Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bootcamps vs. College

blog.triplebyte.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 449 posts

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#91

Post by busterarm »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #80
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…

I know salaries are lower in NYC than SF, but even $80k/yr probably won't get you an App Academy graduate in SF. If it does get you an App Academy graduate, well, we actually talk to each other about compensation so they will almost certainly get poached after 6 months to a year. The issue isn't what the bootcamp grad is worth. The issue is what the next best option is - spending more time job hunting and getting a p…

Yeah I'm in NY thankfully. I wouldn't even consider taking a job in SF below $120k. I don't know how I'd make it there otherwise.

I'm too old to bother with having roommates anymore.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#92

Post by ammon »

jonny_eh wrote: post #31
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 think there's a correlation between "bad bootcamps" and "bad bootcamp grads"? I assume you can get good grads from bad bootcamps and vice-versa.

Our dataset is not large enough to really answer this. My opinion is that quality of the bootcamp (how selective they are, and how well they present and motivate students) has to matter.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#93

Post by MAGZine »

busterarm wrote: post #68
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…

A large percentage of the people in my bootcamp already had STEM or law degrees or many years of experience in another technical field (like myself)...and in a few cases both. I do way more than just CRUD apps - I basically own all of the business logic/processes here at my company. My bosses on a regular basis make it clear that I'm invaluable to the organization. I think this view is fairly myopic and basically cre…

The people I seeing decrying degrees as credentialism are invariably those out of bootcamps. I get that people may be satisfied with the level of education they received, but why do they attempt to cheapen others' experiences?

People always talk about how they're concerned with a candidate's ability to see something through, work hard on something with deadlines, know how to learn new things/not just knowing one thing. In my eyes, this, if NOTHING else, is something that a degree shows.

And yet, even though you decry the usefulness of degrees, you're sure to mention that your bootcampers mostly hold them. If they don't matter at all, why even bother mentioning it?

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#94

Post by pbiggar »

DougWebb wrote: post #66
pbiggar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Engineers make dozens of architectural decisions every day. > Two really key fundamental knowledge areas if you're goal is to build actually reliable and relatively efficient software. I would challenge you on this, and suspect that you're looking at a relatively thin slice of developers: can you clarify why you believe this to be the case. As a counter-example, a lot of modern web development is building frontends…

I've been building web-based frontends for my entire professional career, and my systems architecture skills have been invaluable throughout. Web frontends don't stand alone; they run on server, they make use of networks and networking hardware, they talk to other services on the same server and other server, and they interact with the operating system. Being able to understand all of those moving parts is crucial to…

Can you clarify why CS skills are necessary, vs the ones you learn in bootcamps (which I would guess are much more specific to this use case)? I agree they do all these things, but in a way that can be taught quickly and is mostly learned through experience, no?

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#95

Post by wahnfrieden »

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #58
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 exist…

Echoing this - my girlfriend, 29, just went through one and the average age was similar. Everyone (but her) had a STEM background / college degree. Abstract thought isn't exclusively taught in CS.

This was a full time iOS program in Totonto.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#96

Post by Mc_Big_G »

That's because bootcamps specifically teach you how to pass interviews. I'm a senior developer and suck at interviews because I haven't taken my spare time to specifically study for interviews. I don't remember how to reverse sort a b-tree or whatever inane questions are asked because I don't need to know that to do my job spectacularly. It's actually kind of a joke that bootcamp grads interview better.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#97

Post by ammon »

qqrsmith wrote: post #79
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.

It's great to see some hard data on this! Were you able to see any patterns in the backgrounds of the bootcamp students? It doesn't seem too surprising that someone with a physics or finance or mechanical engineering background can learn enough programming skills in three months to be productive. But do students without as much prior experience in quantitative and analytical thinking have as much success?

We see about a 50/50 split between the two groups. (Of course a lot of the people without a technical background are still analytical thinkers. There's probably pretty heavy selection bias for that)

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#98

Post by caconym_ »

It makes a lot of sense that bootcamp grads would outdo fresh college grads on "web system design"; they've presumably spent most of their bootcamp time focusing heavily on web systems. Stuff like load balancers/reverse proxies, distributed message queues, noSQL DBs, etc. may be totally foreign to a lot of fresh college grads, while a bootcamp grad can probably be expected to have a not-too-shabby understanding of how those components fit together.

The "practical programming" bit is a little more depressing, though it does ring somewhat true based on what I've seen in real life. How people can spend 4 years programming and still consistently fail at building decent abstractions, I have no idea.

Also, where is the "neither" category? There are dozens of us... dozens!

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#99

Post by lsadam0 »

busterarm wrote: post #83
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…

I believe we are misunderstanding each other, as you are making some assumptions. We do spend time training junior developers. We are hands on during work.

I'm talking about one problem at the start of the process. In the example, I didn't touch on their choice of sort algorithm. I was pointing out that they believed that re-sorting the same array, for every single GetIndexAt(x) call, was an ok thing to do. The majority of boot campers did, the majority of CS grads did not.

So if we have two distinct groups applying for a junior level position, and one group has a stronger grasp on fundamentals, I fail to understand how a company is at fault for choosing the better candidate. Objectively, the junior level CS grad had a better understanding of the problem.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#100

Post by ammon »

caconym_ wrote: post #98

It makes a lot of sense that bootcamp grads would outdo fresh college grads on "web system design"; they've presumably spent most of their bootcamp time focusing heavily on web systems. Stuff like load balancers/reverse proxies, distributed message queues, noSQL DBs, etc. may be totally foreign to a lot of fresh college grads, while a bootcamp grad can probably be expected to have a not-too-shabby understanding of ho…

We also work with a bunch of great self-taught folks! Perhaps I'll blog about this in the future!
Post reply on HN