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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

#51

Post by mgirdley »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #49
mgirdley wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I recommend people hiring bootcamp grads to sit them next to a senior dev. There's 1-2 times a day that 5 minutes of mentoring will save them hours.

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

#52

Post by pessimizer »

never_snapped wrote: post #46
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 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.…

The math generally cannot be learnt quickly, or else I'm particularly stupid. For me it took years and tears and a full time courseload.

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

#53

Post by angersock »

vinceguidry wrote: post #31
mjhea0 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skip the middle man - bootcamps. Hire non-developers to screw up he codebase!

Non-developers won't get far enough to make the mistakes.

Far from the case, as it turns out. What many lack in skill they more than make up for in industriousness.

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

#54

Post by netcan »

There's a question that interests me.

Employers are vocal about needing good employees. They are willing to spend on their recruiting. Some are apparently happy with the results of these bootcamps (for entry level coders, I imagine).

The schools’ revenue models differ substantially. App Academy, in San Francisco and New York, charges no tuition, but takes 18 percent of graduates’ first-year salaries

Why don't big employers hire & train, evening if they outsource the actual teaching to bootcamps? That way they will be able to dictate the toolset and the standards can be whatever they want. The costs are similar to recruiting costs anyway. Shorter average tenures don't sound like the whole story behind the lack of employer funded training. How can they be willing to spend $15k on recruiting but not on training. It doesn't make sense.

Big Banks once had very successful intense training courses lasting 2-6 months frothier traders. These contributed to their culture, built loyalty, actively assisted in recruiting, and culled the bottom of each cycle. The training programs were an asset.

If these schools can get someone to a solid starting point in 3 months, that sounds like a perfect fit for employer training. It takes a lot of risk off the table for students. Why not?

Is there some inherent advantage these schools have that facebook don't?

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

#55

Post by enraged_camel »

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.

As a self-taught developer, I struggled with accepting that people like me are a minority.

For a long time I could not wrap my mind around why people did not put in the effort to learn new skills on their own. Eventually I realized that the reason is simple: they can't. Like you say, they either don't have the self-teaching skills or the motivation to follow through on the endeavor. I would be talking to friends and they would say, "I want to learn X so I'm thinking of taking classes at the local college." I would think to myself, "that's so silly, they should just buy a bunch of books for one tenth the price!" Because that's what I would have done. As time went on though I realized most people need someone to teach them stuff. They either never developed self-teaching skills, or let those skills erode throughout high school and college due to neglect. Maybe that's a commentary on our education system: it's too focused on spoon-feeding facts (and then test on those facts) and does not put enough emphasis on self-reliance.

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

#56

Post by netcan »

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.

It's possible to learn too much from a crisis. Fast growth inherently has risks like this, but overall the premise is not wrong.

Computers and the internet are important. We do need lots of people who can make them do new things. These skills are possible to learn, with talent, motivation and investment of time.

The late 90s was fueled by the correct realization of these things. It just misjudged the value of early versions of everything. The Microsofts of the internet launched 10, 15 years after the web started to blow up. The mistake was thinking that all the land would be grabbed by 2002.

Today's tech growth is more real, like the industrial revolution. It's productive, even if it produces stupid pictures sometimes.

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

#57

Post by bentlegen »

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…

"...and your clients"

I wonder if the number one employer of these graduates are web consultancies, whose clients are effectively footing the bill for their continued training.

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

#58

Post by walshemj »

baltcode wrote: post #34

Not all engineers live in SF and make more money than they know what to do with. What are the kind of services that most engineers and coders are paying through the nose? Attorneys, financial services, therapists, etc. Why not have more schools training these professions?

Have you seen the cost of living in SF? and Lawyers and Doctor are pre entry closed shops and make far more than the average Engineer.

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

#59

Post by w1ntermute »

mgirdley wrote: post #41
w1ntermute wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They definitely are. If more developers knew how to negotiate, weren't so meek, and knew how to persuade/explain to managers that outsourcing is going to cost them a lot more in the long run, then the average developer would probably make a lot more money. But bargaining doesn't work so well on an individual level unless a lot of (good) developers are willing to bargain.
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