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Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

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Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#101

Post by vram22 »

throwaway91111 wrote: post #39
austenallred wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

>The curriculum is typically focused around a single tech stack (many teach Mongo for unfathomable reasons)

Could be because many startups used to use Mongo. Not sure about current state of affairs, but somewhat recently, plenty of them did. One of the stated reasons was "schemaless", and other might have been scaling. I don't necessarily agree with either, because it can depend on a lot of factors, and scaling may not be the first thing that a startup should plan for. Just saying what I've heard/read.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#102

Post by CM30 »

Maybe because too many people got into the business and completely saturated the market with coding bootcamps. I mean, maybe I'm wrong here, but I get the impression most people running these things didn't really do it because they were passionate about the field or knew how to run a teaching business, but because it was seen as a quick way to make extra cash.

There are just too many of the bloody things, and it's a pain to compete in the field as a result. Just look at how many this site seems to list for example:

https://www.coursereport.com

426 schools listed there alone. And that's likely just the more promoted/credible ones.

It's like any type of business really. The more popularity a trend gets, the more competition there is, the more people who don't know what they're doing get involved and the more businesses/sites go out of business. It's happened to web hosts, to mobile app developers, to people trying to run social networking sites and marketing blogs alike.

The fact they're offering a service facing competition from both real world schools/colleges and online help sites probably isn't helping their chances either.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#103

Post by vram22 »

austenallred wrote: post #43
throwaway91111 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

You have a point. Here's the problem the bootcamps will start to run into: They're teaching as much as they can in twelve weeks, but lengthening the program increases the cost dramatically. Why Mongo? Because they're already using JS so they don't have to teach two languages (no time), and mongo is super easy to pick up. They'll learn other stuff on the job. Why aren't they teaching how to debug and what a hash is? W…

>In order to do something longer and more thorough/in-depth you'd probably have to start with a fundamentally different business model.

Interesting point. Maybe something in between bootcamps and full-fledged 4-year CS or Software Engineering degrees? Say a 2-year course, with some of each of: tech stack topics, algorithms, data structures, and other CS-y topics, and software engineering topics. That would make for more well-rounded junior devs than the trend of just teaching the hot tech stack du jour plus git plus some DB (and all at very basic level, as many of them seem to do).

Some Indian software training institutes (such as Aptech and NIIT) already did have long courses (with corresponding high fees), but to the best of my knowledge, they may not have had much in the way of the higher-level topics in those courses, i.e. CS and s/w engg. ones - AFAIK they mainly had the hot language and DB of the season, like Java and Oracle some time ago, now probably something else like JS and Mongo, etc.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#104

Post by gsylvie »

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 you effectively train 10% of the cohort, and some of that cohort find jobs, then several of those 10% would enthusiastically recommend you internally for any positions that come up in their companies.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#105

Post by JCzynski »

austenallred wrote: post #83
JCzynski wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Don't get me wrong, most of the skills gap is for capable engineers, and if you understand data structures, algorithms, architecture, memory management, etc. you'll get a job very quickly. We're talking within a week. Empirically, that's totally false. The people I knew who went to the same bootcamp (App Academy) as me and had the strongest skills took longer, not shorter, to get jobs. The average was around 9 month…

How deep doesn't App Academy go into stuff like data structures, algorithms, memory management, architecture, scaling, etc.? I see mention of algorithms on the site, but not much else that would lead me to believe developers understand more fundamental CS concepts.

Not very; about 10 hours is spent on that with instructors, plus more time practicing it in the form of whiteboard questions. Which means there was a wide variance from most knowledgable to least.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#106

Post by sokoloff »

nilkn wrote: post #84
matwood wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made sokoloff's point. A fresh college grad on day 1 of working makes the median family income in Boston. To say that wages are not reflecting the shortage (the comment originally replied to), is ignoring the statistics.

Not at all. In fact, as far as I can tell, you completely ignored the point I made, so I'll just repeat it: > The state median household income includes high school dropouts working at McDonald's, and it includes folks living in very affordable rural areas with low wages. It's not a meaningful point of comparison when you're looking at a subset of workers who are highly educated and seeking jobs in a technically dema…

> It seems pretty warped to suggest that I made his/her point by indicating that the cited statistics were off by a factor of 2 -- and not in the direction that favors their argument.

