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Interestingly enough, a close relative of mine paid 17k to do Hack Reactor and didn’t get a job. They eventually hired her to be a TA. Overall, if I notice a c

Interestingly enough, a close relative of mine paid 17k to do Hack Reactor and didn’t get a job. They eventually hired her to be a TA. Overall, if I notice a company hiring a lot of boot campers, I try to leave and let them have mostly entry level workers. Their product and codebase eventually reflects their staff (inexperienced). If you stick around and shepherd them, you more or less undervalue yourself in the long term. Just let them run wild until the company decides ‘this was a mistake’. It’s nothing personal, it’s just business. This is a lesson I learned the hard way early in my career where I literally trained my future replacements. Literally went out of my way to train them. This is a seriously amateur move, and a tough lesson to learn since no one wants to be a jaded asshole, but that’s just how the business is.

brundolf 5y ago
I get the strong impression you're over-projecting your personal feelings, which are rooted in a bad experience you had. I've worked with probably a dozen bootcampers over the years and all but one have been great. Some of them were junior at the time, some of them were not. The junior devs were junior devs; nothing wrong with that. If a company is hiring nothing but entry-level/junior devs then yes, they will have problems. But that has nothing to do with bootcamps. And I'm not sure what "try[ing] to leave and let them have mostly entry level workers" accomplishes.
- crate_barre 5y ago
  Again, it’s not personal. I’m simply saying I don’t want to facilitate the macro-level game. The same way I don’t support out-sourcing. I am well versed with the gauntlet interviews they throw at mid/senior level, and the cost-cutting they do with entry-level/out-sourcing. They run a very economic game on both ends, and it’s simply not in my interest (and many people’s interest, even the new bootcampers who will one day not be new anymore) to help these processes. Bootcampers are really going to love the new bootcampers in a few years that will make their 3 months of training look stupid in the eyes of the business. This system will come back around and haunt those who it helped, nothing is that easy. Also, yes, I have a perspective. I think the critique of projection generally dehumanizes anyone’s experience. Yes, of course, this is from my experience - why wouldn’t it be? Businesses drive prices down, create career choke points for anyone involved long term (cost-cutting via capping careers). Now why the hell would help with this?
  - brundolf 5y ago
    All I'm saying is that you were framing your experience as universal truth, instead of as just your experience. And it can't be universal, because it doesn't line up with my experience at all. Parts of the original comment also dipped into reinforcing stereotypes about "bootcampers" that - again - don't hold up in my experience, and could be discouraging to new/potential devs here.
honkycat 5y ago
I've had the same experience. Noobs are cheap but they write noob code. They can be useful if lead by a good senior engineer, but usually when companies start getting cheap, the senior engineers are already half-way out the door. This literally happened at a start-up I was a foundational engineer at. They started hiring noobs, a year later the entire senior engineering team left after getting stiffed a raise. They are still struggling to pay off the technical debt.

brundolf 5y ago

I get the strong impression you're over-projecting your personal feelings, which are rooted in a bad experience you had. I've worked with probably a dozen bootcampers over the years and all but one have been great. Some of them were junior at the time, some of them were not. The junior devs were junior devs; nothing wrong with that. If a company is hiring nothing but entry-level/junior devs then yes, they will have problems. But that has nothing to do with bootcamps. And I'm not sure what "try[ing] to leave and let them have mostly entry level workers" accomplishes.

crate_barre 5y ago
Again, it’s not personal. I’m simply saying I don’t want to facilitate the macro-level game. The same way I don’t support out-sourcing. I am well versed with the gauntlet interviews they throw at mid/senior level, and the cost-cutting they do with entry-level/out-sourcing. They run a very economic game on both ends, and it’s simply not in my interest (and many people’s interest, even the new bootcampers who will one day not be new anymore) to help these processes. Bootcampers are really going to love the new bootcampers in a few years that will make their 3 months of training look stupid in the eyes of the business. This system will come back around and haunt those who it helped, nothing is that easy. Also, yes, I have a perspective. I think the critique of projection generally dehumanizes anyone’s experience. Yes, of course, this is from my experience - why wouldn’t it be? Businesses drive prices down, create career choke points for anyone involved long term (cost-cutting via capping careers). Now why the hell would help with this?
- brundolf 5y ago
  All I'm saying is that you were framing your experience as universal truth, instead of as just your experience. And it can't be universal, because it doesn't line up with my experience at all. Parts of the original comment also dipped into reinforcing stereotypes about "bootcampers" that - again - don't hold up in my experience, and could be discouraging to new/potential devs here.

honkycat 5y ago

I've had the same experience. Noobs are cheap but they write noob code. They can be useful if lead by a good senior engineer, but usually when companies start getting cheap, the senior engineers are already half-way out the door. This literally happened at a start-up I was a foundational engineer at. They started hiring noobs, a year later the entire senior engineering team left after getting stiffed a raise. They are still struggling to pay off the technical debt.