4 ms·

This is a weird post. A CS degree and programming bootcamps aren't mutually exclusive. I'd say they're not even really comparable. There's many reasons why a C

This is a weird post. A CS degree and programming bootcamps aren't mutually exclusive. I'd say they're not even really comparable. There's many reasons why a CS degree would not be a good fit for someone. Some people just don't perform well in an academic environment. Some people simply don't have the intelligence required for that kind of education; not all tech workers are "software engineer", there's "tech workers" stretching from PhD level all the way to near minimum wage. Some people might not have 3 or 4 years of time to spend on a CS degree. Some people might not be able to afford a CS degree, depending on where they live. Basically, I think your post just mentions a lot of the positives of a CS degree (without mentioning any of th negatives), and then somehow uses this to conclude that "bootcamps are rubbish" without actually saying anything about bootcamps themselves, as though there's a binary choice between the two where both options are always equally viable.

yabadabadoes 7y ago
I don't see how you get that conclusion. The OP seems to be saying bootcamps alone are insufficient and a poor choice for someone who will not be able to get a degree and wants career longevity. I've worked with a lot of people from the technical skills but no tech academics portion of the tech field. If they want to work in tech support or IT then it is not such a bad option, but that isn't really what bootcamps are trying to prepare them for.
- scarface74 7y ago
  How much good do you think that my CS degree from an unknown state college in 1996 has actually done me compared to keeping up with the latest tech, doing Resume Driven Development and staying buzzword compliant?
  - yabadabadoes 7y ago
    Having any STEM degree from anywhere has probably lowered your risks of a gap (or level drop) and potentially permanent drop in salary considerably, with more for it being in CS. The degree also gives you options like embedded or government positions that are pretty much unavailable without a CS (or EE) degree and have less change, making better per hour compensation if you don't like working more than 40 hours, 32 hours, 20 years for a pension? You certainly can compete with all the people without degrees where they can make as much total compensation as someone with a degree by going with the most instable parts of the field. But that competition will sound exhausting and the level you put in will be exhausting your other options in life while still probably being less energy than the bootstrap-only graduate.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Having any STEM degree from anywhere has probably lowered your risks of a gap (or level drop) and potentially permanent drop in salary considerably, with more for it being in CS. I’ve been working in the industry, in Atlanta for 20+ years. I’ve been on the market 6 times (stayed at one company almost a decade) and it has never taken me more than three weeks to have multiple offers. I can guarantee you that none of those jobs or interviews cared about my CS degree. The quickest was when my contract was over, I called a recruiter, had an interview four days later and an offer the same day. I’m no special snowflake, any halfway connected, developer with buzzword compliant resume could tell a similar story. My second job out of college my manager cared a lot more about my then encyclopedic knowledge of C from spending way too much time on comp.lang.c, my (self taught) experience with x86 assembly and that I was a big enough geek to be able to talk about some of the 65C02 assembly language hobby projects I did in middle and high school than my courses in Pascal, Basic, FORTRAN, and COBOL or even my one simple data structures class in college. Do you think consulting companies are recruiting me now based on my 20+ year old degree or my more recent experience as a team lead, AWS architect, and my being able to be talk about “The Well Architected Framework”, Domain Driven Design, and the Cloud Maturity Model? Yes these are all buzzwords to a certain extent but consultants get paid a lot for them. Whether I had a degree or not, if I couldn’t negotiate a salary commensurate with my experience - I would be doing it wrong. But that competition will sound exhausting and the level you put in will be exhausting your other options in life while still probably being less energy than the bootstrap-only graduate. Considering what I learned in college and how useless it was compared to what I taught myself even when I graduated or even more importantly the experience and networking I’ve done in the past twenty years, I really don’t see my career trajectory being that much different. The only thing college did useful for me was get my first job based on an internship the year before. In today’s world, if a boot camp (which didn’t exist back then) could have gotten my foot in the door, it wouldn’t have made any difference. As far as pension, it’s nothing special. A pension is just worth the present value of all the payments you hope to make after you retire, considering the difference in pay - and the flexibility - in the private industry even in Atlanta, you can easily save/invest enough over your career to create a greater annuitized income in retirement.
      - 7y ago
EpicEng 7y ago
> A CS degree and programming bootcamps aren't mutually exclusive Of course not, and the GP never said that they were, but bootcamps are often marketed as an alternative to a CS degree.

