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Bootcamps vs. College

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Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#191

Post by spdionis »

humbleMouse wrote: post #46
eropple wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only thing most grads have on bootcamp people is algorithm knowledge. "Just teach algorithms." Do you have two years to spare to do so? Because I'm a platform engineer and I regularly use the extent of my CS mathematics education to write better code--you'd think this'd just be Ruby slinging, "what sort of math do you need to automate systems", but it ends up being remarkably more than that! But you know what e…

I like your post and agree with most of what you said, except about the algorithms. I don't think you need 2 years to teach them. You need a highschool level understanding of Math and about a week. Obviously this varies from person to person - but I learned them extremely quickly. I think where we are not seeing eye to eye here is that I envision a bootcamper that has a high aptitude for abstract thought, can read qu…

What algorithms did you learn in a week?

"I learned Algorithms in a week" sounds weird.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#192

Post by WWKong »

Go to college. Life is long and it is not about passing your first interview. Real world is complex and ever changing. The point of going to college is not to acquire coding skills to pass the interview. It is about facing real world challenges: people, responsibilities, complicated decisions, uncomfortable situations etc. And hopefully at the end of it you are better prepared to take on life. It is a harder path than going to a coder factory. Take the hard path.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#193

Post by morgante »

SilasX wrote: post #182
morgante wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hey, I can code and think abstractly. Give me a chance? That's more or less all most CS graduates can say though. I personally don't think anyone is qualified to be a professional developer until they've been programming for several years (especially coding in an unstructured way). I don't want to be combative, but what made you think you needed a bootcamp? I learned to program long before I went to college and was…

That's the point -- I didn't . I just needed it to convince someone to give me a chance. Employers would assume someone still in college for CS can program, and so look there. They don't automatically make that assumption for some rando with a different degree. To be sure, there were also probably some job-searching techniques that would have worked, but they're also hard to learn from reading pointers online if you…

Did you actually try to interview before the bootcamp though? (Ideally after building a few portfolio projects.)

I ask because I had no trouble getting jobs and freelance work without a degree or bootcamp.

In fact, a bootcamp is usually a strong negative signal for me. I'd much rather hire a self-taught developer than a bootcamper.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#194

Post by bobbyi_settv »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #115
nostrebored wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My CS degree was four years of heavy abstract thinking. If you can get those skills elsewhere great, but I don't think it's that common.

Based on what? The amount of bias in this thread is very strange. I think what's going on is that the people with CS degrees invested a significant chunk of their life and a significant amount of money into getting a CS degree. Therefore they're invested in denying the possibility that the qualities they achieved through their program can be achieved without. The article presents some evidence in support of this poss…

Is your comment meant to reply to the comment above you? Yes, a program that is designed entirely to give you just enough skills to get an entry level job when you exit succeeds at doing that, although not more than an actual college. What does that have to do with abstract thinking and deeper skills? What happens in two years when the specific "web developer" technical skills your program taught you are out of date and irrelevant?

The thing you quote is entirely saying that bootcamps are good for employers who just want cheap coders who know the language of the week that they can replace in two years with a new batch. Of course they are. But that doesn't mean they are great for you or that they in any way are a replacement for a real CS degree.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#195

Post by xigency »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #115
nostrebored wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My CS degree was four years of heavy abstract thinking. If you can get those skills elsewhere great, but I don't think it's that common.

Based on what? The amount of bias in this thread is very strange. I think what's going on is that the people with CS degrees invested a significant chunk of their life and a significant amount of money into getting a CS degree. Therefore they're invested in denying the possibility that the qualities they achieved through their program can be achieved without. The article presents some evidence in support of this poss…

I think saying that a computer science education is a way to learn "abstract thinking" is a useless simplification, given that any undergraduate degree involves some amount of abstract thinking. Surely a bootcamper is more prepared to work as a software engineer than a psychology major in over 50% of cases (all other things being equal). So the comparison between certain specific majors and bootcampers is much more minute.

Consider that at any major accredited university or college with programs in computer science and software engineering usually these two degrees are separate. Some study computer science and some study software engineering. Computer science as a discipline entails many fields that are unrelated to web development in any way, just as there are fields of math that are completely abstract and have no relation to reality. So, given that a web development role would technically be a form of engineering, you need to strictly compare interviewees with software engineering undergraduate degrees with those coming out of bootcamps without the same degrees, and also compare in-industry experience, age, and every other factor in a controlled way.

In any case, the data from a study like that would be inarguable and it would also be uninteresting. It might hurt some people's pride to see that a 6-month program can outdo a 4-year program, but it is true in some cases. Look at places like Digipen and Full Sail University which also teach programming. It was not at all uncommon a few decades ago for programmers to drop out of high school and be successful. What you will find, from responsible adults, is that no one would advocate this path. So it shouldn't be surprising that almost everyone will advocate the benefits of education.

