Is this announcement official? I don't see anything on their website https://devbootcamp.com/. Also, the timing is off -- it seems announcing this at this time is going to put a damper on the entire next semester.
Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down
261–270 of 306 posts
Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, they didn't teach you data structures and algorithms? They seriously stop at "hey deploy a CRUD app?" That's rough. There's no way students are getting jobs with that in this environment. Maybe when they first started that was enough, but now the market is flooded with not-quite-competent junior devs.
They can and they do. Which is somewhat problematics. A lot of companies are trying to scale, and with the demand for software developers being so high (plus the push for diversity), bootcamp "grads" are a pretty popular target. But companies rarely make the difference between a CS major (especially those with multiple internships or coops often spawning longer than the bootcamp on their own) and bootcamp graduates.…
> So they both start as SWE or Junior/Associate SWE
> That puts a ton of burden on teammates that may not be properly prepared to coach these people
You hit the nail on the head. Bootcamp grads will typically require more coaching than 4-year CS grads. Companies that don't realize this are setting themselves and their new hire(s) up for a painful experience.
In my opinion, fresh bootcamp grads are ready to be apprentice developers. Unfortunately, that's not really a role / distinction that any 21st century companies even recognize, probably because that also means recognizing the additional costs involved : apprentices require mentoring, and mentoring costs money. It's simply greedy thinking on the part of a hiring company to believe they can get a 4-year CS grad on the cheap & easy by going the bootcamp route. It's bad management not to account for the latter's steeper learning curve & onboarding requirements.
Ultimately there's no such thing as a free lunch. Even talented people can't magically leapfrog the learning curve by cramming out webapps for 3 months. There will be gaps in their skillset - gaps that are best bridged with hands-on guidance from a senior developer. This applies to all junior devs, obviously, but doubly so for bootcamp grads.
Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down
#263So, three years ago, I was attending DBC and getting my first exposure to web app development. Today, I write code for a living and am enjoying the work I do much more than what I had been doing before. Did DBC give me an education equivalent to a computer science degree? No. Did they teach me everything I need to know about data structures and algorithms? No. Did they help me get my first programming job? Sort of, b…
Wait, they didn't teach you data structures and algorithms? They seriously stop at "hey deploy a CRUD app?" That's rough. There's no way students are getting jobs with that in this environment. Maybe when they first started that was enough, but now the market is flooded with not-quite-competent junior devs.
To be fair, they introduced us to data structures and algorithms, but there was no time to get a strong understanding of them.
Most of the first 3 weeks of the class was focused on writing Ruby programs to do different sorts and searches, and to model and manipulate different objects (suduko boards, battleship boards, etc.).
I left with a good practical knowledge of working with arrays and hashes in Ruby and when I would prefer one structure over the other, but what I mostly learned was how to model data objects for a SQL database and set up a web app to manipulate those objects (and how to integrate w 3rd party APIs).
But if you asked me anything about a Linked List or a Trie or when it was better to use which one, I would not have given you a very satisfactory answer (still might not, about Tries at least...).
And, yeah, getting a job was tricky. Partly because I still had a lot to learn (still do), but also partly because there is a lot of knowledge that every computer science grad has learned backwards and forwards and then forgot about that most bootcamp grads have only barely been exposed to.
Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. We use JavaScript for front-end stuff as that's the native language of the browser. We'll also use a little bit of Spring, so JSF isn't far away, but I wouldn't go into looking for a school that teaches exactly one (relatively small) framework. Look for the fundamental principles and worry about frameworks later.
Fair enough, and I'm no expert, but isn't JSF 2 a formalized / built-in standard, rather than a relatively small framework? I thought most of what made Spring useful and popular was blown away by JSF 2.
Spring and JSF are to some extent mutually exclusive. I worked on a project that used JSF views with Spring EL that called Spring beans. However, the best practice, according to BalusC on StackOverflow, is to avoid mixing Spring components and JSF managed beans (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18387993/spring-jsf-inte...).
Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down
#265I find bootcamps to be an interesting industry. The general perception is that they're learning institutions, but that couldn't be further from the truth. In reality, bootcamps are technical recruitment agencies. Companies are realizing that smart, motivated people with no CS degree can still oftentimes excel in the majority of positions (primarily app development.) The problem is finding those people. Bootcamps have…
> Dev Bootcamp was always in that awkward position where it was trying to be one of the "premiere" bootcamps, but never actually made it to tier 1 status. It's always lived in the shadow of Hack Reactor, Fullstack Academy, and to a lesser extent, App Academy. Having personally worked with Dev Bootcamp graduates, I've felt that on average, they were much weaker than the graduates from the other bootcamps I mentioned.
