5 ms·

Reminds of the late 90's, early 2000 era, when every man off the street was doing mcse, cisco qualifications etc with the promise of highly paying jobs. Then a

by UK-AL 12y ago

Reminds of the late 90's, early 2000 era, when every man off the street was doing mcse, cisco qualifications etc with the promise of highly paying jobs. Then a few years later there was gut of unemployed techies.

psaintla 12y ago
Yup, I remember that clearly since I got my first job right after that dot com bust. It led to a mass exodus of the people who were in it for the money.
swalsh 12y ago
The thing about programmers though, is bad coders are actually job creators. Bad code bases require more and more resources to maintain (as entropy increases), until ultimately they hit that breaking point where you need to hire a bunch of contractors to rebuild it. Good code bases are built in a way that you can pay down technical debt while enhancing the product. I view programming as more of an art then a science, people can learn knowledge quickly, the internet is great at that... but talent/skill requires years of experience. Art requires practice. The more schools like this are successful, the more job opportunities i'll have :D (EDIT: I should clarify, I'm not implying that these places will churn out bad coders, just inexperienced ones)
- oftenwrong 12y ago
  Are those job opportunities you want? For me, maintaining poorly-written code bases is not enjoyable.
  - cheriot 12y ago
    Screw the maintenance, but I don't mind being the one to do the rewrite. By then they won't see programmer salaries as a place to pinch pennies.
    - vinceguidry 12y ago
      What's happening is there's a growing number of business needs that need a programmer's attention but don't quite justify throwing a Silicon Valley salary at. So you see management pushing to try to hire someone at the rates they're used to paying people at. It means there's a lot more opportunity out there, for both experienced coders and people looking to break in. Just like oil and other resources, the more supply that gets pumped in, the more demand blows up for all tiers. We're all going to be very, very busy for the foreseeable future.
  - dyeje 12y ago
    Yes, but not eating is even less enjoyable.
- mjhea0 12y ago
  Skip the middle man - bootcamps. Hire non-developers to screw up he codebase!
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    Non-developers won't get far enough to make the mistakes.
    - angersock 12y ago
      Far from the case, as it turns out. What many lack in skill they more than make up for in industriousness.
jonifico 12y ago
So basically the bad ones pay for the good ones? Codeception!
never_snapped 12y ago
I would think this is a bit different as these students come out creating things and in the process (hopefully) creating value for their company. They're becoming the people who enabled those certificates, and companies, to exist in the first place. Whereas the certifications you described enabled a person to write reports, recommend products of a particular vendor, and maintain software/hardware configurations -- a job which is still being automated and taken over by developers without certification, particularly in smaller companies (devops). Only time will tell though.
mgirdley 12y ago
Disclaimer: I run a bootcamp in San Antonio called Codeup. While the media paints the camps as "get a great paying job", I see more people wanting a more meaningful life. They've got an expensive degree in English or something similarly un-useful and want to work on things that matter. They see coding as the path to get there.
- porter 12y ago
  Can you define what "matters"? What exactly are people finding more meaningful about programming as opposed to English?
  - mgirdley 12y ago
    They want to work things that are used by real people. If they can help the world be better and get to see their work being used, that's a plus. Many are stuck in what they consider dead-end careers like retail or customer service. They feel like cogs in a machine.
- spenuke 12y ago
  There is a competing interpretation that this lack of a meaningful life you allude to is in fact the RESULT of a society built on strict financial benefit. You've conflated the terms "meaningful" and "useful". These are not equivalent terms. Meaning is a story we tell ourselves to make sense of our lives. Use is an observable action. If I help make a product that gets 16% more people to click on ads for something they didn't need in the first place, I will have been _useful_ to the advertiser (and my own pocket). But to say that gives my life _meaning_ merely displays a twenty-first-century version of the lazy and ignorant naivete that the Humanities have tried to fight against all along. I am not against having a better paying job, nor am I saying folks can't find meaning in software development (or any field, for that matter). And I'm not implying that an English degree should make you a bunch of money. It's just that this whole "learn to do some JavaScript and CSS, change the world!" technohype is just plain bullshit. Do you need to pay $100k to learn the skills to see through such bullshit? No. But the sort of things that the Humanities teach are exactly the prophylactic that one needs to guard against such existential wheel-spinning.
netcan 12y ago
It's possible to learn too much from a crisis. Fast growth inherently has risks like this, but overall the premise is not wrong. Computers and the internet are important. We do need lots of people who can make them do new things. These skills are possible to learn, with talent, motivation and investment of time. The late 90s was fueled by the correct realization of these things. It just misjudged the value of early versions of everything. The Microsofts of the internet launched 10, 15 years after the web started to blow up. The mistake was thinking that all the land would be grabbed by 2002. Today's tech growth is more real, like the industrial revolution. It's productive, even if it produces stupid pictures sometimes.

