California Cracks Down on Hacker Boot Camps
wired.com
wired.com
I was very surprised to read this. Volunteering can be appropriate if you're helping the less fortunate, or if you're sharing with your peers; but if you volunteer for a for-profit organization, you're devaluing your own skills while enriching those who are already rich. It's not just self-damaging, but socially regressive too.
For example, creative jobs in NYC. There's tons of illegal, unpaid internships and tons of companies who don't want to pay. I know several animators working in the industry there and often it takes them 6 months after a project to get paid and frequently studios try not to pay. I know a couple of people who have worked in the industry for 6 or more years and never been able to get a paying job.
Imagine working in an industry pulling 60+ hour weeks for 6 years and never getting paid for your work...and that's after being saddled with 200k in loan debt from an art school. There are so many people in that area willing to work for free and are used to it that it's difficult to find long-term paying work.
There's a vast chasm of difference between "right to work" and "right to be paid for your work".
Just because it's "artsy" doesn't make it more okay.
Because after all, open source gives us software for "free". Much of this software would otherwise have to be written commercially, so one can make the case that people who write software for a living deserve to be protected from this open source nonsense.
It's highly probable that for-profit bootcamps using volunteers would be in violation of the long-existing law.
By working for free, they're lowering the wages of everyone else in the software development field. Who is robbing who exactly?
So really, any regulation has another side. It benefits one group of people, while robbing another group, which is less vocal and less identifiable and thus is less likely to be remembered in this case at all.
You're totally ignoring the most probable outcome - reductions in costs lead to higher dividends paid to shareholders. Consumers continue paying the same price.
Now, employer - union, maybe.
Even still, nobody's forcing them at gunpoint. Presumably they chose a an unpaid graphic design internship because they value the experience. They could have chosen to work elsewhere for pay. As long as they are not being forced, are not being deceived, and are choosing according to their own priorities, it's their decision.
This is incredibly naive. There are many good reasons for deregulation, but propagating arguments like this just gives libertarianism a bad name.
Your choice of word, mate, not mine. If you want to talk about entitlement, lead on.
Free labour will always out-compete paid labour, and the more free labour in the market, the lower wages get, so the point I raise is valid - they gain their experience at the overall expense of the rest of the developer community.
In general, usage of unpaid interns damages the social contract between employer and employee - fair wages for fair work. Look at what has happened in other industries where wages have been driven down - America's regional airline pilots are paid ludicrously low wages despite the rather important role they have, with flow-on effects that speculatively affect safety.
I have a feeling I've struck the libertarians of HN, in which case, this discussion is probably for naught.
If everyone picked up their friends and family from the airport, there would be no more business for those who make a living transporting people to and from the airport. Even if it came to that, should we enact laws to protect the businesses? I would argue no. Why? Because it is no one's business but mine and those I pick up.
I agree, except I would also add that companies shouldn't be allowed to conspire about wages. If they must compete, the ones that pay the most (or offer the most valuable experience) will get the best interns and all will be well.
Admittedly, in the SV programming climate this is not currently much of an issue.
Well then, problem solved: turn the buildings into Pastafarian temples and the act of coding into religious service - should be more or less the same as Scientology is doing already.
I'd recommend against embracing Pastafarianism for this. The last thing that the industry needs is legions of spaghetti coders.
I don't know why but this just smells like scam to me.
Why would a company hire you, who just finished a boot camp, as opposed to someone who have years of coding experience and knowledge?
Because the market rates for Bob who just finished a boot camp and Cindy who has years of coding experience are very different numbers. (I also expect the market clearing price for Bob and Dave, who recently graduated Stanford CS but has no professional experience, are also different.)
Concrete example: the going rate for 3-5 years of Rails experience in the Valley is creeping above $140,000 right now. I'm willing to bet you can get many bootcampers to agree to work for $80k. If you're willing to put them on a team with experienced Rails programmers and mentor them a bit, that's a heck of a lot more bang for you buck for e.g. just wiring up actions and views. You probably won't have them rearchitect a payment processor's queuing systems by themselves over the weekend while live transactions are flying over the wire but, hey, that's not a requirement for most Rails work (by count or by weight).
