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Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

nytimes.com

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Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#41

Post by mgirdley »

w1ntermute wrote: post #20
mgirdley wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the open dev job postings, experienced developers are where the shortage is. Companies hire bootcamp graduates to take workload off of the experienced (3+ yrs) developers plates. Interestingly enough, if you look at job postings you'll also see that a disproportionate number of job listings want 3-5 yrs experience. Companies want people who someone else has trained for 3 years but don't want to pay the…

Yeah, they all want 3-5 years experience, but they're more than willing to hire someone with less once they realize that someone with 3-5 years experience is probably not available at the salary they're willing to offer.

There's an argument to be made that the vast majority of developers are underpaid in the US.

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#42

Post by existencebox »

llamataboot wrote: post #26

I graduated from a bootcamp a year ago after working in the non-profit field for over a decade as a researcher and a social worker, and doing a few years of standing up wordpress sites for small non-profits and doing other IT support for them (setting up better CRMs, networking their office, setting up online donation systems, etc) A few things: 1) Bootcamp graduates shouldn't lead to poorly written codebases if they…

At the risk of a slight tangent, I would contribute that these are issues for bootcampers/nonbootcampers/developers of all ages, that I'd really love to see more people notice.

Even as someone who has been "doing this for a while", the amount of stress and feeling underwater that comes from a job that doesn't onboard sufficiently (or at all) compared to one that has good mentoring is astronomical. As a caveat, this may be an effect of my terrible habit of switching concentrations every 2-3 years (prototyping->security->ops/sysadminning->research->'industry programming'), but the amount of extra productivity I could have given my employers had they better smoothed new team transitions (even in such simple things as having organized and non-silod documentation) I would hope could motivate positive change, since it benefits all parties.

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#44

Post by scarecrowbob »

mgirdley wrote: post #15
UK-AL wrote: post #3

Reminds of the late 90's, early 2000 era, when every man off the street was doing mcse, cisco qualifications etc with the promise of highly paying jobs. Then a few years later there was gut of unemployed techies.

Disclaimer: I run a bootcamp in San Antonio called Codeup. While the media paints the camps as "get a great paying job", I see more people wanting a more meaningful life. They've got an expensive degree in English or something similarly un-useful and want to work on things that matter. They see coding as the path to get there.

Hey, greets from Fredericksburg, TX.

I'm pretty close to the guy you're talking about (though I'm 5 years down the line from quitting my English PhD program, and have already figured out how work freelance without starving).

I'm not sure I agree that more users === "work that matters", though I can agree it is much more difficult to find reasonable work the relies on a BA in Philosophy than to find reasonably good paying work that relies on being able to slap together some PHP script.

But I generally agree with you: the issue that the people I work with are all dealing with is figuring out how to not work 50 hours a week and still make a living, and being a tradesman programmer is a very easy way to do that (I'm finding it comparable to being an electrician or plumber without having to actually leave the house and own a truck full of tools).

This fall I had tried to get some interest among the people out here in Fredericksburg for a class, but I couldn't get enough people to sign on so I put my plans on hold. Teaching folks to do this kind of work is a good thing, so I wish you great success on codeup.

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#45

Post by pessimizer »

mgirdley wrote: post #38
pessimizer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably unfair, but I think that most of them are going to lack the math background to advance their skills very far from implementing simple CRUD apps in common frameworks. I don't know that STEM people are going to code schools; I think they probably just google the manual, read a few tutorials and have at it.

The reality is that most custom web applications aren't more than CRUD. No advanced math concepts are required beyond algebra level stuff.

Scalability requires mathematical reasoning. From implementing 'you may also like' in an ecommerce store to pulling up a combined list of your friend's pets, I'm reminded over and over again of the gulf between non-mathematical programmers and ones with a basic undergrad math education.

edit: ...along with spending months doing homework on algorithms and big/little-* notation, and learning automata theory, of course. I don't mean to oversimplify.

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#46

Post by never_snapped »

pessimizer wrote: post #30
mgirdley wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If bootcamp grads are "doing it right", they'll keep developing and evolving their skills.

