The Joys and Challenges of Hiring Developer Bootcamp Grads

"Bootcamp Grads" is a pretty broad phrase; we might want to start using more precise language. An grad from an 8-week bootcamp will have a different skill set than someone who spent 18, 48, 72 weeks in a bootcamp program.

Also, Thoughtbot has a somewhat good guide to running an apprenticeship: https://github.com/thoughtbot/apprenticeship

It could be adapted without much work to hiring bootcamp grads.

Let's not paint this subject with a broad brush.

Depends on the choice and depth of curriculum, length of time, the student and the instructor.

Having said that no bootcamp or hacker school can give you 20 years of experience writing and maintaining software. That's really the disavdantage. But natural talent in rare individuals can replace that with intuition, although I'm not sure how people like that do over the long range. I don't know ... But it's wise not to judge people in superficial manner without seeing what they can do.

Excellent post!

I am a bootcamp student and from my perspective, you really nailed the points on the Challenges of Hiring Bootcamp Graduates. I worry, however, that many companies will not have the resources or the patience to provide the kind of fostering environment described here. There is perception that the junior developer talent pool is being watered down by sheer number of bootcamp grads and many of them just do not measure up to classically trained CS students often competing for the same jobs. I recently attended a career track hosted by my own bootcamp and the coaches specifically instructed the students to omit the word "bootcamp" from their resume.

I personally believe that bootcamps can be a tremendous opportunity for motivated (and disciplined) students seeking a condensed and immersive learning environment; it's possibly one of the fastest way to learn a new trade. My experience so far is that meeting the boot camp requirements alone is probably not enough to make me competitive and I need to supplement the learning with additional readings, meet-ups (as suggested by my mentor), and further coding practices. Bootcamp curriculum should be the bare minimum.

Pretty much everything listed as "challenges" also applies to "recent grads from CS programs -- even top tier ones".

FWIW we've had great experiences hiring bootcamp grads. A few aspects of our software engineering process have helped smooth this transition: * We're disciplined about code reviewing everything that goes to production. * We're very careful about having a smooth ramp-up period - managers are expected to carefully curate the first few weeks / months of a new hire's projects to make sure that it follows a smooth learning curve, and we adjust the params as necessary. * We're gun-shy about hiring. * Our tech stack happens to share many frameworks / languages with the technologies that are in vogue among bootcamps today (due to random chance).

My experience has actually differed slightly from this post, in that many of the bootcamp grads whom we've hired have actually had excellent project management skills, especially coming from IT or PM roles in tech or tech-related industries. The main challenges that I see are around depth of experience - most bootcamps optimize very heavily for building CRUD apps with a bit of frontend sugar on top, so you need to select really carefully along whatever metrics for potential you find valuable. YMWV though.

Specific plug: despite interviewing candidates from many different bootcamps, one bootcamp in particular, App Academy, has consistently stood out. As of when I last checked, App Academy was the only bootcamp to use a conditional payment system, where tuition is contingent upon finding a fulltime software development job. This aligns incentives well - App Academy is encouraged to maximize training and applicant quality - and we've found their alumni to be very solid. I don't have a horse in this race but they turn out very professional and talented graduates.