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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

#161

Post by maxxxxx »

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…

I always think the we should send CS graduates to a bootcamp to get some coding skills. Or send old-time devs so they get up to speed with newer tech. But starting from zero in 12 weeks seems almost impossible except for a few.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#163

Post by ErotemeObelus »

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…

This isn't a soul-crushing job babysitting (only outdone in horror by being in a chicken suit waving a sign for a fried chicken restaurant). This is an opportunity for you to study various psyches and all the gory "this is how sausage is made! details. Also exposure to abnormal psyches.

The Chinese word for disaster is opportunity.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#164

Post by emilfihlman »

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…

This right here. "Everyone can learn to do x" is a thing but when applied to coding the marketing is strong (compared to say mathematics or writing or dancing or construction).

Yes, everyone can do it. No, not everyone can do it.

These statements are funnily enough not mutually exclusive, they just apply different meanings to the words "can" (potential vs actual aptitude) and "do" (future vs presence).

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#165

Post by learc83 »

johnwyles wrote: post #156
Uptrenda wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I agree with you. I don't mean to discourage anyone trying to learn software engineering but: IMO its something that takes years to learn the fundamentals. There are so many small details that aren't what you expect them to be that I see no way bootcamps could prepare you. Things like how file systems work, what system calls do -- how write() works -- does it write data or not? How do blocking / non-blockin…

You should note that a bulk of your list is the knowledge that a senior engineer should require of his peers. To be productive writing a small feature in a React app it could be had under a week out from bootcamp with modest support sharing whatever tribal knowledge and documentation for onboarding.

>To be productive writing a small feature in a React app it could be had under a week out from bootcamp with modest support sharing whatever tribal knowledge and documentation for onboarding.

That's not my experience at all. I've on-boarded many bootcamp graduates and I've never seen one that was doing anything that I would call "productive" a week out of bootcamp.

I could see that maybe if they had a good bit of experience before bootcamp.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#166

Post by g837382 »

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…

I'm currently in a bootcamp in SF after several years in product/analytics type roles in tech. I decided to finally go for it after considering it for a few years because structured learning/accountability helps me learn a lot faster.

I just finished my first final project using React/Redux/PostgreSQL/Rails/S3 -> http://www.orangemusic.xyz I don't think I could have learned what I've learned in that amount of time with self-study alone.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#167

Post by learc83 »

fma wrote: post #69
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…

To a lesser extent, the same can be said for those who get an "IT" degree from a no name school from the college of business. I've spent a lot of my time training people who graduate from local small colleges instead of say, Georgia Tech or UGA (I'm in Atlanta) because management at my big corp is throwing cheap bodies at the solution. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed mentoring but done kids graduate with no clue and…

>local small colleges instead of say, Georgia Tech or UGA

This really only applies for CS, but I wouldn't hire people with "IT" degrees for programming jobs no matter where they went (not based on their degree anyway).

GSU is much larger than either GaTech or UGA, and it just received an award for being the 2nd best teaching institution in the US. Kennesaw is about the same size now that they merged with Southern Poly, and their CS program is also ABET accredited.

I've taken CS classes at both GSU and Tech, depending on the classes the person takes at GSU, there isn't a big teaching disparity. The type of person who makes it into Tech changes things, but if you look at their transcripts when hiring you can quickly see who took the easy classes and scraped by with Cs and who really took it seriously

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#168

Post by stale2002 »

sideaccount wrote: post #99
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…

They could still administer a coding test to the bootcamp certificate holders. Just because you have a CS degree does not mean we hire you without a coding test. Some of the least productive coders I have worked with have had degrees. Most degrees only prove that you have some ability to memorize things, practical application is a very different skill.

Coding tests are the easy part.

I truly believe that almost anyone could spend 6 months studying interview questions and go from zero coding experience to getting a job at Google.

Is this person going to be a good engineer? Almost certainly not. But by God's will they be good at programming tests and Google interview questions.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#169

Post by quantummkv »

ip26 wrote: post #122
Kalium wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where did this idea that "anyone can learn to code" come from? A better question, perhaps, is why this is assumed to equate to coding-based jobs. Anyone can learn to cook. This shouldn't be equated to everyone being equipped to become a chef de cuisine.

At the same time, just because not everyone is chef de cuisine material, doesn't mean there's no point in their learning to cook. The theme in this comment thread seems to be something like, "Only rockstars should learn to code, it's pointless for normal people".

Yeah. but you should be honest about your skills and not bullcrap your way into being the chef in charge of preparing the pufferfish main course. That is a very deadly disaster.

By all means learn to code and make programs for yourself. No issue in occasionally helping other projects or programs or doing some small scale work. But don't try to directly jump into big things before getting trained correctly.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#170

Post by lgleason »

quelle surprise!

Most of these programs are a joke. I remember when Tech Square Labs in Atlanta did a program to "help" inner city black kids. I went down to talk to them and get more information. For one year of this program they were charging the sponsors $57K. That is more than the tuition at many private schools. But it gets better. They had The Iron Yard (which is now closed) doing the course material so I had a chat with the people teaching the courses etc.. It was very apparent they had no idea what they were doing. The supposedly "disadvantaged" founders of this did not even understand the kinds of things they kids in the program actually were going through, such as having a lack of financial literacy or even a bank account at times. I'm white but live in a disadvantaged neighborhood and knew this because I don't live in the rich bubble that these "disadvantaged" founders did.

When the political climate was right they were bilking the tax payers for this program with funding from the city of Atlanta, the feds etc., but after 2016 the funding went away, as did the founders profits. There have been many programs like this one in Atlanta and the one for the people in Appalachia.

I'm all for bringing people who do have the aptitude to the industry. That said, not everybody has the aptitude to be a developer, in the same way that not everybody has the aptitude to be a prize winning author, language guru, doctor, top athlete etc.. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. The coding bootcamp industrial complex appears to be a movement of grifters from a non tech background trying to make a quick buck and flood the market with cheap labor. In the end most of the students were poorer than they would have been in an accredited program, without training that would actually get them a job and as an industry we've had to deal with the fallout from it.

I'm saying all of this as someone who actively supports one of these, but the one I support is run by computer science majors, who grew up poor, have made enormous personal sacrifices to run the program and targets people who truly have no option to go to the university and do it for far less than what the grifter orgs were doing it for.

Truth be told, "learn to code" is not the way to economic prosperity. Paying livable wages for things is, irregardless of the country etc..

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