Which statistic did I cite that was off by a factor of 2? Your figure of $70,628 is 4% higher than the google search result featured snippet for "median household income massachusetts" of $67,846, but even using your figure, my saying that $100K is "1.5x the state median household income" isn't anywhere near wrong by a factor of 2.

1.5 x $70,628 is $105,942. My claim is at the very most wrong by less than 6%, not the 100% you seem to be claiming.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#107

Post by jmtame »

austenallred wrote: post #7

There are so many things wrong with this that I don't know where to start. First, to say there's no skills gap is insanity. I refuse to believe anyone in the industry actually believes that - even the worst bootcamps are placing folks, they just place folks that are not well prepared and shift the burden of training to the company. I'm constantly blown away that some of those people get jobs, and they somehow keep th…

"They were bought for $80 million."

AFAIK that's not public info. How'd you find out about this?

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#108

Post by austenallred »

pm24601 wrote: post #98
jasode wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think people underestimate how difficult it is to teach yourself, I wanted to give some counterpoint to that. The point is not to argue with you because you clearly felt that it was "difficult" so by extension, it makes sense to project the learning obstacles out the world so we know they are there. You felt there were hurdles and that's all in the past so we can't argue with what you felt. (Hopefully, the above w…

I hire junior engineers. When I am looking at a resume, I am looking for something that indicates success possibilities. Many times I see the only programming experience as the bootcamp. A 4 year CS degree means that the candidate had to stick with the CS for 4 years: 12x longer than the bootcamp. (I am assuming summer internships as well) This time allows concepts to sink in, be reenforced by later classes, implicat…

You're comparing apples to oranges - of course 4 yrs is better than 3 months. Consider the same person at some point in the future, and it would be bootcamp grad + 3 years experience vs CS grad.

You could make a case for both at that point, but I'd guess many would be inclined to opt for a bootcamp grad + experience, all things being equal.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#109

Post by bdcravens »

pm24601 wrote: post #99
bdcravens wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will always be some types that are naturally inclined towards development. I learned on my own, no college degree, in the late 90's, when there was no Stack Overflow or Github. I lived in a tiny town, so there wasn't a local Barnes and Noble or the like. I would say that someone who needs a curriculum won't succeed as a developer. They may remain hired, an eternal junior programmer, and as long as they're surro…

Hmmm..... > I would say that someone who needs a curriculum won't succeed as a developer. I disagree. Lets try this shall we: "I would say that someone who needs a curriculum won't succeed as a " ... doctor ... pilot ... nurse ... electrician ... architect I am not willing to accept a self-taught brain surgeon.

Nor would I. There's a reason why we're talking about this on HACKER News.

Every field you mentioned is a licensed profession, in an industry surrounded by regulations and inspections. Every one of those fields involves the health or safety of other people. Programming is a pretty wide open field, without regulation and highly prescribed ways of performing the work. It feels extremely disingenuous to compare a brain surgeon to someone building Uber for Skateboards and deciding whether to use Redux or observables.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#110

Post by austenallred »

vram22 wrote: post #103
austenallred wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a point. Here's the problem the bootcamps will start to run into: They're teaching as much as they can in twelve weeks, but lengthening the program increases the cost dramatically. Why Mongo? Because they're already using JS so they don't have to teach two languages (no time), and mongo is super easy to pick up. They'll learn other stuff on the job. Why aren't they teaching how to debug and what a hash is? W…

>In order to do something longer and more thorough/in-depth you'd probably have to start with a fundamentally different business model. Interesting point. Maybe something in between bootcamps and full-fledged 4-year CS or Software Engineering degrees? Say a 2-year course, with some of each of: tech stack topics, algorithms, data structures, and other CS-y topics, and software engineering topics. That would make for m…

Ya, I think so. I'm a co-founder of https://LambdaSchool.com/computer-science and that's part of our goal
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