4 ms·

Code Fellows Alumni Stats

29 points by mikeyanderson 12y ago

DangerousPie 12y ago
Isn't this pretty much just an advertisement? How is this different from the usual numbers that lots of schools publish to attract new students?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
minimaxir 12y ago
A $75.6k average salary (with 70% of graduates making <$80k) seems low for a development position in Seattle.
- trose 12y ago
  Probably the salary they deserve I'd guess. I worked at a company that hired someone from a similar school in NYC. They ended up letting her go after a month or two. These schools are a scam for the people that think they'll gain a career from them as well as the companies that think they'll get a competent dev.
- 8_hours_ago 12y ago
  With only 8 weeks of programming experience, I'd say that's a fairly high salary. I assume that the pay would rise over time until the salary after 4 years is comparable to (or greater than) what a newly graduated Computer Science major would make.
trose 12y ago
When is this fad going to die out? You can't produce a competent web developer in 8 weeks. Maybe this would be useful to an experienced dev who is looking to pick up some web technologies in a structured atmosphere but there are so many resources available online, why bother?
- minimaxir 12y ago
  The real interesting statistic would be to illustrate the correlation between post-secondary study and salary. (The post had the distribution of both, but no relationship) It's entirely possible that the higher salaries are caused by the prior education and not the boot camp.
  - killertypo 12y ago
    exactly my thoughts
- killertypo 12y ago
  It's telling that a large % come with a bachelors degree, or that 6% had an associates and an additional 11% with a masters. Adding that up you have 6% Associates + 65% Bach + 11% Masters Or a total of 77% with degrees and an 88% pass-rate. They don't tell us the overlap or what % that passed and had a college were the top earners from their averages. Stats can be twisted to tell just about any story, without the raw data and a chance to perform independent analysis it's hard to tell who the real success stories are. What a newbie gets in 8 weeks is probably not much, but a CompSci masters holder, he may get much more. I don't like these partial stories with pretty stats that don't tell us the overlaps and give us real pictures. These stats are great PR, but they're about as helpful as asshole on an elbow.
- lispylol 12y ago
  I don't think these bootcamps are going to go away so long as there's pent up demand for developers. I do think there are existing models that work for a particular audience (college educated, analytical/mathematical thinkers?) and those are going to continue serving as more effective alternatives to scouring the web for resources on your own or going back to school. Some schools might find out that 8 weeks is too short. Others might find it too long. Being that these rapid fire dev ramp-up programs are still pretty new it'll be interesting to see what insights emerge.
GuiA 12y ago
What really bothers me about coding schools is that their application process pretty much sets them up for success. They aggressively filter applicants (on prior work experience, passion, etc.) to only keep the ones most likely succeed and make their program look good (not unlike most private high schools, and a lot of private universities). And a lot of them charge crazy tuition (not far from the most expensive US universities if you bring it to a cost per week of instruction), further narrowing the funnel. There's not a lot of merit in having a very high success rate if your students were going to succeed anyway. That's where the real educational challenges lie, and why public universities or non-profits who aim to reach precisely the people who couldn't get in those bootcamps have much lower success rates. At my current workplace, we just hired a developer who came from a dev bootcamp. She's fantastic- but she also has an undergraduate degree in math, she wrote some C++ out of college, and has an MBA as well as pretty impressive work experience. Of course she was very likely to do well in a cookie-cutter Ruby course! Try teaching former convicts, unemployed people, veterans, teenagers from poor neighborhoods, etc. But, it's much harder work, less glamorous, and surely less profitable (I've taught CS/programming in public universities and to disadvantaged teenagers).
- mikeyanderson 12y ago
  GuiA, needing to have much wider software engineering education is absolutely needed. It's definitely one that we've tried hard to address. We're offering lower cost getting started courses so a wider group can get started and get the tools they need. Also we have had summer camps to help get at risk kids started: http://www.geekwire.com/2013/code-fellows-offer-code-camp-atrisk-youth-underprivileged-women/ http://www.geekwire.com/2013/code-fellows-offer-code-camp-at... Our goal is to give people the tools and passion they need to develop. If you'd like to volunteer we'd love to help do more programs to help more of these groups.
- dmunoz 12y ago
  It's not only the application process. Some of these programs kick out some successful applicants in the first few weeks, further reducing the field from which they pluck these success figures. To be fair, Code Fellow seems to be upfront about this, since only 88% of successful applicants actually graduate. Edit: More related to your point above, they are also up front about previous degrees held. 82% of their students had degrees before entering their program.
bruceb 12y ago
Anyone have thoughts on why nearly 14% of their students already studied CS? Maybe they reflect people who studied CS but did not graduate?
- mikeyanderson 12y ago
  We've had folks fresh out of CS degrees but didn't feel that they had software development skills, team skills, interview skills, negotiation skills, etc. Also we've had quite a few that studied CS, didn't use it for a long time or got stuck in a particular stack and used the intensive 8 week course as a way to quickly pick up and put the new skills to work. Make sense?
lispylol 12y ago
>Our alumni tell us that learning how to code professionally is like learning a super power I feel like the real super power is the ability to learn effectively. Not just how to write code, but how to do anything. I get the feeling that a lot of people who have had just the right combination of upbringing + opportunities take this ability for granted. They do it very naturally. Coding is only as powerful as your ability to think. I don't care how many monkeys are coding in PHP you're never going to get Facebook.

