Comment by jonesb6 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonesb6 | Hacker News Reader

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When I dropped out of college to start working in tech I spoke with one of my professors who urged me to do a bootcamp instead (he had some kind of loose affiliation with it) and was able to spew off some impressive statistics, 90%+ employment rate, amazing salaries, etc.

I told him that moment that there was no way those statistics were honest, at the very least they were surely either maintaining ludicrous acceptance standards (only accepting experienced developers who already had hiring potential) or were using loose interpretations of the words "employment" and "salary" where a job was a gig and perks got attributed dollar sign values etc.

I did not go the bootcamp route and to this day maintain the same opinion, the value of bootcamps is dubious at best and a cash grab similar to for-profit education in the United States at worst.

And finally I'm extremely cynical of "that one success story that proves x was a good idea and you should do it too". Although I found your article very thoughtful, I can't help but draw connections between "That one new dieting trick that helped Larry lose 20 lbs in six weeks!", and "That coding boot camp that directly led me to make more then my doctor friend".

Any thoughts on my skepticism, given that you've actually done one? Again thoughtful article, it makes me feel bad for shooting down bootcamps.

[1]: http://www.skilledup.com/articles/bootcamps-san-francisco

As a hiring manager who has hired from boot camps, I view boot camps simply as an organized medium to encourage career change into tech. They are not unlike undergraduate computer science programs - neither program is required to start a career in tech, but some people need organization and a clear path to get there.

Sometimes a little guidance and networking enables an individual to excel where they might otherwise find themselves lost. Boot camps can provide this stability, as long as the program isn't misguided.

In the end, it's down to the individual to make their career. I would never hire blind from a boot camp.

Completing them also signals dedication and a strong work ethic, which are very important qualities to have in programming, especially when starting out.

I briefly taught at a bootcamp, but no longer have any affiliation with them, and I don't have any incentive to be dishonest one way or another.

They aren't perfect. There are cheaper ways to learn. Instructor quality is uneven, and the tendency to hire their best students as instructors means that many instructors never see real-world applications.

But the cynicism about their intentions is misplaced. The people who run bootcamps are generally passionate about changing students' lives.

The students I know all said the bootcamp was a great educational experience.

Rather than pump up the employment numbers with fluff, our bootcamp was careful not to inflate numbers (for instance, not counting the people we hired internally towards the placement rate).

That's just my experience with one bootcamp, and I'm not saying it would have been right for you.

But that level of cynicism is totally off-base.

I do agree that one persons success with something (getting a job, losing weight etc) isn't a very good prediction on most people's result using the same technique. And yes, I don't think all aspiring developers should do a bootcamp either. It wont replace a CS degree, and there are tons of ways to become a developers just using online tools/courses.

My motive with this article isn't to encourage more people to go to bootcamps, but help those who want to go do bootcamps do better research before they apply, as there are a lot of bad bootcamps out there.

Given the lack of web developers and demand for the skill, I don't doubt that some schools have 90 percent hiring rate.

I applied to a bootcamp in Austin a few years back that was boasting about its insanely high placement rate, so I did a little research. They gave all students a "developer intern" title or something similar and told them to go update their LinkedIn profiles. A quick search on LinkedIn showed that they were including people who failed at getting engineering gigs and went back to their old jobs in their placement figures, which seemed super misleading. I messaged a few grads that didn't have developer titles and got some very sobering responses.

I don't blame bootcamps for not getting everyone hired, but touting these ridiculous figures with hooks like "our avg dev grad makes $75k straight out of our program" seems to incentivize people into thinking there's a short path to solid pay, and not emphasizing how hard the work is. It just felt so much like a miniature for-profit program that I pulled my application and got a job after building some stuff on my own.

I worked at a place that had the opposite problem. We never asked students to add us to their profiles but they did anyway.

Subsequently it tanked the value of being an actual employee there.

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