What i've seen so far in the comments is that the ones hiring out of these programs are mostly publisher/content sites largely working within some kind of cms. This is mostly simple web dev and likely pays less than $100/k especially for entry level. Furthermore, I doubt job security is very good for these roles.
Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
201–210 of 264 posts
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#202Our company was approached by a local bootcamp to be a hiring partner. Myself and our VP of R&D attended their graduation day to interview potential candidates. None of the candidates made it to the next level of interviews (essentially failing an in-person phone screen).
We came back to their next graduation, and that batch of candidates was even worse. Next time, we didn't come back, but we did interview some folks over Google hangout. No one made to the next level of interviews. We no longer participate as a hiring partner with the bootcamp.
Now, that's a sample size of 1 (well, sampled it 3 times, but still only one camp), but the experience was about what I would have expected. Most of the bootcampers were 1) wanting to make more money and heard that coding pays well, or 2) out of work and trying to learn new skills to land a job, or 3) switching careers. About 95% of the folks we talked to fell into the never-seen-code-in-my-life-till-this-camp group. And it showed. The camp touted the campers as junior developers, and they were not remotely developers, let alone junior. They were people who now knew what coding looked like. That was about it.
Worse, we got some initial false positives because one of the questions I asked was the very simple but classic fizzbuzz test. It turned out that the day before the hiring day, the camp covered that test, as well as others, that get used in interviews. Not cool.
Overall, I'm not yet convinced of the value of such camps, at least those that say they can take someone with 0% coding experience and turn them into a junior dev in 9 - 12 weeks. I don't think so. Maybe if they've already graduated with a technical degree, or minored in CS, but not for someone who's worked for 15 years as a legal secretary, etc.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
...are you willing to name the school you attended?
Yeah, you need to name names. There are lots of us who had great bootcamp experiences and it's irresponsible to sully their reputations because you had a bad experience at one school. At least do it to help other students avoid paying a bunch of money for a bad experience. That kid who posted about the nightmare at Coding House did the whole community a big favor.
I would love to call them out, however I know at least a few of my classmates are still seeking their first employment and I'd hate to cause them to miss out on an opportunity to get a job because an employer sees my post.
The school in question has a campus in Georgia. I'll be more than happy to update this in the future however.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#204Yes they do. I'm a recent App Academy graduate and everyone gets a job. There are a lot of benefits to doing a program like this versus a classical CS education. I've been programming since 8th grade, and I was a computer science major before I dropped out of college. I remember having CS professors that couldn't code themselves out of a box, but they "taught" the material they were supposed to teach. App Academy and…
You do realise that computer science is not programming? Yes, it's impossible to get a msc in computer science without some programming knowledge, but a university is not a job training centre.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#205Hey Ruskick, Like many of the other commenters here, I'm also a co-founder of a trade school (Code Fellows, we're 2 years old) that offers immersive programs for web and mobile developers. We have 13 different offerings to accommodate developers with varying skill levels and interests. Our flagship program teaches students who have on average ~2yrs of experience writing code professionally, and our hiring partners of…
I've never understood the whole thing about CS foundations... For the most part you're never discovering new datastructures, the rest of it is just knowing which data structure to pick, 50/50 dictionary/arrays, once in a while a set, and use a tree every year or two. Even then if it's an esoteric data structure you'll still use an off the shelf implementation. Even in data science it's mostly off the shelf R packages…
CS grads hiring "people like us"
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#206yes i hired a guy who had been through a general assembly course in london, he had also had a couple short of internships before he got to us. hired as a junior javascript developer and he is doing very well
I'm sure you can't answer this, but are you paying him anywhere near $100,000 (£66,000)? In my experience that's about twice what a bog standard junior dev outside of finance, Facebook, Palantir, Facebook etc gets in London.
that's a little high I heard the average was around the £50k mark.
if its is so it's time to dust of my interesting bits of my job using ML to optimise ppc acountmanageent
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#207yes i hired a guy who had been through a general assembly course in london, he had also had a couple short of internships before he got to us. hired as a junior javascript developer and he is doing very well
I'm sure you can't answer this, but are you paying him anywhere near $100,000 (£66,000)? In my experience that's about twice what a bog standard junior dev outside of finance, Facebook, Palantir, Facebook etc gets in London.
that's a little high I heard the average was around the £50k mark.
if its is so it's time to dust of my interesting bits of my job using ML to optimise ppc acountmanageent
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#208Yes they do. I'm a recent App Academy graduate and everyone gets a job. There are a lot of benefits to doing a program like this versus a classical CS education. I've been programming since 8th grade, and I was a computer science major before I dropped out of college. I remember having CS professors that couldn't code themselves out of a box, but they "taught" the material they were supposed to teach. App Academy and…
You do realise that computer science is not programming? Yes, it's impossible to get a msc in computer science without some programming knowledge, but a university is not a job training centre.
Which is part of the reason why bootcamps are so valuable. Like you said, universities aren't interested in teaching you the skills that you need. So people have to go elsewhere to get them.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#209Hello. Great debate. Full disclosure. I work for Makers Academy and we have many hiring partners. From tech software houses, to up and coming startups to established brands like Deloitte Digital and Argos. Regardless of their size, these companies are choosing to hire from us because our graduates learn the latest technologies and methodologies, and bleeding-edge best practise. Anyway enough from me. I'd rather you read our graduate success stories: http://www.makersacademy.com/graduate-stories Proof companies do hire from us at Makers Academy :-)
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, you need to name names. There are lots of us who had great bootcamp experiences and it's irresponsible to sully their reputations because you had a bad experience at one school. At least do it to help other students avoid paying a bunch of money for a bad experience. That kid who posted about the nightmare at Coding House did the whole community a big favor.
I would love to call them out, however I know at least a few of my classmates are still seeking their first employment and I'd hate to cause them to miss out on an opportunity to get a job because an employer sees my post. The school in question has a campus in Georgia. I'll be more than happy to update this in the future however.
Even saying that the school is in Georgia is helpful. I would expect that it's harder to run a school outside of SF, if only because it's harder to find instructors and the tech jobs are less dense.