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If it helps, they probably still would have done it, regardless of what you said. I've found that even friends and family you explicitly tell "bootcamps are a

If it helps, they probably still would have done it, regardless of what you said. I've found that even friends and family you explicitly tell "bootcamps are a scam" will ignore your advice, quit their jobs, drop 10's of thousands of their limited savings into them, then avoid the subject afterwards when they can't find those much promised programming jobs. That's how good bootcamp marketing is.

travisjungroth 7y ago
My girlfriend went to a bootcamp and got a job, but won’t recommend them. She got lucky with timing. The classes after her haven’t been so lucky.
tracker1 7y ago
On the other side of the table, interviewing bootcamp grads... Only granted interviews for about 10-15% of the ones presented. Of those, most only did what was assigned, which really wasn't enough to be close to productive in terms of ramp up, and indicated that they wouldn't put the effort needed to being productive employees. In the end, I'm really supportive of those who come into software outside college. I never went to college and some of the best developers I've worked with never went. What we do share in common is a LOT of effort beyond the minimum in terms of self driven learning and projects on the side. Open-source gives a huge amount of potentially highly visible work to demonstrate. Yes, some may turn their noses up at someone who didn't go through a college program. Regardless of the path you take, you have to do more than just show up, and some really just don't have the natural ability to do certain kinds of work. My advice to people is grab a book or two, and try to make something useful to you. Do it on github/gitlab if you can. It may be a crappy, one-off implementation, but you'll probably learn more than a bootcamp, and in the end you get something you and others might find useful.
- lhuser123 7y ago
  I know a Lambda student that’s now on what they call labs. Not sure how to explain it but students are in teams & meetings with project managers, designers, other teams, etc. It kind of resemble working in a big organization. They are actually working in a real project with a real investor. I’m no expert, but think that the exposure to real interactions in an environment like that could help in the job search.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    I cannot speak for Lambda specifically... but have been on interviews on the other side. When your only technical understanding as a developer is literally what you were assigned, with no personal effort beyond that, you will be very unlikely to be able to fit into most development environments, which imho requires a certain amount of discovery, research and ongoing reading. You cannot just sit on your knowledge for 20+ years in this career path... some come close, but they hit a wall... I've also seen that when interviewing those with 20+ years of experience with nothing more recent. In the end if you cannot/will-not grow, and this can include taking time during work hours, you won't succeed. When you're starting out, you have to bury yourself with learning to get a leg up for at least a few years. Later, you can get by with reading a few articles a day and maybe a couple experiments over a year. But you can not stop learning. And not putting extra effort in when starting out, to me at least, is a bad sign that you won't do well without someone holding your hand.
    - lhuser123 7y ago
      Thanks for sharing. May I ask, how can an applicant demonstrate “certain amount of discovery, research and ongoing reading“? In this specific case, the student have a few GitHub repos of courses taken before enrolling in Lambda. One repo is in a different programming language. Would that help?

travisjungroth 7y ago

My girlfriend went to a bootcamp and got a job, but won’t recommend them. She got lucky with timing. The classes after her haven’t been so lucky.

tracker1 7y ago

On the other side of the table, interviewing bootcamp grads... Only granted interviews for about 10-15% of the ones presented. Of those, most only did what was assigned, which really wasn't enough to be close to productive in terms of ramp up, and indicated that they wouldn't put the effort needed to being productive employees. In the end, I'm really supportive of those who come into software outside college. I never went to college and some of the best developers I've worked with never went. What we do share in common is a LOT of effort beyond the minimum in terms of self driven learning and projects on the side. Open-source gives a huge amount of potentially highly visible work to demonstrate. Yes, some may turn their noses up at someone who didn't go through a college program. Regardless of the path you take, you have to do more than just show up, and some really just don't have the natural ability to do certain kinds of work. My advice to people is grab a book or two, and try to make something useful to you. Do it on github/gitlab if you can. It may be a crappy, one-off implementation, but you'll probably learn more than a bootcamp, and in the end you get something you and others might find useful.

lhuser123 7y ago
I know a Lambda student that’s now on what they call labs. Not sure how to explain it but students are in teams & meetings with project managers, designers, other teams, etc. It kind of resemble working in a big organization. They are actually working in a real project with a real investor. I’m no expert, but think that the exposure to real interactions in an environment like that could help in the job search.
- tracker1 7y ago
  I cannot speak for Lambda specifically... but have been on interviews on the other side. When your only technical understanding as a developer is literally what you were assigned, with no personal effort beyond that, you will be very unlikely to be able to fit into most development environments, which imho requires a certain amount of discovery, research and ongoing reading. You cannot just sit on your knowledge for 20+ years in this career path... some come close, but they hit a wall... I've also seen that when interviewing those with 20+ years of experience with nothing more recent. In the end if you cannot/will-not grow, and this can include taking time during work hours, you won't succeed. When you're starting out, you have to bury yourself with learning to get a leg up for at least a few years. Later, you can get by with reading a few articles a day and maybe a couple experiments over a year. But you can not stop learning. And not putting extra effort in when starting out, to me at least, is a bad sign that you won't do well without someone holding your hand.
  - lhuser123 7y ago
    Thanks for sharing. May I ask, how can an applicant demonstrate “certain amount of discovery, research and ongoing reading“? In this specific case, the student have a few GitHub repos of courses taken before enrolling in Lambda. One repo is in a different programming language. Would that help?