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They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

nytimes.com

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Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#31

Post by y4mi »

learc83 wrote: post #12
y4mi wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... You really don't need a degree for most programming work I've seen at my day job? It's basically just creating various APIs in order to wrap them into some service you can sell. You can do most of that with maybe 1 year of coding at home. Though code review should be done at least in the beginning to make sure the produced code is maintainable

There's some truth to that. There definitely is plenty drudge work that can be done by supervised noivices. But I think we tend to overestimate how much of our jobs that work entails, and what exactly can be done independently. A master carpenter can have an apprentice do most of the physical work, but the apprentice is still very much working under the master and relying on them to guide their work. Good bootcamps c…

well, our chief architect at my day job (with a degree) "designed" a system with several points of failure, each of which would kill the whole platform if even one of them failed.

honestly, a degree really doesn't show competence -- nor does experience from what i've seen. Its clearly hard to create a fault tolerant system, but its just as hard to quantify what makes people able to do just that

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#32

Post by PopeDotNinja »

maxxxxx wrote: post #17
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #5

I know I'll catch flak for this, but where did this idea that "anyone can learn to code" come from? Coding requires a certain drive and curiosity, without delving into the capability side. What makes anyone think that they can take a bunch of people who never or barely passed highschool and have been working in a mine for a decade+ and teach them this? By all means subsidize a laptop and point them at some great onli…

I don't get it either. A lot of people also would find coding as very tedious and boring. You have to be cut out for it.

I've found the hardest part about coding to be accepting that there isn't enough time in a single lifetime to learn it all. I may be close to learning that learning it all is not possible with infinite time, but I am not there yet :)

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#33

Post by in_cahoots »

The real shame here is that apparently nobody throwing money at this company did any due diligence. In an interview, the co-founder claims that all of its graduates get jobs, and that the skills taught are worth $200-$250 an hour (i.e. 400-500k a year) in San Francisco. The website’s success testimonials include quotes from a co-founder and one from a co-founder’s brother. If the people donating a million dollars had done ten minutes of background research they could have prevented this debacle in the first place.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#34

Post by matwood »

snazz wrote: post #8
shiburizu wrote: post #2

I find it very important to analyze cases like these when CEOs sound off about how you shouldn't need a degree to work in the industry. These code camps have no credibility.

I’ve seen many super-talented self-taught programmers who never received any formal education, and I’ve seen college graduates who can’t get FizzBuzz working. Of course the code camps are scams, but a degree isn’t much better for many people who have very little internal motivation to learn.

That certainly happens, but is it the norm?

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#35

Post by asveikau »

> When word spread of a trip by the Mined Minds leadership to a tech conference in Lithuania in November, she saw an opportunity.

I am partly of Lithuanian descent. With respect, I don't understand why someone in the US would think to attend a tech conference in Lithuania, when there is a much larger tech industry closer to home.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#36

Post by tyingq »

chillacy wrote: post #3

That’s disappointing. I remember I was very supportive of coding as trade education when I first heard of it but it hasn’t really panned out. I can’t quite decide if it’s because we’re bad at teaching (the example in the article seems like an execution failure) or if it’s fundamentally infeasible (programming is hard and unintuitive for most people).

16 weeks is just unrealistic though. Credible auto mechanic trade schools are a year or so. And once you graduate, there's plenty of low end work for you to earn your keep while you continue to skill up.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#37

Post by mises »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #5

I know I'll catch flak for this, but where did this idea that "anyone can learn to code" come from? Coding requires a certain drive and curiosity, without delving into the capability side. What makes anyone think that they can take a bunch of people who never or barely passed highschool and have been working in a mine for a decade+ and teach them this? By all means subsidize a laptop and point them at some great onli…

The idea came about when media pitched it as a solution to blue-collar jobs disappearing. This was particularly the case when some asked what would happen to coal miners when environmental regulations were enacted: they were told to learn to code. It was supposed to be a panacea for job loss.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#38

Post by jen20 »

This article seems (at best) poorly researched and one-sided - and it does not chime even slightly with my experience of this group.

I have personally met several people who have been through Mined Minds training with no prior coding experience - and those people were the first who convinced me that development “boot camps” were not a completely lost cause.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#39

Post by snazz »

matwood wrote: post #34
snazz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen many super-talented self-taught programmers who never received any formal education, and I’ve seen college graduates who can’t get FizzBuzz working. Of course the code camps are scams, but a degree isn’t much better for many people who have very little internal motivation to learn.

That certainly happens, but is it the norm?

No, but it happens often enough that I think that requiring a degree doesn’t significantly improve the quality of the average candidate you receive.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#40

Post by jimmaswell »

commandlinefan wrote: post #15

I guess people believe what they want to believe, but it should be obvious that if programming is really something you can learn in a few months in your spare time, it’s not going to be a very valuable skill. Either programming requires extensive education and experience to be really proficient (read: employable) in, or it’s going to be a minimum wage “we can throw a rock and replace you this afternoon” call-center j…

You can learn it in a few months in your spare time if you're cut out for it, which the vast majority are not. CS education for programming jobs is mostly a very expensive formality to convince hiring managers you know what you already knew before enrolling, or at least it was in my case.
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