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It seems it's another "bootcamp" like initiative trying to make a quick buck by treating computer science education as a trade. Naturally, people who end up goi

by apta 7y ago

It seems it's another "bootcamp" like initiative trying to make a quick buck by treating computer science education as a trade. Naturally, people who end up going to these programs end up working on web stuff or mobile apps. Maybe there's demand for this kind of work, but what people may not realize is that it's also diluting the value of people with a proper engineering education.

TallGuyShort 7y ago
If a proper engineering education can't compete or find a niche against people with a tradesman-style education, what's the value that a proper engineer education (or people who have one) brings to the table? What's the benefit in holding people back because they didn't go to school as long as you if they can do the job sufficiently well?
- pingyong 7y ago
  You have a point tbh. There are simply way more jobs for people to do simple web programming and making UIs that are essentially just DB interfaces for people who can't write SQL statements. It's boring, but it can still be hugely profitable for small/medium sized business who do everything with Excel or by hand currently. These businesses often have a huge need for relatively simple automation tasks. And they simply don't need someone who can write that in C++21 with intrinsics for absolute maximum performance - because even a badly written php script on a normal desktop PC chews through the few thousand database entries they have in 150 ms. But of course a human would need days for that, if not weeks. Do you get payed significantly more if you're in some sort of super high performance or embedded field and you constantly need to re-invent the wheel to squeeze out every bit of latency you can, plus you can spend an hour on every line of code to make sure it absolutely never fails, ever? Or if you're working as what is almost more of a mathematician on ground breaking ML algorithms? Sure. But there are also way less jobs like that. Also if everyone had the education for those jobs, it'd probably not be a healthy industry anymore.
  - TallGuyShort 7y ago
    I think we also need to get away from the idea that the only reason there are people excelling at squeezing every bit of latency out of an embedded system is because they went to a 4-year school. There are so many people who go get an associates because their career isn't going anywhere. So they go get a bachelor's because their career isn't going anywhere. Then they go get an MBA because their career isn't going anywhere. And then they're posting on LinkedIn looking for better offers, covered in debt, and think we should make degrees appear to be a costless decision. A degree doesn't change your personality, and sometimes that's the problem. We think too highly of degrees in too broad a context and think degrees === qualifications.
- jackthetab 7y ago
  But most employers don't care about having a "proper engineer". They want someone who knows $LATEST_HOT_FRAMEWORK which a trades education can provide. I've been in the trade professionally for 30 years. In only one interview have I been asked about how I would design something or (Linux) computer fundamentals. Every other interview was about how well I knew a specific technology.
  - TallGuyShort 7y ago
    Well that's my point: I'm usually asked design questions, so it's a good thing (or it's the cause) that I have an engineering-focused degree. But for other jobs, if people can learn how to make business applications like it's a trade, and it eliminates unreasonable costs and even eliminates a bunch of biases, how is that bad? There's no reason for me to try and compete head-to-head for those jobs. It's a different niche.
stale2002 7y ago
> is that it's also diluting the value of people with a proper engineering education. Ehh, so what? CS majors are rich. I don't particularly care if their value is diluted a bit.
DesaiAshu 7y ago
Your perspective highlights one of the biggest false choices of traditional education - that you can either get a well rounded education or learn vocational skills (but not both). 124 units that make up an accredited bachelors degree is a LOT of time to learn, and you can divide this across a mix of modern technologies, computer science theory and "proper engineering", liberal arts courses, and soft skills. Just because we have some courses that help you get a day one job doesn't make us a trade school. A lot more on this, and our origins here - https://www.makeschool.com/vision https://www.makeschool.com/vision
- DesaiAshu 7y ago
  Also, it's worth considering that the negative perspectives on more vocational focused institutions are propagating classism in the US. In many countries in Europe, it's common to go to a vocational school for undergrad then a research university for grad school. The system is built for mobility. In the US, you're tracked at age 18 (largely based on what you accomplished at age 16), locked into that system, and more or less judged for life. It's not particularly surprising that so many Americans detest well-educated coastal elites.
  - jmastrangelo 7y ago
    Isn't more the opposite? In Europe (well at least Germany, Europe is big) don't students get split up between a vocational track and university track pretty early in their educations? Even going to different kinds of high schools. Then for the university track people education is free but few vocational trackers end up going to university at all? Students in the US can only go in the institutions that admit them, but the vast majority of students can get admitted to their state school and get a decent degree. I agree tradesman are looked down upon by degreed workers, but thats more based around having/not having an education, not the pipeline that leads people there. (Also money talks in the US, and plenty of tradespeople make way more than those with useless degrees, and therefore end up with a good social standing later in life)
dannykwells 7y ago
This. What people miss is that the value of education isn't the job you get right after college, it's the job you get 10 to 15 years after college. A good education gives you fundamental knowledge to can leverage your whole life. Let's check back in with these trade programs in a few years and see how their people are doing then.
- DesaiAshu 7y ago
  To be clear, this is not a trade program. A bachelors degree is required (and screened by accreditors) to have a broad based education encompassing liberal arts and theoretical education.
tashoecraft 7y ago
Software engineering for a large portion of open positions is a trade, it's not computer science. Bootcamps make a lot of sense (when done well). Trying to pass off "web stuff" or "mobile apps" as work that is beneath someone with a "proper engineering education" is extremely elitist and just ridiculous. What the market is showing is that to get a developer who can contribute and make meaningful additions to add value to the company and codebase, a computer science degree is not a requirement. This has always been the case, there have always been people who self studied and got jobs. It largely depends on how motivated you are to pick up new things. A traditional cs education is still a great thing that holds a lot of value. What you learn there will give you a leg up when trying to learn new things throughout your career and if you just go to a bootcamp, you'll probably want to study a lot of those concepts in your career. Comp sci grads need to get off their high horse if they believe what you say. You're not special. What you learned can be learned by a lot of people and it is. It's not a wall gardened career of "nerds" who are separate and unique to the rest of the population. What Make School seems to be offering is a career focused education that is done at a accelerated pace. I'm not saying it competes with a top cs education, but with the many colleges and universities where people don't focus as much and don't have to apply themselves that hard. What I saw (and did) at school was not work that hard and get along just fine with the coursework I was given. Even when I started pushing myself harder, the school work just wasn't that hard. It wasn't until I went to a bootcamp, surrounded by students who were actually really interested in learning and being there, was I pushed as a student. Sure, there are a lot of bootcamps that do not turn out good students. Many of them have turned into cash grabs and it shows as there students can't get jobs and the schools are going under. But that does not mean all of them are bad and all the schools were useless. There are bootcamp grads at probably every company you can think of, contributing in a broad spectrum of languages across all ranges of products. People who are interested in learning and willing to push themselves will succeed (given circumstances) and bootcamps were just a way to get started.

