Google Launches a Developer Boot Camp, Promising Jobs for Graduates • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Launches a Developer Boot Camp, Promising Jobs for Graduates

#171

Post by jtmcmc » Fri, Oct 23, 2015, 1:46 AM UTC

bphogan wrote: post #140

d2xdy2 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I work at a school that has that right now, and we do have lots of people who don't make it very far. When it comes to those "who don't make it very far"; how do you handle tuition and possible refunds? I'm not really advocating that they deserve or should get a full refund; I'm just skeptical that an open enrollment type thing where anyone can join (like I've experienced with a MOOC)-- you'll have a lot of student…

I agree with all of this. But I've seen people who came from nothing rise to the occasion and turn things around. And if we'd screened them out, the world would be worse off for it. The perspective they bring demonstrates the true, non-politicized idea of diversity. And so that's what I fear happens if the industry picks this bootcamp thing and runs with it; that we'll end up with a very homogeneous group of develope…

traditional schools absolutely don't have open enrollment. Try telling that to MIT or Stanford.

While I agree that there should be programs out there that reach out to underprivileged people and teach them to program I don't think the bootcamp model really suits them.

There are a number of organizations that do things like this (there should definitely be more though) but one of the main things is that the should generally be free and allow people to keep to differing paces. Otherwise you run into a large number of people who have spent a lot of money on a program that they won't do well at.

Re: Google Launches a Developer Boot Camp, Promising Jobs for Graduates

#172

Post by jqm » Fri, Oct 23, 2015, 1:55 AM UTC

MangezBien wrote: post #151

Ologn wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seriously, fuck you for acting like the only way to become a respectable or successful developer is the path you picked. Can you name me the respectable, successful, known developers that did not get a college degree? I mean, I can think of a few who were in the math/CS program of a top-tier school, who started a company on the side that took off, and dropped out since they were already on a rocket ship. I can also…

Nope. My argument is with you. You are a dick.

Imagine you had spent years and a lot of money studying 1'st normative forms. You have a lot of pride in in this knowledge... it represents a significant investment in time and money and makes you feel special. Suddenly, a 3 month bootcamp is insinuating it can turn out developers making almost what you are. You may just get a little dicky.

But I would guess there are at least a few shop owning mechanics who make as much as the highly degreed engineers designing the parts they install. And no shortage of plumbers making more than people who have graduate level knowledge of Latin. It's not fair. Life isn't fair. But from what I see, life rewards practical know-how... which may or may not entail academic credentials and esoteric knowledge.

Re: Google Launches a Developer Boot Camp, Promising Jobs for Graduates

#173

Post by lloyd-christmas » Fri, Oct 23, 2015, 1:57 AM UTC

itslennysfault wrote: post #150

To all the skeptics... I spent a year teaching the web development immersive program at General Assembly. I felt skeptical about the program too, but I always wanted to try teaching so I thought it was worth a go. by the way, I'd recommend it to anyone. It's a great way to take a break from dev work and teach the next generation of developers. It is extremely rewarding to watch people go from next to zero knowledge t…

From the student side, I'd say the admissions were crap. I was wait-listed simply because they lost my application. Our class ended up with 15 people who lived and breathed code for 3 months, along with a few nine-to-fivers who treated it as a work vacation. Shockingly, they were the ones who were allowed to control the pace. I ended up with one of them as a partner on one of the projects. His only contribution was a single line of "code"... his name on the README.

Admission gripes and crappy students aside, the rest of the learning environment was great. The teachers were always willing to give more outside work if we wanted more. It was invaluable having classes overlapping and students at different learning stages sitting next to each other in the community workspace. Most people were happy to provide help. I even had the dumb luck of sitting next to Ryan Dahl while I was learning node (I had no idea who he was at the time); now I use node all day every day.

