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I've been training juniors and taking part in technical interviews for a few years now, and I can say that bootcamp hires were generally the best performant. P

I've been training juniors and taking part in technical interviews for a few years now, and I can say that bootcamp hires were generally the best performant. Particularly those in late twenties/early thirties who were coming from an entirely different field - we had tons of applications from former architects and biologists for some reason - tend to outshine younger software engineers fresh out of school in just a few months. I could understand this opinion to be controversial, but considering bootcamps a red flag vs just a hobbyist programmer with no education? Sounds ridiculous to me.

nicoburns 4y ago
I think it’s because boot camp graduates often have no experience prior to the boot camp, so they’ll often only have 3 months coding experience total. Whereas most other applicants will have much more experience than that even if they have no professional experience.
- Scarblac 4y ago
  But in those few months, they were often trained intensively on exactly the tech stack you're looking for, and they built some things, in a team, that look a lot like what's actually done day to day in many businesses. In an up to date way. That helps! We have only one boot camp graduate, who came from a completely different career. He's been productive from day 1, has carefully listened to all advice he's got since and is always working on figuring out better ways to do things, and he's just very good after two years.
  - josephg 4y ago
    There are knowledge holes a mile wide with bootcamp curriculums though. The programs I’ve seen don’t teach: - Information security - Anything lower level than Python/Ruby - Unix (streams, files, processes and threads, syscalls, etc) - Debugging. (Except incedentally) Not knowing these things can be fine in a feature factory workplace. But having an engineer on your team who has no idea about infosec is an active danger. “I make a sql query from this string builder” / “we save the passwords in this database table” / “the AWS credential is here in the javascript code in the repository” / etc.
    - torben-friis 4y ago
      I’d argue that if any of those reach production it’s never going to be the junior dev’s fault. Where’s the review process? Stronger point even: it is beneficial to have a person capable of messing up that way so you can check that your quality control is working.
      - josephg 4y ago
        A tiny minority of places I've worked do code review for every commit. Or have careful enough processes that they would catch every mistake made by incompetent engineers. Most companies simply trust their employees most of the time. Hardening a process against programmers you don't trust has a massive cost.
        mavelikara 4y ago
        > A tiny minority of places I've worked do code review for every commit. In the past three jobs I have had, over 13 years, all changes were code reviewed before merge. I don't know the industry's general stance on this, but I wanted to describe my experience here which is very different from yours.
        torben-friis 4y ago
        Same here.
      - nicoburns 4y ago
        > I’d argue that if any of those reach production it’s never going to be the junior dev’s fault. Where’s the review process? That's true, but issues getting into production isn't the things that might be problem. Junior devs requiring hours of review time for relatively simple tasks can also cause a lot of problems for an organisation, bringing productivity to a halt in extreme cases.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      And most college courses also don’t teach that.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    > he's just very good after two years Right, but a self-taught developer might well have years of non-commercial experience and be good in two months or even from the get-go.
    - mavelikara 4y ago
      The word "might" is doing a lot of work in that assertion.
throwaway0asd 4y ago
Most likely the difference in performance is due to differences in expectations. The two greatest common failures I see repeated among software developers is: 1) The inability to consider diverse perspectives 2) The inability to differentiate writing instructions from building something larger For example many developers cannot imagine the career requirements associated with other careers. That could be due to lack of experience diversity, poor empathy, or weak imagination. Likewise, many developers cannot write original software. The very idea is frequently both horrifying and disgusting. The alternative is just a little help from a tool or framework, because they write instructions not applications. The interesting part of that is how people respond when confronted about it.
- saurik 4y ago
  I am having a difficult time inferring your meaning for "writing instructions".
  - throwaway0asd 4y ago
    I have seen developers confused by the words writing instructions before, suggesting either they do not know what writing is, what instructions are, or that they cannot differentiate between writing an application and writing a few instructions.
  - MrVandemar 4y ago
    Not OP, but I infer that "writing instructions" equates to a lot of basic scripting - change the colour of that button, show a calendar, trigger that animation, send data to the validation script and display an X or a tick depending. As differentiated from, or opposed to, writing complex applications that require thought, design and awareness of best practice.
29athrowaway 4y ago
Bootcamps are a form of training designed for you to pass a job interview and use a scripting language to solve problems within a very well-defined problem space. Their deliverables require supervision because they don't have the technical depth to identify common non-functional requirements. Occasionally, troubleshooting the technologies you use is necessary, but this scenario is also beyond bootcamp training. But if you work in a startup that's making a functional prototype for some web application, where things don't really have to truly work or scale, you can waive the supervision and they may even be "the best performant". I've worked with bootcamp graduates and I've seen scenarios where they are unqualified to contribute. But to do them some justice, some universities are worse than bootcamps. And, these days, there's an abundance of material you can learn from... but it takes time, initiative and sometimes, mentoring to know what to prioritize.
Jarwain 4y ago
I think there's a difference between a professional using a boot camp to switch fields, and someone using a boot camp to avoid going to college or something

nicoburns 4y ago

I think it’s because boot camp graduates often have no experience prior to the boot camp, so they’ll often only have 3 months coding experience total. Whereas most other applicants will have much more experience than that even if they have no professional experience.