This is probably unfair, but I think that most of them are going to lack the math background to advance their skills very far from implementing simple CRUD apps in common frameworks. I don't know that STEM people are going to code schools; I think they probably just google the manual, read a few tutorials and have at it.

The math can be learnt, just like coding can be learnt. The only difference between someone with STEM background who codes and someone without, is the order they choose to learn it in.

mgridley is right in that the vast majority of business applications require almost no math, and those that do are usually so specialized that an advisor figures out those equations first as they require a specialized domain knowledge.

Want to build tools that developers build upon? You may need the math, but you can usually already find the algorithms in research papers.

The only exception to this rule (that I can think of) are very specialized niches of development, which ultimately become commoditized and consumed by developers without the math anyways.

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#47

Post by mgirdley »

comatose_kid wrote: post #39

What do people think about an alternate path - read a few good books, create something useful on a github page? My hiring bias skews towards people with a good engineering background or concrete examples of meaningful contributions to non-trivial coding projects. Sure, vocational school is fine while demand for programmers is outstripping supply. But those who lived thru 1999 and the resulting downturn have seen that…

In my experience, this works for only a very small minority of people. Most everyone else is lacking self-teaching skills or motivation to teach themselves enough to be hireable.

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#48

Post by mgirdley »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #44
mgirdley wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I run a bootcamp in San Antonio called Codeup. While the media paints the camps as "get a great paying job", I see more people wanting a more meaningful life. They've got an expensive degree in English or something similarly un-useful and want to work on things that matter. They see coding as the path to get there.

Hey, greets from Fredericksburg, TX. I'm pretty close to the guy you're talking about (though I'm 5 years down the line from quitting my English PhD program, and have already figured out how work freelance without starving). I'm not sure I agree that more users === "work that matters", though I can agree it is much more difficult to find reasonable work the relies on a BA in Philosophy than to find reasonably good pa…

Cool. Come down and see us at Geekdom if you'd like.

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#49

Post by yummyfajitas »

mgirdley wrote: post #47
comatose_kid wrote: post #39

What do people think about an alternate path - read a few good books, create something useful on a github page? My hiring bias skews towards people with a good engineering background or concrete examples of meaningful contributions to non-trivial coding projects. Sure, vocational school is fine while demand for programmers is outstripping supply. But those who lived thru 1999 and the resulting downturn have seen that…

In my experience, this works for only a very small minority of people. Most everyone else is lacking self-teaching skills or motivation to teach themselves enough to be hireable.

I pretty much want to stick to this minority in hiring. I don't know how to get useful work out of anyone else.

Given a development role, how do you get someone who needs hand holding to be worth their salary? Just hire a lot of manager/mentors and resign yourself to being a large team? Or something else?

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#50

Post by enraged_camel »

michaelvkpdx wrote: post #29
mgirdley wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I run a bootcamp in San Antonio called Codeup. While the media paints the camps as "get a great paying job", I see more people wanting a more meaningful life. They've got an expensive degree in English or something similarly un-useful and want to work on things that matter. They see coding as the path to get there.

If you classify an English degree as "un-useful", you should not be involved in educating developers. I studied both CS and English in college, and got my degree in English. The communication skills and translation techniques I learned as an English major have been tremendously useful to me in my career as a software engineer. In my experience hiring developers, I've found that those with liberal arts degrees do very…

The way I look at it is that soft skills, such as those taught in an English (or any other language) program, act as multipliers for non-soft (hard? solid?) skills. Without them, a STEM major can still be effective. But a pure soft skills major will not be very effective. Zero times X is zero.

What would it have been like if you had not studied CS, and graduated with just an English degree? Well, we have a fairly good idea: just look at pure English degree holders and how they are faring in today's economy. Most of them are underemployed and overworked as they work multiple jobs in the service sector to make ends meet.

You, on the other hand, were able to use what you learned in your English program to boost your effectiveness in software engineering. But make no mistake: software engineering is the real, solid foundation of your career. Not English. English was useful, but only in combination with your technical knowledge.

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