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Unpopular opinion, but I think if you already possess the necessary mathematical knowledge as a foundation, something like a boot camp followed by an internship

by _mlbt 3y ago

Unpopular opinion, but I think if you already possess the necessary mathematical knowledge as a foundation, something like a boot camp followed by an internship or apprenticeship would probably be at least as good as what a college education would provide.

pacaro 3y ago
Sans the boot camp, you're describing many self-taught developers, myself included. I was motivated to learn to code, and used the resources available — library, school computers, etc. — when a job turned me down because I know 8502 assembly but not 8086 assembly, I bought myself a cheap second hand, green screen PC and found a shareware assembler. The critical part was finding that first employer that would hire me with an unrelated degree, because that served as my apprenticeship. With one job on your resumé, the next is much easier Luck, via an acquisition, was what got me into Microsoft, and with one of the big companies on your resumé job switching can become almost trivial. The Sankey diagrams for my last 4 job changes are close to being straight lines
jajko 3y ago
What boot camp brings that isn't taught ad nausea in good online courses? Discipline? I went through full IT-focused university, and added value from those times to my actual work is nearly 0, most of what I learned that I use I myself forced upon university via semester projects. Campus life was fun, and probably biggest added value from those wild times. But I've spend maybe 70 USD/month on all university study-related costs together back then (study itself was for free so I mean campus, food, traveling... one of very few benefits of coming from former eastern block in Europe). Getting into massive debt for studies when you can get everything online (and much more if you really have focus & discipline) ain't smart. It will get you a better CV, in some employer's eyes (nothing SV cares about from what I've heard, unless we talk about at least PhD in related fields). Law or medical degrees are a different beast of course, thats a walled garden and its not changing anytime soon.
geor9e 3y ago
That's an extremely common opinion on the internet. But I don't get it. If a 12 week bootcamp is "at least as good" as a 156 week bachelors degree, then what are people learning the remaining 144 weeks of college? I feel like my first 12 weeks of college were worse than a bootcamp - I was working from dusk till dawn having a nervous breakdown trying to keep up. And there were plenty of hard quarters after that. Calculus, Linear Algebra, C++, Differential Equations, Discrete control systems, Numerical analysis, having to make a weather simulation with navier-stokes equations in MATLAB, having to make a room mapping roomba out of a microcontroller and some bump switches. I could go on and on but college was hard AF for me. Jobs have felt like a breeze in comparison. Maybe it was all waste of time, and I should have gone straight into job experience. I'm genuinely saying that, not sarcasm. I just don't know.
- _mlbt 3y ago
  A significant portion of the first two years of a typical Bachelor's degree program are very liberal arts heavy with a generous sprinkling of electives. These classes may deliver some value to the individual, but it is questionable how much they add to your skillset as a software developer. Also a bootcamp is a very compressed format, versus a typical college schedule. On top of all of this there is also the elephant in the room that the cost of college has become so great that the value proposition isn't the same as it was in the past. If I can learn even 75% of what I could learn from a college at a bootcamp for a fraction of the price, does it still make sense to choose college?
- ryaneager 3y ago
  Bootcamps typically focus on a single tech stack, i.e. web apps made with Ruby on Rails. While a degree focuses on all aspects of software development and could delve into hardware depending on the school.
- beej71 3y ago
  144 weeks of learning to learn, is the way I see it. And jobs feeling like a breeze is a great side effect.
daft_pink 3y ago
Honestly, I think not getting a college degree is extremely short sighted. When you want to move into management and don’t have a Bachelor’s and can’t go get a Master’s, and coding loses all the fanfare, it’s going to be difficult to compete with people who have college degrees for a job. I think bootcamps make sense for someone who got a degree that like anthropology that has high unemployment rates and low starting salaries and wants to move into the coding field, but not a good alternative to a bachelors degree as they are so expensive and won’t offer much value after the first job. I know someone that worked their way up in a company and the company was sold and it was very difficult to get a similar job, because many places wouldn’t hire them for a similar position without a bachelor’s degree.

by _mlbt 3y ago

pacaro 3y ago

Sans the boot camp, you're describing many self-taught developers, myself included. I was motivated to learn to code, and used the resources available — library, school computers, etc. — when a job turned me down because I know 8502 assembly but not 8086 assembly, I bought myself a cheap second hand, green screen PC and found a shareware assembler. The critical part was finding that first employer that would hire me with an unrelated degree, because that served as my apprenticeship. With one job on your resumé, the next is much easier Luck, via an acquisition, was what got me into Microsoft, and with one of the big companies on your resumé job switching can become almost trivial. The Sankey diagrams for my last 4 job changes are close to being straight lines

jajko 3y ago

What boot camp brings that isn't taught ad nausea in good online courses? Discipline? I went through full IT-focused university, and added value from those times to my actual work is nearly 0, most of what I learned that I use I myself forced upon university via semester projects. Campus life was fun, and probably biggest added value from those wild times. But I've spend maybe 70 USD/month on all university study-related costs together back then (study itself was for free so I mean campus, food, traveling... one of very few benefits of coming from former eastern block in Europe). Getting into massive debt for studies when you can get everything online (and much more if you really have focus & discipline) ain't smart. It will get you a better CV, in some employer's eyes (nothing SV cares about from what I've heard, unless we talk about at least PhD in related fields). Law or medical degrees are a different beast of course, thats a walled garden and its not changing anytime soon.

geor9e 3y ago

That's an extremely common opinion on the internet. But I don't get it. If a 12 week bootcamp is "at least as good" as a 156 week bachelors degree, then what are people learning the remaining 144 weeks of college? I feel like my first 12 weeks of college were worse than a bootcamp - I was working from dusk till dawn having a nervous breakdown trying to keep up. And there were plenty of hard quarters after that. Calculus, Linear Algebra, C++, Differential Equations, Discrete control systems, Numerical analysis, having to make a weather simulation with navier-stokes equations in MATLAB, having to make a room mapping roomba out of a microcontroller and some bump switches. I could go on and on but college was hard AF for me. Jobs have felt like a breeze in comparison. Maybe it was all waste of time, and I should have gone straight into job experience. I'm genuinely saying that, not sarcasm. I just don't know.

_mlbt 3y ago
A significant portion of the first two years of a typical Bachelor's degree program are very liberal arts heavy with a generous sprinkling of electives. These classes may deliver some value to the individual, but it is questionable how much they add to your skillset as a software developer. Also a bootcamp is a very compressed format, versus a typical college schedule. On top of all of this there is also the elephant in the room that the cost of college has become so great that the value proposition isn't the same as it was in the past. If I can learn even 75% of what I could learn from a college at a bootcamp for a fraction of the price, does it still make sense to choose college?
ryaneager 3y ago
Bootcamps typically focus on a single tech stack, i.e. web apps made with Ruby on Rails. While a degree focuses on all aspects of software development and could delve into hardware depending on the school.
beej71 3y ago
144 weeks of learning to learn, is the way I see it. And jobs feeling like a breeze is a great side effect.

daft_pink 3y ago

Honestly, I think not getting a college degree is extremely short sighted. When you want to move into management and don’t have a Bachelor’s and can’t go get a Master’s, and coding loses all the fanfare, it’s going to be difficult to compete with people who have college degrees for a job. I think bootcamps make sense for someone who got a degree that like anthropology that has high unemployment rates and low starting salaries and wants to move into the coding field, but not a good alternative to a bachelors degree as they are so expensive and won’t offer much value after the first job. I know someone that worked their way up in a company and the company was sold and it was very difficult to get a similar job, because many places wouldn’t hire them for a similar position without a bachelor’s degree.