Re: Google Launches a Developer Boot Camp, Promising Jobs for Graduates

#174

Post by FLUX-YOU » Fri, Oct 23, 2015, 1:59 AM UTC

Ologn wrote: post #127

MangezBien wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude, that I see frequently on HN, isn't very helpful. I taught myself to write code in a little under three months and immediately got a job as a Jr. Dev. I knew nothing about data structures or algorithms but I could write a Ruby program. Now, three years later, I am taking online classes to learn about those issues. The more advanced I got, the more I needed those "basics." Looking back at myself at 18, t…

> I knew nothing about data structures or algorithms but I could write a Ruby program.Now, three years later, I am taking online classes to learn about those issues. The more advanced I got, the more I needed those "basics." Data structures are not basics. Self-balanced binary tree graphs are not basics. More basic than that would be to learn what a graph is - Euler's bridges, Dijkstra's shortest path. More basic is…

>As an interviewer I will be able to tell this.

Who cares? You're just another job among the hundreds out there. That CS grad could be working on very difficult problems... or he could be pushing web apps for the next four years because his interviewer promised him cool toys and tough problems and then bait-and-switched. Not all of the school programs are top notch. Not all of the students that pass those programs will remember half of what you mentioned in your post or even recall the solutions when a typical problem is staring them in the face. His confidence will be misplaced, and now you're back to where everyone else is: assessing actual skill instead of guessing with credentials.

Frankly I'm alarmed that you've placed so much faith in that credential. For America in particular it really doesn't mean that much on its own unless you went to a well-known school. Not all CS programs are created equal. I'm certainly not going to burn cash and time because of spooky predictions of developer armageddon. People with four years of actual experience will be just fine.

Personally I'd be more interested in security-oriented devs. That's more important than knocking a few thousand cycles off of your algorithm.

Re: Google Launches a Developer Boot Camp, Promising Jobs for Graduates

#175

Post by lloyd-christmas » Fri, Oct 23, 2015, 2:41 AM UTC

jqm wrote: post #172

MangezBien wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. My argument is with you. You are a dick.

Imagine you had spent years and a lot of money studying 1'st normative forms. You have a lot of pride in in this knowledge... it represents a significant investment in time and money and makes you feel special. Suddenly, a 3 month bootcamp is insinuating it can turn out developers making almost what you are. You may just get a little dicky. But I would guess there are at least a few shop owning mechanics who make as…

Nobody is insinuating that they'll be competing with you. I had a class of 18, I'm one of two who ended up as a back end developer. It wouldn't surprise you much to learn that the two of us were both Math majors. The rest were design-y people who wanted to expand their job prospects and ended up as front end developers. I mean this in the nicest of ways to front end developers, but your algorithms mean jack-shit to them.

As one of those few back end developers, I would HOPE I'm not competing with you for a job, as that would then have been a waste of my time and money. That being said, 4 years down the road of real world experience, I doubt there will be any separation between myself and someone with a CS degree and 4 years of work experience. Real life converges. From my couple years post-GA, I'm perfectly capable of talking the talk with the CS majors who think the two letters give them superpowers.

Again, nobody is implying 3 months will match your 4 years. However, thinking that 3 months of immersion doesn't give you enough knowledge to gain the REAL knowledge on the job would be ignorant. I'm reasonably confident if you blindfolded me and dumped me in France, I'd be speaking french in 3 months. I doubt I'd be able to appreciate The Count Of Monte Cristo, but I'd be more than capable of navigating day to day life.

Re: Google Launches a Developer Boot Camp, Promising Jobs for Graduates

#176

Post by tayo42 » Fri, Oct 23, 2015, 2:41 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #69

roymurdock wrote: post #3

Can anyone in the app development world speak to whether or not there actually is a shortage of Android devs? Or is Google just trying to spark innovation by getting more engineers into the Android ecosystem?

Have been building mobile apps for a living for a few years - which I suppose makes me a vet in a relatively new field, so maybe I can shed some light: Demand for mobile developers in general is off the charts, and still climbing. It's kind of absurd, really - the going rate for mobile devs has increased 200-300% over the past 3 years amongst colleagues I know, which I think is almost entirely attributable to the dem…

RE: simply hiring experienced Java devs. This doesn't usually work - good mobile devs are also at least partially UX people - we spend a lot of time knee-deep in UI, and consumer expectations for the fit and finish of apps are high. Someone who has completed the "Hello World" equivalent of Android learning has done exactly that - finished "Hello World". It in no way implies the ability to build apps that aren't an embarrassment to the Play Store. There is a vast amount of domain knowledge here, and the gap between an app built by someone who merely knows the API vs. someone who knows mobile apps is pretty darned wide.

