Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?

#221

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 11:08 PM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #143

dragonwriter wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The confusion here probably comes from the past tense phrasing. Possibly pedantic, but, that's the simple conditional (which, in this particular context without an explicit condition, has the implicit condition of "in similar circumstances"), not the past tense.

Apologies for out-pedanting you, but I believe it is still called the past tense. English past tense (a grammatical form) can be used in several situations, the dominant being signalling past time , but also used to signal conditionals.

> Apologies for out-pedanting you, but I believe it is still called the past tense.

No. In "If we were in similar conditions again, we wouldn't do the same thing", the condition clause ("If we were in similar conditions again") uses the past tense, the main clause ("we wouldn't do the same thing") uses the conditional mood, which is marked (in this case) by the use of the modal verb "would".

In the sentence "We wouldn't do it again" where the condition is implicit, there is no use of the past tense, only the conditional mood.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?

#222

Post by rememberlenny » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 11:15 PM UTC

s0uthPaw88 wrote: post #51

rememberlenny wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a company, we dont normally do large scale hiring. When we do large scale hiring, we can bring on junior devs. If we are hiring for single spots, we need experienced developers.

But if you were in the same large scale hiring situation again and can bring on junior devs, would you do it again?

It was a once a decade hiring process.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?

#223

Post by rememberlenny » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 11:16 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #80

wch wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually not true. He/she quoted the original two sentences. The parent post was later edited to add a third (middle) sentence.

Oh, pardon then. The original really does read strange.

Sorry about that. Three people asked the same question, so I updated the post after.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?

#224

Post by rememberlenny » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 11:16 PM UTC

wlesieutre wrote: post #112

rememberlenny wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No.

The confusion here probably comes from the past tense phrasing. "We wouldn't do it again" strongly implies "If we were in the same situation as before we wouldn't do the same thing." It'd be more clear to say "We probably won't do it again," I think. And if you did end up needing multiple entry-level hires, it sounds like you would be open to a similar approach?

Spot on.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?

#225

Post by rememberlenny » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 11:17 PM UTC

endeavour wrote: post #67

rememberlenny wrote: post #2

Yes. I work at Conde Nast. I helped work with a bootcamp program to create a "internship" program for new graduates. We took eight students after attending a recruiting event and invited them to work on a cycling program. From the eight, we hired four. We cycled the students through four of Conde Nast's brands/responsibilities. Currently, we have junior developers from this program working on GQ magazine, Glamour, an…

Is this in the US or UK?

US. New York city.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?

#226

Post by cyberBeach » Wed, Jan 07, 2015, 12:09 AM UTC

VLM wrote: post #98

astletron wrote: post #34

I live and work in a city of 300K people. My experience here is that companies have high hiring standards that border on the unreasonable (e.g. min 5 years of Ruby experience for a junior level job) and have little interest in training. This attitude stands in stark contrast to companies in larger cities which are willing (and even prefer) to invest in people by building interns into juniors and so on. I can't genera…

"companies have high hiring standards that border on the unreasonable (e.g. min 5 years of Ruby experience for a junior level job) and have little interest in training" Those are related. I can help translate. It means you'll have a non-technical boss. You must be comfortable with learning from google, and your non technical boss is not tech savvy enough to learn from google for you. For example, its humorous to see…

Re: they demand a "Python Expert"

Or they demand a "Rockstar". :)

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?

#227

Post by jlees » Wed, Jan 07, 2015, 1:12 AM UTC

GolfyMcG wrote: post #119

My team (a small healthcare startup) spent a lot of time looking at this for our first hire so I feel like I could provide some insights. First off, I think it varies quite widely on the school. We talked to people from General Assembly and the quality varied A LOT. There were some people who I would have said were capable of being a junior developer and some who I would say are hardly employable. None of them were e…

Several programs get a commission _and_ charge tuition.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?

