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Comment by trowawee | Hacker News Reader

Why would I believe, as a bootcamp grad, that you're going to be able to put aside your already-admitted bias when I make it to the table for the interview, or if I make it through the hiring process? Why would I want to work with a coworker who thinks "their resume looks great, but they're a bootcamp grad, so it must be a lie"? How can I be confident that you won't throw some bullshit about me being a bootcamp grad at me when we inevitably disagree about some question? I'd rather put it on my resume and take my chances.

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The issue isn't with the candidate it's with the application of the candidate. You've presented two different things as the same. The initial screening process at many companies is pretty deterministic, based on fixed inputs in the person's application, and so can somewhat be easily gamed unless it is continually refined by engineering leadership to counteract some of the dynamics I mentioned by those who basically make a living trying to get all of their students through these screens.

If there is a sufficient correlation between radically underqualified candidates passing the initial screens due to their applications being (retrospectively) designed by the coding boot camp to do so, then it's reasonable to assume applications from those boot camps contain basically no real signal, and so really don't say much one way or another about the candidate's technical skills. In general, interviewing people is costly, and so with minimal signal you'll just say "no."

On the other hand, if there is no coding boot camp on the resume, there's no reason to believe the person's resume, github profile, etc, has been hand crafted by domain experts around passing technical job screens. You can much more likely take it at face value. So, that is why my honest advice at this time is to leave it off, because you are probably doing more harm than good. (This doesn't mean remove the work from your github or wipe the knowledge you had from your brain, just don't put it there because it may be sending a negative signal, regardless of your own merit.)

Once the person is in the door for an interview or the job their application is, generally speaking, not very relevant at that point vs their actual abilities to get the job done and work well on the team.

The post above highlights the negative stereotype of bootcamp grads (being under-experienced and under-qualified for the jobs they apply for), and therefore recommends highlighting your experience and projects over your bootcamp certification.

If you have a "great resume" then a bootstrap certification is not what makes it great. Self taught developers prove that a degree is not essential, and being self taught shows motivation and interest.

If someone disagrees with you and they have more experience and/or education, then your level of knowledge is the first thing they would attack, so again keeping it on your resume is no advantage in that case.

He's saying a person with a liberal arts degree and some amateur experience looks better than some one who graduated from a boot camp. The implication is that boot camps let people appear better than they are.

And you don't need to tell them you went to a boot camp. So if you get hired without mentioning it you won't deal with that bias.

Depends on the boot camp, but a boot camper would probably write better code than someone that's self taught.

Someone who's self taught doesn't need a bootcamp.

In reality all good coders are self taught - you can't really teach this stuff. You have to learn to play, to explore the solution space and figure out the different ways of composing your raw materials. And you need to do this over and over again throughout your career as new materials become available. Self-teaching never stops.

Coding is a skill, much like being a carpenter.

You can read about it all you want but unless you are doing it, you are not going to grow.

Hack Reactor is touted as really exclusive, but it's a 12 week boot camp. Does anyone seriously think that 3 months or even 6 months is enough to become any sort of passable? A well paced, self taught programmer can surely strive to a higher standard.

I've been working with computers all my life. I made static HTML/CSS/JS websites back in the 1990s before I'd hit puberty.

I never learnt how to code though, but I know a lot of technical stuff.

So I legitimately thought that "hey, I can learn to code in a few months"

Nope. 12 weeks is hilariously less to truly understand coding.

You can, at most, mimic the actions of the teacher.

It took me quitting, then months of idle rumination to understand what a recursive loop could be used for.

It makes me wonder if 12 weeks in a startup accelerator is also not enough time to truly understand how to run a business, either.

Also startup accelerators usually work with businesses that already exist. It's actually a good analogy. If you already know a little bit about coding and computer science a bootcamp can really help. If you don't have the drive to learn programming than a bootcamp can leave you with a huge skills gap.

My first business failed miserably. I had no business training and no one in my family who'd ever run a business. I was just overwhelmed all the time and never had advisors to reach out to (a problem YC students wouldn't have)

In hindsight, I know what I did wrong and what I should have done instead.

I'd say it took me at least a year of failing before I could gather my bearings and understand what was going on.

Well like coding, the only way to learn how to run a business is to do it and pour all your time and energy into it for years and years.

Passable for what?

For a junior web developer position? Yes, absolutely.

And it turns out that junior web developers make a shit ton of money in the bay area.

A whole lot of companies do not need serious CS algorithms experts. A whole lot of companies merely need blue collar, CRUD web devs to build their CRUD angular react node web app.

Being a crud web devoper is still a pretty good gig.

> And it turns out that junior web developers make a shit ton of money in the bay area.

Part of the problem is the high salary comes with the expectation of quick growth.

I think a lot of bootcamp graduates come up short.

That's my main gripe with these boot camps. If you're an experienced programmer with all the fundamentals in place, you could certainly learn a lot about a new language/framework in 12 weeks.

But, that's not who these things are aimed at. New programmers need time to absorb the fundamentals of programming. Getting pushed through some fast-paced program is the worst way to absorb anything.

I do like the idea of hopping right into writing applications vs the more traditional route, but it needs to be over years, not weeks.

Hack Reactor is ~11 hours a day and has all the social support and camaraderie that comes when you do the same thing w/ other people. I'd be surprised if someone on their own could learn as well in the same time.

> Hack Reactor is ~11 hours a day

11 hours a day for 12 weeks can't compare with two hours a day for a year.

Apples to oranges.

More like Apples to sour grapes. 11 hours a day, of anything, is complete overkill. Especially something like learning how to program.

11 hours a day is a bit extreme. After a certain point I would be concerned about my retention. Personally, I've never had good results from studying more than a few hours a day, but I understand this may not be the case for others. I usually study a bit, take a break for a couple hours, and study some more.

You're kidding right?

In my area, I have had recruiters specifically tell me that they will not list junior positions because of the hiring market being completely oversaturated with bootcamp graduates. I have had several tell me something along the lines of "this is listed as a mid-to-senior level position, but that is just to keep bootcampers from applying".

Without any commentary on whether you can be skilled/productive/knowledgeable after a bootcamp program, it CAN hurt your odds to list it on your resume. A former employer of mine was burned so bad by a string of bad hires they say they will never work with bootcampers again. Anecdotally I have observed that bootcamps tend to have their own tight-knit networks of alumni or companies willing to hire from a given camp, so I can't comment toward the net effect (whether it's better not to list the bootcamp on your resume at all), but I can guarantee you there are employers who want nothing to do with you if your primary education and experience are from a bootcamp, as misguided as that may be.

The person you are responding to makes a reasonable point that if an employer cares about productivity, then what you can accomplish on your own and what you actually know and understand should be emphasized. They may perceive that applicants whose primary self-advertised selling point is "I went to Einstein-Hawking Ruby Camp" may not have anything unique/valuable to offer for a given role because they seem identical to many other applicants from that same place, some/many of whom may have underperformed. I would recommend not developing a chip on your shoulder about it.

>"this is listed as a mid-to-senior level position, but that is just to keep bootcampers from applying"

Wouldn't help. Would actually be counterproductive. Listing requirements higher than actual requirements is a game, and boot camps are good at figuring out and optimizing for games. Bootcampers will (and should) apply to literally every job description that involves writing code.

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