Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Strange and Sudden Disappearance of a Coding Bootcamp Founder

inc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 75 posts

Re: The Strange and Sudden Disappearance of a Coding Bootcamp Founder

#61

Post by flukus »

reustle wrote: post #33
keithpeter wrote: post #32

"Every year, dozens of new schools open, promising to teach anyone who can type the skills necessary to make a career in software development." OK, so people want an accessible route into the very basics. Where are the Community Colleges? In the UK, your local Further Education college will do you the very basics for not much money as an evening class.

They are there, but their curriculums are extremely outdated most of the time.

They are learning to code, they particulars of the technology shouldn't really matter.

Re: The Strange and Sudden Disappearance of a Coding Bootcamp Founder

#62

Post by flukus »

keithpeter wrote: post #32

"Every year, dozens of new schools open, promising to teach anyone who can type the skills necessary to make a career in software development." OK, so people want an accessible route into the very basics. Where are the Community Colleges? In the UK, your local Further Education college will do you the very basics for not much money as an evening class.

What's your government been like lately? In Australia they've been trying hard to funnel all the community college money into dodgy private trainers.

Re: The Strange and Sudden Disappearance of a Coding Bootcamp Founder

#63

Post by morgtheborg »

jdhawk wrote: post #2

Has anyone done a coding bootcamp? With the plethora of relatively cheap/free resources out there from Universities, to professional institutions, all the way to YouTube, what is the appeal? Do the certifications count for anything to hiring managers? Do you need someone to kick you in the ass on a daily basis to keep moving? Do you need the higher touch Q&A thats not available in Forums/StackOverflow type places?

I did three years ago. Basically spent three weeks reading books and doing exercises available online for about 3-5 hours a day and then nine weeks of M-F 9 AM - 11 pm and probably 4-9 hours each day of the weekend doing curated exercises intended to get you to the point at the end of the bootcamp where you could get a functional web app up and knew how to teach yourself anything you were missing. Which, obviously, was a lot.

Everyone who did the program with me now makes six figures in the Bay Area or decent salaries if they left. All of us who stuck with it (rather than moving to project management, etc) are working alongside people who got 4 year CS degrees and getting paid in the same range.

If you like coding, it's a pretty sweet deal. My brother-in-law recently went through the program (six months ago) and landed a job that more than doubled his salary back in Arizona, so it's not like it's only useful if you want to do the start-up SF thing.

Re: The Strange and Sudden Disappearance of a Coding Bootcamp Founder

#64

Post by morgtheborg »

the_watcher wrote: post #10
mericsson wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A close friend of mine did https://devbootcamp.com/ --- and coupled with the instruction and a lot of hard work in the class, was able to switch careers successfully. This was a few years ago when there was less competition amongst boot camp graduates to find jobs, but I'm still seeing devbootcamp graduates successfully change careers. I think the combination of the kick in the ass, working on projects as a team, and…

I've had friends do Hack Reactor, App Academy, MakerSchool, Dev Bootcamp, and Galvanize. They've all been very positive about the quality of instruction, and all are now happily employed, but all have clarified that while the schools all try to help with job placement, it's not substantively different than getting a first job out of school.

Depends on your degree.

I have a MA in Global Affairs and Management and getting a job in DC meant pulling all sorts of connections, being willing to do internships that paid close to nothing, and networking my rear off. I once sent out over a three month period over 20 applications for paid positions a week (so not internships) and got, I kid you not, zero responses. It was connections all the way. Even once I had made my way in the pay was pitiful and it remains a connections game.

After I did the bootcamp, easily 20% of resumes I sent out at least got a response. All in person interviews led to job offers. That's a pretty different experience than hunting for a first job out of school if you have a non-technical degree.

Re: The Strange and Sudden Disappearance of a Coding Bootcamp Founder

#65

Post by morgtheborg »

twblalock wrote: post #28
jdhawk wrote: post #2

Has anyone done a coding bootcamp? With the plethora of relatively cheap/free resources out there from Universities, to professional institutions, all the way to YouTube, what is the appeal? Do the certifications count for anything to hiring managers? Do you need someone to kick you in the ass on a daily basis to keep moving? Do you need the higher touch Q&A thats not available in Forums/StackOverflow type places?

