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IMHO, I think this is great. It's taking people with shit job prospects and starting them on a good career. I went through something like this, got paid ~33k

by treis 6y ago

IMHO, I think this is great. It's taking people with shit job prospects and starting them on a good career. I went through something like this, got paid ~33k for a year and had similar repayment conditions and non competes. I did my time, left that initial shithole of a company, and embarked on a lucrative career. It's no exaggeration to call it a life changing opportunity. I find it interesting to compare getting hired at these places to the big tech firms. I've applied to places with collectively thousands of open engineer roles. But they all have a process to find a reason not to hire you. Like one place I did well on 3/4 coding challenges and kind of bombed the system design interview. None of these companies will look at that and say, well this person has potential let's give them a chance. They all will say, well they don't raise the bar so let's just keep our dozens of needed roles unfilled.

bigcorpdev 6y ago
The (large) company I work with brought on a bunch of Revature contractors, attracted to the cost savings. By and large, their skills were lacking and their attitudes overconfident which resulted in negative contribution to various projects. The few that were good, got swept away when the company cancelled the entire contract. Those folks had to move to middle-of-nowhere America to work on projects that are unlikely to advance their skills much. They couldn’t afford to quit. This experience mirrors my experience with software devs on H1B’s— these firms wield too much control over people.
- treis 6y ago
  It's not a great working environment nor does it provide the best experience but compared to a service job it's miles ahead. They're paid above the national median and get a chance at a career where they can make several times the national median. Way better than making 30k as a waiter.
mywittyname 6y ago
> None of these companies will look at that and say, well this person has potential let's give them a chance. I'm sure these companies do. When I'm interviewing, potential is what I weight most in a candidate. Not to be an ass, but are you sure you are showing the potential you think you are?
- treis 6y ago
  >I'm sure these companies do. When I'm interviewing, potential is what I weight most in a candidate. Amazon has the most well known example: >When Amazon launched the hiring plan for tech job candidates in 1999, it was called the ‘barkeeper programme’. But that name implied maintaining a hiring standard, when actually the programme is about raising the standard with each hire. Every person hired should be better than 50 percent of those currently in similar roles. https://blog.aboutamazon.eu/working-at-amazon/what-is-a-bar-raiser-at-amazon https://blog.aboutamazon.eu/working-at-amazon/what-is-a-bar-... But that's pretty standard across the FANGs and trickles down into other tech companies. They're not interested in the 20% performer that might turn into a 50%+ one. They expect you to go work somewhere else, develop into that 50%+ programmer, and try again. >Not to be an ass, but are you sure you are showing the potential you think you are? Yes, I'm sure because I received positive feedback on a couple rounds before bombing out. I (according to them) did well on 3/4 coding challenges, terribly on the 4th, and bombed the system design. They chose to give more weight to that 4th test and the system design than the 3 good performances. And they're sitting on 200 open engineering roles for a not that big company.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    High potential candidates are great candidates that will be even better with time. Imagine you're a band auditioning for a guitarist, and not just any guitarist, but one with the potential to be Great. Would you really think someone with a mediocre audition fits the bill? Probably not. A potentially great guitarist will have already achieved certain milestones when you audition them. They will play all the songs you ask them to very well, but they will also show you something that really demonstrates their talent. You might think 3/4 is pretty good. And maybe it is. But candidates with high potential probably ace them, and have other qualities that aren't asked about in the interview. For example, the greatest intern I ever hired had no practical experience in our field, but developed a very successful game mod. Achievements like that are the mark of potential.
    - treis 6y ago
      Your post couldn't have illustrated my point better. Your (and most tech company's) idea of potential is acing a coding test or building something very successful. Revature's idea of potential is anyone off the street that shows technical aptitude.
hunterloftis 6y ago
> Like one place I did well on 3/4 coding challenges and kind of bombed the system design interview. None of these companies will look at that and say, well this person has potential let's give them a chance. They all will say, well they don't raise the bar so let's just keep our dozens of needed roles unfilled. A bad engineering hire can result in worse outcomes than leaving a role unfilled because developers exert so much leverage through software. The risk when hiring developers is that they will create highly-leveraged negative value. Taking your system design example, a poorly-designed system can: - cost millions of dollars directly by failing its functional requirements - cost millions more indirectly by being inefficient - divert energy from other initiatives to fix - dissuade other engineers from working at the company in the future By this, I don't mean to say that we should demand interviewing perfection, or that the industry's interviewing process can't be improved. But it's important to recognize that "having potential" includes the potential for both good, and dramatically bad, outcomes.
- treis 6y ago
  >Taking your system design example, a poorly-designed system can Sure, but I had 0 system design experience applying for a role with 0 system design responsibilities. No reason to expect I could design a system like that or that I would need to be able to for that role. I'm not saying that they're wrong necessarily. It's more a commentary on how there's a huge swath of companies with basically no entry level. You're expected to know CS fundamentals, a bunch of algorithms, and be able to design a highly scalable system.

