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> I’ve never met a single boot camp person, and absolutely zero staff engineers are boot camp grads that I know of, unless they scrubbed it from their LinkedIn

> I’ve never met a single boot camp person, and absolutely zero staff engineers are boot camp grads that I know of, unless they scrubbed it from their LinkedIn and never talk about it. This comment has the same energy as the person I once worked with who told me (a lesbian) with total confidence that they'd never met a gay person before. Just because you aren't aware doesn't mean it's not happening all around you. It's very common for graduates to not talk about it, precisely because of the attitudes you see in these comments. It's easily left off LinkedIn because the experience only lasts a few months. And after you've had some success at the first job, it's not relevant anyway. How many people do you know in the industry without CS degrees? A lot of those folks came in through bootcamps, whether they cop to it or not. I considered it a shameful secret for years, and it's only now as I approach my tenth anniversary in the industry that I've become more open about it -- I'm confident my work now speaks for itself.

wittycardio 4y ago
Can also confirm worked at multiple faang never seen anyone with a bootcamp. Sorry to break it to you but It's pretty rare.
- dghlsakjg 4y ago
  I personally know people from my one bootcamp that have worked at Google and Apple. That’s without having looked to see if there are others I don’t know. People tend to play down their bootcamp experiences because of stigma associated with it. It’s possible that there are bootcamp grads that don’t mention it because a lot of people think lesser of them.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    I think the point of contention is with "Staff+" roles. I'm at a Big Tech company and we've seen lots of success with bootcampers, but I've noticed many of them hit a wall around Senior or Staff. Though I worked with an engineer who was super intelligent and a blast to work with and she is now a Staff engineer and was from a bootcamp. (At the time we were smaller and didn't really have any Staff level roles.) We've also had several bootcamp engineers move onto other Big Tech/FAANG companies so I have no idea what they're up to there. I can see why folks might want to hide their bootcamp path if they already have past non-bootcamp experience they can point to. In all fairness, most engineers, whether top-10 CS school or bootcamper, tend to hit a wall around Senior or Staff. Without knowing the true denominator of bootcampers we've hired, I can't properly answer the question of whether bootcampers tend to do better, the same, or worse at these levels than average.
  - wittycardio 4y ago
    Everyone I worked with had a undergrad is CS/math/engineering and plenty had masters / PhDs. That's generally what the profile of devs at faang looks like. I'm sure there are some people who have different backgrounds but it's not common.
ed25519FUUU 4y ago
> How many people do you know in the industry without CS degrees? A lot of those folks came in through bootcamps, whether they cop to it or not. People without CS degrees or degrees at all are fairly common, including at staff level and above. Many of these people have been in the industry since before bootcamps became a thing.
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  Previous comment showing a sample of 50 staff engineers shows only 1/50 having a non CS or CS adjacent degree and only 6 didn't show any degree. So idk if I would call that 'fairly common'.
CSMastermind 4y ago
I'm skeptical of that claim as well. I happen to have a roster of product and engineering employees at a FAANG company. It doesn't include any information about their education but what I can do is pick a selection of the staff level engineers at random and look them up on LinkedIn. Here's the highest level of education attained by the first 50 I looked at: 7 had a PhD in Computer Science 1 had a PhD in Physics 1 PhD in Electrical Engineering 12 had a master's degree in Computer Science 1 had a master's degree in Computer Engineering 1 had a master's degree in Information Management 13 had a bachelor's degree in Computer Science 1 had a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering 1 had a bachelor's degree in Information Technology 6 did not list any educational experience 6 I could not find on LinkedIn I did not see any that mentioned a coding bootcamp explicitly.
- jurassic 4y ago
  My claim was not that all or even most Staff engineers at prominent companies come from bootcamp backgrounds but that bootcampers can and have achieved this level of success. My bootcamp cohort was over 9 years ago... anybody who didn't wash out in the very early days has had plenty of time to grow and make significant contributions. Not sure why people find this surprising.

wittycardio 4y ago

Can also confirm worked at multiple faang never seen anyone with a bootcamp. Sorry to break it to you but It's pretty rare.

dghlsakjg 4y ago
I personally know people from my one bootcamp that have worked at Google and Apple. That’s without having looked to see if there are others I don’t know. People tend to play down their bootcamp experiences because of stigma associated with it. It’s possible that there are bootcamp grads that don’t mention it because a lot of people think lesser of them.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  I think the point of contention is with "Staff+" roles. I'm at a Big Tech company and we've seen lots of success with bootcampers, but I've noticed many of them hit a wall around Senior or Staff. Though I worked with an engineer who was super intelligent and a blast to work with and she is now a Staff engineer and was from a bootcamp. (At the time we were smaller and didn't really have any Staff level roles.) We've also had several bootcamp engineers move onto other Big Tech/FAANG companies so I have no idea what they're up to there. I can see why folks might want to hide their bootcamp path if they already have past non-bootcamp experience they can point to. In all fairness, most engineers, whether top-10 CS school or bootcamper, tend to hit a wall around Senior or Staff. Without knowing the true denominator of bootcampers we've hired, I can't properly answer the question of whether bootcampers tend to do better, the same, or worse at these levels than average.
- wittycardio 4y ago
  Everyone I worked with had a undergrad is CS/math/engineering and plenty had masters / PhDs. That's generally what the profile of devs at faang looks like. I'm sure there are some people who have different backgrounds but it's not common.

ed25519FUUU 4y ago

> How many people do you know in the industry without CS degrees? A lot of those folks came in through bootcamps, whether they cop to it or not. People without CS degrees or degrees at all are fairly common, including at staff level and above. Many of these people have been in the industry since before bootcamps became a thing.

adamsmith143 4y ago
Previous comment showing a sample of 50 staff engineers shows only 1/50 having a non CS or CS adjacent degree and only 6 didn't show any degree. So idk if I would call that 'fairly common'.

CSMastermind 4y ago

I'm skeptical of that claim as well. I happen to have a roster of product and engineering employees at a FAANG company. It doesn't include any information about their education but what I can do is pick a selection of the staff level engineers at random and look them up on LinkedIn. Here's the highest level of education attained by the first 50 I looked at: 7 had a PhD in Computer Science 1 had a PhD in Physics 1 PhD in Electrical Engineering 12 had a master's degree in Computer Science 1 had a master's degree in Computer Engineering 1 had a master's degree in Information Management 13 had a bachelor's degree in Computer Science 1 had a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering 1 had a bachelor's degree in Information Technology 6 did not list any educational experience 6 I could not find on LinkedIn I did not see any that mentioned a coding bootcamp explicitly.

jurassic 4y ago
My claim was not that all or even most Staff engineers at prominent companies come from bootcamp backgrounds but that bootcampers can and have achieved this level of success. My bootcamp cohort was over 9 years ago... anybody who didn't wash out in the very early days has had plenty of time to grow and make significant contributions. Not sure why people find this surprising.