29 points by mikeyanderson 12y ago

Isn't this pretty much just an advertisement? How is this different from the usual numbers that lots of schools publish to attract new students?

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

minimaxir 12y ago

A $75.6k average salary (with 70% of graduates making <$80k) seems low for a development position in Seattle.

trose 12y ago
Probably the salary they deserve I'd guess. I worked at a company that hired someone from a similar school in NYC. They ended up letting her go after a month or two. These schools are a scam for the people that think they'll gain a career from them as well as the companies that think they'll get a competent dev.
8_hours_ago 12y ago
With only 8 weeks of programming experience, I'd say that's a fairly high salary. I assume that the pay would rise over time until the salary after 4 years is comparable to (or greater than) what a newly graduated Computer Science major would make.

trose 12y ago

When is this fad going to die out? You can't produce a competent web developer in 8 weeks. Maybe this would be useful to an experienced dev who is looking to pick up some web technologies in a structured atmosphere but there are so many resources available online, why bother?

minimaxir 12y ago
The real interesting statistic would be to illustrate the correlation between post-secondary study and salary. (The post had the distribution of both, but no relationship) It's entirely possible that the higher salaries are caused by the prior education and not the boot camp.
- killertypo 12y ago
  exactly my thoughts
killertypo 12y ago
It's telling that a large % come with a bachelors degree, or that 6% had an associates and an additional 11% with a masters. Adding that up you have 6% Associates + 65% Bach + 11% Masters Or a total of 77% with degrees and an 88% pass-rate. They don't tell us the overlap or what % that passed and had a college were the top earners from their averages. Stats can be twisted to tell just about any story, without the raw data and a chance to perform independent analysis it's hard to tell who the real success stories are. What a newbie gets in 8 weeks is probably not much, but a CompSci masters holder, he may get much more. I don't like these partial stories with pretty stats that don't tell us the overlaps and give us real pictures. These stats are great PR, but they're about as helpful as asshole on an elbow.
lispylol 12y ago
I don't think these bootcamps are going to go away so long as there's pent up demand for developers. I do think there are existing models that work for a particular audience (college educated, analytical/mathematical thinkers?) and those are going to continue serving as more effective alternatives to scouring the web for resources on your own or going back to school. Some schools might find out that 8 weeks is too short. Others might find it too long. Being that these rapid fire dev ramp-up programs are still pretty new it'll be interesting to see what insights emerge.

GuiA 12y ago

What really bothers me about coding schools is that their application process pretty much sets them up for success. They aggressively filter applicants (on prior work experience, passion, etc.) to only keep the ones most likely succeed and make their program look good (not unlike most private high schools, and a lot of private universities). And a lot of them charge crazy tuition (not far from the most expensive US universities if you bring it to a cost per week of instruction), further narrowing the funnel. There's not a lot of merit in having a very high success rate if your students were going to succeed anyway. That's where the real educational challenges lie, and why public universities or non-profits who aim to reach precisely the people who couldn't get in those bootcamps have much lower success rates. At my current workplace, we just hired a developer who came from a dev bootcamp. She's fantastic- but she also has an undergraduate degree in math, she wrote some C++ out of college, and has an MBA as well as pretty impressive work experience. Of course she was very likely to do well in a cookie-cutter Ruby course! Try teaching former convicts, unemployed people, veterans, teenagers from poor neighborhoods, etc. But, it's much harder work, less glamorous, and surely less profitable (I've taught CS/programming in public universities and to disadvantaged teenagers).

mikeyanderson 12y ago
GuiA, needing to have much wider software engineering education is absolutely needed. It's definitely one that we've tried hard to address. We're offering lower cost getting started courses so a wider group can get started and get the tools they need. Also we have had summer camps to help get at risk kids started: http://www.geekwire.com/2013/code-fellows-offer-code-camp-atrisk-youth-underprivileged-women/ http://www.geekwire.com/2013/code-fellows-offer-code-camp-at... Our goal is to give people the tools and passion they need to develop. If you'd like to volunteer we'd love to help do more programs to help more of these groups.
dmunoz 12y ago
It's not only the application process. Some of these programs kick out some successful applicants in the first few weeks, further reducing the field from which they pluck these success figures. To be fair, Code Fellow seems to be upfront about this, since only 88% of successful applicants actually graduate. Edit: More related to your point above, they are also up front about previous degrees held. 82% of their students had degrees before entering their program.

bruceb 12y ago

Anyone have thoughts on why nearly 14% of their students already studied CS? Maybe they reflect people who studied CS but did not graduate?

mikeyanderson 12y ago
We've had folks fresh out of CS degrees but didn't feel that they had software development skills, team skills, interview skills, negotiation skills, etc. Also we've had quite a few that studied CS, didn't use it for a long time or got stuck in a particular stack and used the intensive 8 week course as a way to quickly pick up and put the new skills to work. Make sense?

lispylol 12y ago

>Our alumni tell us that learning how to code professionally is like learning a super power I feel like the real super power is the ability to learn effectively. Not just how to write code, but how to do anything. I get the feeling that a lot of people who have had just the right combination of upbringing + opportunities take this ability for granted. They do it very naturally. Coding is only as powerful as your ability to think. I don't care how many monkeys are coding in PHP you're never going to get Facebook.