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Bootcamps vs. College

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Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#251

Post by khalilravanna »

warlox wrote: post #240
brudgers wrote: post #184

There are several factors that don't enter this analysis. 1. Bootcamps can be selective over a range of non-academic criteria such as interview skills, personal hygene, and prior work experience. Or to put it another way, unlike a public university, a boot camp can select for culture fit both in its internal cohorts and in the workplaces it targets. 2. Bootcamps tend to attract people with previous work experience: s…

Isn't not letting C students graduate a good thing?

I think the point was not so much whether it's good or bad but that by weeding out the possibility of a C student from being in the bootcamp pool to begin with, it means the success of bootcamp interview candidates will be higher than any given college student just because they're better/more skilled-- not because they did bootcamp over university. I.e. you're comparing apples to oranges because bootcamp-educated candidates might actually be a more skilled subset of the overall candidate pool.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#252

Post by Fiahil »

Could it be possible to combine both worlds? Getting a university degree by spending four years with a strong focus on practical skills and intense workload[1].

To my knowledge only the top tier of american colleges (MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, ...) come close to that achievement. But, in France, where I live; I had the opportunity to go to a private school "specialized" in computer science (Epitech, 42, if you wanna look it up), that was mostly an "enlarged bootcamp" from year one to year three. It was kind of funny, for me, when my peers from traditional schools ended up discovering version control in their final internship.

[1]: Once you replace the shitty paper exams by actual projects in programming classes, you'll be amazed by how much you'll increase student proactivity.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#253

Post by serge2k »

> How to use an editor is something that a traditional CS degree program would never think of teaching.

Of course not. Why would they ever do that. It falls into the same bucket as version control. It's useful, but go learn it yourself because it's not that hard.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#254

Post by Sk1pp »

WWKong wrote: post #192

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 tha…

Makes total sense if you're coming out of high school I think. But we can assume that there is a decent amount of people that are switching post college to a programming related field.

And in terms of college being the hard path, I'm not sure that it was. I don't know how college helped me with "responsibilities" or "Uncomfortable Decisions". Not to mention the cost of college is pretty extreme, taking on 7k (usually more) a year at a state school would be expensive and stressful. (Real world challenges lol)

I think the solution would might be to step up the bootcamps to be a little more in-depth, and probably take a little longer, like a year at night, or something like that.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#255

Post by busterarm »

madmax96 wrote: post #206
madmax96 wrote: post #32

I have a slightly more pessimistic view of the situation: Sure, bootcamp grads can write a web application just fine; after all, it's usually only CRUD. But what value are they bringing to an organization? Why would I pay them the same amount as a college graduate who undoubtedly has more total knowledge not only in CS, but in other areas as well? Ideally, a college should expose students to a diverse range of knowle…

I hesitate to add this lest I be accused of moving the goalposts, but I'd like to add that the algorithmic and other low-level knowledge is vital to bringing technological value. Here's why: I've taken English courses and Music theory courses, but I am not a writer or a composer by any sense of the word. Sure, I can write a blog post or a comment, and I know how to compose a harmony, but I still lack the sort of know…

I hate to nitpick but I think music is a particularly bad example here. The vast majority of music as we know it is outsider art. The people I went to music conservatory with are largely not the same people who produce either music that you've heard or great works.

Sure, the self-taught pop star isn't going to write Rite of Spring anytime soon, but the music business does just fine while being flooded by people with limited theory skill...and I say this while holding the view that most people should just be performers and not compose.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#256

Post by changkx »

MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #200
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 "t…

Obviously this isnt every case but quiet frankly it's bullshit if somebody who studied some "worthless" major like psychology or history then thinks they can do a 10 week coding bootcamp and be on par with a CS grad.

If anything the TIME alone that a CS grad has to put in to graduate puts them above coding bootcamps.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#257

Post by azth »

jhchen wrote: post #121

It was not long ago that Computer Science degrees itself faced a similar challenge, against more well-rounded liberal arts programs, championed and prided by the Ivy Leagues. Today MIT and Stanford are ahead by the strength of their more “practical” engineering degrees. The data from Triplebyte supports the same narrative, just in greater granularity: businesses value practical skills. There is value in being balance…

> it may not be so difficult to fix.

Would you want graduates of such programs working on the software that goes into your operating system, your car, or other such systems? I doubt you'll find people graduating from these programs working at places like SpaceX or the JPL (unless they're doing some CRUD/web dev work), or even at Apple designing compilers or iphone processors.

Just as an anecdote, my current company hired a couple of graduates of these programs, and they didn't fair well.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#258

Post by munchbunny »

madmax96 wrote: post #32

I have a slightly more pessimistic view of the situation: Sure, bootcamp grads can write a web application just fine; after all, it's usually only CRUD. But what value are they bringing to an organization? Why would I pay them the same amount as a college graduate who undoubtedly has more total knowledge not only in CS, but in other areas as well? Ideally, a college should expose students to a diverse range of knowle…

The issue you might run into is that colleges will teach this in theory, but only the good students will internalize all of those things from their education. Same with bootcamps.

If we're comparing the two head to head, I suspect we'll run into a more general nature vs. nurture problem: the ones who want to learn will succeed regardless of whether their means of learning programming was a CS degree or a bootcamp. The ones who aren't taking it seriously will have problems regardless. The interesting part is maybe the degrees of quality within those camps.

I agree with your point about colleges and other skills though.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#259

Post by nappybrainiac »

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #26

How is this possible? I think one key aspect that is missing is that boot camp graduates aren't straight off the barista lineup. I took one at age 28 after having worked in a technical role in finance since undergrad. The average age of my class was probably 29. Beyond just time in the workforce, I had a double major in math and economics with a minor in applied statistics. Had I dropped "Behavioral Economics" and ta…

>I think one key aspect that is missing is that boot camp graduates aren't straight off the barista lineup.

It seems like everyone is forgetting this.

Since coding is becoming important for a tech driven World, no matter what our backgrounds are. We come in with whatever skills we've gathered from our personal journeys and then learn to code.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#260

Post by seattledev14 »

When you think about it as skills training vs. college I think it delivers on it's promise.

In college, most people don't declare a major until their Sophomore or Junior year, so the idea that competition is a 4 year degree is a bit misplaced. Code Schools don't teach music appreciation, though there are a lot of musicians. Bootcamps offer an intensive at 40+ hours a week vs. a two hour class two days a week.

Can you deliver skills based training in 10 weeks? The placement rates would say yes. Do some schools focus on placement while others focus on taking tuition... That's true as well.

Look to find the school that has a placement track record.

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