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Ask HN: Reverse Bootcamp Idea

9 points by codegeek 7y ago

I keep thinking about this so I thought to ask HN's opinion. We all know what bootcamps do. They charge you to train you and then you hope to get a job at a good company. As a bootstrapped SAAS founder, I am finding it very hard to try and attract experienced talent as I cannot pay the high salaries for senior folks. However, I can afford to pay 60-70K USD/Year with profit sharing options. The issue is that you have to work with us in our office at least for first few months before I am comfortable doing remote. So I thought of an idea where I would run a web dev bootcamp as an employer. I will pay entry level folks to join the bootcamp and out of the batch, I will then hire the best candidates once bootcamp is over. So there really is no downside to the bootcampers. They get paid to learn but I get to choose who I want to hire from that batch. Win win ?

Juliate 7y ago
Serious question: if you are not comfortable doing remote at once, what will make it more comfortable thereafter? What will this bootcamp, or this preliminary period in the office, change to the fact you're not comfortable with remote working?
- codegeek 7y ago
  We are a very small team and for entry level candidates, I believe in person collaboration/training will be better. This is very contextual. We already have some remote developers as well but for this role, in person is required. Once they are ready to start being remote, we will make it happen. Honest thoughts.
- probinso 7y ago
  I have never seen a bootcamp that prioritizes teaching collaborative remote workflows. This is a learned skill that many experienced software engineers still have no experience with. I Love the idea of incorporating collaboration and remote-flow into a educational model. It makes for stronger long term engineers [] I taught at several bootcamps, I was discouraged from teaching with ticketing or including asynchronous communication. Rarely do they cover strategies for success across time zones.
  - jdhawk 7y ago
    That's because they are two very disparate skills. One is how to create software products, and the other is how to be an effective employee in a specific style of management. The second is much more unique to the company, and honestly easier to grasp.
brunoc 7y ago
Wouldn't you be spending the money you save on salaries on training your new "reverse bootcamp" employees? Hiring entry level people and giving them work isn't the same as teaching. The costs involved in actually training them has to be paid from your own pockets after all. Might be possible to have them sign an employment contract beforehand and simply have them join an existing, reputable bootcamp.
plasticbugs 7y ago
Speaking as someone who went through a Bay Area bootcamp (Hack Reactor) it seems to me that it would be more cost-effective to work with a local reputable bootcamp and interview candidates who will soon be graduating. You won't get the top of the class with your salary offering, but I would confidently hire any of the people who came out of my bootcamp's cohort. You should also consider remote candidates from places where that salary is livable (not SF Bay Area or NYC). I would say nearly 100% of my bootcamp cohort came in very rough, with little to no production experience and not ready to do any kind of productive work. The bootcamp really started with the basics which we worked on for 10 hours a day / 6 days a week in JavaScript - data structures, algorithms, and many many toy problems. After six weeks of that, we were introduced to Node, then Backbone and finally React and Angular. I don't think you want to invest that amount of time in developing a curriculum and becoming a bootcamp just to get some cheaper junior engineers. There's a reason why bootcamps are not super-lucrative -- good instructors cost money and there's a ton of competition from other bootcamps so they have to price their product competitively.
masukomi 7y ago
speaking as someone who's interviewed a LOT of bootcamp "graduates" i'd also say it's a terrible waste of money and human resources. Let the bootcamps do it. There are way to many people who go through them who aren't up to the standards any reasonable company would want. There are definitely some gems in there BUT... also teaching is actually really hard, and to do it right requires someone who understands how people learn, not just someone who knows how to do x. also, teaching bootcamp cirriculim is a full time job for multiple people. You up for that? > I will pay entry level folks to join the bootcamp and out of the batch, I will then hire the best candidates once bootcamp is over. So there really is no downside to the bootcampers. as a somewhat snarky aside: The idea of taking low paid people and teach them to do a task, and then if they do it really well, you pay them more to continue doing it, is an established idea called an internship.
- codegeek 7y ago
  Well, there you go. I probably should hire interns and your comment gives me more clarity. Thank you for that.
SavageBeast 7y ago
Attempting to hire dev resources that do not have Computer Science degrees and a SOLID grasp of CS fundamentals is a suicide mission. The FAANGs have already figured this out. As a bootstrapped founder you should strongly consider that behaving like a FAANG makes you much more likely to be successful like a FAANG. What are you going to do with these Reverse Bootcampers when one of your paying customers demands a Web Scale API implementation of The Blue Eyed Island problem? What happens when the pager goes off in the night because the recursive palindrome finder service is stack overflowing? Personally I really don't want to be on the phone with an angry customer trying to explain how the sub-optimal time complexity of my products sorting algos is "good enough" or giving other excuses ("..results typically come back in <400ms"). I'm sure you can get a bunch of junior folks in and train them to repeatably perform common dev tasks, bang out some functional Javascript, maybe even take some data from a form on a website and query a database with it but unless you're willing to get a crop of campers and pay them to memorize Cracking The Code Interview (6th edition) then I feel like you're probably just wasting your time.
duxup 7y ago
Isn't your time more valuable working than training? I did a bootcamp full time M-F for 3 months, there was an instructor and two assistants, and there were a handful of us capable of being productive.... that's a lot of time you spend to get a few of us.

