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Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

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Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#101

Post by OJFord »

Kluny wrote: post #36
OJFord wrote: post #27

> As a positive point, all the females in our cohort got dev jobs, including the only one who actually failed the class. Startups are pretty aware of the gender discrepancy and actively looking to hire those with double x chromosomes. Not complaining about affirmative action, just wanted to give you as full picture as possible You should be complaining! Especially given the rest of your story. This kind of thing is s…

Maybe the women just hustled harder. I know that was the case in the program I went through. 30 of us passed; 3 were women. All 3 women and about 20% of the men got good industry jobs. However, I and the other two women were hustling for jobs, sending resumes, networking and going to interviews 6 months before graduation. Most of the men, assuming they were telling the truth when I casually asked them about it, didn'…

Maybe so. But your experience is slightly different from what I'm objecting to most - which was a woman failing the programme and getting a development job, while men passed and no jobs or irrelevant jobs.

No amount of hustle puts a candidate that failed a 'boot camp' above one that passed in a merit-based evaluation.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#104

Post by OJFord »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #88
jen729w wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called "positive discrimination" for a reason. We're positively discriminating to the benefit of women (or minorities, or whomever) now, to make up for the decades of negative discrimination that these groups have suffered. Don't think it's fair? Interesting feeling, eh. Not very nice, eh. Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life.

Alt view: for at least the last 500 years of Western civilization, women have always had a more comfortable and safer life than an equivalent man living at the same time and of the same class. Men died in wars, suffered injury and death in jobs, etc. There's money in software development and women want it. Note the lack of "positive discrimination" for jobs like coal mining, or any other profession on the top ten mos…

> Note the lack of "positive discrimination" for jobs like coal mining, or any other profession on the top ten most dangerous jobs..?

You don't even have to go to the 'top ten most dangerous' - when did you last see a female plumber, electrician, gas technician, builder?

I was recently telling someone (female) that I was waiting in for an electrician. I said something like 'so when he comes', then said 'or she, sorry I don't know' - but then I realised actually, you know what I do know, the electrician is going to be a man and not because it's so hard to 'break into', but because women/feminists don't care about doing it.

Of course there are similar examples the other way around - male nurses or primary school teachers are examples to a lesser extent.

It's not really a problem, but we should at least be honest about what we mean.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#105

Post by [deleted] »

DanBC wrote: post #89
patrickg_zill wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alt view: for at least the last 500 years of Western civilization, women have always had a more comfortable and safer life than an equivalent man living at the same time and of the same class. Men died in wars, suffered injury and death in jobs, etc. There's money in software development and women want it. Note the lack of "positive discrimination" for jobs like coal mining, or any other profession on the top ten mos…

> Note the lack of "positive discrimination" for jobs like coal mining, Come on, that's lazy and dishonest. You can do better than trot out that well worn, dumb, troll point.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#106

Post by owebmaster »

DanBC wrote: post #100
owebmaster wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are the real troll here. What he said is right. Don't you think men in coal mining would also prefer work with software development?

The troll point is that there are no programmes to get women into mining (or other high risk / low pay industry) - that's untrue, and it's easy to check with a simple web search. It's lazy, and it's so frequently used and debunked that it's indistinguishable from trolling at this point.

No, it is not. You pointed a false equivalence. Do for me the web search that points women struggling for the right to work in coal mining, be sent by hundred of thousands to war and things like that. This don't happen (and shouldn't!). We are animals, after all, and the biology demands from us (both woman and man) different things. If men could get pregnant, I could bet with you that this would be a good reason to have women into mining. Thanks god, we can't. It is a harder job than coal mining.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#107

Post by jtcond13 »

I recommend John Guttag's Intro to Computation and Programming Using Python to people interested in starting to code, as the accompanying video lectures are available on MIT OCW and the book itself is enjoyable to read. That book (+ the Django tutorial) might be a good way to get started before doing a boot camp.

As others have pointed out, there are other ways to learn the material, but it may be that the 'career day' activities, etc. are worth the price of tuition.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#108

Post by scrapcode »

yahyaheee wrote: post #98

If she wants to be a software engineer, tell her to teach herself. I think the reason why many of the graduates don't get jobs is because Tech is really hard, and almost all of it you have to figure out yourself to be a good engineer. A lot of the boot camp attendees are the type that need to be taught, it actually looks better if you teach yourself. It shows your independence and drive, which are very hirable qualit…

I've been developing for 12+ years in many different languages & frameworks. I don't code much anymore due to having to support myself financially, but I certainly didn't find that anyone was impressed with the fact that I taught myself. I never got an offer and likewise ended up choosing the boring but well paying supervisor position in an unrelated field.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#109

Post by DanBC »

owebmaster wrote: post #106
DanBC wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The troll point is that there are no programmes to get women into mining (or other high risk / low pay industry) - that's untrue, and it's easy to check with a simple web search. It's lazy, and it's so frequently used and debunked that it's indistinguishable from trolling at this point.

No, it is not. You pointed a false equivalence. Do for me the web search that points women struggling for the right to work in coal mining, be sent by hundred of thousands to war and things like that. This don't happen (and shouldn't!). We are animals, after all, and the biology demands from us (both woman and man) different things. If men could get pregnant, I could bet with you that this would be a good reason to h…

> Do for me the web search that points women struggling for the right to work in coal mining

http://www.womeninmining.org/

> be sent by hundred of thousands to war

Women have campaigned hard to be allowed to go into "front line combat"; they're already sent to war:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11302533/Wome...

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-military-women-idUSBRE...

For the rest, do your own searching. These are very easy to find.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#110

Post by yahyaheee »

scrapcode wrote: post #108
yahyaheee wrote: post #98

If she wants to be a software engineer, tell her to teach herself. I think the reason why many of the graduates don't get jobs is because Tech is really hard, and almost all of it you have to figure out yourself to be a good engineer. A lot of the boot camp attendees are the type that need to be taught, it actually looks better if you teach yourself. It shows your independence and drive, which are very hirable qualit…

I've been developing for 12+ years in many different languages & frameworks. I don't code much anymore due to having to support myself financially, but I certainly didn't find that anyone was impressed with the fact that I taught myself. I never got an offer and likewise ended up choosing the boring but well paying supervisor position in an unrelated field.

I think that probably has more to do with how you market yourself. Me and two of my friends all taught ourselves and all of us work on major top level projects now only about 3 years later. I think my point is that there is a type of person that makes a really good software engineer and those types of people typically don't need a coding bootcamp. If you market yourself as having found your passion and built a lot of awesome stuff on your own I guarantee that you will have work.
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