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Coding Boot Camps Get the Boot: Why the Industry Is Shutting Down

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Re: Coding Boot Camps Get the Boot: Why the Industry Is Shutting Down

#21

Post by CloudYeller »

Sivart13 wrote: post #9

I think it's a big leap from "two large bootcamps have closed" to "the bootcamp industry is shutting down". Like anything else, there was a big race to capture the market once Dev Bootcamp proved it could work, and now the market is correcting itself. No reason to think bootcamps are going to stop existing altogether.

Yeah, in 2013, the top bootcamps were raking in like $15k per student, and they were churning out hundreds of students per year. Earning millions from teaching people JavaScript was an incredible proposition.

Re: Coding Boot Camps Get the Boot: Why the Industry Is Shutting Down

#22

Post by bradleyjg »

thegayngler wrote: post #5

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…

A few decades ago turnover was much lower and it made more sense for a company to invest in a particular employee. We can debate about whose fault it is that turnover is much higher now and talk about what an individual company can try to do to reduce turnover (be a lot less reluctant to give out big raises for starters) but at the end of the day no individual company can completely negate a nationwide trend.

It simply isn't rational for a company to spend long periods of time on training if it expects that employee to leave not long after he is finally becoming productive.

Re: Coding Boot Camps Get the Boot: Why the Industry Is Shutting Down

#23

Post by Karrot_Kream »

stale2002 wrote: post #18
randomdrake wrote: post #6

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…

LOL! 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 s…

> 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 have got to be joking right? Not only is the intro-level algorithms class in universities a known-difficult class almost everywhere, MS and PhD students continue to try and discover better algorithms and new data structures.

Sure if you're working on a CRUD web app then it doesn't matter, but if you're working on Postgres, it sure as hell matters.

Re: Coding Boot Camps Get the Boot: Why the Industry Is Shutting Down

#24

Post by pavel_lishin »

thegayngler wrote: post #5

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…

> 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.

Do you? I certainly wasn't "ready" for the workforce after graduating, but that's because I wasn't taught how to use version control software, how to manage a project, how to do proper estimates. I knew how to do Big-O estimates of algorithms, but in practice, this actually comes up rarely. (Although, admittedly, can bite you right in the ass if you don't understand what's going on.)

I don't know what sort of training bootcamps do, but if they offer practical training, it seems like there's a place for them.

Or do we want plumbers to take advanced hydrodynamics courses, rather than apprenticing?

On the other hand, if they're just teaching people to pump out code, then yeah, that's fairly useless.

Re: Coding Boot Camps Get the Boot: Why the Industry Is Shutting Down

#25

Post by sdenton4 »

badloginagain wrote: post #17
thegayngler wrote: post #5

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…

I feel the idea of coding "bootcamps" is incomplete. Military training doesn't stop at bootcamp- it's just the beginning. Everyone in the military starts in bootcamp, but move on to more specialized skills and a different level of training. 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 meta…

The bootcamp is followed by years of hands on experience at an actual job. Which, hopefully, has good opportunities learning and mentorship within it's own ecosystem.

(Meanwhile, there are a handful of Stanfords cranking out what are supposed to be the Navy seals, and not meeting demand...)

Re: Coding Boot Camps Get the Boot: Why the Industry Is Shutting Down

#26

Post by matthew349hall »

badloginagain wrote: post #17
thegayngler wrote: post #5

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…

I feel the idea of coding "bootcamps" is incomplete. Military training doesn't stop at bootcamp- it's just the beginning. Everyone in the military starts in bootcamp, but move on to more specialized skills and a different level of training. 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 meta…

True

Re: Coding Boot Camps Get the Boot: Why the Industry Is Shutting Down

#27

Post by wolco »

sotojuan wrote: post #8

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.

And most colleges. I think what is missing is learning to code in a variety of languages vs just one or two can give you a different prospective. When I went to college we learned everything from jcl to php with the core being java. Being able to pick up different languages is one of the most employable skills one could have and that aspect is usually missing from bootcamps.

Re: Coding Boot Camps Get the Boot: Why the Industry Is Shutting Down

#29

Post by bigspider421 »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #19
sotojuan wrote: post #8

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.

More like 5 if people want to use the term "engineer" on their CV.

Disagree. Engineer here - I did a 6 week bootcamp and immediately got hired at Amazon. $150k+, the most I've ever been paid. Still learning tons but my experience was quite positive.

Re: Coding Boot Camps Get the Boot: Why the Industry Is Shutting Down

#30

Post by thehardsphere »

stale2002 wrote: post #18
randomdrake wrote: post #6

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…

LOL! 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 s…

> So your argument that what makes a person a good software engineer is the whiteboard coding algorithms?

No, his argument is that what makes a person a good software engineer is the ability to think about an abstract problem and come up with a solution to it.

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