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Comment by j-bos | Hacker News Reader

Bias declaration: I'm a hired Bloomtech grad, so overall a satisfied customer/student.

Meta comment: It's intersting to see how many comments on any Bloomtech/Lambda post are very knee-jerk in nature, mostly negative some positive. And to be clear, I'd say most are thoughtful. The thing that strikes me is that I can't tell if this is normal HN tenor for a tech story or if it's just because I have opinions on the subject. The only other stories witg comments that strike me as remotely similar are those dealing with privacy.

So an ask, if Bloomtech is something you don't care about, neither positively nor negatively, do you find the comments for this article of average "pitch"?

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Over the years, I've subjectively found HN to be less optimistic. The tone of the comments here are not significantly different from many other topics.

Note that I am not saying that HN is now less neutral--it may be that the current level of optimism vs. cynicism maps better to reality.

That said, I think more optimism is generally better (for motivating action) if you want to start a new business or build a new technology; more realism is generally better if you want to go down an established path or join a venture purely as an employee; and more cynicism is better if you want to be a rabid online commentator (joke!).

>Over the years, I've subjectively found HN to be less optimistic.

The largest companies on the planet, that the majority of us here earn a living from, directly or indirectly, are essentially data gathering advertising companies. I feel like the lack of optimism is justified.

Yes and perhaps your bias clouds your perception or desires a more positive reception of your “alma mater”. Boot camps generally illicit a negative reaction from experienced programmers. Primarily because their primary stated goal is to give a “student” enough experience in an extremely compressed amount of time for them to enter the workforce as productive developers. The issue is that experience, by definition, can only be gained over time and with diverse trials and tribulations. Only the most motivated bootcampers can achieve this during their program by supplementing with copious amounts of self-learning.

Unfortunately even then a boot campers “experience” is quite limited but many come out of their program believing they are equals to more experienced mid/senior level programmers which results in those in the industry having animosity to those individuals. I think this explains the general “negative tone” you see in this comment section.

Are boot camps bad? No, I think they are quite useful but I think we need to acknowledge that they really only effectively create a pipeline of junior developers and replace the need for corporations to have internal education/training programs.

The experience argument seems thin: new grads have a similar issue, and yet companies have hiring programs targeting these individuals, sometimes aggressively.

It seems the core of your argument is not that they are inexperienced, but rather that the bootcamps somehow convince them they are not and this leads to friction in the positions they seek and the expectations around the work they're capable of accomplishing.

Comparing to new grads is a strawman argument, I didn’t make that comparison in my orginal comment. I would argue new grads can have the same or more experience (courses, assignments & internships) yet they would still be treated as entry level when entering the industry. Regardless, I wouldn’t classify either cohort as being particularly experienced. Educated? Trained? Practiced? Sure. Not experienced. To make a bad analogy, take a soldier from a 2 year training bootcamp and put them shoulder to shoulder with a 1 year combat veteran and you will see a significant discrepancy in the majority of cases.

Yes, I personally believe that the animosity isn’t usually targeted at the fact that boot camp grads went through boot camp. Hell, programmers are most commonly self taught using free online resources for the majority of topics. My impression is because the boot camp is sold as a “get programming experience quick scheme” that most candidates would still be entry level after their program but are led to believe they are more senior.

Neutral observer, don't particularly care about lambda.

I think it's worse than average - lots of strong opinions being bandied about. If I had to make up a score it's somewhere slightly above Google shutting down Stadia and significantly below FB / Cambridge Analytica scandal.

It's not a normal HN tenor there is not a HN hivemind. Why is everyone trying to make themselves special by posting the same shit everytime there are comments with different views than their own. You are just biased.

The comments seem of average pitch to me. I did have to scroll to the bottom to see the more inflammatory ones, but even with those it matches what you get on any exciting topic. Ask devs what they think of golang and you almost get the same!

HN really hates the idea of coding bootcamps for some reason. I think it's because the median HN person is pretty independent, libertarian, self-taught, etc and can't imagine any other model working for people.

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