They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia • Hacker News Board

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#51

Post by voidhorse » Sun, May 12, 2019, 2:35 PM UTC

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 disagree. I think with the right levels of exposure at the early stages of education “coding” can become a proficiency just as common as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Of course, just like those skills, people will pursue programming to varying depths, some will determine to study advanced topics while others will remain “coders at the 6th grade level”.

Not everyone will go into CS and develop new data structures, algorithms, or programming paradigms—but most people can and should be able to code solutions to well understood problems—just like mathematics this doesn’t mean everyone will know how to apply it in novel business situations, but just as most people can perform easy calculations they should be able to write straightforward programs.

It’s all a matter of the appropriate cultural and educational scaffolding. Programming is still in its infancy and hasn’t permeated through the education system deeply enough yet to enshrine it as a core proficiency, but we can and should head in this directon.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#52

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 12, 2019, 2:35 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#53

Post by jen20 » Sun, May 12, 2019, 2:36 PM UTC

mothsonasloth wrote: post #45

[Warning Exremely Controversial Post Ahead] I am currently working for a big corporate in the UK, who have been showing off their "pioneering" and "visionary" strategy to focus recruitment from code boot-camps. All I can say is that as a senior developer, it has made my life misery. I've gone from writing code and producing features, to a full-time mentor and babysitter. Half of the boot-camp graduates I believe have…

> developers have an easy life, getting into work whenever they choose

Why exactly is that the wrong reason?

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#54

Post by mothsonasloth » Sun, May 12, 2019, 2:37 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #49

mothsonasloth wrote: post #45

[Warning Exremely Controversial Post Ahead] I am currently working for a big corporate in the UK, who have been showing off their "pioneering" and "visionary" strategy to focus recruitment from code boot-camps. All I can say is that as a senior developer, it has made my life misery. I've gone from writing code and producing features, to a full-time mentor and babysitter. Half of the boot-camp graduates I believe have…

Why did your company fall for this? The only logical reasons I’ve seen are an inability to hire otherwise, and staff moonlighting at the boot camps. Both are bad reasons.

I believe the main reasons were:

* The local management are non-technical and have a rudimentary equation that 1 developer = 1 productivity unit

* The bootcamp has some really great salespeople

* Hiring is generally difficult for great dev talent, so their logic is just to hire anyone for the numbers, otherwise their budget gets constrained by kafkaesque finance practice from the companies HQ.

* Local political and PR reasons, the company is "hiring local talent", "equal opportunities" etc.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#55

Post by jen20 » Sun, May 12, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

jen20 wrote: post #42

asveikau wrote: post #35

> 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.

Have you looked at the line ups of Build Stuff in Vilnius? It has many of the same speakers as QCon, historically at a fraction of the price, and attendees from across Western Europe and the US. I have priced it out several years running, and with flights from major US cities or (especially) Europe, a hotel and expenses it is substantially cheaper than attending a US conference in the same tier. Disclaimer: I have wo…

Also since this came up out-of-band (ugh) and apparently is not the norm for US conferences: Build Stuff pays full travel expenses for all speakers, whether they come from Kaunas or San Francisco.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#56

Post by erentz » Sun, May 12, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

vsskanth wrote: post #46

erentz wrote: post #20

The “anyone can code” and “just learn to code” phenomena needs to die in a fire. This reminds me of many other scams in our education system, it’s disgusting how much money is being leeched out of people on private “schools”. This “anyone can code” idea is actually an easy thing to test if we were serious and honest about it. But we are not. And I believe boot camps give a false sense that more people are successful…

As a counter-point, I would like to point out India's IT industry. When the IT outsourcing industry was booming and there was a serious programmer shortage, outsourcing firms such as Infosys, Cognizant, Tata would hire college graduates en-masse regardless of major (like, entire batch of 20XX would get a job offer). They would then spend 6 months actually training them and weeding out poor performers. The ones who ge…

It doesn’t sound strictly like a counter-point? More like we agree. As you say they weeded out those who had the capability from those who didn’t. Which in my experience is what bootcamps do, very expensively.

Watching someone go through one of the more “legit” bootcamps: they first filter for candidates that can largely grok it and self teach by putting through a few hours of basic tutorial and quizzes. But a fair amount of ground is covered quickly in this which when you look at the people going through it (in chat rooms etc) means it’s very much a lot of googling and self teaching to understand what they’re saying in the videos. So after this point you selected people who can get basic programming and teach themselves. And the rest don’t go into the course and so don’t pollute their success rate statistics.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#57

Post by auston » Sun, May 12, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

Any ideas on how we (HN) could help these people that dealt with Mined Minds?

Perhaps some free remote tutoring?

Some interview coaching?

Resume review?

A whole lot of bagging on coding boot camps, the founders of Mined Minds & people looking for an easier life. I’m game to help myself!

If anyone knows those folks & they want some help - I’m happy to connect & spend time doing any of the above!

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#58

Post by gingabriska » Sun, May 12, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

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've no idea why coding should be anymore special than basic reading/writing skills.

Code is a way to express solution to the problem which a computer can execute.

If you can learn any language, you can learn coding too.

Sure, not everyone can understand intricacies of the algorithm design and data structure gotchas but some of that can come as experience and curiousity.

Question worth asking is that, does everyone need this special knowledge? And the answer is even many today working in the field know lot less than you would like them to know.

Many websites have vunerabilities which can easily be solved by following some good practise. But still they are getting paid for that kind of work, which means there is a market for less knowledgeable developers who get the stuff done what's assigned to them even if they do not know how memory and processor works on the basic level.

Today, it's lot easier to code with stackoverflow and GitHub at your disposal than ever.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#59

Post by 5555624 » Sun, May 12, 2019, 2:42 PM UTC

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…

Because if you define "to code" as knowing the correct syntax for a given language, just about anyone can "learn to code." That does not mean they can write a program that solves a problem. That's a different skill set. It requires you to think and not simply look at a quick-reference card.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#60

Post by dingbat » Sun, May 12, 2019, 2:43 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #14

BlackJack wrote: post #10

We can discuss code camp pro/cons all day, but the article spells out that there was little coding being taught here. Instructors with little tech experience, high rate of firing and stuff turnover, students being told to "google it", operating without licenses, all while the founder has fancy offices in Chicago with rapacious and alcoholic parties. Amanda Laucher, the founder, essentially stole funds from government…

Won't happen. Unless some WV politician makes a crusade out of it nobody is going to get prosecuted for ripping off poor people.

yup, and since Sen. Manchin took credit for bringing them in and giving them tons of public money, doubtful he'll be up for that crusade