Comment by petsormeat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by petsormeat | Hacker News Reader

I attended a bootcamp in 2014. I regret it.

I entered because I wanted to switch from front-end development to full-stack. I'd really enjoyed what little I'd done with Ruby and Rails, so I fell for the pitch of this bootcamp that I could be retrained as a Rails developer in three months.

What I wished I'd known: - everything about the bootcamp (schedule, curriculum, equipment) was set in stone. You are just a widget on a conveyor belt. - the bootcamp's mandatory pair programming did not help me to learn the material at all. - as others have mentioned, bootcamps are untruthful in their statistics. Mine even lied to the state regulators, claiming 90% of my cohort was employed as software developers, when maybe half of us were.

I ended up going back to my previous career.

Mine even lied to the state regulators, claiming 90% of my cohort was employed as software developers, when maybe half of us were.

A prior employer employed an advisor at a famous Data Science bootcamp. We wound up interviewing a ton of his students (I guess required for him being an advisor?) and most hadn't learned enough to be useful. Not even up to a BA/BS in CS/Math level. Even after the program ended, many of them will still in the job market for extended periods of time.

My current employer has someone who had a non-technical job, left for a boot camp, and came back for a more technical job. In his case it worked because he had a lot of market context.

So it's hit or miss, but not worth a guarantee.

If most people can't make it through a 4 year CS program, how can open-entry programs create better output in 3 months?

> most hadn't learned enough to be useful. Not even up to a BA/BS in CS/Math level.

Why would your expection be someone in 3 months learn what other people learn in 4?

You should compare them to high school students or self taught people with no job history.

>If most people can't make it through a 4 year CS program, how can open-entry programs create better output in 3 months?

100% of bootcampers are Computer Science dropouts?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com