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Comment by whiteboarder | Hacker News Reader

My definition of a "software engineer" is someone who gets paid 6 figures for writing code, any code.

And it just so happens there there are quite of lot of 6 figure jobs that solely involve building crud apps by gluing together frameworks.

You can shit it on all you want, and talk about how "us real computer scientists are solving the Hard Problems by building compilers and OSs".

But at the end of the day, the person going to the bootcamp doesn't care about this opinion. All they care about is that they were able to spend 3 months of there time in order to double or triple their salary.

And the only other price they have to pay is having to put up with people like you shitting on them for not working on Hard Problems. And to me, that seems like a very small price to pay.

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Parent's argument reminds me of a No True Scotsman fallacy.

Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

Person B: "But my uncle Angus likes sugar with his porridge."

Person A: "Ah yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

I feel the much of the negativity towards bootcamps is partially due to people feeling threatened by new entrants. Kind of like black cars in London claiming that to be a cab driver you'd have to know the streets by memory, while in most cases GPS would be good enough. To me, it seems like a lot of bootcamps get you to good enough. That doesn't take away from all the years of investment and learning that other developers might have gone through to get where they are. There's room for both.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

> I feel the much of the negativity towards bootcamps is partially due to people feeling threatened by new entrants.

There's so much work in this industry, and will only be more over time, that I'm not worried about being replaced by any stretch. Fear certainly may be the driving force for some folks, but my experience with bootcamp graduates has just generally been unimpressive. I'm certain there are quality graduates from these programs! I've just never actually worked with them, and it's getting to the point where the correlation is uncomfortable.

Would you be willing to extend the same logic to the medical profession? What about law? Or perhaps architecture? Would you let a 12 week bootcamp graduate design your home? Or really, any other type of engineer. After all, the argument about "theory" differing from "real world practice" and becoming "good enough" can be made for those as well. You don't need to know about how germs work in order to treat a cold. You just need to know which medicine to prescribe.

The only difference between the above mentioned professions and Software Engineering is that there is no formal "examination" that you have to pass to demonstrate your qualification - which is the barrier that is there to ensure quality students. It comes down to qualification. Unlike doctors and lawyers, the barrier to entry in our industry is much, much low. Which most assuredly leads to a decline in quality.

So yeah, thanks for the passive aggressive attacks about me feeling threatened, but no. I've never seen a 6-figure salary, I don't live in US/Bay Area. I just like quality code and working with quality people. Bootcamp devs aren't those. Can they be? Sure, but as some graduates in this thread themselves admitted, it took them 2-3 years to reach that position anyway.

> Medical

Yes. There is plenty of work that can be done by a nurse that doesn't need to be done by a doctor. It seems silly that someone gets sent to school for over a decade to talk to me about whether I can take a drug to bring back the spark in my relationship.

> Law

Yes. There are plenty of routine legal procedures that should be allowed to be performed by someone that doesn't have to go through the costly process of going through law school (routine divorce comes to mind)

> Architecture

Don't know much about architecture :-/

Didn't mean to be passive aggressive. So for that I apologize.

Becoming a nurse or paralegal requires far more certification than software development. It's actually quite amazing how much of an outlier software is in the realm of professional qualification.

Accounting is perhaps a more interesting corollary because it doesn't have the built-in awe and long history of respect as the medical and legal professions: perhaps we should have 12-week tax accounting bootcamps! I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek, but there are real benefits on both sides of this argument: there are real quality of work and quality of employment (salary, respect, etc.) advantages to professional certification enforcement, but it is difficult to imagine the pace at which the technology sector is growing if employment were controlled by certification.

There's a tax bootcamp in a strip mall I drive by on the way to work. It's a nine week program for people that want to be tax preparers. Same story as developers. Fast path to a better paying job.

What is changing right now is that demand for skilled people is outstripping the education system's ability to produce them. So you see the emergence of schools and eventually employer driven training programs. This has been coming for a long time, and it is actually a good thing. It's actually an opportunity.

Didn't we try this before with Microsoft (MCSE), Cisco (CCNP) and Oracle certifications and failed miserably?

Nobody stops you to do your own book keeping or management accounting/budgeting.

Sure, but there are plenty of accounting tasks that you do need to be certified to be allowed do. Is there an analogue to that for software (in the US)?

Certification, no. Practicalities - yes.

> > Medical

> Yes. There is plenty of work that can be done by a nurse that doesn't need to be done by a doctor. It seems silly that someone gets sent to school for over a decade to talk to me about whether I can take a drug to bring back the spark in my relationship.

> > Law

> Yes. There are plenty of routine legal procedures that should be allowed to be performed by someone that doesn't have to go through the costly process of going through law school (routine divorce comes to mind)

Paralegals and Nurses require 2-4 year diplomas or degrees, typically

>> Can they be? Sure, but as some graduates in this thread themselves admitted, it took them 2-3 years to reach that position anyway.

Meanwhile they were taking home a paycheck instead of paying tuition dollars. Maybe they've got family to support and taking four years out of the workforce wasn't a possibility. Or maybe sitting in a classroom is just not how they learn.

What exactly is the problem with some people learning on the job if they want to and employers want them to? You don't want to work with them find an company that doesn't want to hire them or found one yourself.

> Meanwhile they were taking home a paycheck instead of paying tuition dollars. Maybe they've got family to support and taking four years out of the workforce wasn't a possibility. Or maybe sitting in a classroom is just not how they learn.

How is that in any way the problem of the company said guy is joining?

> What exactly is the problem with some people learning on the job if they want to and employers want them to?

Because it is inherently a risky proposition. Why should the rest of the team be held back or be responsible for plugging the gaps in the education of the guy/girl who doesn't know their stuff? It's not an Internship, is it? If you're getting paid a full time salary you better be able to fucking to the job.

Anyway all this talk is pointless. Any company worth its salt will weed out the weaklings in the Interview process.

Really? People who write code, any code - but make under 6 figures are not "software engineers"? What's making 6 figures have anything to do?

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