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If I may comment on the abstract: I don’t get these bootcamps. I’ve been programming for 30 years and I still feel like there’s another 60% of the craft to lear

If I may comment on the abstract: I don’t get these bootcamps. I’ve been programming for 30 years and I still feel like there’s another 60% of the craft to learn. More data structures, algorithms, functional strategies, large system architecture, read/write fanning, I’m just getting into websockets now. The list goes on. These people are getting hired as programmers? To do what?

austenallred 4y ago
If your point is one must understand 100% of computing before being hired as a software engineer none of us would ever be hired. You can produce value long before you understand everything there is to know, of course, and a lot of being a software engineer is being able to problem solve on the job. BloomTech exists to help people get to the point they can do that and create value. No school can pretend to teach everything there possibly could be to know about how software works.
- user3939382 4y ago
  My point isn’t to learn 100% but how about 5 or 10? The complexity of the work just doesn’t seem to match the duration of these programs.
  - austenallred 4y ago
    I can't speak for other code bootcamps, but BloomTech is at 960+ hours for our shortest program, and considerably longer for our longer ones. And it's really hard, intentionally. That's an absolute minimum six months full-time (and a lot of students spen dmore than 40 hours/week) with no breaks; longer hour for hour than the time in a CS degree spent on software-related topics (though those vary far more widely than most of us like to pretend). If you eliminate context switching, have the right tooling and instruction, yeah you aren't coming out the other side a principal engineer, but you can certainly build stuff, contribute to code the right way on teams, understand data structures and algorithms enough to make stuff performant, problem solve and build a whole lot of stuff and a lot of value. That's enough to start getting paid, and 30 years later you can continue to marvel at how you're still just scratching the surface. That's kind of beautiful, actually.
    - user3939382 4y ago
      > BloomTech is at 960+ hours for our shortest program I helped run a large school for 6 years with 4,000 students/year who took an 850 hour program. Sad to say that amount of training isn't necessarily as much as it sounds.
      - austenallred 4y ago
        850 actual hours, butt-in-seat and required, or 850 scheduled hours?
        user3939382 4y ago
        The rules are complex but feds require 90% attendance for clock hour programs receiving financial aid.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    A lot of software jobs are collecting data from a source, doing something with that data, and then putting it somewhere. It’s just CRUD over and over.
gobias1234 4y ago
To do the frontend work with more recent tech like websockets that you're just now learning about. In all seriousness, considering the amount of bootcamp grads now at all (yes all) levels of the industry, this is an out of touch take. They're getting hired to work hard at entry level software engineering jobs, and most of them quickly move beyond that.
- user3939382 4y ago
  > this is an out of touch take I'll grant that possibility. Also, my anecdata isn't an objective truth right? But I can only judge by what I know and have seen. I wouldn't hire myself at my 2 year mark, all I could produce then by my standards now is a bunch of code I'd have to fix. I've had the same experience with junior developers I've hired. Maybe these bootcamp grads are great, I haven't hired them because of the issue I raised so I don't actually know.
lkrubner 4y ago
I've hired several developers straight out of dev boot camps and I've had good experiences with them. I wrote about that here: http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/the-grace-hopper-division-of-fullstack-academy-helps-create-some-amazing-programmers http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/the-grace-hopper-divi...
decohen 4y ago
Several of my relatives are Mechanical Engineers. In that field, it seems typical to have both engineers and technicians working on projects. Engineers are responsible for design, and have degrees; Technicians do assembly and maintenance, and only need on-the-job training. I’ve often wondered what our industry would look like if we adopted a similar distinction. In which case, bootcamp graduates would be a natural fit for a technician role.
- ZephyrBlu 4y ago
  That's just gatekeeping based on having a degree.
- s3000 4y ago
  The difference is that mechanical engineers need math to understand what they are doing. Engineers are essentially applied mathematicians. They are responsible for design because you cannot design without math. For software development, you don't need math. This may change when data science is taken more serious and companies have to guarantee the quality of the derived knowledge. So it's the other way round. When our industry changes, we will adopt a similar distinction. Software doesn't need math because testing is enough. Unlike physical objects, it doesn't cost much to test software, especially because reproduction is almost free. Additionally, with SaaS, software doesn't run unsupervised and thus there is constant testing. In that environment software can almost always be adjusted and reproduced when there are problems.
mym1990 4y ago
Graduated from a boot camp in 2014 and I can confidently say I did not learn a ton(3 months 5 days a week) but it did reinforce my desire that I wanted to be in the field and that I wanted to learn more. In some ways the whole thing is a money grab, but when I went in to my first job interview after the bootcamp(which wasn't even a junior dev role, it was a bit lower on the rung), they gave 0 craps about my 4 year undergrad degree and we instead had a lengthy conversation about my bootcamp experience(I did end up getting that job).
JamesBarney 4y ago
People hire junior devs everyday. These people are at least a prepared as most of the folks coming out of CS programs. And are definitely more prepared than I was.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

austenallred 4y ago

If your point is one must understand 100% of computing before being hired as a software engineer none of us would ever be hired. You can produce value long before you understand everything there is to know, of course, and a lot of being a software engineer is being able to problem solve on the job. BloomTech exists to help people get to the point they can do that and create value. No school can pretend to teach everything there possibly could be to know about how software works.