Does this exploit Bob? Well, if we assume that prior to the coding camp Bob was a generic young liberal arts graduate, Bob's employment prospects in 2014 are a) not that great and b) likely offer a salary in the $30k a year range. $10k plus a few months of work plus opportunity cost strikes me as "More than possibly worth it" to secure an $80k a year job and the career trajectory that programmers have as opposed to the one that e.g. baristas or office managers have.
In theory a good bootcamp should accelerate your learning and give you a strong multiple over what you'd learn fighting your way through online resources. In practice, someone who does the latter is a much stronger signal to me as a hiring manager. In a way it reminds me of my experiences trying to work with outsourced teams in India 10 years ago where it was obvious that many of the programmers were there were simply clock-punchers encouraged to enter the field by their parents and saw programming more as a rote exercise of finding the right recipe rather than as a craft to be mastered through deep mental engagement.
You can learn a lot by coding for 12+ hours a day for 12 weeks in an environment with a) more experienced people readily available, and b) other students working on the same or similar problems. I had been teaching myself for about two years prior to attending, and having other people to talk about coding with (SO does not count in the sense I'm referring to) was a huge help. The staff were also pretty legit.
I don't think that people will generally choose a bootcamp grad over someone with multiple years of coding experience, but that is primarily because they're not competing for the same jobs. I think as a bootcamp alum you're competing initially against recent CS grads.
Not saying all the schools are good. (some look slightly sketchy to me)
"Why would a company hire you, who just finished a boot camp, as opposed to someone who have years of coding experience and knowledge?"
An odd premise, its like asking why a company would hire someone straight out of college.
Companies hire from devcamps because the good ones are taught by people who work in the industry and know what they would want a colleague to know, furthermore they ask the potential employers what they are looking for and teach that in a hands-on environment.
I am still not convinced that this is anything more than a scam. Unless you are exceptionally brilliant at learning new language, no matter how much you push yourself, you will be barely good enough to even know the rudimentary concept of programming in 2-3 months.
To me the best way to learning programming is to make fuckton worth of crude programs and then make insanely silly and sometimes good mistakes in the process and then try to figure out how to fix those mistakes by yourself (or at least with some help).
2-3 months is barely enough time to understand _WELL_ rudimentary concepts of programming let alone learn from your mistakes.
If you already have prior programming knowledge and know at least one programming language, joining this camp is silly and it doesn't prove anything one way or another. If you already know one programming language, learning a new language should be fairly easier than for someone who have never programmed in his life.
I have to disagree here. If you taught yourself enough for what you needed at the time and never knew any other programmers then you face a huge impediment to learning. Every time you hit a wall where you know how to describe the problem to a human but not to google or stack overflow you can spend hours (notice I didn't say waste) hunting down what is the proper way to describe the problem. While this can be extremely educational in the broad sense it can be slow in terms of actual progress towards being a better programmer since the overhead associated with troubleshooting/debugging is multiplied when it is most costly.
Also, if you're spending 12+ hours a day writing code on average (in my program we did) for 12 hours a week, then you're putting in a hair over a thousand hours of coding time. Assuming a 12 week semester, 2 semesters a year, and 4 years this comes out to about 10 hours per week of actual coding. This clearly isn't the best student in a 4 year program's work schedule, but it's not unrealistic for an undergrad. It takes time to get situated with a given problem and into writing code, but if you're essentially on a 12 week coding binge where you take breaks to sleep and eat then that context switching overhead is reduced. The productive hours of a 12 week bootcamp may seriously outpace the hypothetical student who spends that raw time over 4 years.
As someone in this group, I'd have to disagree with you.
