "fail" people or have higher standards for entry - but management and sales (I mean, admissions) push back hard. A student leaving is money lost. A student just not doing well afterward is something that they can write off as some glitch. They'd rather have the latter. Or they want the instructors to do superhero efforts to get the student to pass. The teachers know within a week or two who is going to have real problems with the material. The schools do not want them to put assessments in place that would have them leave, because they want money.
- austenallred 7y ago
  That's the nice thing about the aligned incentives of Lambda School.
  - tibbon 7y ago
    I'd like to know more about that. It sounds like a great idea!
    - austenallred 7y ago
      Students pay $0 unless they get hired in a software role making $50k/yr or more. So it’s not in our best interest to string someone along who can’t write fizzbuzz. We use mastery-based progression so realistically that person wouldn’t progress past the first week or two, then would repeat until he or she had mastered the content.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  From what I understand, the system I saw had originally started with good standards. The first few small classes came out of the program fine, got internships and Junior positions at a variety of local firms. Then had grew bigger groups, lowered the bar for students, increased prices, reduced scholarships, more focus on financing via loans, and then changed the curriculum in response to the requests of local industry. On paper they all have reasonable explanations. Bigger groups? Well we just have so many more people applying! After all, they evangelized the hell out of the program, getting both graduates and local well-known business leaders to speak about the wonders of the program. Lowering the bar and offering loans? Well they're just opening it up to folks from non-traditional and more varied backgrounds. Don't want to be classist or whatever the hell else -ist! I'm self-taught, I sure didn't want to be one to pull the gate up behind me, and what's more I saw folks from non-traditional backgrounds do well. There is some validity to this. Changing the curriculum in response to your local board of industry advisors? Great idea! The students will be even more likely to land roles afterwards because those doing the hiring are telling us what their actual needs are. Well what it turned into was a tale of too many cooks. You have an already small time frame with which to teach core material further reduced to satisfy an advisor. Teaching Java and Spring? Why not throw in some Android! Well we'd be in remiss to not touch on Scala, oh and Clojure too! Because they need exposure to other languages! So now you have a three-month camp for someone that needs to learn Java basics of Spring, basics of their build tool, Gradle, so throw in some Grovvy, oh and basics of Hibernate... which means basics of databases. Oh, don't forget this is all being run on their shiny new MBPs so there's the whole systems administration jackassery. So why not then throw in a week of Android, another week of Scala and Clojure, when they barely understand syntax as a concept to further confuse them. So that's 12 weeks minus 4 weeks for the capstone gives you 8 weeks for all that I just listed, only 6 weeks for the core material. As I write this out, I'm even more amazed at the folks who came out of that and landed anything. Thankfully for a few of my friends and colleagues the front-end courses were a bit more focused and seemed to produce more working candidates. Sometimes a shyster comes along and hoodwinks people, sometimes you have incompetence, sometimes both. Either way it's the students left holding bag.