Theory: If you disliked it, reviewing it poorly could reduce the credibility of your education. If you liked it, you don't care enough to review it.
Ask HN: Why are there so few reviews for coding bootcamps?
41–49 of 49 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few reviews for coding bootcamps?
#42Having done an online boot camp I can say at least part of it is not wanting to spread negative feedback that might devalue your investment. I imagine many people go into these programs to gain skills to get a job. If afterwards you talk about how the program failed to prepare you for that you're shooting yourself in the foot. As to why there aren't more positive reviews - maybe it's related?
We got a lot of this in college. Thankfully it's big enough and I'm ambivalent enough that I can say my college education was largely worthless and the good parts often far less good than they could have been. At a 'good' school.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few reviews for coding bootcamps?
#43I wrote a fairly detailed review on my blog. http://logicmason.com/2013/hack-reactor-review-life-at-a-hac... It lead to several sites emailing me and asking me to write a review or to link to their sites. Here is what I wrote to coursereport: > By completely ignoring the issue of student outcomes, your resource does prospective students a disservice. How about listing average salaries, listing graduation rates, linki…
Disclaimer: I run switchup.org The reason we don't have average salaries and grad rates is because the only org publishing that is the school itself. Can we trust that number? Has it been reviewed/audited by a third-party? Only one school does that and we report their number on the site. However, we constantly publish data on industry trends and overall placement rates and job stats to help guide the conversation. ht…
Yes, I've encountered this argument. Are you aware of the legal trouble a school misrepresenting its numbers would be open to?
It's extremely useful to include self-reported salaries and hiring stats. That's actually one of the key pieces of information I myself was looking at. List the stat and link to or summarize or link to their explanation of how it was calculated.
As for your own independent surveys, they are almost certainly far less accurate than that of the schools themselves. Considering the effects of selection bias on top of those of the small sample size you mentioned before I suspect they're essentially useless for someone making a decision.
Similarly, what good are "overall stats" that average the results of random respondents from world class institutions, low-end operations, experiments and all kinds of other projects? It would be kind of like looking at "overall stats" for a bucket of participating businesses who had taken money from YC, Techstars, unknown funds, crowdfunding, banks or their parents. That would yield some data, but the data wouldn't be useful for an entrepreneur actually considering taking on funding.
I don't think bootcamp review sites (except possibly Yelp) "help guide the conversation". I think they tend to mask the huge gulf between the several schools that a fantastic investment and the many more that aren't.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few reviews for coding bootcamps?
#44I did a GA bootcamp, during which time we were all encouraged to blog about our experience on a weekly basis (and we did). I'm not sure where I'd necessarily write/post a proper review.
My GA review: I did GA coworking space before their pivot to full time bootcamp. Startups and an established community that had been there for years were all given one month notice at the end of the year and were kicked out... seats for learning are more profitable than desks for doing. Now all of the grads need jobs, which used to be across the hall. In summary, they're short sighted.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few reviews for coding bootcamps?
#45One reason that also explains why there aren't many reviews of universities, relative to the number of people who attend: When your career depends in part upon the esteem of your degrees or certifications, speaking negatively about the source (uni, a camp) is disincentivized.
Reviews of individual university classes are prolific. Last time I used one of these websites [1] (years ago), there weren't any compunctions about posting negative reviews. I know this isn't exactly responding to your comment, but I thought it fit. [1] ratemyprofessor.com
As a total sidebar, my favourite ratemyprocessor.com review (of myself) reads as follows:
"is always willing to help if you need help just make sure that you at least try for a bit before you go for help from Tony otherwise he will not help you."
And yet the student rated me 5/5 for helpfulness and clarity. Makes me very happy inside to know that at least someone sees that that's a plus.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few reviews for coding bootcamps?
#46Hmm... there is probably space for a service here. Find out who applies to boot camps, interview them, find out who gets accepted to boot camps, interview them, then interview the graduates and any drop outs/people cut after the program is over. Use questions drawn from standard sociological and psychological surveys like the Grit-S Scale http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/12-item%20Grit%20S...
Provide ratings and info to the general public that don't just show rates, but trends, who drops out, comparisons of success rates for different groups, etc. Provide more structured but still anonymous feedback, for a price, to bootcamps as a consultant, or get a grant from a large tech firm. Publish papers in conjunction with academia on a delay.
I think what bootcamps could do, if they were willing to, is be much more agile in changing how they work based on research then a 4 year school, and actually do research and experiments to find better ways of teaching, and improve the industry as a whole.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few reviews for coding bootcamps?
#47[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few reviews for coding bootcamps?
#48Try yelp. Hack Reactor has 150+ Yelp reviews http://www.yelp.com/biz/hack-reactor-san-francisco
As good as the course sounds, and though it's small fish in the grand scheme, this turns me off: "Also, you get this hoodie for writing a review so...)" - http://www.yelp.com/biz/hack-reactor-san-francisco?hrid=mVJT...
You get the same hoodie for writing a negative review.
Re: Ask HN: Why are there so few reviews for coding bootcamps?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am pretty much just starting out. I took a few classes in high school and I've done some really minor projects since then, but I'd definitely still call myself a complete noobie. I've been considering trying out Learn Python the Hard Way, it comes up in pretty much every "I want to learn programming" thread on /g/.
How sure are you that you want to write code for a living? How much debt do you have? What kind of savings do you have? How many external obligations do you have? DBC was worth it for me; I moved to a new city, got a great job, didn't have to take on too much debt, and I am generally happier and better off now. But it's not a flat yes or no, it's very much a question of your circumstances and your commitment level.
I'm very sure that I'd like to write code for a living. I have $3k in credit cards from the last time I was unemployed, a $16k car loan, and around $2k in student loans from the one semester of college I did before I had to start working to pay for food. I don't have a savings. My only obligation is that my girlfriend of 5 years has a really great job in this city so I'd like to stay here until I get a "big boy" job.