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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

#91

Post by aaronchall »

nhorob67 wrote: post #65

Anyone have any boot camps they think are "best-in-class"?

Recurse Center, née Hacker School, emphasizes that they are not a "boot camp", but they at least started with the best reputation.

I'm not sure where they are now in terms of reputation, though.

I think it may be that there was an unserved pool of natural talent that the first boot camps quickly served to train, and now we're down to the trickle of trainable talent that thinks boot camps are the way to go.

And as schools like NYU (where I'm currently teaching a fairly new Python certificate program) begin to grab market share as substitutes to boot camps, with their stellar reputations, the bootcamp niche will become even more difficult to compete in.

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

#92

Post by AquinasCoder »

geebee wrote: post #38

I think that bootcamps actually can work well for people who already have highly honed analytical and logical reasoning skills, but for whatever reason haven't gotten involved in programming. For instance, a linguistics or philosophy major, or maybe a pure math major, who hasn't done any programming. For example, in a math class on graph theory, we essentially did DFS and BFS, but through proof, not through code. I t…

I completely agree. I did my undergrad and grad studies in philosophy, specifically focusing on contemporary and symbolic logic, before joining a six month bootcamp. Before the bootcamp, I had at least six months of development experience. Would I do it again? Absolutely, the bootcamp gave me discipline, a network, and a schedule to fill the gaps in my development experience. Did it teach me computer science? No way. We spent a week on it and hardly covered bubble sort, quick sort, and binary search. Although I have only touched the surface of computer science, I view it as an extension of my training in logic, and philosophy as an abstraction of pure mathematics. I know that if I want better jobs I will have to continue to learn algorithms, data structures, architecture, etc.

Bootcamps can direct an analytical inclination, but rarely, if ever, create it. I am not at all sure that the conclusion is that bootcamps are ineffective. The issue is not with bootcamps as such, but with those who believe that the hard work is done by just showing up for lecture or doing the minimum in homework. I like to think that bootcamps are just an extension or tool to employ as an autodidact.

There has always been a divide between those jobs which require a more rigorous foundation and jobs which need someone to bang out some semi-workable code for a website. Bootcamp grads are often under the wrong impression that they are qualified for the first type without some experience doing menial tasks.

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

#93

Post by jefflombardjr »

Jemmeh wrote: post #46
sotojuan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could see six months work - it'd just have to be intensive and under very good teachers (hard to find!).

One of the great things about online coursework is that it requires less staff and everyone can work at a different pace. From what I've read/heard 42 Code School has very little staff and mostly relies on computer courses and peer learning. https://www.42.us.org/

At that point, how is that a boot camp and not a paid tutorial?

Why would anyone pay for online course work when there is so much available for free from places like MIT and Stanford? I paid for a boot camp to have access to an instructor with industry experience. Not to learn language syntax and build projects.

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

#94

Post by mythrwy »

busterarm wrote: post #81
Kiro wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other 3 are companies that have a bit of a reputation and I wouldn't even consider working at anyway. How is that relevant in this context? Regardless of company it's obviously a trend to refuse bootcamp graduates.

3 out of 923 comments is a trend now? I think you need to reevaluate what you consider obvious/significant.

4 explicitly say it which is in a way kind of them.

Many others probably just drop the resume right in the trash.

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

#95

Post by zelos »

skewart wrote: post #54
nowarninglabel wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is more information that is let on here. I've talked with some folks at prominent bootcamps who are likely to be shutting their doors or hard pivoting soon if their revenue situation doesn't drastically improve.

Any idea what's causing the revenue problem? I assume it's getting harder to attract students willing to pay for a bootcamp? Is that because fewer people are looking to learn to code than a few years ago? Or because they're learning in different ways other than bootcamps? Or is everyone only wanting to go to the most prestigious bootcamps? Or something else?

Perhaps there was a backlog of people who'd wanted to go to a bootcamp? Once that backlog is exhausted, it would be natural for applications to drop.

