They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia • Hacker News Board

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#321

Post by krageon » Mon, May 13, 2019, 12:28 PM UTC

deanCommie wrote: post #281

phillipcarter wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Juniors are great when their inexperience is correlated with youth, fresh outlook on the world, a burning passion for the subject, lack of fear with new ideas that seem controversial to the old guard, and frankly fewer family commitments such that succeeding at their job and learning and growing is their number one priority. Very little of this applies to people on their second career doing bootcamps for a leg up.

I genuinely expected you to pivot to something interesting or novel halfway through your post and was very disappointed when I got to the end. This comment eloquently depicts everything that is wrong with corporate culture in general, occasionally magnified in IT.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#322

Post by hluska » Mon, May 13, 2019, 12:49 PM UTC

eecsninja wrote: post #287

hluska wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes its snobby, but I didn't study and spend my student loan on my passion just so I can train up a bunch of people looking for the "easy life". It is extremely snobby and frankly, I feel sorry for the poor juniors who are forced to learn from you. Very few of us entered the workforce with the requisite skill to succeed. Some of us were lucky enough to learn from amazing mentors. Others were cursed to attempt to le…

I've been in OP's boat, mentoring people (normal hires, not from boot camps) who couldn't be bothered to put in the effort. It was a colossal time and energy sink. My attitude today is that you have to put in the initial effort to demonstrate that whatever I invest in training you will be paid off by your future work using that training over and over again. Otherwise it's a wasted investment. And that attitude is bas…

Part of life is getting to choose how we behave and what actions we model.

In a situation like this, we have a choice. We can be snobby towards junior developers. Or, we can be kind to juniors and push back at the management structures which brought in less than qualified talent.

When we follow the snobby path, we model that that type of toxicity is acceptable for senior developers. We also teach smart juniors that the best way to avoid our considerable wrath is to fly under the radar and avoid asking questions. How does that help anyone? I can point out several situations over my career where less experienced people have asked questions that exposed a gap in my thought processes. And I can point out more situations where relatively basic questions have turned into major teaching opportunities.

Or, we can follow a different path and ‘gripe up’. We can keep open minds about juniors and model kindness and approachability. And, we can tell management about our concerns and seek actual change.

I would rather model leadership than elitism.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#323

Post by hluska » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:13 PM UTC

slow_donkey wrote: post #291

hluska wrote: post #288

I’m not shocked by HN’s attitude towards bootcamp grads, but I am very surprised that so many here are blaming the grads and not the bootcamps themselves. Bootcamps use absolutely disgusting marketing techniques to appeal to people with little ability outside of being able to pay tuition. Their grads are closer to victims.

They absolutely are the victims but it's also a students responsibility to do due diligence on the bootcamps just like you would (should?) research an employer before signing the job offer.

Let me pull out a quote from the article.

“But Tori and her mother, Stephanie, 45, stayed. Every weekday morning, Tori would wake up early, her mother would feed the chickens and together they would head down the serpentine mountain road to Beckley. Nights and weekends they spent in the glow of their laptops — bought from a website on credit — learning the rudiments of Ruby, the programming language.”

To steal a shitty term from mainstream media, let’s unpack this. Tori [Frame] used to be an assistant manager in a Family Dollar location. She decided to take a bootcamp with her mom so she quit her job. And, the family bought laptops on credit from a website. I’m pretty sure we can all guess what kind of website that is.

With all due respect to the Frames, I don’t buy that either of them were qualified to assess whether the bootcamp was any good. Instead, they sound a lot like desperate people caught up by predatory marketing.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#324

Post by throw-away-2346 » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:14 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…

Do these bootcamps charge what a real uni charges? I recently went back to school (a well known one here in the UK) to get a MSc in Data Science (have gotten interested in research now) so I ended up doing a research dissertation. I already had a MSc (CS) and B.Sc (CpE) and 20 years experience, so it was not too difficult. It was a bit less math heavy than I expected, but ok.

