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I noticed a couple (4) "No agencies, recent bootcamp grads, or visa candidates." on this month's "who is hiring?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15148885
The other 3 are companies that have a bit of a reputation and I wouldn't even consider working at anyway.
At least, the few my work paid for some years back were essentially that.
From the sounds of it though a lot of places are abusing these to create micro IIT Techs that hand out near worthless certificates.
I'm not all that surprised. The biggest advantage to a Coding Boot Camp is the intense, focused study for the duration of the program - and possibly any industry experience any of the teachers bring (although I'm sure the quality of that experience varies greatly from camp to camp). The biggest downfall I see in the idea behind the Boot Camps is that they are great at pumping out entry level coders, but don't seem to…
It's funny, until recently I thought boot camps were for people who already were working in a field who wanted to sharpen a particular skill in that field. At least, the few my work paid for some years back were essentially that. From the sounds of it though a lot of places are abusing these to create micro IIT Techs that hand out near worthless certificates.
The name 'boot camp' doesn't really imply that they would be.
These bootcamps are too basic for starters. They never take you beyond the basics. Secondly, the industry has changed. You need to know more things than you did previously. Even computer science grads aren't necessarily "ready" for the workforce. Education is behind in general instead of ingrained into the community with which it wishes to operate. They are always lagging behind or even way behind. On some level I fe…
These bootcamps are too basic for starters. They never take you beyond the basics. Secondly, the industry has changed. You need to know more things than you did previously. Even computer science grads aren't necessarily "ready" for the workforce. Education is behind in general instead of ingrained into the community with which it wishes to operate. They are always lagging behind or even way behind. On some level I fe…
Coding bootcamps are an incomplete idea. You need a program that takes you from Bootcamp to the coding equivalent of Navy Seals, and everything in between. And just as in the metaphor, for the 100 in bootcamp, maybe 1 makes it to the Seals- through years of training and real world experience.
I'm glad they're going away. > While coding boot camps had many course listings on JavaScript, Ruby, and web development, they had none that covered product management, wireframing, cloud computing, DevOps, or Agile methodologies. In other words, they don’t teach students the other important entrepreneurial tech skills. This makes sense seeing how their focus is coding. But as I stated in my last article, many recrui…
So your argument that what makes a person a good software engineer is the whiteboard coding algorithms?
That stuff is EASIER to learn than actual software engineering skills. All you got to do is spend a couple months cramming from the book cracking the code interview.
You learn that stuff in a singular CS class, that's called data structures and algorithms.
You are right about one thing though, if we are in a state where you can cram for your interview, that is a bad spot. And that is precisely the problem with the CS algorithms type questions!
The "hard" stuff in software engineering is about how you design maintainable code, how you design high level architecture, and generally all the skills that go into coding in a TEAM as opposed to be a programming superstar individual.
Bootcamps are just too short. I think the sweet spot for a coursework in programming is a year to two years. That's essentially how long my university degree was if you remove the non-CS required classes.
By being smaller, bootcamps should have more ability to pivot content to match market demands, and give students advice on directions to persue. Front end development needs for entry level people are getting satisfied, so it's time to how some new teachers and refocus curriculum. Camps need to market as great learning spaces, rather than throwing their whole rep behind a single specially.
The notion that the space is overcrowded is bullshit; it just depends where you set your sights. I don't think we would call university education an overcrowded space, in spite of serving many orders of magnitude more students than the bootcamps currently are... One can argue that there are too many law schools, charging to much to create too many entry level lawyers. Hand wringing about these two camps closing is like worrying that there are too many law schools specializing in bankruptcy law.
Ultimately I think the closures are more about these two companies failing to adapt than any kind of general lesson about bootcamp education.