I work in a life sci research setting, and am usually the only person with any programming knowledge or experience whatsoever. In research, "it works," is generally the only quality control placed on bespoke software. I'm capable of writing working programs to perform simple tasks & do on a regular basis, but I could not begin to write a large web application using best industry practices. I've also never spoken at length with other programmers regarding the problems I'm facing, and as such, I would have a significant degree of difficulty discussing conceptual frameworks with a team.
Having spoken to a few people who attended these schools, it seems that they have a thing or two to teach someone like me.
Perhaps it's not worth $10k, but I think that's a separate argument.
But if these camps are letting just about anyone in I would have a problem with that. You have to have a solid foundation in the basic of CS at least.
I'd love to find out who's hiring these people, and how satisfied they are with the results. The two conditions where I can imagine hiring somebody with ~3 months total coding experience are A) when it's mainly a filter for ability to learn, and I expect to invest a lot of time getting them to the level of a production coder and then supervising their work, or B) a situation where output quality doesn't really matter.
I'm hoping all those people end up in situations like A. But there are definitely things that fit B. Back in Bubble 1.0 there were people selling themselves as an "HTML programmer". And there were consulting shops billing total idiots [1] out at $1500/day plus expenses. Your developers don't have to be very good if your sales guys are great and you have at least one solid technical person to put out fires and impress clients.
[1] this kind of idiot: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/02/the-nonprogramming-...
To your last question - why would a company ever hire a less experienced person? Everyone in the valley wants experienced developers but they seem to be in short supply these days. The best of the recruits from these bootcamps are making substantial contributions at their respective companies within a couple months on the job. In this hiring environment, there is value in taking a flyer on a less experienced but highly motivated candidate.
I guess I am curious how this kind of bootcamp can prep someone to continue to grow/learn once in the office. Companies are always looking to fill junior roles until the economy hits a downturn.
I was originally keen on the idea of bootcamp hires because I've tutored a good number of people over the years but I'm beginning to see that it's closer to O'Reilly Cookbooks than SICP.
Edit: To be more topical, while I'm generally irritated by anything that could be perceived as nanny-state brigading I have a hard time working up any froth on behalf the bootcamps after the experiences I've had with their students.
Possible biases: didn't go to uni, self-taught programmer, some class-based baggage.
It took me almost a year, until I found an unpaid internship, followed by another company who hired me because they found I had potential. I learned way more from working with companies who took more time to help me develop my skills than the main instructor at the school I attended. It was both embarrassing and frustrating to find that I was neglected to the point of learning false methods. Not to mention that the main instructor spouts so many prejudices against software practices/languages (TDD, Ruby, etc.) that it could influence a person against marketable skills that are actually fairly valuable.
The thing that's made me hirable to companies is my determination to learn, and my ability to learn. Books, projects, internships or positions at companies with CTOs who are willing to take the time to say, "Hey, you don't know this. Learn it." is what will get you far, not a coding Bootcamp, in my opinion.
Alternatively, if you want to be making 6 figures, the school's networks are amazing and they will definitely hook you up with jobs. I didn't get the chance to use the network too much, but I know that others have landed jobs immediately, and with great companies.
I would say, if you have a ton of money, want the connections, and you're fairly technical already (ie. you know how to do some coding), this is for you. Otherwise you are absolutely capable of learning to code and find a job on your own. There are billions of resources online and at meet-ups that will give you a similar curriculum, basically for free or very little.
To answer the 'Why would any one hire you?" -- They won't unless they really like you & your potential to grow.
I guess companies in the valley are becoming really desperate - or they build trivial products where someone with almost no programming experience can productively fill a role.
In my opinion this is the market that boot camps are preparing people for.
The only scam here is this part of the USA law, is scamming people into believing that everything needs to be regulated or otherwise it's evil.
Even if the current crop of boot camps is all awesome, it's an ideal model for a scam. With new ones popping up all the time, anybody with more greed than sense could open up a well-marketed school, make some great promises, collect a couple hundred thousand dollars, give some half-assed classes, and shut it all down again before the first bad Yelp reviews come in. And then they could do it again with a different name instantly.