9 points by codegeek 7y ago

Juliate 7y ago

Serious question: if you are not comfortable doing remote at once, what will make it more comfortable thereafter? What will this bootcamp, or this preliminary period in the office, change to the fact you're not comfortable with remote working?

codegeek 7y ago
We are a very small team and for entry level candidates, I believe in person collaboration/training will be better. This is very contextual. We already have some remote developers as well but for this role, in person is required. Once they are ready to start being remote, we will make it happen. Honest thoughts.
probinso 7y ago
I have never seen a bootcamp that prioritizes teaching collaborative remote workflows. This is a learned skill that many experienced software engineers still have no experience with. I Love the idea of incorporating collaboration and remote-flow into a educational model. It makes for stronger long term engineers [] I taught at several bootcamps, I was discouraged from teaching with ticketing or including asynchronous communication. Rarely do they cover strategies for success across time zones.
- jdhawk 7y ago
  That's because they are two very disparate skills. One is how to create software products, and the other is how to be an effective employee in a specific style of management. The second is much more unique to the company, and honestly easier to grasp.

brunoc 7y ago

Wouldn't you be spending the money you save on salaries on training your new "reverse bootcamp" employees? Hiring entry level people and giving them work isn't the same as teaching. The costs involved in actually training them has to be paid from your own pockets after all. Might be possible to have them sign an employment contract beforehand and simply have them join an existing, reputable bootcamp.

plasticbugs 7y ago

Speaking as someone who went through a Bay Area bootcamp (Hack Reactor) it seems to me that it would be more cost-effective to work with a local reputable bootcamp and interview candidates who will soon be graduating. You won't get the top of the class with your salary offering, but I would confidently hire any of the people who came out of my bootcamp's cohort. You should also consider remote candidates from places where that salary is livable (not SF Bay Area or NYC). I would say nearly 100% of my bootcamp cohort came in very rough, with little to no production experience and not ready to do any kind of productive work. The bootcamp really started with the basics which we worked on for 10 hours a day / 6 days a week in JavaScript - data structures, algorithms, and many many toy problems. After six weeks of that, we were introduced to Node, then Backbone and finally React and Angular. I don't think you want to invest that amount of time in developing a curriculum and becoming a bootcamp just to get some cheaper junior engineers. There's a reason why bootcamps are not super-lucrative -- good instructors cost money and there's a ton of competition from other bootcamps so they have to price their product competitively.

masukomi 7y ago

speaking as someone who's interviewed a LOT of bootcamp "graduates" i'd also say it's a terrible waste of money and human resources. Let the bootcamps do it. There are way to many people who go through them who aren't up to the standards any reasonable company would want. There are definitely some gems in there BUT... also teaching is actually really hard, and to do it right requires someone who understands how people learn, not just someone who knows how to do x. also, teaching bootcamp cirriculim is a full time job for multiple people. You up for that? > I will pay entry level folks to join the bootcamp and out of the batch, I will then hire the best candidates once bootcamp is over. So there really is no downside to the bootcampers. as a somewhat snarky aside: The idea of taking low paid people and teach them to do a task, and then if they do it really well, you pay them more to continue doing it, is an established idea called an internship.

codegeek 7y ago
Well, there you go. I probably should hire interns and your comment gives me more clarity. Thank you for that.

SavageBeast 7y ago

Attempting to hire dev resources that do not have Computer Science degrees and a SOLID grasp of CS fundamentals is a suicide mission. The FAANGs have already figured this out. As a bootstrapped founder you should strongly consider that behaving like a FAANG makes you much more likely to be successful like a FAANG. What are you going to do with these Reverse Bootcampers when one of your paying customers demands a Web Scale API implementation of The Blue Eyed Island problem? What happens when the pager goes off in the night because the recursive palindrome finder service is stack overflowing? Personally I really don't want to be on the phone with an angry customer trying to explain how the sub-optimal time complexity of my products sorting algos is "good enough" or giving other excuses ("..results typically come back in <400ms"). I'm sure you can get a bunch of junior folks in and train them to repeatably perform common dev tasks, bang out some functional Javascript, maybe even take some data from a form on a website and query a database with it but unless you're willing to get a crop of campers and pay them to memorize Cracking The Code Interview (6th edition) then I feel like you're probably just wasting your time.

duxup 7y ago

Isn't your time more valuable working than training? I did a bootcamp full time M-F for 3 months, there was an instructor and two assistants, and there were a handful of us capable of being productive.... that's a lot of time you spend to get a few of us.