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Boot Camp: A Business Saga

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Re: Boot Camp: A Business Saga

#11
Could be interesting to take a bootcamp the summer between high school and the start of college - for an engineering/CS student prior to entering engineering/CS college.

It could provide a lot of hands-on/industry context that might actually be pretty motivating prior to going deeper into the more rigorous math/CS (i.e. O(n), proofs, data structures, compilers).

Maybe things have changed but back in my day - interestingly a lot of undergrad CS coursework did not cover practical stuff until much later (i.e. which made you clueless for freshman and sophomore summer internships) or you picked it up outside of the curriculum.

Re: Boot Camp: A Business Saga

#12
There’s a timing and context to this all.

In the early days of programming, typically math or engineering skills were sought out. By the 70s nobody knew what would be appropriate, so a philosophy or English degree was considered fine. Or nothing: even in the early 80s, self-taught people like John Gilmore (first non-founder employee at sun) or Burrell Smith (former tech support staffer turned macintosh designer) didn’t need college at all.

But now nobody has the patience for that, and conversely very few businesses depend on extraordinary people. So almost everyone feels they need credentialism either to stand out or, on the other side, to hire someone when you don’t have the skill to judge directly.

In other words, this situation is the consequence of its own success.

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