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Comment by segmondy | Hacker News Reader

58% of classroom graduates making $74,447 average seems better than most universities out there. Too bad they had to lie about it.

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A general practice of many coding bootcamps is making admissions selections in part based on the likelihood of career (as opposed to academic) success. There is a degree of "would I like to have a beer with this person" in the application process which is absent from traditional academic institutions like 'Old State U.'

One of the operating models of bootcamps is as a recruiter for tech companies. In addition to tuition from students, the bootcamp receives a fee from employers when graduates are hired. This provides incentives bootcamps to encourage students to take jobs as apprentices. And whether a student has the financial resources to take on an apprentice role can also factor into admission selection.

I have hired or at least interviewed directly from several bootcamps in NYC, including the Flatiron school, and was never asked to pay a referral or acquisition fee.

Fullstack Academy has a fee for hiring grads, but only if the company attended hiring day and the offer was a result of that attendance.

Their acceptance rate is much lower than all but the very top tier schools. Plus the students are a good bit older on average, they have more work experience, and most of them already have degrees.

Most universities teach something besides tech.

I assure you, a bootcamp for European medieval history will not produce average salaries of $73,000.

your logic makes no sense.

That's like saying coding bootcamps don't produce chefs. Different goals for different programs.

> 58% of classroom graduates making $74,447 average seems better than most universities out there.

The parent poster is comparing how successful universities are at getting their graduates well-paying jobs, compared to how successful coding bootcamps are at getting their graduates well-paying jobs.

I point out that this is an unreasonable comparison. University averages are dragged down by low-earning, low-employable majors.

(One may conclude that going to university for the sake of a low-wage, low-employable major is worthless. To which I will have to ask - how well do you think software engineers will be paid, if the 20 million current American college students were to switch their major to comp sci tomorrow?)

Is it better than a university CS degree?

After accounting for the difference in cost and time required, quite possibly.

From my experience, boot camps are more frequently a supplement rather than a replacement to college education.

They have a much lower acceptance rate than the vast majority of CS programs.

You'd need to compare them to Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley etc...

Being intellectually honest, I'd have to say that they aren't really comparable. The low acceptance rate is true, but the sheer amount of completely unacceptable applications that are filled out after seeing one of these "make 75k in 3 months" ads contributes heavily to the percentage.

I attended this school and while most of my classmates were highly-intelligent people of diverse backgrounds, I can absolutely say it is much easier to get into Flatiron school than any of the programs listed above.

I've heard that many people who don't know any coding at all often apply to bootcamps and simply just flunk the first coding assessment they get. They probably help account for much of the low admissions rate at any half decent bootcamp (that have coding assessments).

"Better" is tough to say - coding bootcamps are focused on getting a coding job, but university CS degrees are not (CS graduates going into other fields [like finance], research/grad school, etc).

If the goal is to get a high-paying coding job as quickly as possible, bootcamps look good. Would be interesting to look at longer-term trends in a few years - career advancement, job type, management level, industry within tech, etc.

A bit of a rant since I worked in the industry:

> CS graduates going into other fields [like finance]

Finance is just like every other high-professional industry, they train you for what you need to know because they are invested in your success. I worked in that industry for 6 years. Most banks run a 2-3 month internal bootcamp for fresh college hires. I was a math/econ double major and sat next to an english lit major in my class. My brother was a poli-sci major and went straight from college -> bootcamp -> Goldman Sachs as a developer.

I think people greatly overestimate the value of their major (excluding those going into academics). My personal experience in finance and tech is that Finance and CS majors are the absolute worst about overvaluing their education. 2 years of work experience^ erases any "superiority" of an industry-specific major compared to an art history major (all else equal).

^ I've done a fair amount of mid-level hiring. I've told people in the past that mentioning your major in an interview after 2 years of work experience is a strong strike #1 to me. If your major is still relevant to your ability to do a job, I generally assume your recent work experience has been worthless.

I can't speak for Finance but if your CS degree isn't equivalent to ~4 years of work experience you went to a bad school.

Some numbers:

College:

    30 weeks
    40 hours per week
    4 years
    = 4800 hours

Work:

    49 weeks
    50 hours per week
    2 years
    = 4900 hours

And that's being generous at only a 50 hour work week, as well as being generous in giving a full 40 hours worth of college work. I think your comment perfectly demonstrates my point.

CS majors are also doing 2-4 internships which are by and large more formational experiences than a bootcamp. I don't know where you work that a developer working "only" 50h weeks is "generous" but I hope I never find myself applying there.

> CS majors are also doing 2-4 internships which are by and large more formational experiences than a bootcamp

This seems like a left turn from my comment. Nowhere did I say bootcamps are a replacement for formal education. I was comparing the value of time in the workforce vs. time spent in school. I was discussing finance majors who, shockingly, also do internships. I don't know anyone that took a bootcamp as a replacement to a college education, so I'm not sure where you pulled any of this from.

