A friend of mine did General Assembly, and while I haven't worked with him, I was fairly impressed with the breadth of topics they covered, including things like computational complexity and web app security.
Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
31–40 of 264 posts
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#32I haven't hired from them but I bet they have a high hire rate because they have connections. The people who run the program are likely well connected with companies and can find positions for the students. I've seen this with university programs. I know someone who studied a non-computer related bachelors degree. He followed it up with a 1 year masters in software developer (no experience in software before this) an…
Huh. I just learned about "one year masters degrees." I realize that some extremely exceptional people can complete a masters degree in one year, but I don't think I'd ever hire someone who came out of a program that was _designed_ to be completed in one year.
Strange I thought that's what a masters degree was - a bachelors + 1 year. Is there another type? I always thought the extra year would have to be in the same field of study but apparently not. I don't think it even has to be in the same 'school' (i.e. someone with a BS can do a 1 year engineering masters).
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#33I have a Flatiron guy on my team as an FE dev and he's been pretty good. He had to be nurtured a bit on some softer projects, but after a year or so we put him on important stuff and he's been a solid junior dev. Probably ready for promotion. Even before bootcamps, it was pretty common to have self-taught devs be solid if not better than guys with CS degrees.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#34I 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 generalize with confidence, but I suspect this small town / big town dynamic may exist otherwise.
To answer the original question - companies in my area are unlikely to hire from a Bootcamp and I think this may be a trend in smaller hiring markets.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#35It's common to put people who are already employed through these things when their skills are out of date. You'd much prefer a JS developer than a Fortran or Pascal developer today, right? But many huge corporations have only the later.
Actually I'd take a good Fortran or Pascal developer any day. What programming language they know isn't relevant. If they're a good engineer they'll figure out javascript or whatever the flavor of the month is.
There's a Detroit employer running a bootcamp to take Cobol developers and retain them for IOS. I hear its been a big success.
Why wouldn't someone with 30-40 years of programming experience and who is motivated not be able to learn a new language?
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#36Flatiron School has published an audited 3rd party job report about the success of our graduates. http://flatironschool.com/jobs-report-2014 AFAIK we're the only school to actually do that and not just talk about it. Additionally, if you're into more of a narrative, check out our annual report. http://far.flatironschool.com/
Judge for yourself.
Avi Flombaum
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#37We hired a junior developer from Flatiron School in NYC. We were very happy with the process of working with them and very happy (now 6 months in) with the hire. She got familiar, then proficient, with our stack (Rails, Rspec, heavy client side JS with Backbone & Marionette with Jasmine specs, Postgres) at a rate I'd expect of someone with a year of experience.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#38Although the development shop I work at (makandra) has a constant demand for new engineers, we would never hire someone out of a ten week program. To give you an idea about what kind of juniority is attractive to a shop like ours: We run our own in-house internship program which takes 9 months . It requires CS degree plus some previous experience (private pet projects are OK) to enter. The intern is paid living expen…
This, while 100K wont be much in SF, I don't think people realize how much that is in other states (and how much you get to take home). Where I live after 80K is already a senior developer position, and that's still in the US (Florida).
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh. I just learned about "one year masters degrees." I realize that some extremely exceptional people can complete a masters degree in one year, but I don't think I'd ever hire someone who came out of a program that was _designed_ to be completed in one year.
Strange I thought that's what a masters degree was - a bachelors + 1 year. Is there another type? I always thought the extra year would have to be in the same field of study but apparently not. I don't think it even has to be in the same 'school' (i.e. someone with a BS can do a 1 year engineering masters).
This term may depend upon the country. In the UK, masters programs are 1 year full.
Re: Ask HN: Does anyone actually hire from 'developer bootcamps'?
#40I was hired from a "boot camp". Well, it was a boot camp preset, but I hired someone to mentor me in mobile development. When I felt ready, I applied to a mobile dev shop and got the job. You still have to continue to really bootstrap your skills for the first year or so, but you'll get there.