It would be easier to compare a specific bootcamp with a narrow set of courses from a CSSE program, and it would be more of an apples-to-apples comparison.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#196

Post by busterarm »

SilasX wrote: post #182
morgante wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hey, I can code and think abstractly. Give me a chance? That's more or less all most CS graduates can say though. I personally don't think anyone is qualified to be a professional developer until they've been programming for several years (especially coding in an unstructured way). I don't want to be combative, but what made you think you needed a bootcamp? I learned to program long before I went to college and was…

That's the point -- I didn't . I just needed it to convince someone to give me a chance. Employers would assume someone still in college for CS can program, and so look there. They don't automatically make that assumption for some rando with a different degree. To be sure, there were also probably some job-searching techniques that would have worked, but they're also hard to learn from reading pointers online if you…

This was my experience exactly. Aside from helping me pick up a few concepts more quickly than I would have otherwise, I did it purely to get my foot in the door for interviews. It also was a good excuse to just focus on my portfolio for several weeks whereas if I had held a full-time job during this time, it would have easily taken me 4x as long.

It's a super expensive and wasteful way to do this, but I was optimizing for my time.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#197

Post by dionidium »

lsadam0 wrote: post #175
busterarm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they saying that it's an actual okay thing to do? ...like, you challenged them on it and had a discussion and they said it was perfectly okay regardless of size of array? Or it was just allowed to let lie and they said it's an okay thing to do because that's what's in their code? I think it's a huge mistake to conflate whether someone does know and whether they can know something. Some of the best programmers I'v…

There were a few hundred applications to sort through for the position. Applicants all received the same test. The initial response is used to filter the pool and decide with whom to speak with further. Only with a filtered applicant pool is it reasonable to sit and discuss their solution with. Some criteria is needed to filter the pool, so obviously those that have submitted a better initial solution will be selecte…

You're talking about a single junior-level position and you had a few hundred applications? That isn't passing my smell test.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#198

Post by sotojuan »

HNcow wrote: post #36

I'm in the process of hiring a junior position and have no bias towards college grads or bootcamp grads. The only negatives towards boot camp grads I've seen so far is: 1) One candidate had no idea what the terms "Class" or "OOP" even meant. I'm FINE with them not understanding stuff like sorts/advanced data structures, but he ACTUALLY had 0 idea what an int was. No lie! 2) I wish there wasn't such a heavy reliance o…

> This part might get me in trouble here, but we are a small company in NJ and budgeting 50k for the junior 0 experience position. Most of these bootcamps in Brooklyn or Manhattan instill that you minimum should be making 60k and not to even look for anything else. I disagree with that personally

I'm graduating from a Manhattan college Saturday and I would never take less than $60k for a programming job. In fact, I see most people recommending minimum $70k (and that matches my experience based on jobs offered to me). Most of my peers range from $70k-90k based on experience.

IDK where in NJ you are, but I trust that in your area, $50k is a comfortable salary to live on. In my hometown I'd also expect that much because it's a cheap place. You need to make this clear to your applicants (tell them the cost of living). Since you live near NYC then, sorry, most people will take $60-70k and live in the city with maybe a roommate than $50k in NJ even if they end up making less in NYC.

That said there's a lot of people eager to get some experience in their resume, so you'll find someone eventually.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#199

Post by sotojuan »

p4wnc6 wrote: post #101
kemiller2002 wrote: post #78

Boot camps have their place, but they are not a replacement for a traditional CS degree. I have met good and bad programmers from both types of programs (some from well respected colleges who I still wonder how they exactly passed), but here's the thing, I don't care about practical skills. I care about the person being able to think. All those concepts that they teach in CS isn't about knowing the name of an algorit…

The trouble is that while most employers say the same thing you say -- that they hire for critical thinking ability and intellectual curiosity / talent -- almost all of them don't actually want that. Instead they want employees who don't think independently; employees who are pliable and will not complain if given drudgery, told to use poor practices, told to make things of poor quality. Everyone says they don't just…

I get what you're saying. Here and on Reddit you see a lot of programmers who say they have been hired or say they hire based on ability to think and not domain knowledge. They say language doesn't matter and that personal projects are a nice bonus but what matter is if you can think and program.

That's awesome—I learned how to think in school and love solving problems.

The problem is that in real life I've had the opposite experience: I've been rejected from and been offered jobs almost solely based on practical, domain knowledge. Sometimes people email me or contact me based on my GitHub or the stuff I say I know or can prove I know. After doing great on trivia questions (both about the language I will use and algorithm ones) sometimes I've been rejected because of "lack of experience in our stack" (maybe just an excuse for something else). It's cynical, but I get the feeling what most people want in real life is not what HN users want.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#200

Post by MaxfordAndSons »

analognoise wrote: post #157

Of course employers love bootcamps - they need business logic monkeys who lack the fundamentals and therefore don't increase in value over time as much as the people who actually put in the time with said fundamentals. It's cheaper to have somebody who doesn't have a real education.

That's a remarkably cynical opinion. Why do you assume bootcamp grads learn and become more valuable at a lesser rate than CS degree grads? You're also making the assumption that bootcamp grads decided to forgo a CS degree in favor of an easier route, which in my experience is rarely the case - by and large bootcampers are there because they want to change careers, not as a way to cheat the system without learning "the fundamentals".
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