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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'?

#91
I went to a coding boot camp in Omaha, Nebraska of all places.

Less than a month out of the school I was offered a job paying $55,000 a year salary at a large insurance company.

They primarily use Java and Groovy. The bootcamp taught Ruby on Rails. Maybe I got lucky, but I've found that the ability to code is slightly less important than one's ability to speak about programming/code in general.

If you can read and understand documentation, understand fundamental concepts like OO or functional paradigm, and understand what a stack is, a closure, recursion, the difference between an integer and a float, or a character and a string, methods/functions, etcetera, you are more or less hireable.

Basically you have to understand how a computer works, and the fundamental concepts in programming, as well as how to apply them.

However, you do need to have some sort of experience to put on a resume. For instance, if you go to a coding bootcamp you should be able to develop a simple REST API which sends a blob of json from a DB to a URL. That's a relatively complex task, but with a tool set like Ruby on Rails can be done in Essentially what I am doing at my job is more complex list processing and analysis. Just taking a bunch of data from a db, performing some operations to it, and spitting it back out. Basic stuff.

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

#92
It's strictly anecdotal but I have a friend who's been a Windows guy all his life.

He was already a great programmer, but he took a DevelopMentor Guerrilla .NET class and made contacts there that put him on a contract for Alyeska.

I doubt if he was a mediocre guy they would have noticed him, but he absorbed and mastered the material and got noticed. shrug It happens.

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

#93

I was a freelance web developer for a few years (utilizing skills I picked up growing up) when one of my clients hired me to come on-board full-time for my first salaried position. My supervisor wanted me to build a team, so he had me right a job req. I sent it to him, and he sent it back with the addition: "Bachelor's degree in CS". I pointed out that, not only is my degree not-in CS, but I would probably be dissuad…

Wow. I feel like you're more likely to get a poor non-CS candidate this way. i.e., you're more likely to get a non-CS candidate who isn't good at reading instructions, or isn't honest.

I myself wouldn't apply for a job that asked a BS in CS, as I don't have one. The best case is still awful: The company is being dishonest about its requirements. Which if they're dishonest about their requirements, who knows what else they're being dishonest about? Benefits? Hours?

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

#94

Heads up: I run one of these schools in SF and Austin, MakerSquare. >But if the stats that these bootcamps throw out are true, there are companies hiring people at $100k who, twelve weeks ago, had never opened a text editor in their lives. This is a very extreme case. As part of the admissions process for most great schools, people who have never opened a text editor are shown tutorials, books, and videos to prepare…

> mks.io/ac2

This is an interesting setup. What stops someone from creating a PR or fork with the answers?

Also, what kind of answers are you looking for from a candidate? When giving interview advice after seeing things like this, I'm not sure if "the" answer involves data hiding. Would that go beyond what you expect of a candidate? If not, I can appreciate how hard it would be to juggle the various incoming skill levels.

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

#95

Heads up: I run one of these schools in SF and Austin, MakerSquare. >But if the stats that these bootcamps throw out are true, there are companies hiring people at $100k who, twelve weeks ago, had never opened a text editor in their lives. This is a very extreme case. As part of the admissions process for most great schools, people who have never opened a text editor are shown tutorials, books, and videos to prepare…

[deleted]

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

#96

Yes, I work at Refinery29 (obligatory www.corporate.r29.com/careers/), a large women's fashion website in NYC. Of our 30 person tech team, we have had about 5 people coming out of these bootcamps, and they are all awesome. Although I think your idea of who goes to these bootcamps is pretty off. These aren't people who "had never opened a text editor in their lives." Some of them are people who were working in science…

Stated right in the quote you copied "entry-level talent". Are you entry level?

If not, then your recruiting emails mean little.

If yes, then your assessment of other entry-level programmers who happen to have come from bootcamps is perhaps less valuable.

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

#97
I attended one of these programs (Startup Institute Boston, back when it was Boston Startup school and free) and I had more job offers than I knew what to do with coming out of the program. The most money I was offered was $80k. I think $100k for someone just out of bootcamp is very much the exception, but I believe it does happen.

It seems like you're confusing listed job requirements with actual hiring practices. They don't have that much to do with each other. I don't think every graduate of a developer bootcamp is necessarily qualified to go right into a full engineering role, but more than enough are to make it worth it to employers.

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

#98

I live and work in a city of 300K people. My experience here is that companies have high hiring standards that border on the unreasonable (e.g. min 5 years of Ruby experience for a junior level job) and have little interest in training. This attitude stands in stark contrast to companies in larger cities which are willing (and even prefer) to invest in people by building interns into juniors and so on. I can't genera…

"companies have high hiring standards that border on the unreasonable (e.g. min 5 years of Ruby experience for a junior level job) and have little interest in training"

Those are related. I can help translate. It means you'll have a non-technical boss. You must be comfortable with learning from google, and your non technical boss is not tech savvy enough to learn from google for you.

For example, its humorous to see this story on the front page adjacent to the "I'm a freelancer and can't find work" story. In that story, theres a comment with a link to the periodic "hiring" stories you'll see here on HN. One of the most recent has a very entry level back end data processing job where (paraphrasing) they need someone to write a python script to open a text file, connect to a database, read the text file and import into the database, and then the javascript frontend guys take it from there. For this, which sounds like a first programming assignment in baby's first python class, they demand a "Python Expert". I cannot possibly imagine how bored a real python expert would be, taking care of something like that. They don't really want or need a "real" python expert, they are signalling that the boss will be totally non-technical and don't expect any training or hand holding at all, which for some noobs with self training skills is perfectly OK. Or by the standards of a totally non-technical businessman, a guy who can "apt-get install python" then write a hello_world or fizzbuzz that actually works is, relative to the businessman, a python expert.

Another reason you'll see weird job offers is H1B legal requirements. There's a large energy company about a mile from my house that periodically posts its legally required H1B job for a CCIE with 25 years experience and similar BS for $50K. All it means is they have a H1B working there and can't find a local willing to work for, say, $45K with 30 yrs (real, not resume) experience, so they don't have to deport the poor guy who's currently working there.

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

#99

Yes, I work at Refinery29 (obligatory www.corporate.r29.com/careers/), a large women's fashion website in NYC. Of our 30 person tech team, we have had about 5 people coming out of these bootcamps, and they are all awesome. Although I think your idea of who goes to these bootcamps is pretty off. These aren't people who "had never opened a text editor in their lives." Some of them are people who were working in science…

Oh hi, which of my (recently former) coworkers are you?

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

#100
GA Instructor in London here!

None of my students have gotten jobs out of my short-term, part time (6 hours a week) course yet. Most of my students were already employed and looking to find out more about development, or starting their own business. That's why they did a less intensive course. A couple, both with jobs already, are going to start looking soon though, they tell me. I'm excited to see what they come up with :)

However, I know that from the immersive course (UX Design Immersive and Web Design Immersive) which are all full time, many students get jobs. One recently at a company I used to work at, and in fact, my Teaching Instructors were both ex-GA students one of whom had gone on to get a job and then start freelancing.

Pretty cool!

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