by treis 6y ago

bigcorpdev 6y ago

The (large) company I work with brought on a bunch of Revature contractors, attracted to the cost savings. By and large, their skills were lacking and their attitudes overconfident which resulted in negative contribution to various projects. The few that were good, got swept away when the company cancelled the entire contract. Those folks had to move to middle-of-nowhere America to work on projects that are unlikely to advance their skills much. They couldn’t afford to quit. This experience mirrors my experience with software devs on H1B’s— these firms wield too much control over people.

treis 6y ago
It's not a great working environment nor does it provide the best experience but compared to a service job it's miles ahead. They're paid above the national median and get a chance at a career where they can make several times the national median. Way better than making 30k as a waiter.

mywittyname 6y ago

> None of these companies will look at that and say, well this person has potential let's give them a chance. I'm sure these companies do. When I'm interviewing, potential is what I weight most in a candidate. Not to be an ass, but are you sure you are showing the potential you think you are?

treis 6y ago
>I'm sure these companies do. When I'm interviewing, potential is what I weight most in a candidate. Amazon has the most well known example: >When Amazon launched the hiring plan for tech job candidates in 1999, it was called the ‘barkeeper programme’. But that name implied maintaining a hiring standard, when actually the programme is about raising the standard with each hire. Every person hired should be better than 50 percent of those currently in similar roles. https://blog.aboutamazon.eu/working-at-amazon/what-is-a-bar-raiser-at-amazon https://blog.aboutamazon.eu/working-at-amazon/what-is-a-bar-... But that's pretty standard across the FANGs and trickles down into other tech companies. They're not interested in the 20% performer that might turn into a 50%+ one. They expect you to go work somewhere else, develop into that 50%+ programmer, and try again. >Not to be an ass, but are you sure you are showing the potential you think you are? Yes, I'm sure because I received positive feedback on a couple rounds before bombing out. I (according to them) did well on 3/4 coding challenges, terribly on the 4th, and bombed the system design. They chose to give more weight to that 4th test and the system design than the 3 good performances. And they're sitting on 200 open engineering roles for a not that big company.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  High potential candidates are great candidates that will be even better with time. Imagine you're a band auditioning for a guitarist, and not just any guitarist, but one with the potential to be Great. Would you really think someone with a mediocre audition fits the bill? Probably not. A potentially great guitarist will have already achieved certain milestones when you audition them. They will play all the songs you ask them to very well, but they will also show you something that really demonstrates their talent. You might think 3/4 is pretty good. And maybe it is. But candidates with high potential probably ace them, and have other qualities that aren't asked about in the interview. For example, the greatest intern I ever hired had no practical experience in our field, but developed a very successful game mod. Achievements like that are the mark of potential.
  - treis 6y ago
    Your post couldn't have illustrated my point better. Your (and most tech company's) idea of potential is acing a coding test or building something very successful. Revature's idea of potential is anyone off the street that shows technical aptitude.

hunterloftis 6y ago

> Like one place I did well on 3/4 coding challenges and kind of bombed the system design interview. None of these companies will look at that and say, well this person has potential let's give them a chance. They all will say, well they don't raise the bar so let's just keep our dozens of needed roles unfilled. A bad engineering hire can result in worse outcomes than leaving a role unfilled because developers exert so much leverage through software. The risk when hiring developers is that they will create highly-leveraged negative value. Taking your system design example, a poorly-designed system can: - cost millions of dollars directly by failing its functional requirements - cost millions more indirectly by being inefficient - divert energy from other initiatives to fix - dissuade other engineers from working at the company in the future By this, I don't mean to say that we should demand interviewing perfection, or that the industry's interviewing process can't be improved. But it's important to recognize that "having potential" includes the potential for both good, and dramatically bad, outcomes.

treis 6y ago
>Taking your system design example, a poorly-designed system can Sure, but I had 0 system design experience applying for a role with 0 system design responsibilities. No reason to expect I could design a system like that or that I would need to be able to for that role. I'm not saying that they're wrong necessarily. It's more a commentary on how there's a huge swath of companies with basically no entry level. You're expected to know CS fundamentals, a bunch of algorithms, and be able to design a highly scalable system.