Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#31

Post by mnutt » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 3:33 PM UTC

pjdemers wrote: post #10

People are realizing that even though coding pays well, it's not a job for everyone. We hired 4 people out of boot camps. All had a decent level of skill (of course they did, we choose the 4 we liked out of dozens available). However after a few weeks, two of them left, saying: "there is no f'en way I can do this 40 hours a week for the next few decades". And they went back to their old jobs and old pay.

I think the best bootcamps do a pretty good job of having students answer that question during admissions or during the class itself. If you aren't getting some fulfillment during class, you probably won't during work either. For what it's worth, my company has hired half a dozen developers out of bootcamps (Fullstack and App Academy) and none of them have left or expressed interest in leaving the field.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#32

Post by icantdrive55 » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 3:34 PM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #8

tptacek wrote: post #5

A 250k Haskell programming job in SFBA is prima facie evidence of a "skills gap". The law of supply and demand says that's how you evaluate an inadequate number of available programmers. It's facile to suggest there's an adequate labor supply because employers can acquire developers simply by paying 5x the national median income. I would suggest instead that we focus on two other problems with bootcamps, one mentione…

If I were thinking about working as an instructor at a bootcamp, low placement rates would probably discourage me from doing it - the last thing I want is to participate in a training program that cons jobseekers out of money, even if the salary is good.

I have found when it comes to money, and career; 95% just go along with the flow. "Hay--its legal?"

(I got my first dose of reality in Chiropractic School. It was obviously placebo, but placebo was just not talked about. Selling out is so common. I'm not talking the cute TV version on of selling out, but the real people who con the uninformed, and vulnerable out of their money daily. There's a lot of denial in so many professions.)

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#33

Post by NDizzle » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 3:36 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #5

A 250k Haskell programming job in SFBA is prima facie evidence of a "skills gap". The law of supply and demand says that's how you evaluate an inadequate number of available programmers. It's facile to suggest there's an adequate labor supply because employers can acquire developers simply by paying 5x the national median income. I would suggest instead that we focus on two other problems with bootcamps, one mentione…

I wouldn't move myself and my family to the SFBA for a $250k job. Perhaps that's cliché to say that kind of thing at this point. It needs to pay more due to the cost of living. I'm making > 200 now in a city-data.com cost of living index 91 city. SF is COL index 170.

The people who would take that job already have a similar job, more or less. It's not a skill gap so much as a "willing to put up with SF bullshit" gap.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#34

Post by telecuda » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 3:37 PM UTC

As a neighbor and local supporter of Iron Yard Tampa Bay (St. Petersburg FL), losing our growing economy's only code school was a big letdown this week.

In my experience, admittedly Iron Yard graduates were often too green to join our small engineering team (and we don't utilize .NET or Ruby). I'd like to say we have better training and mentorship for junior devs, but we don't yet. However, when we listed an iOS position, it was The Iron Yard's campus director who spread our ad through their national network. She found an Atlanta Iron Yard graduate who spent two years at a large company, receiving on the job training that now qualified her for our role.

The Iron Yard St. Pete was meaningful in that it provided a starting point for people in our area to make a career change and offered a meeting place for tech (located in the same building as our co-working space). The closure for us here locally is less about losing a code school and more about losing an anchor in our developing startup ecosystem.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#35

Post by sokoloff » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 3:39 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #20

ryanmarsh wrote: post #12

"than there are people looking to pay, on average, $11,000 for 12 weeks of intensive training" ...able to pay $11,000 and not work full time for 12 weeks FTFY There isn’t really much evidence of a “skills gap” Except that hiring is nearly everyone's biggest problem in tech and, you know, that whole crazy H1B thing. Companies and Gov't job programs should be paying for dev schools not poor people. If they did it would…

> America desperately needs more skilled programmers in almost every market. Outside of a few hotspots like SF, do offered wages really back that up? It's good being a developer but it certainly doesn't look like a desperate shortage.

In metro Boston area, we're paying new college grads $100K to start and sometimes losing on comp.

