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Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

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Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#41

Post by bbcbasic »

biznerd wrote: post #20

I did one. I HIGHLY suggest vetting the placement "statistics". For me, I just read 95% get a job, went to the open house, listened to a couple "rah rah" testimonials and did it. It was a big mistake. A friend of mine from the class estimated that only 30-40% of us got actual dev jobs. The rest are either in customer service at a tech company, sales or testing (keep in mind this is people who dropped $15k+ to do the…

The % of people who get jobs doesn't matter. Those people are not you. Maybe the 70% decided they didn't like coding after all. Or maybe the course was crap. Who knows?

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#42

Post by oddlyaromatic »

atsaloli wrote: post #18

Freecodecamp.com is free if price is an issue.

Really found the community and structure of freeCodeCamp to be amazing for me to make progress. The actual teaching is not very detailed- they show you a little but then intend that you learn to Google and use the documentation to find stuff out. I recommend having some other source of learning in parallel with FCC. Can also be free.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#43

Post by mannykannot »

Kluny wrote: post #36
OJFord wrote: post #27

> As a positive point, all the females in our cohort got dev jobs, including the only one who actually failed the class. Startups are pretty aware of the gender discrepancy and actively looking to hire those with double x chromosomes. Not complaining about affirmative action, just wanted to give you as full picture as possible You should be complaining! Especially given the rest of your story. This kind of thing is s…

Maybe the women just hustled harder. I know that was the case in the program I went through. 30 of us passed; 3 were women. All 3 women and about 20% of the men got good industry jobs. However, I and the other two women were hustling for jobs, sending resumes, networking and going to interviews 6 months before graduation. Most of the men, assuming they were telling the truth when I casually asked them about it, didn'…

"One already had a degree in software engineering..." There's a whole other issue right there.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#44

Post by cgriswald »

Kluny wrote: post #36
OJFord wrote: post #27

> As a positive point, all the females in our cohort got dev jobs, including the only one who actually failed the class. Startups are pretty aware of the gender discrepancy and actively looking to hire those with double x chromosomes. Not complaining about affirmative action, just wanted to give you as full picture as possible You should be complaining! Especially given the rest of your story. This kind of thing is s…

Maybe the women just hustled harder. I know that was the case in the program I went through. 30 of us passed; 3 were women. All 3 women and about 20% of the men got good industry jobs. However, I and the other two women were hustling for jobs, sending resumes, networking and going to interviews 6 months before graduation. Most of the men, assuming they were telling the truth when I casually asked them about it, didn'…

It's entirely possible that the women just hustled harder, thus explaining while all the qualified ones were hired.

The problem is with the one who failed the class. What do we know about her? We know that she either was too lazy to pass the class--implying she doesn't hustle--or she is simply unable to pass the class, implying she isn't qualified.

Combine this with the current political climate, in which a company looks like its trying to solve problems if it employs more women; and the fact that women joining male-dominated fields tends to cause a reduction in wages in those fields, and the fact that this seemingly unqualified and/or non-hustling woman was hired while many men were not, and its suggestive of a gender bias.

That is not to say the other women who were hired aren't qualified or don't deserve those jobs. Merely that there may exist a gender bias which is problematic in that it is focusing a particular outcome (equality of gender) at the expense of economic sense and efficiency; not to mention the personal expense of the qualified men and also at the expense of the unqualified woman who, if such a bias exists, is really being exploited.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#45

Post by liquidise »

biznerd wrote: post #20

I did one. I HIGHLY suggest vetting the placement "statistics". For me, I just read 95% get a job, went to the open house, listened to a couple "rah rah" testimonials and did it. It was a big mistake. A friend of mine from the class estimated that only 30-40% of us got actual dev jobs. The rest are either in customer service at a tech company, sales or testing (keep in mind this is people who dropped $15k+ to do the…

As a dev in Denver who routinely interviews candidates from some of the nations top bootcamps, i can corroborate these claims. Many graduates from these programs are hired by the bootcamp itself, as tutors or web devs. Rarely are these hires profitable to the school, instead the are done strictly to maintain the placement statistics that are paramount to their continued enrollment.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#47

Post by MegaButts »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #32
eagsalazar2 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things have changed over the last few years and what was true in 2013 is no longer true. In 2013, the few bootcamps that existed and the fewer cohorts they each had were much more selective and they were producing in total many fewer candidates. The result is that bootcamp grads were very high quality (albeit very junior) and they got snapped up quickly. In 2017 there are bootcampers everywhere flooding the market. S…

The first two CS courses at my top university are enough to be qualified for your entry-level junior engineer: the intro course "Programming with Java" (recently changed to Python now), followed by the second course, Data "Structures & Algorithms." All the bootcamp would have to do is be similarly very selective and do the same exact curriculum, and the people who "survive" these two weed-out courses (you needed to s…

> you needed to score higher than half your classmates in each course to receive a passing grade

Was this actually the rule dictated by the professor/curriculum or just a rule of thumb?

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#48

Post by pfarnsworth »

Someone I know graduated from Hackbright, the bootcamp for women that has a decent reputation but also fairly expensive. It's been a couple of years and she hasn't gotten a programming job, I don't even mention it anymore.

So your mileage might vary. I'm deeply skeptical of anyone from a bootcamp, to be honest. I think if you can really learn something and get your foot int the door with a small startup, then it opens the doors, but it's also hard without signficant amount of dedication.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#49

Post by tps5 »

Kluny wrote: post #36
OJFord wrote: post #27

> As a positive point, all the females in our cohort got dev jobs, including the only one who actually failed the class. Startups are pretty aware of the gender discrepancy and actively looking to hire those with double x chromosomes. Not complaining about affirmative action, just wanted to give you as full picture as possible You should be complaining! Especially given the rest of your story. This kind of thing is s…

Maybe the women just hustled harder. I know that was the case in the program I went through. 30 of us passed; 3 were women. All 3 women and about 20% of the men got good industry jobs. However, I and the other two women were hustling for jobs, sending resumes, networking and going to interviews 6 months before graduation. Most of the men, assuming they were telling the truth when I casually asked them about it, didn'…

> Maybe the women just hustled harder.

Doubt that explains it.

I went through a large software development course, about 70 people. 60-40 male-female. Was a positive experience. The women all landed jobs instantly. As in, the day the camp ended, they all had jobs. The men, mostly, did not. It took months and multiple interviews for the men to get hired.

The demand for female developers is higher than the demand for male developers. (not that the demand for male developers is low). This doesn't particularly bother me, but it does appear to be a thing.

The way I look at it, most of the personal attributes that get you an entry-level job will end up having nothing to do with how well you will perform in that job. Gender is just another one of those.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#50

Post by StClaire »

liquidise wrote: post #45
biznerd wrote: post #20

I did one. I HIGHLY suggest vetting the placement "statistics". For me, I just read 95% get a job, went to the open house, listened to a couple "rah rah" testimonials and did it. It was a big mistake. A friend of mine from the class estimated that only 30-40% of us got actual dev jobs. The rest are either in customer service at a tech company, sales or testing (keep in mind this is people who dropped $15k+ to do the…

As a dev in Denver who routinely interviews candidates from some of the nations top bootcamps, i can corroborate these claims. Many graduates from these programs are hired by the bootcamp itself, as tutors or web devs. Rarely are these hires profitable to the school, instead the are done strictly to maintain the placement statistics that are paramount to their continued enrollment.

Uh... I don't normally do this, but any chance you guys are hiring? I'm in Denver looking for an entry level position. I can do machine learning
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