They definitely were not "always" in that awkward position since DBC was the first of these bootcamps, and is where the entire term 'coding bootcamp' originated. Early DBC grads went on to start several of the other "top tier" bootcamps, including Hack Reactor.
Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bootcamps are threats to ego. If it turns out that random person can do the same with three months of study, then one is not such a huge exceptional genius as one would like to believe. A lot of the negativity is insecurity.
What a lot of people fail to understand is working in React and Angular is no easier to get into with a CS degree than without one. Both technologies among the thousands of others change weekly and for that reason Bootcamps are damn near as effective training tool than anything else. Ego's do get hurt though.
I have nothing against bootcamps, but I don't think it is difficult for someone with CS degree to learn react. There is a lot of practical in CS too and that experience makes learning react much easier - especially compared to people with little experience and not much programming background.
Likewise, second bootcamp would be easier and learning new technology for someone from bootcamp is easier then for someone with neither bootcamp nor CS.
Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about a math major from a top ivy? Physics grad student? Consultant? Chem-E engineer? Founder of a successful startup? Product managers? We had all those and more at my bootcamp cohort. Look, you do what you want with your hiring. But don't just make the blanket claim that bootcamp grads aren't competent. People in my cohort were contributing right away. Looking at people few years above me, they're launching suc…
> Physics grad student? Consultant? Chem-E engineer? Founder of a successful startup? Product managers? Those would be the same in that they don't have coding experience. Those people might be great hires, but they're not going to be great coders after a few short months trying to learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and possibly a backend language. I didn't say that they're stupid or anything. I mentioned that even a highly…
What basis do you have for asserting that their contributions are bad? That their open source projects and promotions to team leadership aren't signs of competence? Look, you can go on believing whatever you want to believe about bootcamp grads - no one's forcing you to hire them. But it is interesting to me that my cohort mates keep getting hired by everyone from small startups to Google, and they keep progressing in their careers. That tells me the bootcamps have done a good job of prepping them to begin their coding careers.
And wait, who said bootcamps is for everyone? My bootcamp never made that claim - they specifically said that it's hard, they're selective about who they let in, and that they kick out people who aren't cutting it. And who cares whether I (or anyone else) could have done it on my own? Could you have learned to code without taking comp sci classes? Probably, right? Does that mean your college was pointless/useless/fraudulent? Of course not.
Bootcamps showed that entry level developer jobs at most web startups don't require four years of studying computer science. It's a craft that many people can pick up without formal education in the subject matter. And if you ever want or need to learn about 'deeper' subjects? We can just pick up a book and learn it. This isn't rocket science.
Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down
#268So I graduated from DBC 3 years ago and I agree with most of the sentiments already stated in this thread. However, I think the red flag for me was seeing some of my cohort graduate and then immediately after become instructors at DBC. I don't care what you say, you cannot teach programming after being exposed to programming for 12 weeks. For one thing, a "good" teacher isn't just someone who has been coding for a wh…
I hear that, I remember being asked if I was planning on sticking around to teach at DBC and feeling inadequate at the thought of it. Mentoring perhaps made sense...
BTW I finished in 2013 as well (Pocket Gophers SF!).
Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if this is accurate, but reading between the tea leaves it seems the commitment to diversity compromised their ability to signal their student quality. Their values are certainly laudable, but perhaps unprofitable. Maybe they would have been better off as a non-profit? It seems like rich and famous people would love to throw money to this initiative as a non-profit.
How diverse was charging $10k/head in New York City in the first place? Are we just talking about racial diversity? Seems like an awfully strange hill to die on.
I'm guessing not very diverse at all since most people had to float 6 months+ without income.
Re: Dev Bootcamp Shutting Down
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
Born Stanford and Harvard provide very generous financial aid packages to those that "get in" but aren't rich. The problem is getting in requires a lot of prep and achievement long before the college application is submitted, and that's where the rich get their leg up. And at the end of the day, that is still worth something to employers.
The claim is not that colleges provide no value, but that going to college is not a reliable indicator of anything but privilege. Using it as an indicator of intelligence or work ethic, especially as being more intelligent and hard working than someone who got their degree from University of Phoenix, doesn't work. It's just buying into the narrative that rich people must be rich because they're smart.
I think the parent comment was referring to Harvard/Stanford's need-blind admissions & full financial aid packages.