Why not hire and expect that people need to be trained and train them? There's a catch 22 situation here. Do most tasks really require amazing android specialized developers? Cant some decent developers get by with some guidance?

Re: Google Launches a Developer Boot Camp, Promising Jobs for Graduates

#177

Post by xacaxulu » Fri, Oct 23, 2015, 3:20 AM UTC

Every time I see a new Hacker School or something, I make a note of the technology they are teaching (Rails / Android) and slowly walk the other way, technologically speaking. I get the impression that companies are really tired of paying solid 6 figure salaries to devs. For now I'll just keep on focusing on newer, harder more niche things to stay in high demand.

Re: Google Launches a Developer Boot Camp, Promising Jobs for Graduates

#178

Post by almostApatriot1 » Fri, Oct 23, 2015, 3:49 AM UTC

kotojo wrote: post #160

redbluff wrote: post #157

My first impulse is like a lot of people to be fairly skeptical. Then I cast my memories back to when I started, and this is how a lot of big companies got their developers. You took the IBM Data Processing aptitude test and if you did OK, the company inducted you into a trainee programmer role and you were sent on a course and got your PL/I book. You then spent 6 months working with the senior programmer gaining exp…

I actually just went through General Assembly's Web Development Immersive course and finished in July. I'm in a similar situation to that. I learned HTML/CSS/JS, then ruby on rails and MEAN stack. After I finished I was at the point to know enough to know I don't really know much of anything, and got hired into an apprenticeship program a local company was running, even though the majority of the stack I learned at G…

Funny, every GA grad says this on Reddit/HN, yet the ones I've talked to claim otherwise, and GA still has yet to release any sort of Employment Statistics. You'd think they'd use some of that 70 million to publish some official stats before starting up all these new expensive courses...

Re: Google Launches a Developer Boot Camp, Promising Jobs for Graduates

#179

Post by enraged_camel » Fri, Oct 23, 2015, 5:39 AM UTC

manish_gill wrote: post #60

segmondy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop it. I think it's really an uncomfortable feeling for plenty of us that someone can learn to program in a few months. It makes plenty of people in the industry free inadequate and I see this argument of yours repeated over and over. It doesn't stand. A developer and a computer scientist are two different things. There are awesome developers who are terrible computer scientists. They can build a great website/smal…

> A developer and a computer scientist are two different things. No, they are not. A good developer is someone who, by virtue of the fact that he or she has to write software whose theoretical underpinnings are rooted in CS, must be good in CS as well. It's ok if you're not a CS person, but stop generalising and saying no dev has to be. > There are awesome developers who are terrible computer scientists. They can bui…

>>No, they are not. A good developer is someone who, by virtue of the fact that he or she has to write software whose theoretical underpinnings are rooted in CS, must be good in CS as well.

It depends on the problem domain. Most problems solved by software developers today do not require a CS background, or even any technical background. Just like in other fields, we have the advantage of building on the shoulders of giants. A smart person invents Ruby, another smart person builds Rails on top of that, and the next thing you know, a ton of people are writing web apps. This doesn't mean that the web app developers are "bad" developers. It just means they can focus on other types of problems.

Re: Google Launches a Developer Boot Camp, Promising Jobs for Graduates

#180

Post by learc83 » Fri, Oct 23, 2015, 6:02 AM UTC

tdaltonc wrote: post #137

bphogan wrote: post #99

edits to correct typos made on my phone. I am skeptical of developer bootcamps because they often aren't open enrollment. You generally have to have the aptitude and background to get through their admissions process and interview. That weeds out some people right away. They are right to have this admissions process, because if you let everyone in, lots of people won't make it, and then the promise of good paying job…

> open enrollment Do you mean that the program should be made available to anyone who wants to take it? What if there just isn't enough capacity to take that many people?

The usual solution is to raise prices until demand dies down to a level you can handle.