yabadabadoes 7y ago

I don't see how you get that conclusion. The OP seems to be saying bootcamps alone are insufficient and a poor choice for someone who will not be able to get a degree and wants career longevity. I've worked with a lot of people from the technical skills but no tech academics portion of the tech field. If they want to work in tech support or IT then it is not such a bad option, but that isn't really what bootcamps are trying to prepare them for.

scarface74 7y ago
How much good do you think that my CS degree from an unknown state college in 1996 has actually done me compared to keeping up with the latest tech, doing Resume Driven Development and staying buzzword compliant?
- yabadabadoes 7y ago
  Having any STEM degree from anywhere has probably lowered your risks of a gap (or level drop) and potentially permanent drop in salary considerably, with more for it being in CS. The degree also gives you options like embedded or government positions that are pretty much unavailable without a CS (or EE) degree and have less change, making better per hour compensation if you don't like working more than 40 hours, 32 hours, 20 years for a pension? You certainly can compete with all the people without degrees where they can make as much total compensation as someone with a degree by going with the most instable parts of the field. But that competition will sound exhausting and the level you put in will be exhausting your other options in life while still probably being less energy than the bootstrap-only graduate.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Having any STEM degree from anywhere has probably lowered your risks of a gap (or level drop) and potentially permanent drop in salary considerably, with more for it being in CS. I’ve been working in the industry, in Atlanta for 20+ years. I’ve been on the market 6 times (stayed at one company almost a decade) and it has never taken me more than three weeks to have multiple offers. I can guarantee you that none of those jobs or interviews cared about my CS degree. The quickest was when my contract was over, I called a recruiter, had an interview four days later and an offer the same day. I’m no special snowflake, any halfway connected, developer with buzzword compliant resume could tell a similar story. My second job out of college my manager cared a lot more about my then encyclopedic knowledge of C from spending way too much time on comp.lang.c, my (self taught) experience with x86 assembly and that I was a big enough geek to be able to talk about some of the 65C02 assembly language hobby projects I did in middle and high school than my courses in Pascal, Basic, FORTRAN, and COBOL or even my one simple data structures class in college. Do you think consulting companies are recruiting me now based on my 20+ year old degree or my more recent experience as a team lead, AWS architect, and my being able to be talk about “The Well Architected Framework”, Domain Driven Design, and the Cloud Maturity Model? Yes these are all buzzwords to a certain extent but consultants get paid a lot for them. Whether I had a degree or not, if I couldn’t negotiate a salary commensurate with my experience - I would be doing it wrong. But that competition will sound exhausting and the level you put in will be exhausting your other options in life while still probably being less energy than the bootstrap-only graduate. Considering what I learned in college and how useless it was compared to what I taught myself even when I graduated or even more importantly the experience and networking I’ve done in the past twenty years, I really don’t see my career trajectory being that much different. The only thing college did useful for me was get my first job based on an internship the year before. In today’s world, if a boot camp (which didn’t exist back then) could have gotten my foot in the door, it wouldn’t have made any difference. As far as pension, it’s nothing special. A pension is just worth the present value of all the payments you hope to make after you retire, considering the difference in pay - and the flexibility - in the private industry even in Atlanta, you can easily save/invest enough over your career to create a greater annuitized income in retirement.
    - 7y ago

EpicEng 7y ago

> A CS degree and programming bootcamps aren't mutually exclusive Of course not, and the GP never said that they were, but bootcamps are often marketed as an alternative to a CS degree.