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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”?

#71

Post by gregmac »

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…

> This kind of thing is such bull shit.

> Before you down-vote me: a man passed and now works at Trader Joe's; a woman failed and got a software engineering role.

There's no reason to be outraged by a single anecdote. There are dozens or even hundreds of factors that qualify a person for a job beyond both their raw coding skill and gender.

If someone is taking a job at Trader Joe's because they can't find a programming job, there's a good chance there's a reason for that.

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

#72

Post by j45 »

everybodyknows wrote: post #38
j45 wrote: post #31

For beginners, it's critical to learn concepts of software development instead of the syntax memorization and regurgitation that seems popular to collect like scout badges. The fewer syntaxes one has to learn in the beginning, to do the most, the better. To keep a list to the minimum, I'd probably start with HTML, a bit of CSS, and then go to Javascript to teach web and then mobile development. I am not a day to day…

I hear you on that -- I've been looking for a path that starts with the best-structured languages, as vehicles for learning the more powerful concepts: static vs dynamic typing et al. So, Golang, Python, or Typescript. School in question is a bit behind the curve -- "PHP/MySQL".

PHP/MySQL is fine to learn to build web apps too. The problem is when you have to learn 30 different things in some languages to create your own stack (Ruby, node, etc) for beginners.

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

#73

Post by tmnvix »

bbcbasic wrote: post #41
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?

You have a good point but I have to disagree with you when you say that "The % of people who get jobs doesn't matter." It does matter. I'm sure you'd agree if it were 1% and not 70%.

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

#74

Post by jimmy444 »

jen729w wrote: post #67
michaelmrose wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given Male 1 and Female 1 wherein female 1 was unfairly discriminated against. How does it follow that if you unfairly privilege female 2 in favor of male 2 that you have somehow made up for the original injustice. A rational though process would be that this just adds to the sum of injustice in the world. I'm perhaps presuming to much but with a name that begins with Jen which is often a short or familiar form of Je…

They're my initials. I'm a 40 year old white English guy called John. I believe my life thus far has been tremendously more easy than a 40 year old black woman's would have been. Do you disagree? Edit: here's a concrete example. I've basically been offered every job interview I've gone for. I'm good at my job, no doubt, but in some of those cases I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been the strongest candidate. But - for…

None is denying that there is a problem.

But people are upset because there is a PD that is favouring inferior candidate. In this case woman who failed. Of course a lot of assumptions, but still it looks like this.

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

#75

Post by badminton1 »

jen729w wrote: post #54
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…

It's called "positive discrimination" for a reason. We're positively discriminating to the benefit of women (or minorities, or whomever) now, to make up for the decades of negative discrimination that these groups have suffered. Don't think it's fair? Interesting feeling, eh. Not very nice, eh. Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life.

Not the right mindset either. Positive discrimination is actually negative for the groups that you are leaving out.

Just focus in looking for candidates that are objectively competent at what they are supposed to do and fit in your culture. If you do it in an unbiased way then most groups should be represented.

Have you heard of the Equal Employment Opportunity commission? call them and tell them about your positive discrimination idea, they will surely like it... since you are in violation of EEO laws (sex discrimination = preferring females to males is as illegal as preferring males to females).

https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sex.cfm

If you do, you will have a hard time proving that setting higher requirements for male employees is not unfavorable discrimination against them.

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

#76

Post by michaelmrose »

jen729w wrote: post #67
michaelmrose wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given Male 1 and Female 1 wherein female 1 was unfairly discriminated against. How does it follow that if you unfairly privilege female 2 in favor of male 2 that you have somehow made up for the original injustice. A rational though process would be that this just adds to the sum of injustice in the world. I'm perhaps presuming to much but with a name that begins with Jen which is often a short or familiar form of Je…

They're my initials. I'm a 40 year old white English guy called John. I believe my life thus far has been tremendously more easy than a 40 year old black woman's would have been. Do you disagree? Edit: here's a concrete example. I've basically been offered every job interview I've gone for. I'm good at my job, no doubt, but in some of those cases I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been the strongest candidate. But - for…

If its not favoring the weaker candidate its not discrimination positive or otherwise its plain old judgement. You are saying that you are in favor of discrimination or somehow used as a sort of tie breaker which is kind of silly frankly.

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

#77

Post by abraca »

lmcnish14 wrote: post #64
WildUtah wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40% female? That's extremely high. Wonder how they accomplished that.

That seems like a reasonable ratio considering that bootcamps are a popular way for women to break into the industry.

No, it is not a typical ratio. Bootcamps often have cohorts where there are 10 percent or even fewer women. For a bootcamp to have 40 percent ratio is impressive and unusual. Also - remarkable for all women to have a job at graduation. The bootcamp described sounds very unusual and the numbers are so very different from industry standard - that I encourage anyone reading to do their own research.

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

#78

Post by exclusiv »

jen729w wrote: post #54
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…

It's called "positive discrimination" for a reason. We're positively discriminating to the benefit of women (or minorities, or whomever) now, to make up for the decades of negative discrimination that these groups have suffered. Don't think it's fair? Interesting feeling, eh. Not very nice, eh. Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life.

That's nonsense. It's illegal to discriminate based on gender.

Your idea of a "make good" policy doesn't align with the laws nor does it make sense to punish people that have nothing to do with any prior discriminations made against the group you are advocating breaking the law for.

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

#79

Post by doyoulikeworms »

jen729w wrote: post #54
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…

It's called "positive discrimination" for a reason. We're positively discriminating to the benefit of women (or minorities, or whomever) now, to make up for the decades of negative discrimination that these groups have suffered. Don't think it's fair? Interesting feeling, eh. Not very nice, eh. Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life.

Men can suffer from discrimination too. You sound like you read some bad, echo-chambery stuff TBH.

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

#80

Post by bbcbasic »

tmnvix wrote: post #73
bbcbasic wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You have a good point but I have to disagree with you when you say that "The % of people who get jobs doesn't matter." It does matter. I'm sure you'd agree if it were 1% and not 70%.

Nope still doesn't matter.
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