If you really care that much you just need someone that knows the subject to go the classes and see for themselves if everything is being taught good enough. You don't need to inject a bureaucratic debt in their finances in the name of "regulations".
Unless someone has information I haven't been able to dig up "crack down" just means that they've been requested to comply. BPPE decided that these sorts of programs are under their purview and so they need to cough up some amount of cash and submit some paperwork.
Quotations in the Venture Beat article very clearly state BPPE are not going after them, just notifying them of their need to comply under California law.
So much polemic either on government regulation or on the merits of these programs. BPPE places schools into either "approved" or "accredited" categories. These programs need only be approved. As far as I can tell BPPE is fairly minimal in its requirements basically ensuring the schools are real things and not diploma mills.
This isn't anywhere as much of a crackdown as CPUC making it harder for ride-shares (for a bit). Discussion of the programs makes sense, but in the context of an imagined witch hunt it just seems strange.
Do you have a cite for that? Nationwide there's very little evidence of structural unemployment, and I'd be surprised to find that California (which is a state people tend to be interested in living in) has an unusual problem with finding skilled workers.
This is a bit off topic, but the prices that they command seem ludicrous. $1k a week or so, for most of them. I know that a person attending stands to get a high paying job, but 10k seems like a lot.
But anyway this is not the issue, if you pay to learn something so what? What does it haves to be regulated? Is not like food where you may get intoxicated if its bad, is not like cars where you may kill someone if you don't know how to drive; if you need to certify the quality of your employees you can always ask for a college degree and that's it, doesn't mean that everyone haves to ask for it.
Quoting from the article, "it would be relatively easy for a fly-by-night operation to advertise a developer bootcamp, collect tuition, and then provide low-quality education — or skip town before the courses were even set to begin. Even if the current crop of hacker boot camps are perfectly ethical, there’s no guaranteeing the integrity of future entrants into the market."
Your own statement reflects undue optimism. Who says that 1) you actually make it to week 65, that 2) you get a job, and 3) it's not a ringer job paying sub-market rates from a firm which pays recruitment fees to the school?
The article links to http://www.fastcompany.com/3023456/become-an-ios-developer-i... , which goes into some details about the negatives. And positives.
Markets equilibrate slowly with asymmetric information, which is the case with schools. Regulations done right can prevent malicious people from taking advantage of a temporal lag.
>there’s no guaranteeing the integrity of future entrants into the market.
There is no guarantee in any market; you survive by the product you provide, you can sell food that tastes bad (but is not rotten) and then change the name of it any amount of times you want, but without appealing to the market you just end up broke.
Is the same way here; if you don't even give the classes that's a scam and if it happens to you then you sue them; if they are "low-quality" you just give everyone involved bad reviews and go on with your life.
Walmart sells millions of very "low-quality" stuff, but people knows that "you get what you pay for", but even if they suddenly increased the prices on their low-quality stuff they would still be legal. Why is different with education?
I myself wouldn't use the word guarantee this way, as you rightly point out, but to be fair, it's part of a hypothetical.
It looks like you didn't understand the last part of my response. It takes time for a feedback mechanism to operate, and in some fields that asymmetric information and time lag can be exploited in ways that are well known, generally considered unethical, and more easily addressed through regulation than lawsuits.
The article even gives examples; of companies which "make bold claims about alumni making six figure salaries upon graduation" but omit that that is a rarity, and "boast of high placement rates" but omit to say that "many students either quit or are kicked out, which inflates placement numbers."
These are obvious cases of information asymmetry, and the companies aren't even lying, so what is there to sue about? Misleading advertising?
Plus, it's disproportionally likely that students will not have the resources to make a legal challenge on their own, or that a lawsuit would be effective. It would require a class action lawsuit, which is more complicated, more expensive, and it's more likely that the school would declare bankruptcy, and the organizers start another school. (Just like some West Virginia water polluting company I've heard about.)