by UK-AL 12y ago

psaintla 12y ago

Yup, I remember that clearly since I got my first job right after that dot com bust. It led to a mass exodus of the people who were in it for the money.

swalsh 12y ago

The thing about programmers though, is bad coders are actually job creators. Bad code bases require more and more resources to maintain (as entropy increases), until ultimately they hit that breaking point where you need to hire a bunch of contractors to rebuild it. Good code bases are built in a way that you can pay down technical debt while enhancing the product. I view programming as more of an art then a science, people can learn knowledge quickly, the internet is great at that... but talent/skill requires years of experience. Art requires practice. The more schools like this are successful, the more job opportunities i'll have :D (EDIT: I should clarify, I'm not implying that these places will churn out bad coders, just inexperienced ones)

oftenwrong 12y ago
Are those job opportunities you want? For me, maintaining poorly-written code bases is not enjoyable.
- cheriot 12y ago
  Screw the maintenance, but I don't mind being the one to do the rewrite. By then they won't see programmer salaries as a place to pinch pennies.
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    What's happening is there's a growing number of business needs that need a programmer's attention but don't quite justify throwing a Silicon Valley salary at. So you see management pushing to try to hire someone at the rates they're used to paying people at. It means there's a lot more opportunity out there, for both experienced coders and people looking to break in. Just like oil and other resources, the more supply that gets pumped in, the more demand blows up for all tiers. We're all going to be very, very busy for the foreseeable future.
- dyeje 12y ago
  Yes, but not eating is even less enjoyable.
mjhea0 12y ago
Skip the middle man - bootcamps. Hire non-developers to screw up he codebase!
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  Non-developers won't get far enough to make the mistakes.
  - angersock 12y ago
    Far from the case, as it turns out. What many lack in skill they more than make up for in industriousness.

jonifico 12y ago

So basically the bad ones pay for the good ones? Codeception!

never_snapped 12y ago

I would think this is a bit different as these students come out creating things and in the process (hopefully) creating value for their company. They're becoming the people who enabled those certificates, and companies, to exist in the first place. Whereas the certifications you described enabled a person to write reports, recommend products of a particular vendor, and maintain software/hardware configurations -- a job which is still being automated and taken over by developers without certification, particularly in smaller companies (devops). Only time will tell though.

mgirdley 12y ago

Disclaimer: I run a bootcamp in San Antonio called Codeup. While the media paints the camps as "get a great paying job", I see more people wanting a more meaningful life. They've got an expensive degree in English or something similarly un-useful and want to work on things that matter. They see coding as the path to get there.

porter 12y ago
Can you define what "matters"? What exactly are people finding more meaningful about programming as opposed to English?
- mgirdley 12y ago
  They want to work things that are used by real people. If they can help the world be better and get to see their work being used, that's a plus. Many are stuck in what they consider dead-end careers like retail or customer service. They feel like cogs in a machine.
spenuke 12y ago
There is a competing interpretation that this lack of a meaningful life you allude to is in fact the RESULT of a society built on strict financial benefit. You've conflated the terms "meaningful" and "useful". These are not equivalent terms. Meaning is a story we tell ourselves to make sense of our lives. Use is an observable action. If I help make a product that gets 16% more people to click on ads for something they didn't need in the first place, I will have been _useful_ to the advertiser (and my own pocket). But to say that gives my life _meaning_ merely displays a twenty-first-century version of the lazy and ignorant naivete that the Humanities have tried to fight against all along. I am not against having a better paying job, nor am I saying folks can't find meaning in software development (or any field, for that matter). And I'm not implying that an English degree should make you a bunch of money. It's just that this whole "learn to do some JavaScript and CSS, change the world!" technohype is just plain bullshit. Do you need to pay $100k to learn the skills to see through such bullshit? No. But the sort of things that the Humanities teach are exactly the prophylactic that one needs to guard against such existential wheel-spinning.

netcan 12y ago

It's possible to learn too much from a crisis. Fast growth inherently has risks like this, but overall the premise is not wrong. Computers and the internet are important. We do need lots of people who can make them do new things. These skills are possible to learn, with talent, motivation and investment of time. The late 90s was fueled by the correct realization of these things. It just misjudged the value of early versions of everything. The Microsofts of the internet launched 10, 15 years after the web started to blow up. The mistake was thinking that all the land would be grabbed by 2002. Today's tech growth is more real, like the industrial revolution. It's productive, even if it produces stupid pictures sometimes.