> I don't know where you work that a developer working "only" 50h weeks is "generous" but I hope I never find myself applying there.

Maybe my part of the world is unique, but I've never worked less than 50 hours per week in my 10 years and I honestly can't say I know anyone that does excluding people with "non-professional" jobs.

I've worked exactly one job that routinely took more than 40 hours/week and I make sure to not fall into that trap again. 50 hours a week standard is the same as a 20% per hour pay cut

Only if you're not paid by the hour.

True, but is that a significant amount of people who would be going to boot camps for engineering? The type of people who have the personality to get and succeed at consulting jobs seem to overlap heavily with the type of people who can learn on their own

You're saying people who actively sought out continuing education and were willing to do a career transition are people who aren't willing to learn on their own? That's just silly.

I think they are saying the opposite.

Some of the stats in the thread seem to indicate that a not insignificant minority do self employ or consult.

I was saying the opposite.

Sorry, I completely misinterpreted that as "taking coursework" is the opposite of "independent learning"

Nah I meant more that bootcamps aren't the "proper path" for lack of a better phrase, that everyone goes to by default. It takes a certain amount of motivation to go out of the norm, or at least a certain amount of comfort with that risk, and that same mindset applies to entreprenership.

I say this as someone who just went to college because that's what you do and only got into software because my degree led to a $10/hr job which could not pay rent and student loans. If I had gotten 25 or 30 an hour there's a good chance I never would have had the impetus to teach myself anything

> I was discussing finance majors

I wasn't, I explicitly said I can't speak for finance majors. My point I would not consider 2 years of work and a 4 year CS degree from a well-regarded school to be equivalent for technical hires.

My internship experience was what made CS click, rather than the curriculum itself. Agree that they're a critical ingredient. :)

Which plays directly into my comment about work vs school.

As a college student, I consistently put in 60-80+ hours a week into my studies. I know this is just one data point, but I think your estimate of what it takes to be a student is way off. However, I do take a lot of classes, and do research, so I may be on the upper end.

(This is at a state school in the US.)

That's absolutely insane. I overloaded half my semesters and had a double major-double minor and didn't work anywhere near those hours. Maybe college has changed in the last 10 years, but I went to a very good school and had a drastically different experience. It's insane to believe you should be working more in college than after, let alone double.

Seriously, that's insane. I've never heard of anything even resembling that.

For a lot of the classes I took, this is what the hours looked like for my classmates as well. I do not think it's that unusual, even.

I’m going to mention it if you list it as a requirement and ask me about it.

I would hope you answer if asked about it, but I don't see it as something to bring up unless directly asked about it. Maybe my experience is unique, but on the interviewee side of the table it has only come up once after being in the workforce for 2 years. The only reason was because we went to the same school and were joking about professors.

Strange. I've found my education has been highly relevant over the last 20 years.

This could be tricky to quantify. What percentage of these bootcamps jobs are based in the Bay Area? Salaries are obviously "higher" there (quotes because cost of living is as well).

why do people think coding bootcamps are a replacement for a CS degree? 99% of successful bootcamp grads already have a previous Bachelor's degree and use the bootcamp as a career changer.

In my experience (having worked with several people from boot camps and obviously several people with CS degrees), boot camps are much better at attracting/selecting people who are interested in programming and the long term learning needed to be a successful programmer. University CS degrees are much better at teaching CS, and even the skills necessary to be a good programmer. If you look at CS degrees with good co-op or intern programmes, then it's not even close.

My main complaint about boot camps is that they give students the impression that the 2-6 month intense boot camp is close to what they will need to be successful in their career. It's not. However, my experience has been that after boot camp it's pretty easy to reorient those people to understanding that they will need to work hard to improve for their whole career. Basically, a good boot camp graduate is very similar in skill level to a good 2nd year coop/intern student -- but then they need to study the rest of the stuff on their own.

My main complaint about university programmes is actually pretty similar. People leave the programme with the idea "I know CS", sort of like how Neo knows kung fu in the Matrix. My experience has been that it's much harder to explain to new graduates that they still have a lot to learn. People with master's degrees are even harder to convince. In addition, because coop/intern sessions are poorly monitored, quite a lot of graduates are actually completely hopeless at programming.

But either way, I think you can make a successful career. Sometimes you see boot camp graduates complaining, "How could I have known that" when the answer is, "Yeah, having 4 years to screw around with this stuff and do a variety of different projects really helps". Sometimes I see CS graduates say, "Wait, this complexity is completely ridiculous. Nobody can be productive in this mess" when the answer is, "Yeah, working on realistic projects has a huge benefit".

I personally don't like the current generation of boot camps, mainly because of the potential to exploit the students badly. However, I think there is a huge need for something like them and I'm looking forward to seeing how things evolve. Having said that, for people who know they want to be a programmer and are young/able I still recommend getting a CS degree at the moment.

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