But the MSc in CS course for this uni... it really is less than a proper B.S. in CS course - it was nothing but the very basics. Aka a fairly expensive bootcamp, albeit with a "dissertation" at the end. The uni is making serious ££££ churning out "MSc graduates" and now I know where the trope of people with MSc who can't program comes from. My MSc course was a real course, from a much better school, but that was 15 years ago...

Not all the MSc in CS students were bad, mind you - the ones who could have been engineers did well. But they still only got the very basics of what you need to know coming into industry now (or what a BSc student would get) and if I was in charge, I'd re-label the degree to something other than a MSc. But degree inflation is here to stay...

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#325

Post by phonebanshee » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:19 PM UTC

hcho wrote: post #240

walshemj wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you just said the pay was comparable between the UK and USA ???

Indeed. Not much difference between, say London and NYC. SV is an outlier, even with in US.

Not compared to Seattle, as far as I can tell. Things have changed rapidly in the last few years.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#326

Post by throw-away-2346 » Mon, May 13, 2019, 1:20 PM UTC

hermitdev wrote: post #280

phillipcarter wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Programm…

You have an engineering degree, so.... The joke was, when I was an undergrad, that CS students were the last people you'd ever hire because they couldn't design a system at all (or program properly). The first you'd hire were the computer engineers, aka you and me (of course). Engineers are born, for the most part, not made.

Over the past 20 years, this general principle has been validated, at least in my experience - a good boss I had once said only the top 10-15% of people in IT know what they're doing. The next 20-30% have some idea, but they're sort of useless. The bottom half, you do not hire if you can help it...

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#327

Post by swoongoonz » Mon, May 13, 2019, 2:30 PM UTC

mothsonasloth wrote: post #79

hatchnyc wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

It annoys me that front-end is sold as "easier". Getting started is "easy", building front-end applications at scale is a completely different ballgame.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#328

Post by pmiller2 » Mon, May 13, 2019, 2:37 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #152

chickenfries wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t imagine that there are people who are smart enough to code, but wouldn’t otherwise be doing so if the salaries weren’t so good? The pay is really good right now. Lots of people I know who did boot camps were doing things like research in other STEM fields. They are definitely coding now because coding offers them a more comfortable life, not because writing enterprise software is more rewarding than say, re…

I definitely would be doing it if salaries were substantially lower. In fact, I’ve told people before that the main reason I’m a developer now is because it’s the only thing I know how to do that I know I can pay my student loans with.

/s/would/would not/

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#329

Post by mrguyorama » Mon, May 13, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

Kalium wrote: post #231

ip26 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

> The theme in this comment thread seems to be something like, "Only rockstars should learn to code, it's pointless for normal people". Perhaps it could be read slightly more charitably? Anyone can learn to code. At the same time, most people should not assume this will automatically lead them into a lucrative career in software engineering. As you say, it's by no means pointless for normal people to learn. A great m…

I don't think the "chefs" at Mcdonalds, burger king, subway and the like need to know how to be a career chef. That's the point of these coding bootcamps; Management wants coding to be as cheap, easy, and replaceable as any other production line job.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#330

Post by Datenstrom » Mon, May 13, 2019, 2:48 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #241

z3t4 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned programming at 12 years old. I think its funny that people think you need a engineering degree. It does help to get a higher paycheck though.

Everybody I went to college with “learned programming” when they were 12 years old (or younger). They _also_ got college degrees on top of that.

> They _also_ got college degrees on top of that.

I honestly don't know how people can sit through so many classes that are nearly a complete waste of time. Potentially wasting up to four years of life. I tried, was really motivated in the beginning despite it, then slowly burnt out on classes I absolutely didn't need. I left for a job even though I only need a handful more classes.

Also, because I know it coming, not wanting to waste four years of life absolutely does not imply that anyone lacks "grit." I could refer to a dozen current and former coworkers who I am certain will say I don't lack it. Give me an interesting and hard problem to solve and I'll be on it until it is solved. If you don't have one then I don't want to work for you anyway.