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Bootcamps vs. College

blog.triplebyte.com

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Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#51

Post by Alex3917 »

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…

Right, all else being equal I would expect bootcamp grads to be significantly more valuable than CS majors, since presumably they're also experts in design, marketing, product management, or some other area.

In addition to being able to contribute in a non-development capacity, even in terms of software being good at coding is probably at most 20% of what makes a good developer.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#52

Post by DougWebb »

After reading through all of the comments so far, my impression is that bootcamps are for training the developers whose jobs will be automated away in the coming years, and college is for training the developers who will be writing the code that automates those jobs.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#53

Post by kmonsen »

ammon wrote: post #2

I'm happy to answer any questions about this (I expect it to be controversial). When we started Triplebyte one year ago, I was pretty skeptical of bootcamps. Doing credential-blind interviews and seeing what some bootcamp grads can do, however, has won me over. Clearly there are a lot of bad bootcamp grads (and probably a lot of bad bootcamps). But the model is working really well at the top.

Do you have any date on job performance? It seems to me the complete lack of algorithms is a land mine for any project. I think it is a lot more likely a coder with little fundamentals will be able to grow or see the bigger picture.

I agree that not all jobs require this skills, but then suddenly you get a divided workforce with designers and implementers.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#54

Post by llamataboot »

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…

Yes, but then I would argue that a mid-career switcher like me (bootcamp here - now employed full time as a programmer for 2+ years) brings a TON of value to your organization. Rather than a fresh-out-of-college person, I have a Master's Degree in my first field, tons of experience working with diverse stakeholders, meeting deadlines, dealing with people I may not get along with, getting to consensus, etc etc -- as well as a hell of a lot of domain knowledge in at least one large field. (In my case I have a Master's Degree in Social Work with a focus on policy research and statistics, but it could be ANY other field than just a CS degree). It's up to your organization to know what they need -- but sometimes what they need very well could be adequate coders that have a ton of other skills rather than people that know more algorithms but don't have any of those soft skills yet.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#55

Post by talloaktrees »

ammon wrote: post #2

I'm happy to answer any questions about this (I expect it to be controversial). When we started Triplebyte one year ago, I was pretty skeptical of bootcamps. Doing credential-blind interviews and seeing what some bootcamp grads can do, however, has won me over. Clearly there are a lot of bad bootcamp grads (and probably a lot of bad bootcamps). But the model is working really well at the top.

I know you don't have any data on it, but I'm curious of where you see auto-didacts in this spectrum

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#56

Post by vparikh »

I would love it if Computer Science grads took a boot camp course - one that covers css/html/javascript, any MVC framework, ntier patterns, ORM/SQL/NoSQL training. Because from my experience, they apparently don't teach any of that in comp-sci school.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#57

Post by llamataboot »

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…

MongoDB (MEAN stack) seems to be a recent shift?? Most bootcamps have historically been Rails/SQL.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#58

Post by lloyd-christmas »

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…

> Why would I pay them the same amount as a college graduate

These people ARE college grads. I'm not sure where this seemingly pervasive view is coming from. My class had 1 person without an undgraduate degree, and several with masters.

> i.e. the ability to communicate clearly, how to do research, how to learn independently

The average age of my class was 29. 6-10 years in the workforce tends to demonstrate an existing ability to do this.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#59

Post by humbleMouse »

DougWebb wrote: post #23
humbleMouse wrote: post #3

I think a well-run bootcamp is a better coding education than college computer science. The only thing most grads have on bootcamp people is algorithm knowledge. This is easy to fix. Just teach algos in bootcamp. It really isn't that hard to understand. Ideal bootcamp: -css/html/javascript -angular or any mvvc data mirroring framework -OOP and ntier patterns -Stored Procs/ORM/SQL training -Algos -Webservices SOAP/RES…

How long is a well-run bootcamp? Getting a CS degree takes many, many hours of course work, plus typically a bunch of non-CS course work. I'd think a college grad would (should?) be much better rounded. That depends a lot on the quality of their CS program, obviously. What you describe college grads doing sounds more like a 1-semester high school CS class to me.

> How long is a well-run bootcamp?

If I were put in charge, I would make it 6 months long. I could definitely teach people how to write coherently designed CRUD apps in 6 months (ie. 95% of all programming businesses in the wild).

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#60

Post by [deleted] »

bunnymancer wrote: post #19

Bootcamper here, Of course 3 months is going to get you running with a solid basic knowledge of your stuff. In what world would low-level, algorithms and data structures be doable in 3 months? Point is, I don't think Bootcamps and Colleges are comparable. It's like being a woodworker and a forester.. There's a place for each and it's not the same positions... Now, here's my big question: If your interview includes Pr…

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