We're not "desperate", but for the overall market wage for new college grads to be 1.5x the state median household income, that smells like shortage to me.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#36

Post by mcguire » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 3:39 PM UTC

Parts of this sound like exactly what I was worried about when I first heard of the boot camps. An expensive training program producing a very limited skill set isn't really a sustainable model.

Coupling that with the for-profit schools and an investment environment looking for a big payout, this just sounds like a train wreck.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#37

Post by baron816 » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 3:40 PM UTC

The article makes good points, but the author, nor anyone here really knows why they're going out of business, or even if it's a systemic thing. The industry is becoming more mature and competitive. It's inevitable that at this stage, some firms will fail and there will be consolidation. I know plenty of people who were able to get great jobs right after graduating from a bootcamp and quickly become valuable members of their teams.

Do bootcamps adequately prepare people to work as software engineers? No, but neither do most CS programs. I think the more pernicious problem they pose to their graduates is that they flood the hiring market will low quality talent. They don't do a good job of screening who will be any good, and just push them through their programs without ensuring that they know the material.

At the same time, employers aren't focusing on the things that really matter to them in the interview process. Making someone write a contrived algorithm on a whiteboard in under 30 minutes doesn't tell anyone anything. I get that companies need to search for a signal in all of the noise bootcamps are putting out, but they need a better way of doing that.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#38

Post by matwood » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 3:41 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #30

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #3

I think the biggest factor causing these bootcamps to go out of business was stated in the article: there is no IT worker shortage. The fact that most of the people attending those bootcamps already held Bachelors degrees strongly implies that. If there was a real worker shortage, employers would be hiring people without degrees and have them do the best they can. I think bootcamps arose as a result of an industry-wi…

Is there evidence that wage growth in the IT sector (or for programmers specifically) is below inflation? I don't see that at all personally (as an employee nor as a hiring manager).

I agree with you, and keep trying to figure out where all the doom and gloom people are coming from working in IT. Maybe it's everyone in SF dealing with insane housing prices? Everywhere else, programmer salaries are some of the best in a given location and continuing to rise. Job openings are also on the rise.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#39

Post by throwaway91111 » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 3:42 PM UTC

austenallred wrote: post #23

wolco wrote: post #2

Because those who can learn under those conditions can easily learn the material for free and many have before attending. What they use a bootcamp for is a bridge into a career. People are finding other less costly ways into the job market. The bootcamps of the future will focus on either the experienced developers wanting to learn a new language/skill quickly. The structure will be like an extended conference where…

I think people underestimate how difficult it is to teach yourself, especially when there are so many different ways to learn and a million different paths to take. One of the most important parts of bootcamps, in my mind, is that all of the curriculum is there, in the right order, and on a set schedule. When I taught myself to program I probably spent 80% of my time finding the right resources and understanding what…

It's difficult to make an argument for bootcamps, though, when they won't teach you most of what you'd need to know either. The curriculum is typically focused around a single tech stack (many teach Mongo for unfathomable reasons), leaving students ill prepared for the workforce. Debugging? How to sort a lidt efficiently? What is a hash? All of these are arguably critical to understanding simple, common code; you'd be lucky to make it through a year as a junior dev without being fired if all the skills you have come from a bootcamp.

Of course, Galvanize et all just hire their own grads to inflate the post-graduation job placement stat. So maybe it's not necessary to know anything outside the course to get a job!

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#40

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 23, 2017, 3:43 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #15

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #3

I think the biggest factor causing these bootcamps to go out of business was stated in the article: there is no IT worker shortage. The fact that most of the people attending those bootcamps already held Bachelors degrees strongly implies that. If there was a real worker shortage, employers would be hiring people without degrees and have them do the best they can. I think bootcamps arose as a result of an industry-wi…

> there is no IT worker shortage. There is no junior worker shortage. A bootcamp grad is competing with other bootcamp (100+ boot camps) grads, and people who just self started and got to coding. Finding mid-level and senior people is actually quite challenging.

[deleted]