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They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

nytimes.com

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Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#211

Post by ng12 »

duxup wrote: post #202

I went from a different technical career through a coding camp. I loved the experience. Having said that I'd say at least half my class was unemployable by the end. The camp did not filter candidates nearly enough and really hurt the class and I fear their own financal well being. I think coding camps could be done right, I just don't know if anyone is really doing it right...

The problem is there's no incentive to fail out a paying customer. And this isn't isolated to bootcamps -- I've noticed many universities babying CS majors by dumbing down CS101 and offering enough soft-skill electives that you can basically get a degree without knowing how to code.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#212

Post by ape4 »

gcmeplz wrote: post #158
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…

> Needless to say, I will be leaving my company very soon to go to a place where there is a coding test and filtering to prevent most of these bootcampers from getting in. I went to a bootcamp, and the first hour of every day was spent learning to solve the types of coding tests that companies use in interviews. So, when companies look at the graduates of these bootcamps, it's really hard to differentiate between peo…

After attending that bootcamp do you thing you could design tests to stump people who only knew how to do tests.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#213

Post by walshemj »

hcho wrote: post #199
brian-armstrong wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how little UK pays developers in general, is there any reason good devs shouldn't move away from there anyway?

At will employment in UK pays compareable to US.

Err no compare what Google pays in London with what Google pays in SV

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#214

Post by duxup »

ng12 wrote: post #211
duxup wrote: post #202

I went from a different technical career through a coding camp. I loved the experience. Having said that I'd say at least half my class was unemployable by the end. The camp did not filter candidates nearly enough and really hurt the class and I fear their own financal well being. I think coding camps could be done right, I just don't know if anyone is really doing it right...

The problem is there's no incentive to fail out a paying customer. And this isn't isolated to bootcamps -- I've noticed many universities babying CS majors by dumbing down CS101 and offering enough soft-skill electives that you can basically get a degree without knowing how to code.

Agreed, the incentives are all wrong for camps.

A classmate said "it's a boot camp... people should be kicked out / quit".

But presumably that might mean a partial refund and the camps do not want to do that.... so they sit in class weeks behind not doing well and dragging the whole class down with them.

At least in universities you MIGHT fail a class. Not so much in coding camps. But yeah I've ran into and worked with some CS folks I wondered about... like dude you should know a lot more than me... you're having trouble logically doing anything here...

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#215

Post by Dylan16807 »

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…

That doesn't sound like a problem with the people you're hiring. It's perfectly normal to train new hires. The problem is that you were not hired for a training job, but they're making you do a training job.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#216

Post by mothsonasloth »

freewilly1040 wrote: post #205
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…

Bootcamps don’t provide an adequate training to become an engineer, yes, but believe it or not there are plenty of very good engineers who have things besides work at the top of their value list. Your post reflects narrow mindedness and a lack of empathy.

> Your post reflects narrow mindedness and a lack of empathy.

Which are the tenets of big corporate, which is why I am getting the hell outta there to a smaller, more "organic" company.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#217

Post by smnplk »

Sharlin wrote: post #73
gingabriska wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've no idea why coding should be anymore special than basic reading/writing skills. Code is a way to express solution to the problem which a computer can execute. If you can learn any language, you can learn coding too. Sure, not everyone can understand intricacies of the algorithm design and data structure gotchas but some of that can come as experience and curiousity. Question worth asking is that, does everyone n…

It’s the problem-solving, not the language part, that requires special aptitude. You might speak a dozen languages but it doesn’t help if you don’t know what to say. Besides, have you tried to learn a new natural language in adulthood? A bootcamp won’t get you far. And natural languages are really forgiving in comparison because you’re communicating with a human-level intelligence that’s used to inferring meaning fro…

So much this. There is a trend with these "techie" youtubers giving advice on which programming languages to learn first or which language is the easiest, etc... They are all missing the point of programming.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#219

Post by Noos »

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…

So here's the thing. What do those people do?

tech people have been automating jobs away and insisting the future is code for a long time now. Now all of a sudden we get "coding is hard" and the non-traditional bootcamp education they pitched only really works for highly motivated self-starters, often with preexisting engineering or science backgrounds.

So what do they do? What exactly are they going to train into?

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#220

Post by in_cahoots »

asveikau wrote: post #35

> When word spread of a trip by the Mined Minds leadership to a tech conference in Lithuania in November, she saw an opportunity. I am partly of Lithuanian descent. With respect, I don't understand why someone in the US would think to attend a tech conference in Lithuania, when there is a much larger tech industry closer to home.

Apparently the co-founders met while in Lithuania: https://money.cnn.com/2016/04/22/news/economy/coal-workers-c.... Given the overall tone of this article I’m guessing it was a vacation dressed up as a business trip.
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