user3939382 4y ago
My point isn’t to learn 100% but how about 5 or 10? The complexity of the work just doesn’t seem to match the duration of these programs.
- austenallred 4y ago
  I can't speak for other code bootcamps, but BloomTech is at 960+ hours for our shortest program, and considerably longer for our longer ones. And it's really hard, intentionally. That's an absolute minimum six months full-time (and a lot of students spen dmore than 40 hours/week) with no breaks; longer hour for hour than the time in a CS degree spent on software-related topics (though those vary far more widely than most of us like to pretend). If you eliminate context switching, have the right tooling and instruction, yeah you aren't coming out the other side a principal engineer, but you can certainly build stuff, contribute to code the right way on teams, understand data structures and algorithms enough to make stuff performant, problem solve and build a whole lot of stuff and a lot of value. That's enough to start getting paid, and 30 years later you can continue to marvel at how you're still just scratching the surface. That's kind of beautiful, actually.
  - user3939382 4y ago
    > BloomTech is at 960+ hours for our shortest program I helped run a large school for 6 years with 4,000 students/year who took an 850 hour program. Sad to say that amount of training isn't necessarily as much as it sounds.
    - austenallred 4y ago
      850 actual hours, butt-in-seat and required, or 850 scheduled hours?
      - user3939382 4y ago
        The rules are complex but feds require 90% attendance for clock hour programs receiving financial aid.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  A lot of software jobs are collecting data from a source, doing something with that data, and then putting it somewhere. It’s just CRUD over and over.

gobias1234 4y ago

To do the frontend work with more recent tech like websockets that you're just now learning about. In all seriousness, considering the amount of bootcamp grads now at all (yes all) levels of the industry, this is an out of touch take. They're getting hired to work hard at entry level software engineering jobs, and most of them quickly move beyond that.

user3939382 4y ago
> this is an out of touch take I'll grant that possibility. Also, my anecdata isn't an objective truth right? But I can only judge by what I know and have seen. I wouldn't hire myself at my 2 year mark, all I could produce then by my standards now is a bunch of code I'd have to fix. I've had the same experience with junior developers I've hired. Maybe these bootcamp grads are great, I haven't hired them because of the issue I raised so I don't actually know.

lkrubner 4y ago

I've hired several developers straight out of dev boot camps and I've had good experiences with them. I wrote about that here: http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/the-grace-hopper-division-of-fullstack-academy-helps-create-some-amazing-programmers http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/the-grace-hopper-divi...

decohen 4y ago

Several of my relatives are Mechanical Engineers. In that field, it seems typical to have both engineers and technicians working on projects. Engineers are responsible for design, and have degrees; Technicians do assembly and maintenance, and only need on-the-job training. I’ve often wondered what our industry would look like if we adopted a similar distinction. In which case, bootcamp graduates would be a natural fit for a technician role.

ZephyrBlu 4y ago
That's just gatekeeping based on having a degree.
s3000 4y ago
The difference is that mechanical engineers need math to understand what they are doing. Engineers are essentially applied mathematicians. They are responsible for design because you cannot design without math. For software development, you don't need math. This may change when data science is taken more serious and companies have to guarantee the quality of the derived knowledge. So it's the other way round. When our industry changes, we will adopt a similar distinction. Software doesn't need math because testing is enough. Unlike physical objects, it doesn't cost much to test software, especially because reproduction is almost free. Additionally, with SaaS, software doesn't run unsupervised and thus there is constant testing. In that environment software can almost always be adjusted and reproduced when there are problems.

mym1990 4y ago

Graduated from a boot camp in 2014 and I can confidently say I did not learn a ton(3 months 5 days a week) but it did reinforce my desire that I wanted to be in the field and that I wanted to learn more. In some ways the whole thing is a money grab, but when I went in to my first job interview after the bootcamp(which wasn't even a junior dev role, it was a bit lower on the rung), they gave 0 craps about my 4 year undergrad degree and we instead had a lengthy conversation about my bootcamp experience(I did end up getting that job).

JamesBarney 4y ago

People hire junior devs everyday. These people are at least a prepared as most of the folks coming out of CS programs. And are definitely more prepared than I was.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]