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They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

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Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#271

Post by rubyboss »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #151
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…

Given how little UK pays developers in general, is there any reason good devs shouldn't move away from there anyway?

Family? Friends?

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#272

Post by closeparen »

ape4 wrote: post #212
gcmeplz wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Needless to say, I will be leaving my company very soon to go to a place where there is a coding test and filtering to prevent most of these bootcampers from getting in. I went to a bootcamp, and the first hour of every day was spent learning to solve the types of coding tests that companies use in interviews. So, when companies look at the graduates of these bootcamps, it's really hard to differentiate between peo…

After attending that bootcamp do you thing you could design tests to stump people who only knew how to do tests.

I have some luck with a question that needs you to use a standard “interview” data structure in a slightly nonstandard way. People who can bring up the data structure and tell me all about it, but not see how to actually solve the problem with it, are easy to reject. People who can derive it on the spot, or at least figure out how to use it after I give it to them, tend to be impressive hires.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#273

Post by jfarmer »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #252
Kalium wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I encountered a particularly egregious example of this recently. I was running a group of recent(-ish) hires through a training course recently. Part of it is penetrating-testing a dockerized application on their machines. One of the things the application is vulnerable to is various forms of form tampering attacks. One of my students just stared helplessly at this. They were absolutely stuck. I had no idea why. I ca…

I once observed a "become a web developer quick" RoR-based course, where they made people write their "hello worlds" as full-blown RoR apps with full MVC project scaffolding - meaning dozens of folders, and having to create 3 files (M, V, C) and write a lot of code to put something simple on the screen. I realized then that people finishing this course lack what I consider one of the most fundamental insights in writ…

I can’t vouch for other programs, but I co-founded Dev Bootcamp (the first programming bootcamp) and the sequence you outlined is almost verbatim how we brought students into Rails.

We’d explain it the way you described. We’d have them start with Sinatra apps after 3 weeks of modeling problems in CLI apps.

After their 10th hand-written form with error handling, they’d see the value of Rails form helpers immediately once they hit the last few weeks.

Similarly, they’d write lots of SQL queries by hand in their CLI apps. We’d push them to separate it behind method boundaries then class boundaries then build a mini-ORM.

When ActiveRecord came along it was no problem because they had a model of the problems it was invented to solve.

A bit of the flavor: http://bit.ly/dbc_activerecord

It’s always sad to hear that the bootcamps that followed us didn’t try to give students the right mental models, but I believe you!

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#274

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #151
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…

Given how little UK pays developers in general, is there any reason good devs shouldn't move away from there anyway?

UK still pays devs way more than EU though.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#275

Post by Nasrudith »

mothsonasloth wrote: post #104
sideaccount wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 effectively a benchmark, and as Goodhart's law says about metrics. They cease to become a useful measure. That's why I am interested in someone's portfolio, if they don't have a portfolio, then why?

Coding tests are often meant as a fizzbuzz type filter - if it is meant only for a very basic level of competence.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#276

Post by ryanmarsh »

hatchnyc wrote: post #72
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 has been my experience, and I'll add I have noticed there is a massive disconnect from the reality of just how complicated modern software is. I remember beginning my career what I think used to be a quite common experience of being quite a bit overwhelmed by how much I had to learn, very aware that I didn't even know what I didn't know and this definitely motivated me. This awareness is completely absent from 1…

This. When I started my career all I had to learn to make enterprise grade apps was Visual Basic. True story, there were even big ERP companies built entirely on VB. Today? Modern HTML, CSS, and JS apps with backends in is more off putting than Win32 or GTK+ was.

Yes I’m aware of the differences in capability and no I’m not complaining. I’m just saying it was easier back then.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#277

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #132
coconut_crab wrote: post #83

My experience with code bootcamp trained developers is positive, due to the follow reasons: - Most of them have engineering background: electrical engineering, civil engineering, petroleum engineering. - Since they lack formal education in IT, they have to train twice as hard, which our company encourages (2 months of probation = 2 months of training, it's almost impossible to find developer with Scala experience aro…

>almost impossible to find developer with Scala experience around here anyway) I feel you. I think there is no pool more shallow than the one of C programmers that can work on embedded in my area. Regardless of what your background is, I’ve already had to commit to 6 months of training for anyone I hire.

> I think there is no pool more shallow than the one of C programmers that can work on embedded in my area.

Maybe if Embedded gigs wouldn't be paid a fraction of what a web dev kiddie would make, the pool would be larger.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#278

Post by Nasrudith »

Kalium wrote: post #112
jdhn wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most of them have engineering background: electrical engineering, civil engineering, petroleum engineering. That's great, but what about the people who come from a non-engineering background? I feel like people with a technical background will be able to pick up coding a lot quicker than people who don't have a lot of engineering aptitude. >We work with the Bootcamp to improve their program: giving reference to 'har…

> That's great, but what about the people who come from a non-engineering background? I feel like people with a technical background will be able to pick up coding a lot quicker than people who don't have a lot of engineering aptitude. You're almost certainly correct. It's perhaps possible that the bootcamp model, which can work well for people with solid technical backgrounds, might not work equally well for others.…

Reminds me of one Computer Science professor I had whose degree was in Philosophy - of course he predated computer science degrees. He is part of the older branch of "self-taught" as opposed to degree trained in programming - it is now rarer for someone new to get into the field at a higher level without formal training.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#279

Post by torgian »

I still see myself as a junior dev since I am still self-teaching a lot of stuff. While running my own business, working on projects with my customer.

I’m not a good dev. But I am good at working with others and getting stuff done. So, there’s that going for me I guess.

I probably wouldn’t be employable if I had to go through coding tests. But I can fix problems since I study and research a lot.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#280

Post by hermitdev »

phillipcarter wrote: post #267
mothsonasloth wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree, I would like to blame it on this dichotomy of "frontend and backend development". Most of the bootcampers did three months of "frontend" work and are oblivious to what goes underneath in the murky world of business logic and services. Until they have been able to demonstrate they are confident in: * Presenting data to a user * Validating inputs * Making correct requests and understanding the interac…

> Then they will remain a junior developer Isn't the point that they _are_ junior developers after completing a bootcamp? Juniors can be some of the best people in your organization if your org is willing to take them on and teach them things.

I'm not disagreeing, but I think the implication is that the bootcamps tend to leave their students without the fundamental knowledge to progress further in their career.

Not saying you need a full 4 year program and a CS degree. I don't have a CS degree, but 2 degrees in electrical engineering and computer engineering. That gave me a very solid and low level concept of computing that most CS grads dont get. Programming languages are a dime a dozen. Some are better suited for certain tasks than others.

Someone going to a Ruby on Rails or Node/JS boot camp isn't going to get that exposure to multuple languages. They're not going to know that, say Python is a better language/ecosystem than JavaScript for scientific analysis. They're not going to be exposed to C, C++, C#, Java, Rust or Go. Personally, I wouldnt even interview someone that's taken a boot camp in C or C++. The languages are too nuanced and complex to even get a foothold in 3 months.

Sorry this ended up very rantish, and I didn't mean for it to be so. I'm trying to make the point that while, yes, boot camps serve a purpose and may be useful to some folks, they will not and are not designed to give you enough knowledge to truly excel in the industry with the knowledge gleaned from the boot camp alone. It will take an extremely passionate and aggressive self learner to be more than a junior after a boot camp.

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