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

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

#41

Post by chrisseaton »

sp3n wrote: post #18

yes i hired a guy who had been through a general assembly course in london, he had also had a couple short of internships before he got to us. hired as a junior javascript developer and he is doing very well

I'm sure you can't answer this, but are you paying him anywhere near $100,000 (£66,000)? In my experience that's about twice what a bog standard junior dev outside of finance, Facebook, Palantir, Facebook etc gets in London.

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

#42

Post by BrainScraps »

aviflombaum wrote: post #36

Flatiron 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

I hope this becomes an industry standard. Thanks for sharing, Avi

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

#43

Post by shawndrost »

(Disclosure: I am a cofounder at one of these schools, Hack Reactor.)

> Most of the job growth appears to be in academic stuff like AI and data science

This is incorrect -- web jobs are growing quickly.

> there are companies hiring people at $100k who, twelve weeks ago, had never opened a text editor in their lives.

This is rare, but it does happen. The more common case is the student that coded on the side for a year or two and then jumped in full-time to a school like mine.

> And if it's really possible to build a rails developer from scratch in 10 weeks, why not just just do it in-house through an internship program?

Running an educational program is hard. You might as well ask me "If your grads are really worth $100k a year, why not hire them all and make software?" That's, like, a whole different company.

> And why do most companies still ask for "at least a Bachelors in CS" for web and mobile development positions?

We tell our students, "This means 'you have to know how to code', so that random non-coders don't apply." As a former engineering manager, this was true in practice. I didn't care if an applicant had a BS or not, as long as they could code.

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

#44

Post by arfliw »

I have a friend who graduated from college a couple years ago with a liberal arts degree then went straight into Hackbright (women's only, I think). I did not have high hopes for her success but she actually landed a job pretty quickly as a javascript dev at a startup. She's still there and the company has raised multiple bigger funding rounds. I would guess her stock is worth quite a bit now. Good for her.

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

#45

Post by daktanis »

Our investors own a recruiting firm, so I am intimate with that industry. Number one take away I see is that companies are desperate for developers and the job reqs are often a wish list and not set in stone. My brother just finished the Iron Yard 3 month Front-End program, he has become a pretty good javascript dev in that time and I think he will do well. Waiting for the holiday lull to pass to see how the market will treat his new talents. I should add that he did well because he busted his ass, some of his class mates I wouldn't hire at minimum wage.

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

#46

Post by cllns »

aviflombaum wrote: post #36

Flatiron 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

I'd like to read this, but I don't see why I should have to share my email address with y'all to do it.

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

#47

Post by mikemjharris »

Yes - I studied at General Assembly last year and found a job very quickly in a start up in London. I have helped out with subsequent courses at GA and the figures of around 90% getting jobs are accurate. As with job ads throughout the industry the required skills are often exaggerated. Companies wont necessarily advertise for entry level but will accept. The careers fairs held at the end of each course are highly attended.

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

#49

Post by mdholloway »

I just finished such a bootcamp and I'm looking for a job. I'm in an geographic area where there's somewhat of a shortage of tech talent. My plan was to save up for Hack Reactor or similar (I have some experience, but not professionally, and no CS degree) but I had the opportunity to do this one for free. We've had several companies interested in recruiting, albeit not the coolest startups on the block.

I do not anticipate starting at $100k - maybe half that if I'm lucky.

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

#50

Post by lucasvo »

We have had some success with hiring out of General Assembly. Last summer we hired 3 interns out of GA who each first started off with a simple throwaway project and then proceeded on to some easy tasks learning our stack (Java/Groovy). We're not a ruby/python shop and a lot of our work is backend heavy. This was quite different to what these students were taught. During this period they got an internship salary. Out of the three we were interested in keeping two. The third person couldn't catch on to it fast enough. About a year later they are at about the level of a junior dev out of college. Their development since has been comparable to other junior devs. I count that as a success.

We'd probably do it again at some point but our engineering team is not big enough to absorb too many junior devs and train these. GA helped in building a foundation, we wouldn't have had the resources to do this training on our own.

And no, we were not paying 100k to people right out of the program.

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