Scarblac 4y ago
But in those few months, they were often trained intensively on exactly the tech stack you're looking for, and they built some things, in a team, that look a lot like what's actually done day to day in many businesses. In an up to date way. That helps! We have only one boot camp graduate, who came from a completely different career. He's been productive from day 1, has carefully listened to all advice he's got since and is always working on figuring out better ways to do things, and he's just very good after two years.
- josephg 4y ago
  There are knowledge holes a mile wide with bootcamp curriculums though. The programs I’ve seen don’t teach: - Information security - Anything lower level than Python/Ruby - Unix (streams, files, processes and threads, syscalls, etc) - Debugging. (Except incedentally) Not knowing these things can be fine in a feature factory workplace. But having an engineer on your team who has no idea about infosec is an active danger. “I make a sql query from this string builder” / “we save the passwords in this database table” / “the AWS credential is here in the javascript code in the repository” / etc.
  - torben-friis 4y ago
    I’d argue that if any of those reach production it’s never going to be the junior dev’s fault. Where’s the review process? Stronger point even: it is beneficial to have a person capable of messing up that way so you can check that your quality control is working.
    - josephg 4y ago
      A tiny minority of places I've worked do code review for every commit. Or have careful enough processes that they would catch every mistake made by incompetent engineers. Most companies simply trust their employees most of the time. Hardening a process against programmers you don't trust has a massive cost.
      - mavelikara 4y ago
        > A tiny minority of places I've worked do code review for every commit. In the past three jobs I have had, over 13 years, all changes were code reviewed before merge. I don't know the industry's general stance on this, but I wanted to describe my experience here which is very different from yours.
        torben-friis 4y ago
        Same here.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      > I’d argue that if any of those reach production it’s never going to be the junior dev’s fault. Where’s the review process? That's true, but issues getting into production isn't the things that might be problem. Junior devs requiring hours of review time for relatively simple tasks can also cause a lot of problems for an organisation, bringing productivity to a halt in extreme cases.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    And most college courses also don’t teach that.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  > he's just very good after two years Right, but a self-taught developer might well have years of non-commercial experience and be good in two months or even from the get-go.
  - mavelikara 4y ago
    The word "might" is doing a lot of work in that assertion.

throwaway0asd 4y ago

Most likely the difference in performance is due to differences in expectations. The two greatest common failures I see repeated among software developers is: 1) The inability to consider diverse perspectives 2) The inability to differentiate writing instructions from building something larger For example many developers cannot imagine the career requirements associated with other careers. That could be due to lack of experience diversity, poor empathy, or weak imagination. Likewise, many developers cannot write original software. The very idea is frequently both horrifying and disgusting. The alternative is just a little help from a tool or framework, because they write instructions not applications. The interesting part of that is how people respond when confronted about it.

saurik 4y ago
I am having a difficult time inferring your meaning for "writing instructions".
- throwaway0asd 4y ago
  I have seen developers confused by the words writing instructions before, suggesting either they do not know what writing is, what instructions are, or that they cannot differentiate between writing an application and writing a few instructions.
- MrVandemar 4y ago
  Not OP, but I infer that "writing instructions" equates to a lot of basic scripting - change the colour of that button, show a calendar, trigger that animation, send data to the validation script and display an X or a tick depending. As differentiated from, or opposed to, writing complex applications that require thought, design and awareness of best practice.

29athrowaway 4y ago

Bootcamps are a form of training designed for you to pass a job interview and use a scripting language to solve problems within a very well-defined problem space. Their deliverables require supervision because they don't have the technical depth to identify common non-functional requirements. Occasionally, troubleshooting the technologies you use is necessary, but this scenario is also beyond bootcamp training. But if you work in a startup that's making a functional prototype for some web application, where things don't really have to truly work or scale, you can waive the supervision and they may even be "the best performant". I've worked with bootcamp graduates and I've seen scenarios where they are unqualified to contribute. But to do them some justice, some universities are worse than bootcamps. And, these days, there's an abundance of material you can learn from... but it takes time, initiative and sometimes, mentoring to know what to prioritize.

Jarwain 4y ago

I think there's a difference between a professional using a boot camp to switch fields, and someone using a boot camp to avoid going to college or something