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Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

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Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#331

Post by tnolet »

thisisforyou wrote: post #223
tnolet wrote: post #186

A sincere question: Do people ever NOT graduate from these types of bootcamps? I'm asking as IT Manager / Engineering Manager person. When it's on someone's CV, I never know how t value it.

The graduation rate is irrelevant, as a very selective bootcamp that works hard to make sure everyone learns and has a 100% grad rate will put out higher quality folks than a dev-mill that doesn't care what folks do and has a 75% grad rate. The base fact is bootcamps vary in quality. As a hiring manager it would be in your best interest to take a day to visit the bootcamps you see on resumes and get a sense for what…

That sounds fare, however the reality is this is a global market: I asses a CV from a Mexican guy/girl who went through a US bootcamp while I'm a hiring manager in Berlin. An actual coding chalenge still helps though.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#332

Post by mowenz »

wpietri wrote: post #286
planxty wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a great experience, which I shared in another comment here. I agree, however, that there are plenty of folks I studied with who either washed out because they weren't prepared, or haven't accomplished that much because they frankly aren't that smart or hard-working. Those people probably aren't posting here. Boot camps are no silver bullet. Like any kind of education, more is better, and the quality of the stud…

I'm glad you had a good experience, but I'm uncomfortable with your analysis here. If plenty of folks enter a boot camp and wash out because they aren't prepared, I don't think that's much about the students. I think that's a huge failure on the part of the boot camp program. The theory of boot camps is that you turn anybody who qualifies into somebody basically competent. E.g., US military boot camp drop out rates a…

>I don't think that's much about the students. I think that's a huge failure on the part of the boot camp program.

If you want a silver bullet for success, go to an ivy league or similarly-pedigreed school. There are plenty of people graduating from the top schools that burn out on their programs, but still get into successful gigs based on the reputation of their degree, and the connections they made.

Didn't study hard in high school, or Mommy And Daddy didn't send you to private school? Too bad. Life is competitive, and it needs to be that way if we want to make progress as a species.

No one is saying failure should come with punishments like unemployment or homelessness, but not every program out there needs to be as easy to coast through with C's as Harvard is. Not everyone needs to be a developer, doctor, pilot, etc., either. But the military needs almost everyone to get through boot camp.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#333

Post by eugmill »

wpietri wrote: post #286
planxty wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a great experience, which I shared in another comment here. I agree, however, that there are plenty of folks I studied with who either washed out because they weren't prepared, or haven't accomplished that much because they frankly aren't that smart or hard-working. Those people probably aren't posting here. Boot camps are no silver bullet. Like any kind of education, more is better, and the quality of the stud…

I'm glad you had a good experience, but I'm uncomfortable with your analysis here. If plenty of folks enter a boot camp and wash out because they aren't prepared, I don't think that's much about the students. I think that's a huge failure on the part of the boot camp program. The theory of boot camps is that you turn anybody who qualifies into somebody basically competent. E.g., US military boot camp drop out rates a…

The one I attended assumed their students have spent a good amount of time trying to learn on their own. They also had a long list of work to be read and done before the program even started.

In my limited experience, the ones that struggled most were the ones who simply didn't do the prework that was asked of them. Some people think education is something that will happen to them if they pay somebody enough, compared to those that went to a boot camp to accelerate the self-education they had already started.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#334

Post by scyclow »

jimbokun wrote: post #248
scyclow wrote: post #185

Disclaimer: My post-bootcamp experience (Chicago 2014) was probably very different from what I'm seeing today (New York 2017). Every meetup I go to seems flooded with bootcamp grads, and it appears the market is oversaturated with bootcamp grads. Overall, it seems like it's much harder to get that first engineering job I graduated from Dev Bootcamp Chicago in 2014. Before starting, I was a financial analyst for three…

"However, the the technical skills I learned from the curriculum ended up being almost completely irrelevant the second I graduated." I hope both boot camps and CS curricula will emphasize this point very strongly. The exact technology stack you are learning right now is probably not the one you will be using in the near future, and that's OK. Learning to learn, and understanding the fundamentals of what makes a good…

Yeah, that's what they told us at the time, but

1) How much can they really to teach you to learn in an 18 week period? I think it helped give me enough learning momentum to grab that first job and keep learning there, but I don't know if my fundamental learning ability was significantly altered.

2) Not only have I not used much Rails in my career, but I barely did anything back end development in the first year. And the back end development I've been doing recently has been a lot of mongo and GraphQL. While I've found knowing REST and SQL are definitely useful and necessary, those concepts aren't as useful for my day to day as I would have hoped.

3) They (understandably) didn't focus much on algorithms and CS. So we were kind of left up to our own devices to get the the real "meat".

Again, I found the whole experience incredibly useful and worthwhile, but I think teaching a relavant tech stack can add a lot if value for the job hunt and early job performance. These programs are mostly very expensive, and you have to derail your life for a few months and start your career over at stage 0. It's a big commitment, so I think grads need every advantage they can get.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#335

Post by dang »

gothrowaway wrote: post #280

> Bootcamp grad here who mentioned it prominently in my resume and blogged my experience and put up a YouTube video once a week while I was going through. Mind telling us who you are so we can take a look at your code and background? YouTube channel and GitHub would be helpful for us in assessing what you learned when you went to the bootcamp. > I'm not sure who filters out bootcamp grads, but I can say Google, FB, A…

We've banned this account for violating the HN guidelines repeatedly, in this thread and elsewhere. Personal attacks are particularly not allowed.

Please don't create HN accounts to violate the site rules with. Doing that will eventually get your main account banned as well.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14520585 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#336

Post by dang »

gothrowaway wrote: post #312

See the above? This is what codecamps do to innocent people. They prey on the weak, act authoritative, and take advantage of their hopes of getting jobs. You should demand your money back, every penny. > I can only look to my choice of bootcamp Bootcamps are not gatekeepers. They portray themselves as such to take your money. There's no such thing as an elite bootcamp. It's a lie to pray on your naïveté of the indust…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14523374 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#338

Post by dang »

planxty wrote: post #162
gothrowaway wrote: post #93

You signed up just to give a review? How did you find this article?

I just read hn. My outcome was great, and that is my response to the poster's question. If you have any meaningful contribution about your experience at a bootcamp, please feel free to share.

We're glad you read HN. (I work here.) Welcome to having an account!

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#339

Post by gothrowaway »

dang wrote: post #336
gothrowaway wrote: post #312

See the above? This is what codecamps do to innocent people. They prey on the weak, act authoritative, and take advantage of their hopes of getting jobs. You should demand your money back, every penny. > I can only look to my choice of bootcamp Bootcamps are not gatekeepers. They portray themselves as such to take your money. There's no such thing as an elite bootcamp. It's a lie to pray on your naïveté of the indust…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14523374 and marked it off-topic.

Why?

To add to it, did you hell-ban me? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14525098

That had 3 points.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#340

Post by gothrowaway »

dang wrote: post #337
gothrowaway wrote: post #93

You signed up just to give a review? How did you find this article?

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14518276 and marked it off-topic.

That's the the only thing that was detached, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14519547 was. It had 20 points.

Are you sure you wanted to detach that thread, and not just https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14520585?

I learned to program for free, and got paid for it, in fact. I think my perspective is valuable and balances the conversation.

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