by apta 7y ago

TallGuyShort 7y ago

If a proper engineering education can't compete or find a niche against people with a tradesman-style education, what's the value that a proper engineer education (or people who have one) brings to the table? What's the benefit in holding people back because they didn't go to school as long as you if they can do the job sufficiently well?

pingyong 7y ago
You have a point tbh. There are simply way more jobs for people to do simple web programming and making UIs that are essentially just DB interfaces for people who can't write SQL statements. It's boring, but it can still be hugely profitable for small/medium sized business who do everything with Excel or by hand currently. These businesses often have a huge need for relatively simple automation tasks. And they simply don't need someone who can write that in C++21 with intrinsics for absolute maximum performance - because even a badly written php script on a normal desktop PC chews through the few thousand database entries they have in 150 ms. But of course a human would need days for that, if not weeks. Do you get payed significantly more if you're in some sort of super high performance or embedded field and you constantly need to re-invent the wheel to squeeze out every bit of latency you can, plus you can spend an hour on every line of code to make sure it absolutely never fails, ever? Or if you're working as what is almost more of a mathematician on ground breaking ML algorithms? Sure. But there are also way less jobs like that. Also if everyone had the education for those jobs, it'd probably not be a healthy industry anymore.
- TallGuyShort 7y ago
  I think we also need to get away from the idea that the only reason there are people excelling at squeezing every bit of latency out of an embedded system is because they went to a 4-year school. There are so many people who go get an associates because their career isn't going anywhere. So they go get a bachelor's because their career isn't going anywhere. Then they go get an MBA because their career isn't going anywhere. And then they're posting on LinkedIn looking for better offers, covered in debt, and think we should make degrees appear to be a costless decision. A degree doesn't change your personality, and sometimes that's the problem. We think too highly of degrees in too broad a context and think degrees === qualifications.
jackthetab 7y ago
But most employers don't care about having a "proper engineer". They want someone who knows $LATEST_HOT_FRAMEWORK which a trades education can provide. I've been in the trade professionally for 30 years. In only one interview have I been asked about how I would design something or (Linux) computer fundamentals. Every other interview was about how well I knew a specific technology.
- TallGuyShort 7y ago
  Well that's my point: I'm usually asked design questions, so it's a good thing (or it's the cause) that I have an engineering-focused degree. But for other jobs, if people can learn how to make business applications like it's a trade, and it eliminates unreasonable costs and even eliminates a bunch of biases, how is that bad? There's no reason for me to try and compete head-to-head for those jobs. It's a different niche.