#228

Post by Pixelicious » Wed, Jan 07, 2015, 1:23 AM UTC

ska wrote: post #200

shawndrost wrote: post #43

(Disclosure: I am a cofounder at one of these schools, Hack Reactor.) > Most of the job growth appears to be in academic stuff like AI and data science This is incorrect -- web jobs are growing quickly. > there are companies hiring people at $100k who, twelve weeks ago, had never opened a text editor in their lives. This is rare, but it does happen. The more common case is the student that coded on the side for a yea…

I care about capability, not credentials. That said, a BS from a decent CS program has some value, if only as a filter. And programs like these "bootcamps" have a similar value with a much lower bar. In both cases you need to know the program to really figure out how to scale it in your decision. Running an educational program is hard, I agree. And if you guys are doing a really excellent job of it over, say, 10 week…

(Disclosure: I'm a college dropout who went through Hack Reactor and can, for the first time, afford a comfortable lifestyle)

Hack Reactor focuses entirely on JavaScript and Web Development, after baking in the basics (algorithms, logical thinking, recursion vs iteration, introductory functional programming and TDD). And it is incredibly successful.

I think you're underestimating the difference between college and immersive learning. College is about many things, your major and focus being one of them. Immersive learning is about one thing. In Hack Reactor's case, it's becoming a competent Web Developer.

Elon Musk's response in this thread (https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk...) rings true. Almost no college is teaching Web Development, and so the students get little class based exposure to it, and stumble through many pitfalls. An immersive experience gives you the trunk and several branches, and then frees you up to go deep into whatever you care about.

And smart, voracious people who are eager to learn and better themselves quickly outclass everyone else.

Oh, and I could code competently before I went to Hack Reactor (I was a contractor). I went to gain deep web experience, work in crossfunctional teams, and have a safe place to fortify the foundational soft skills which are absolutely essential for productive software developers.

Oh, and the ROI is insane.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?

#229

Post by amcaplan » Wed, Jan 07, 2015, 1:25 AM UTC

My experience is limited to the Flatiron School, so I don't pretend to speak for other institutions.

I graduated from the Flatiron School at the end of April 2014. 6 weeks past graduation, I had 3 job offers (1 apprenticeship and 2 full offers) and accepted an offer for $75k - which, by the way, is a very normal salary for a Flatiron School grad (http://www.quora.com/How-successful-are-code-bootcamps-like-...). Now, 6 months after starting work, I think anyone on my team would say I'm more than pulling my own weight. I've already been involved with interviewing candidates and training new hires.

I had some experience with coding pre-Flatiron, but it was relatively minimal (AP computer science - so effectively 1 3-credit college course).

A great developer is made of 4 parts: 1. Inherent talent, 2. Grit and determination, 3. Effort, 4. Experience. You can always boost someone's experience by giving them time to keep learning and helping them along the way.

In terms of recruitment, I can't speak for other schools, but Flatiron grads tend to be placed by networking, not job boards. It's easier for a fresh developer to make a contact and open up a job than it is to fight with others for an already-open spot.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?

#230

Post by Bahamut » Wed, Jan 07, 2015, 2:00 AM UTC

Pixelicious wrote: post #228

ska wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care about capability, not credentials. That said, a BS from a decent CS program has some value, if only as a filter. And programs like these "bootcamps" have a similar value with a much lower bar. In both cases you need to know the program to really figure out how to scale it in your decision. Running an educational program is hard, I agree. And if you guys are doing a really excellent job of it over, say, 10 week…

(Disclosure: I'm a college dropout who went through Hack Reactor and can, for the first time, afford a comfortable lifestyle) Hack Reactor focuses entirely on JavaScript and Web Development, after baking in the basics (algorithms, logical thinking, recursion vs iteration, introductory functional programming and TDD). And it is incredibly successful. I think you're underestimating the difference between college and im…

Not all are equal though if I had to guess - to add another data point, my current company hired someone who went through Hack Reactor. He was on my team before me, but he was let go before I joined for drastically underproducing and for a very low quality of code. I had to deal with some of the repercussions of his code - what supposedly took him one month to write a poor piece of code utilizing d3 for a donut chart, I was able to refactor to a drastically more performant version in 1 1/2 days.

Maybe not all who go through a bootcamp like Hack Reactor are bad - the story certainly reinforces to avoid assumptions about a candidate and assess each person carefully.