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Comment by ucm_edge | Hacker News Reader

I hire them and give them a task somewhere between support engineer that executes well documented code snippets in run books and junior engineer that does very basic CRUD web app development. Making internal dashboards for the customer success team, etc.

Give them about 32 hours of work a week and 8 hours of tutorials on other things. Build them up from there.

I still lose about 35% of them. A combo of firing for lack of ability and the devs getting upset and leaving when promotions and raises come slow. Because the ugly truth is a lot of the bootcampers hit a plateau. I have had a couple push through to my bar for senior, but most cap out in my mid range.

During the shortage the ability to hire and get solid mids out of 65% of them was a net positive. Right now though it is less important given the talent coming into the market.

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> I still lose about 35% of them. A combo of firing for lack of ability and the devs getting upset and leaving when promotions and raises come slow.

I've had similar problems. We've had some bootcamp grads who were good to work with and acknowledged that they were still very junior. We've also had some bootcamp grads who felt entitled to mid-range to senior compensation after their first year, while still getting their bearings on basic developer work. It's hard to explain that, no, I will not give them a raise to match what we're paying people with 5+ years of experience after their bootcamp promised them $200K comp after a couple years in the industry.

> It's hard to explain that, no, I will not give them a raise to match what we're paying people with 5+ years of experience after their bootcamp promised them $200K comp after a couple years in the industry.

I dunno, I think what you have right there is pretty good explanation wise, haha.

Their bootcamp should have added the caveat: at a FAANG

Are they able to go elsewhere and find better pay?

I wouldn’t be surprised if they were able to in the 2020 to early 2022 job market. Today’s market will be a good litmus test to see if people with surface-level knowledge and limited experience can land $200k+ a year jobs in tech.

Have you observed any other path for new want-to-be developers other than boot camps that tends to yield better outcomes ?

Not the person you are asking, but I'd say a genuine interest in the field.

A couple of simple hobby projects and participation in meetups and chats can give both faster ramp-up (beyond very basic) and solid job leads. My 2c.

Activity is the signal. Self taught but goes to a ton of meetups. Enrolled in one of the legit online master's programs, etc. Ofttimes bootcamps can appear on these resumes. Someone did a bootcamp, realized it wasn't enough and kept growing in a manner.

People who treat the bootcamp as the terminal level of knowledge plateau.

Can't the same be said for University? I know lots of classmates who didn't do anything outside of what's mandatory. They wouldn't have a GitHub account if they weren't forced to in a class for example.

Do you build those apps from scratch? Or are you using something like Retool?

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