stale2002 7y ago

> is that it's also diluting the value of people with a proper engineering education. Ehh, so what? CS majors are rich. I don't particularly care if their value is diluted a bit.

DesaiAshu 7y ago

Your perspective highlights one of the biggest false choices of traditional education - that you can either get a well rounded education or learn vocational skills (but not both). 124 units that make up an accredited bachelors degree is a LOT of time to learn, and you can divide this across a mix of modern technologies, computer science theory and "proper engineering", liberal arts courses, and soft skills. Just because we have some courses that help you get a day one job doesn't make us a trade school. A lot more on this, and our origins here - https://www.makeschool.com/vision https://www.makeschool.com/vision

DesaiAshu 7y ago
Also, it's worth considering that the negative perspectives on more vocational focused institutions are propagating classism in the US. In many countries in Europe, it's common to go to a vocational school for undergrad then a research university for grad school. The system is built for mobility. In the US, you're tracked at age 18 (largely based on what you accomplished at age 16), locked into that system, and more or less judged for life. It's not particularly surprising that so many Americans detest well-educated coastal elites.
- jmastrangelo 7y ago
  Isn't more the opposite? In Europe (well at least Germany, Europe is big) don't students get split up between a vocational track and university track pretty early in their educations? Even going to different kinds of high schools. Then for the university track people education is free but few vocational trackers end up going to university at all? Students in the US can only go in the institutions that admit them, but the vast majority of students can get admitted to their state school and get a decent degree. I agree tradesman are looked down upon by degreed workers, but thats more based around having/not having an education, not the pipeline that leads people there. (Also money talks in the US, and plenty of tradespeople make way more than those with useless degrees, and therefore end up with a good social standing later in life)

dannykwells 7y ago

This. What people miss is that the value of education isn't the job you get right after college, it's the job you get 10 to 15 years after college. A good education gives you fundamental knowledge to can leverage your whole life. Let's check back in with these trade programs in a few years and see how their people are doing then.

DesaiAshu 7y ago
To be clear, this is not a trade program. A bachelors degree is required (and screened by accreditors) to have a broad based education encompassing liberal arts and theoretical education.

tashoecraft 7y ago

Software engineering for a large portion of open positions is a trade, it's not computer science. Bootcamps make a lot of sense (when done well). Trying to pass off "web stuff" or "mobile apps" as work that is beneath someone with a "proper engineering education" is extremely elitist and just ridiculous. What the market is showing is that to get a developer who can contribute and make meaningful additions to add value to the company and codebase, a computer science degree is not a requirement. This has always been the case, there have always been people who self studied and got jobs. It largely depends on how motivated you are to pick up new things. A traditional cs education is still a great thing that holds a lot of value. What you learn there will give you a leg up when trying to learn new things throughout your career and if you just go to a bootcamp, you'll probably want to study a lot of those concepts in your career. Comp sci grads need to get off their high horse if they believe what you say. You're not special. What you learned can be learned by a lot of people and it is. It's not a wall gardened career of "nerds" who are separate and unique to the rest of the population. What Make School seems to be offering is a career focused education that is done at a accelerated pace. I'm not saying it competes with a top cs education, but with the many colleges and universities where people don't focus as much and don't have to apply themselves that hard. What I saw (and did) at school was not work that hard and get along just fine with the coursework I was given. Even when I started pushing myself harder, the school work just wasn't that hard. It wasn't until I went to a bootcamp, surrounded by students who were actually really interested in learning and being there, was I pushed as a student. Sure, there are a lot of bootcamps that do not turn out good students. Many of them have turned into cash grabs and it shows as there students can't get jobs and the schools are going under. But that does not mean all of them are bad and all the schools were useless. There are bootcamp grads at probably every company you can think of, contributing in a broad spectrum of languages across all ranges of products. People who are interested in learning and willing to push themselves will succeed (given circumstances) and bootcamps were just a way to get started.