> Has anyone had success hiring bootcamp grads? Yes and no, because it depends on your expectations. At the last company I worked at, I made sure to have a cha

> Has anyone had success hiring bootcamp grads? Yes and no, because it depends on your expectations. At the last company I worked at, I made sure to have a chat with management to understand what they were looking for before I did my round in the interview loop. I also advised on what potential questions to probe with since I had some insight having worked as a lead instructor at a bootcamp. Sometimes that meant I would thumbs down an otherwise promising bootcamp candidate because they were weaker on say, the frontend when we needed a frontend junior dev. Our VP of Eng had already understood that and we batted way above average… at first. Then C-level management took that as a sign that all we needed was juniors and cut the budget for hiring mid+ roles in the then hot hiring market. After a long dry spell (rejected offers), we relented and hired more bootcamp grads into junior roles. That eventually flipped the ratio of juniors to non-juniors which will never go well because you end up with an environment that can’t support their growth. On top of that, C-level management expected that more staff == immediate improvements on velocity and were vocally disappointed when we slowed down. We expected it and tried communicating it - ramping juniors sucks up time, they won’t be a net positive until waaaay later, but of course, they knew better. Looking back on that experience, I learned a lot about the importance of managing upwards and setting very very clear expectations. Because that’s where I see a lot of these hiring situations go wrong. You need to make an honest assessment of both what qualities you need in a junior and of your own environment to know if they work for your company, bootcamp or otherwise.