How To Become An Apprentice Developer • Hacker News Board

Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer

#51

Post by matthewowen » Mon, Nov 12, 2012, 9:49 PM UTC

peteretep wrote: post #36

Purely from a hiring side, can someone sell me on the value of hiring junior developers and training them up? It feels to me like there's real potential for them to gum up the development team, it's going to take years for them to be senior (and nothing stopping them leaving when they are)... I understand people want Junior jobs to exist, as junior developers. As someone hiring, why should I hire one? Serious questio…

Well, one reason would be to take advantage of market inefficiencies.

You might decide that your business can derive a significant amount of experience from people who don't have a computer science degree. Those people might be easier and cheaper to hire. So it might be worth hiring them.

Fundamentally, the question is whether the hire is worth more to the company than the cost of employing them. If you think that CS graduates with four years of experience are overvalued by the employment market, it's a good move.

Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer

#52

Post by matthewowen » Mon, Nov 12, 2012, 9:55 PM UTC

avolcano wrote: post #10

Gotta say, as a sophomore who's been debating dropping out college, that these junior positions exist at all is encouraging. I always thought my trajectory would be to go to my current school, transfer to a better one, get some good internships, and graduate with a CS degree. But my grades aren't where they need to be, so I probably won't be able to transfer to a good school. Honestly I've been concerned whether or n…

It's probably a bad move.

I don't have a CS degree, but I've still found that having a humanities degree from a top tier university is still very helpful for opening doors. Like it or not, having a degree is a positive signifier. Dropping out is (in many cases) a negative signifier. And if you're struggling to learn in college, what makes you think that you'll do better outside of college? I found that one of the most important things I learnt at university was how to learn effectively and quickly.

Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer

#53

Post by hnriot » Mon, Nov 12, 2012, 11:30 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #23

hnriot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is terrible advice. Companies have hr and recruiters for a reason, if you jump over them it just shows you're pushy and impatient. If someone calls me and tells me their email bounced I'd immediately think they were lame. Seriously? "Did you get my message?" Is circa 2001. These days if an email bounces you go back and read sent it properly with th right address. Emails don't bounce on their own. When I lost…

Don't listen to this guy. Building relationships is a huge part of how you go grom one of the massive pile of mostly crap resumes to someone who can skip that and get a warm interview. If you have spoken to someone and they remember who you are, you have a relationship. If you develop relationships with people who might hire you later, maybe they don't hire you, but maybe they can introduce you to someone who will. T…

Building relationships is a huge part for sure, but contacting dev's directly is bad form and a good way to get on the spam list.

Please don't listen to this guy, it's very bad advice

Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer

#54

Post by welder » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 12:14 AM UTC

freework wrote: post #28

welder wrote: post #8

[Hugo's Hacker House roommate here] Hugo went from zero coding experience to holding his own with seasoned Javascript & Ruby devs in 9 weeks. I'm not sure if he's just an exception, but it sure paints app academy in a positive light for me. I hope more of these "Learn to Code for Free" camps pop up around here.

That depends on what is meant by "holding his own with seasoned Javascript & Ruby devs". In my experience, the only thing that makes you a good programmer is building things. What has this guy built? A handful of project euler solutions? That doesn't make you a valuable programmer. There is no free lunch. There is no magic bullet.

I've seen him solve algorithms problems for coding interviews in Javascript and Ruby. He also helped with some html content on a site I'm building.

By holding his own I meant able to understand and contribute to technical conversations. I can't even have a technical discussion with some CS students without having to explain the definition of recursion.

Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer

#55

Post by rizzom5000 » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 3:00 AM UTC

slurgfest wrote: post #48

rizzom5000 wrote: post #26

There are two primary reasons this story is possible. One, we have a highly motivated student; and two, tremendous demand unfilled via traditional channels. And nothing against a 9-week code bootcamp, but even if the student invested 12 hours a day with no days off, we're talking about 756 hours of experience. Compare this to a university education at four years times 12 hours of class a week for 30 weeks and two hou…

I don't think University is a waste of time. However... It doesn't seem completely accurate to count all the time spent at university as equivalent to the same time spent working in the trenches. And it seems extremely harsh to say that there is no reason to hire people who didn't do CS in university, because they were "asleep at the wheel." Figuring out what you are going to do in the future is not the same skill as…

Well, for your first point, I'll agree that code boot camps and university are entirely different things and with entirely different purposes. But if code boot camps are going to advertise themselves as an alternative to university, I think I'm completely within bounds to compare the two.

For your second statement, sorry if there was a misunderstanding, but my comment was directly in reference to people who have gone to university, and who subsequently make comments in public, including on this board, about what a waste of time it was. It had nothing to do with reasons to hire people, or figuring out what one might want to do in the future - but everything to do with people who pissed away four years of what can only be described as full of opportunity, and now complain about what a waste of time it was.

And my statement stands, I don't think I'd want to hire or work with someone who honestly believes that they didn't get anything out of university.

Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer

#56

Post by dazmuda » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:57 AM UTC

HugoMelo wrote: post #31

ruggeri wrote: post #9

[Instructor at App Academy here] I'm really proud of Hugo; he came in to App Academy as an 18 year old kid with no coding experience, and through sheer force of will, learned enough to land a junior dev job in nine weeks. If you're interested in the course that Hugo took, check us out (appacademy.io). Students only pay us when they find a dev job after the program. Hugo's fellow students are doing great. 11/15 of our…

nicholasreed makes a good point. Let me make some stuff clear: - I paid a $500 refundable deposit by mailing them a check they never cashed. That was legit. A $3,000 deposit is silly though. - To the best of my knowledge no jobs were found from App Academy's partner companies. - I don't believe the $83k average salary thing. That said, Ned is one of the greatest mentors I've ever met, and he's radically changed my li…

Another App Academy kid here. Like Eddie, I too received and accepted an offer from one of AA's parter companies after I finished the program. I'm an apprentice at Thoughtbot now!

Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer

#57

Post by EnderMB » Wed, Nov 14, 2012, 11:42 AM UTC

nhangen wrote: post #45

EnderMB wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. There are fewer harder things in software development than taking criticism over code you've lovingly crafted, but ultimately it's this criticism that makes you understand the code better. Additionally, if you're posting code on the Internet then you're there for everybody to shoot at. It sucks sometimes, but that's how things go.

There is a big difference between being cruel and being helpful. Very often I see the former. I don't post my code, so this isn't about me. It's about what I see from others.

You're absolutely right, but it's the current nature of sharing code on the Internet. I've had enough of my code slated to know, and at times it has stopped me posting what could be valuable code for others.

It also depends on where you're sharing your code, and what kind of communities will pick it up. In my experience, the Python and .NET communities have been great when dealing with both damning and constructive criticism of any problems of mine.