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Bootcamps vs. College

blog.triplebyte.com

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Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#81

Post by adpirz »

pbiggar wrote: post #28
ammon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's possible that these things just fundamentally take more time to learn well. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, however.

Judging from my own experience, spending some time through the start of Skiena's Algorithm Design Manual, with a side of Programming Pearls or Practice of Programming, would do wonders and easily outstrip a CS education. I'd say you could do it in less than 200 hours, which is about 3 weeks of dedicated bootcamper time. Maybe dev-bootcamp should offer an optional extra module?

As a bootcamp grad m'self who would love to do more deep dives into algos/data structures, I'm intrigued. Any other recs?

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#82

Post by shubhamjain »

I started programming before college and I was always on my own. I never had a programmer friend until I started working. Although I was always able to get things done but the code I wrote is something that should never go into production. It took lots of mistakes, a lot of reading and shooting my own foot to finally start writing worthy code after like 2-3 years. (Although, there were code bases I worked with that were way worse!)

One thing I am curious about is, does a bootcamp make you proficient enough to avoid those mistakes and contribute directly to the application? I am pretty sure, it could have been a lot of help if someone could point out the mistakes I am making in my code, but I am not sure if it would have been enough.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#83

Post by busterarm »

lsadam0 wrote: post #69

> Bootcamp grads match or beat college grads on practical skills, and lose on deep knowledge. I feel as though you are attempting to lower the bar of what is acceptable in order to sell something :). The word 'practical' is thrown around in this article without much of a definition. Are we talking about making simple web pages? I've just finished conducting a round of interviews for a junior level position, and based…

Personally, I never expect people to pick the right algorithm the first time. In the real world it's hard to do. I'm much more interested in if they think about alternatives to their solution, know where the problems with theirs are and if they might find an alternate solution to the problem online.

If you're hiring junior developers without expecting to be hands-on in their work and with plan to train them, then you aren't really hiring junior developers, you're just trying to pay at junior rates. It's not doing them or your business a service to hire them.

There are plenty of CS grads out there with all sorts of algo skills but no practical and will take 3 months + to build anything in your stack. This is basically the same problem with different symptoms: You don't have the resources to hire a junior developer.

It's just way easier to blame the hire than your company.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#84

Post by busterarm »

HNcow wrote: post #73
busterarm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on which bootcamp. I finally picked up SQL while at App Academy and while we did use JSON, we spent no time working with NoSQL databases. Backend ended up being my strength and my primary role at my (full stack) jobs. The monetary worth as a junior developer is also very dependent on the bootcamp. A decent App Academy or Dev Bootcamp grad in NYC? 60k is a reasonable minimum IMO and a wage below that…

That's good to hear about the SQL. Honestly, we sort of didn't even bother with AA candidates because I went to the website to check it out, and first thing it says is "graduates earn an average of 89k in NYC". Instantly knew that whatever they were telling the students, we couldn't afford em. On Indeed, we get a lot of crossover because of our proximity to NYC. I think we come up if you do a 50mi radius and search j…

You're right, you probably can't afford them. Salary range in my cohort was 60k-105k, but it's typically higher. a/A grads are in the unfortunate position of having their camp be "free" ($5k deposit) up front and 18% of your first year salary upon hire. They basically have to earn more to pay off the bootcamp. I had to pass on my dream gig (apprenticeship at 8th Light in LA) in part because the debt to App Academy would have meant I was starving in LA (flat 18k if you leave NY/SF).

Some of us optimized for culture fit and life balance over salary. I did this because I was lucky enough to be able to. I earn less than a bunch of people from my group who work 20+ hours more a week than I do and I'm happy with my decision - love where I work, love my coworkers.

I'll let the quality of my work determine the direction of my salary :D

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#86

Post by babbeloski »

Bootcamps make people employable for sure, I work with a team of people mostly from Bootcamps. I think the problem with some of them is they don't actually like programming. Learning new things and change is met with a lot of feet dragging. Don't get me wrong, I know a lot of programmers that are just 9-5'ers. It just seems like anytime there's any extra effort involved a ton of justification and selling needs to happen.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#87

Post by grayrest »

shubhamjain wrote: post #82

I started programming before college and I was always on my own. I never had a programmer friend until I started working. Although I was always able to get things done but the code I wrote is something that should never go into production. It took lots of mistakes, a lot of reading and shooting my own foot to finally start writing worthy code after like 2-3 years. (Although, there were code bases I worked with that w…

> It took lots of mistakes, a lot of reading and shooting my own foot to finally start writing worthy code after like 2-3 years.

This is completely normal and I expect this out of any junior developer hire. My brother-in-law went through a boot camp and picked up a job writing unit/integration tests and he makes the same errors. Having to maintain your own code and seeing the consequences of your decisions gets you over this hurdle. I've seen the same for junior web devs coming out of agency work.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#88

Post by akud »

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…

Yea, their analysis only measures the employee value at interview time. It doesn't attempt to measure the lifetime value of the employee.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#89

Post by dontscale »

I think the debate about Colleges vs. Bootcamps is an apples to oranges comparison

Algorithms are commoditized into libraries. Web design has been commoditized with templates.

Open-ended programming is still more complicated, but putting apps on the web today is easier than static HTML just 5 years ago. Parts of programming will continue being commoditized.

So if it's easy to create something and put it out there, the great and all-important challenge that faces developers today is making it matter.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#90

Post by lloyd-christmas »

kmonsen wrote: post #53
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.

> It seems to me the complete lack of algorithms is a land mine for any project.

If you hire someone and release them into the wild of your codebase, that's a failure on your part not theirs. New hires are an investment, they shouldn't be treated as an immediate need-based solution. My experience in two fields has shown me that new hires are a drain on resources for a fairly significant time period, regardless of their background. If you're not doing everything in your power to educate your new hires and get them up to speed, THAT'S your landmine. It's your job to get them to learn the fundamentals if they don't have it.

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