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

When I look at candidates (on all levels), I don't necessary need the most experienced person in the world. I look for people who are smart, gritty, and proven that they can learn quickly and effective in whatever role they're placed in.

It's true there aren't many job postings for entry-level developers, I've talked to a lot of folks who are learning that after their bootcamp, they need to do an apprenticeship before they're going to be seriously considered for an entry-level position. Companies that are willing to offer such on-ramps for new developers (and I know many who are building them) can find the incredible talent they need to grow their engineering teams and businesses.

I think, perhaps unsurprisingly, the statement that

> "GA seems to not really give a shit about actually educating people or getting them jobs, just about making sure they pay tuition"

is flat wrong. We have a large, dedicated "Outcomes" team whose sole job is to educate and prepare students for the workplace and find them positions after they graduate. Unlike other bootcamps, GA does not act as a recruiter by taking fees from employers for placing candidates, nor do we take a percentage of students' first year salaries as tuition. I think this is great, because it means that our Outcomes team is only concerned with finding the best fit for each student, rather than placing them with a "partner" company or in the highest paying job, which may not be suitable for them.

We also integrate workplace related programming throughout the entire course by bringing in developers from other companies to talk about what it's like to work in the industry, taking students on tours of potential employer offices so they can see what a typical dev environment might look like, encouraging students to participate in meetups and local dev events to grow their own development communities, and more. Also, GA has an excellent (90%+) success rate in helping our students get relevant (i.e. something that uses the skills they just learned) jobs post graduation.

As far as the curriculum: frankly, most of the bootcamps (including us) are teaching on the same stack (Ruby, Rails, Git, and obviously HTML, CSS/Sass, Javascript, jQuery and some JS framework). I would be very surprised if the curriculum was wildly different amongst bootcamps. What we've found is that the quality of instruction and an emphasis on problem-solving techniques is more important to long term success than particular technology stacks. I'd be very interested to hear if Flatiron has some groundbreaking new way to teach the Rails stack.

Finally, on instructor quality: I'm obviously very biased here, but the other instructors I've met and worked with at GA have been some of the best I've seen. I suppose it could be argued that I must not have seen great developers before, but if that's true then I have been faking my way through the last several years coding at prominent VC-backed startups. My co-instructors are experienced, knowledgeable, and most of all they take pride in their craft and care about their students. I have a lot of respect for Flatiron and think they're a great bootcamp, but I wouldn't trade the developers I get to work with on a daily basis for anyone.

We offer 7-day classes in various languages that allow current developers to get up-to-speed quickly in a new language or for someone with relatively little experience get a taste of development, but the real talent growth engine is our APPrentice program. Individuals can enter the program at any level, but we only accept those that are highly motivated to learn and fit within a framework of someone that has the potential to succeed as a developer.

This is a PAID program (yes, we pay them) because the individuals work with a highly experienced mentor on client projects, much like an internship. Students are in the program for as long as they "need", but it's typically between 6 - 12 months depending on what experience they come in with. Those in the program can also audit any of our immersive course offerings, even those they've already taken, without cost, to continually accelerate their learning.

We actually have one person currently in the program who graduated from a 10-week bootcamp, but wasn't quite ready to be hired as a qualified developer yet.

Instead of putting a box around education like the 100+ bootcamps have in the U.S., we've created a flexible program that can adapt to the needs of an individual. Check out what we're doing at www.elevenfifty.com