> Is our industry doing the equivalent of offering free rides to hopeful software developers, calling them pilots, and throwing them by the thousands into airplanes just to watch them crash and burn? The evidence is pretty compelling. There's a lot of crashing and burning out there. Is that because nobody is signing the log?

No, it's because some companies do a really bad job of interviewing and hiring developers. This could be for a few reasons:

1. Companies are so hungry to attract developers they make an offer to the first candidate that seems remotely competent, only to see him/her struggle when they get out of the bootcamp and into the trenches of day to day work.

2. Companies have clueless people interviewing candidates for technical positions, and just do a bad job evaluating them.

For all of those "novices" that these bootcamps and such produce, some will go on to fizzle out, but my guess is some of them are actually talented/hard working enough to stick with it and evolve into competent developers. At the end of the day, it's still the responsibility of the company doing the hiring to determine which is which.

The need for developers is only going to increase... so yes, we do need those hordes of novices, but with that need comes an increased responsibility to focus your hiring/recruiting efforts.