Wal*Mart and the goods they sell are subject to a lot of regulation. I don't understand your point.
>It looks like you didn't understand the last part of my response. It takes time for a feedback mechanism to operate, and in some fields that asymmetric information and time lag can be exploited in ways that are well known, generally considered unethical.
That seems to imply that value at some point is completely established and that couldn't farther from the true; this is the same world where you can legally sell dog-haircuts for thousands of dollars, doesn't mean it is a scam or that we have to create a government regulation for dog fashion standards.
About walmart: No they are not; clothes lost their color and integrity pretty quickly; their towels stain everything, etc. Just read their reviews... pretty much anywhere.
Or are you arguing that nothing should be regulated?
If the clothes you bought from Wal-Mart violated consumer protection regulations, then sue them. If you think there should be laws in place, then talk to your legislative representatives.
(Edit: Wal-Mart is subject to OSHA, the FSA issues food product regulations, its money order business is regulated by the FDIC, and so on. You confuse, I think, "some regulation" with "completely regulated.")
There's a long history behind the reason for regulations, stretching back to the muck racking journalism of the 1800s. Do you disagree with all of it?
And I really don't understand your "dog fashion standards" issue. Where's the information asymmetry? Where's the time lag which can be exploited by unscrupulous dog hair dressers?
This regulation or no regulation? It would be like asking if I like women with big eyes or women with no eyes; of course there is a middle ground but this is erring on the wrong side by a lot.
That's why these bootcamps only charge students after they complete the course and get an industry job.
Quoting that Fast Company article: "With the support of his wife, he sold his 2004 Volvo for the amount of tuition, and his family of four in the suburbs made do as a one-car household."
Quoting http://www.hackbrightacademy.com/faq : Tuition is $15,000. If you receive and accept a full-time job offer from one of the companies in our network then we will refund $3,000 of your tuition. If the program doesn't meet your expectations in the first 2 weeks, we'll give you your money back (less your down payment).
Yes, there are some which do as you suggest. Quoting http://www.appacademy.io/#p-program : App Academy does not charge any tuition. Instead, you pay us a placement fee only if you find a job as a developer after the program. In that case, the fee is 18% of your first year salary, payable over the first 6 months after you start working.
But certainly not all do as you believe they do.
> if you pay to learn so what?
I agree.
> Why does it have to be regulated?
I'm curious to know as well. Certainly there are reasons to regulate, if there is some existing system and these schools somehow violate existing policies. It's not clear why they need to be licensed.
> Is not like food ...
Regulation happens for more reasons than just personal harm. Obviously some argue that it shouldn't, even if it does cause harm :)
> like cars ...
A big reason for regulation isn't safety, it's taxation, which helps pay for things like roads and maintenance.
I worked before and after having a college degree. Simply not including it on my resume worked fine, and as long as my resume was filled with all the things I knew/was skilled at, my degree or lack of only came up as an afterthought. So I agree with you on the last point.
All the same, California's community college prices are kind of out of hand if you ask me, but since you asked, I guess I take it back, but lacking any actual accreditation or guarantee, it's unclear how valuable such programs are in the long run.
That said, I didn't realize that some (many?) boot camps were using volunteers as instructors. Who would volunteer for such a thing?
These bootcamps don't charge students until after they complete the course and get an industry job.
What, in your opinion, is the highest quality coding boot camp and why? Follow-up: what should a person who qualifies for one of these schools be looking for?
I think the word "scam" applies here.
In some sense "legal" hacker conferences sponsored by MS and Cisco is utter nonsense. Strong disliking of cargo cults, bandwagon and peer effects of brainwashed mediocrity is a part of so-called hacker culture.)
Its extremely unlikely regulation can do as good a job as the default market forces in identifying quality programs, and it will likely put a huge damper on people trying to do innovative things with technical education in the state.
disclaimer: I run a one year 'developer bootcamp' in rural india - http://jaaga.in/study