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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?

#111

Post by nilkn »

sokoloff wrote: post #106
nilkn wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

That's fair enough. You should really be using $80k though. It makes little sense to average over the entire state. You're then off by 20%, which is not really a negligible error. You're right, though -- I made a stupid error either way.

It doesn't really matter though because it's a deeply flawed comparison to begin with, as already discussed twice. This is all tangential to the points I was making and that both you and matwood have declined to respond to.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#112

Post by everybodyknows »

david-gpu wrote: post #25
trentmb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "there is no f'en way I can do this 40 hours a week for the next few decades" Not a bootcamp grad, but I just hit my two year mark a couple weeks ago and want to blow my brains out. Writing internal web applications is the most mind numbing thing ever. It's gotten to the point where I have so much trouble keeping focused at work. The real issue is that I have no idea what field I'd pivot into.

If it's mind-numbing, can it be automated? Can you use higher-level tools to build them and reduce the repetitive parts?

If only there were the right high-level tool -- an android with an engineers face! It could attend the pointless meetings, and answer QA's trivial questions, the same over and over. Then I could have stayed on at FANGcorp.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#113

Post by zumu »

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.

Why not just consult the BLS statistics? https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

Moreover, there are plenty of remote positions, so a programmer's physical location does not determine what geographical market they're in.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#114

Post by sokoloff »

nilkn wrote: post #111
sokoloff wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

That's fair enough. You should really be using $80k though. It makes little sense to average over the entire state. You're then off by 20%, which is not really a negligible error. You're right, though -- I made a stupid error either way. It doesn't really matter though because it's a deeply flawed comparison to begin with, as already discussed twice. This is all tangential to the points I was making and that both you…

OK, if we take the Boston household figure or even the family figure, a 21-year-old SWE new college grad their first day on the job is making more than any of those.

That's evidence against a shortage?

I'm not replying to your other points, because I think I'm not understanding them.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#115

Post by zumu »

nilkn wrote: post #46
sokoloff wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 demanding field at companies located in almost exclusively expensive metro areas. To add to that, the Massachusett…

Not specific to Massachusetts , but if you look at the BLS numbers, both the median income and job growth statistics are higher for Computer/IT professions than engineering/architectural professions.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/home.ht...

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#116

Post by EpicEng »

austenallred wrote: post #108
pm24601 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But you're suggesting that the employer should be paying for the remaining 3.75 years of experience. I'm certainly not going to hire someone who's going to require that sort of investment in comparison to a fresh college grad. You may as well just grab seemingly clever people off of the street.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#117

Post by nilkn »

sokoloff wrote: post #114
nilkn wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fair enough. You should really be using $80k though. It makes little sense to average over the entire state. You're then off by 20%, which is not really a negligible error. You're right, though -- I made a stupid error either way. It doesn't really matter though because it's a deeply flawed comparison to begin with, as already discussed twice. This is all tangential to the points I was making and that both you…

OK, if we take the Boston household figure or even the family figure, a 21-year-old SWE new college grad their first day on the job is making more than any of those. That's evidence against a shortage? I'm not replying to your other points, because I think I'm not understanding them.

The only point I was trying to make is that these general median statistics across the entire state or even Boston aren't controlling for enough factors. Programmers are generally well educated and the work is technical in nature. This does not describe a very significant portion of the individual workers rolled up in the general median statistics. I was trying to suggest you should be comparing to similar professions, such as engineering in general.

Programmers don't look like nearly such an outlier then. Would you say most engineering disciplines are experiencing shortages? I don't think that's true. O&G is one potential counterexample. Chemical engineers are still very highly paid, the big oil companies don't struggle to hire the best students from the best engineering schools, and yet there are also lots of layoffs going on. The layoffs and hiring freezes seem inconsistent with the notion of a shortage.

Law is another interesting example. There's no shortage of students graduating with law degrees. In fact, there's a vast excess, and a good chunk of them are unemployed or underemployed and will never work as an attorney. And yet many big law firms are still paying new associates big six figure salaries, and partners at major firms are still earning $250k-$700k.

I find this especially interesting and even counterintuitive because it suggests that if there is a shortage, throwing an endless supply of entry level talent at the industry won't necessarily solve anything.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#118

Post by EpicEng »

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.

Are you really comparing brain surgery with "let's write another CRUD app"? Every field you mentioned is licensed for a reason. Your Angular app isn't going to kill anyone, and 99% of devs will never touch anything safety critical.

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#119

Post by EpicEng »

markbnj wrote: post #89
trentmb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "there is no f'en way I can do this 40 hours a week for the next few decades" Not a bootcamp grad, but I just hit my two year mark a couple weeks ago and want to blow my brains out. Writing internal web applications is the most mind numbing thing ever. It's gotten to the point where I have so much trouble keeping focused at work. The real issue is that I have no idea what field I'd pivot into.

Look, writing software is a trade. If you're not getting satisfaction from the act of creating something and doing a good job of it, even if that something is less "amazing" than you were hoping it would be, you probably need a different career. In any skilled trade the majority of the projects you do will be of the more mundane sort, but a skilled practitioner derives satisfaction from the doing and the mastery. You…

>Look, writing software is a trade. If you're not getting satisfaction from the act of creating something and doing a good job of it, even if that something is less "amazing" than you were hoping it would be, you probably need a different career.

Maybe. I've been doing this for about 12 years now and, if I were writing typical IT/web dev stuff, I'd move to a different field. Most software is just boring and unrewarding, the money wouldn't keep me if the interest fell away (though I have a family to consider at this point, but that's beside the point.)

Re: Why Are Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business?

#120

Post by sokoloff »

nilkn wrote: post #117
sokoloff wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, if we take the Boston household figure or even the family figure, a 21-year-old SWE new college grad their first day on the job is making more than any of those. That's evidence against a shortage? I'm not replying to your other points, because I think I'm not understanding them.

The only point I was trying to make is that these general median statistics across the entire state or even Boston aren't controlling for enough factors. Programmers are generally well educated and the work is technical in nature. This does not describe a very significant portion of the individual workers rolled up in the general median statistics. I was trying to suggest you should be comparing to similar profession…

I'm not sure there's anything that really needs "solving". I think there's a shortage (but not a desperate shortage) of programmers in the job market, at least a shortage of qualified ones.

Many of the factors you describe "well educated, work is technical in nature [presumably implying a requirement of intelligence on the worker" I see as rarity factors, increasing the market-clearing price for that work.

https://www.indeed.com/salaries/Entry-Level-Engineer-Salarie... has some stats on engineering job postings with salary. Overall engineering is eclipsed slightly by programming (replace "Engineer" with "Programmer"), but both have a fairly high starting salary range.

Oil and gas has a perennial boom/bust cycle that makes it an oddball. Everytime oil falls under $50/bbl or so, a lot of companies find themselves in trouble who expanded predicated on $60+/bbl oil. It's almost as reliable as the sun rising in the east that O&G will have more booms and busts in the future.

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