Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It's not a bad idea for people who go through them and successfully get jobs before the crunch comes. As long as they can do the job and don't get laid off, they're way better off than they would be otherwise. (And even if they do get laid off, they're probably better off than they would be otherwise - they have tangible skills that will likely be in demand for a while.)

It could be very bad for the boot camps themselves. The reason they have a business is because the demand for software engineers is red-hot right now; much of this demand comes from the easy availability of venture/seed money. Think what happened to telecoms, ISPs, and infrastructure providers at the end of the dot-com boom. It was not unusual to go from thriving repeat business to absolutely zero customers in six months.

Yep. And even more to the point, there were a lot of people who were hired as "webmasters", and knew little more than some HTML. Those people were cut almost immediately when the crash came. It's not even a metaphor -- almost the exact same scenario played itself out in the late 90s. We know how it ends.

It amazes me how resistant we are to learning from experience.

Based on seeing the last crash-

It's not really skill level that determines whether you keep a job. Having a good network and being able to hustle for opportunities are far bigger determinants.

The quiet, 50th percentile engineer who hasn't had to look for a job in 10 years, doesn't know a lot of people, low-ish EQ, works for a company that's not well-known: most at risk of struggling to find a job if laid off or company goes under.

Someone who knows little more than HTML but is a young, hustler type, big network, sociable, puts more energy into finding gigs - likely to get at least some contract work to sustain him through the

*downturn

It amazes me how resistant we are to learning from experience

Its been going on for a long time now, it doesn't phase me anymore.Its not just in technology, but in every other sector in the economy. A fine example is Wall Street.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com