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

#96

Post by jefflombardjr »

ex_amazon_sde wrote: post #42
bigspider421 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've been interviewing a lot of people when I was in Amazon and the company had a much, much higher bar.

It was also likely a much, much smaller company.

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

#97

Post by panopticon »

jzymbaluk wrote: post #76
aecorredor wrote: post #34

"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" I have a 4 year computer science degree and I didn't learn any of the listed topics either, so I'm not sure if the article is implying that other institutions do prepare new grads for these topics. The main advantage I…

Really? I graduated this year from a state school with a degree in CS and we covered a lot of this stuff. Software Engineering was a required junior/senior level course where we had a semester-long group project where we had to self-organize using Agile methods, and we were grade on our user stories and . I took a senior-level elective course on product management, and we covered cloud and warehouse computing in comp…

Not OP, but I graduated from a state university with a degree in CS just over 6 years ago, and we didn't get much in the way of process education. Couple of slides on development processes in a sophomore class and certainly no source control usage for class work (most instructors accepted assignments as zip archives).

In the group project classes I took, the instructors were only concerned with the final results. The process, tools, etc were left to the individual groups to decide.

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

#98

Post by Stranger43 »

aecorredor wrote: post #34

"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" I have a 4 year computer science degree and I didn't learn any of the listed topics either, so I'm not sure if the article is implying that other institutions do prepare new grads for these topics. The main advantage I…

IT Operations have always been a apprenticeship system where you progress from servicedesk towards manager as your career progresses, and project management, cloud computing, devops etc is operations not development skillsets.

An in a lot of ways the current problem is that outsourcing have killed the pipeline from college drop-out to sys-admin by way of the call center. as the call centre have now been outsourced to people far away in companies with no upward career path.

The boot camp industry were never about fixing the operations pipeline problem, but to fix the problem of how to turn domain specialist into programmers something it largely failed at by being way to valley and app centric.

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

#99

Post by scriptkiddy »

geebee wrote: post #38

I think that bootcamps actually can work well for people who already have highly honed analytical and logical reasoning skills, but for whatever reason haven't gotten involved in programming. For instance, a linguistics or philosophy major, or maybe a pure math major, who hasn't done any programming. For example, in a math class on graph theory, we essentially did DFS and BFS, but through proof, not through code. I t…

I kind of tend to agree. I have been a professional developer for about 3 years now. I am 100% self taught. I think I have a natural knack for the field as ever since I was able to read I have been constantly absorbing information about physics and chemistry. I worked as an auto mechanic for a few years and then I moved into industrial fluid process design. After that I landed a job with a (really shitty)web development agency. Now I work under contract for a startup(1099). I really believe that my passion for science and my previous work experience prepared me to deal with all of the complex technical expertise required to be a competent developer. Not everyone can be so lucky.

I have tried to explain basic computer hardware/software concepts to some friends of mine on many occasions. Some of them are right on board with what I'm talking about immediately while others are either completely uninterested or unable to grok the concepts. Usually the ones who grok it are people who already work in technical fields like my buddy who works in machining, or my other buddy who does welding, or my other buddy who is a market analyst(just helped him learn Python for data analysis).

Not everyone can be a competent developer, and that's OK. There are many other positions within a tech company that are just as important, like project leads or designers.

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

#100

Post by bdcravens »

stanleydrew wrote: post #75
skewart wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any idea what's causing the revenue problem? I assume it's getting harder to attract students willing to pay for a bootcamp? Is that because fewer people are looking to learn to code than a few years ago? Or because they're learning in different ways other than bootcamps? Or is everyone only wanting to go to the most prestigious bootcamps? Or something else?

This is speculation, but I assume there are fewer employers willing to hire bootcamp grads.

There are employers willing to hire them, but not at the amounts bootcamps suggest in their marketing. A bootcamper is at the point they can just start to learn, so if the industry standard for a role is $100k, a bootcamper would do well to earn $40k.
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