I know companies and hiring managers who have hired from certain boot camps they consider to be good. They consider the certifications from those particular boot camps to be an indicator that the person they are interviewing can join a fast-paced team and start producing Rails or Node.js web apps with minimal extra training. The boot camp grads often don't understand a lot of fundamental computer science, but the kin…

Super curious what that short list is, care to share?

Re: The Strange and Sudden Disappearance of a Coding Bootcamp Founder

#66

Post by bdcravens »

awareBrah wrote: post #40
bdcravens wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy considering that Launch School (formerly Tealeaf) has an online program for $199 a month (working at it full time you should complete in about 4 months) (we have a junior dev using it)

They used to charge apprx 2.5k for the whole program. Either way, a massive bargain, compared to what's out there

I know this all-too-well. :-) We actually bought the first section ($499 if I recall) and then they made the pricing switch - while that content is still available, in terms of completing the program, we had to switch to the monthly billing.

Re: The Strange and Sudden Disappearance of a Coding Bootcamp Founder

#67

Post by robertjm »

passivepinetree wrote: post #58
robertjm wrote: post #54

I know this guy, he worked for me on a project for a bit. At the time, he was in Mexico on a sail boat just going from port to port working on projects remotely. He would exchange tid-bits about his life, he was definitely unhinged. At the time, I think he was avoiding prosecution in the US by being in Mexico. This is super crazy but I'll be honest, not out of character for the guy.

That's super interesting. Can you offer any more details about him/his skills/his life?

Not too much. I was referred to him through a friend of mine who is a recruiter who knew I was looking for rails dev's, we still talk about him every once in awhile as possibly the oddest dev that's ever worked for me. He was a pretty good Rails developer (and passionate) and very active on the Ruby Forums, I think he was banned at some point though for some of his behavior. I remember he went on a Facebook rant regarding his ex-wife on Facebook, about how she was keeping his kid(s?) away from him and (at the time) she was the reason he couldn't return to the United States. After he got hired, he basically went to the other dev's on the github and emailed all of them telling them "he was the new lead dev" on the project. I had to take an entire day calming down the rest of the team haha.

Re: The Strange and Sudden Disappearance of a Coding Bootcamp Founder

#68

Post by madenine »

cheriot wrote: post #39
madenine wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a bootcamp program. In-person, 13 weeks, 9-5, 5 days a week, plus HW/Weekly projects/Capstone project. If I had locked myself in my apartment could I have learned the same things in the same amount of time? Maybe. Going through an organization took the legwork out and let me focus on the learning. I didn't have to seek out my own materials (I did anyways, but that was for added depth into things that interested…

It sounds like the investment paid off, but if you don't mind me asking, what did the bootcamp cost?

My bootcamp was for data science, so not exactly comparable to software/web dev camps - but it cost me about $9k + living expenses.

Re: The Strange and Sudden Disappearance of a Coding Bootcamp Founder

#69

Post by kafkaesq »

davidhariri wrote: post #22

"He had a penchant for oversharing personal information and sometimes ripped hits from a colorful glass bong during video lectures with the students." "I did learn some stuff," Johnson says. "I can write some code, and I didn't know anything before I started." Oh jeez. I feel really bad for his students.

I wouldn't look down on that remark. People are different, and everyone needs to start somewhere.

Re: The Strange and Sudden Disappearance of a Coding Bootcamp Founder

#70

Post by kafkaesq »

rajangdavis wrote: post #42
jdhawk wrote: post #2

Has anyone done a coding bootcamp? With the plethora of relatively cheap/free resources out there from Universities, to professional institutions, all the way to YouTube, what is the appeal? Do the certifications count for anything to hiring managers? Do you need someone to kick you in the ass on a daily basis to keep moving? Do you need the higher touch Q&A thats not available in Forums/StackOverflow type places?

I went through General Assembly's Web Development Immersive 2 years ago. I have made good use of what I have learned in that program; however, I would be reluctant to recommend that everyone should take it. It really depends on how much of your own time you are willing to invest in learning the material. I had 1 year of some web development experience at that point, so I was familiar with some of the material and did…

Most of that sounds positive, actually. So I'd be curious as to what the basis for your net negative take was.
Post reply on HN