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Comment by RosieA | Hacker News Reader

Hi King_Magic I understand the point you're making, but for people who haven't studied computer science at university, or haven't been tinkering on a computer since they were a small child, these courses are a way they can break into this career. Tech should not be an elusive industry - especially when their is such a huge shortage of skills. These courses open up the scene for people who don't have the background in the industry, but want to change careers or expand in their current roles. No one is saying (and the article certainly isn't) that you can just jump straight into a job after a few weeks studying an online course, but what is true is that by studying online people can acquire skills via a course, then build up their experience over time, build a portfolio and then get a job.

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> No one is saying (and the article certainly isn't) that you can just jump straight into a job after a few weeks studying an online course

Actually in my experience that's exactly what most of these code camps are saying to students before taking their money. I get empty resume's weekly with links to github accounts full of obvious Ruby on Rails classwork and no mention of the code-camp. All from students who don't even really know what our company does (because someone clearly gave them a spam-list of startups they're suddenly qualified for).

I'm a huge believer that our industry really needs a trade-education alternative to 4 year CS programs, but the problem folks who look like a code camp have is that as far as I can tell most code camps are failing to set or achieve the expectations of their students.

[FWIW the company you're working for might be totally different, and I don't mean it as an attack on you specifically, but since you wrote the article generically I find it fair to comment on how generically disappointed I am in what I've seen happening in the current teach-you-to-code ecosystem]

EDIT: Sorry, more to say.

I think quite frankly if you imagine a venn-diagram with two bubbles: People who want to write software for a living and people who have a natural or learned aptitude for logical abstraction. We want the people in the intersection. It's true that those people are incredibly hard to find, but it's also true that we'd usually rather get by doing less with fewer than hiring first-bubble-only folks.

The problem is that code-camps are out looking for people in the first bubble (Want to work in software cause it pays well? Sweet! Join us!!). That's the wrong idea. There are probably loads of people in the second bubble (folks who have a shot at being great developers) who don't even know they'd enjoy this career. Maybe there's a high intersection of architects or botanists or carpenters in that bubble... Maybe there are entire failing industries full of people who'd have a much better-than-average aptitude for software. No idea.

Regardless, in my mind that's where the best chance at success in converting people into this industry is. Unfortunately it's more profitable for code-camps to attract masses of people and letting the terrible conversion rate end up being someone else's problem.

I completely agree here. This is a far better way of expressing what I was trying to get at :)

[Edit: Doh! Sorry @king_magic, I did totally reply to Rosie and not you! I'll leave the comment in-tact since other than the first paragraph I'm making (or maybe belaboring) still-relevant points]

I'm sorry, but it's hard for me to believe that we're well aligned on this yet. Precisely because your marketing pitch is "Are you looking to increase your job prospects, or earn a higher salary?" (verbatim).

Presumably your funnel is filling up with people who want to make more money (as a relatively primary motivation). That maybe sounds right if you're training sales people. For this industry (and frankly trade education as a whole), I think it's going to lead to quite a bit of disappointment. An average student of yours could almost certainly have more predictable and successful access to a similar (maybe higher, lifetime) level of income by training as a nurse.

The promise of trade education should be that you go through, do well, and have a great chance to get hired at the end. The issue I have is that it seems like the code-camps are playing both sides here.. implying that's going to happen, while having to admit under inspection that it's basically not, ever happening.

I'm actually really impressed with our student base in regard to your assumptions because they were ours as well. I noted this in a comment above, but many of our students are not (or at least claim not to be) doing our courses to "make more money". At least not on the code side. Our UX Design students often are experience designers who are upgrading by adding to their tool kit, but that's a different category.

A lot of our students are people looking to start coding to develop a new lifestyle. Or simply to move into an industry that's more exciting. A LOT of our students are literally planning on taking an absolutely massive pay cut to leave industries like Finance to do work for dirt-pay first as a freelancer and then maybe a junior position at a small startup. They just want to get in on the hyped growing industry, and hoping that development is a good path for them. Some of them find out quickly that it isn't right for them, but some of them get more excited by the day and make the leap.

Anyway, the problems you have with the bootcamp industry are problems we have as well, but defining the dream versus the mission for each individual looking for answers is tough. One of the reasons we love discussions like this. :-)

They don't need an expensive boot camp to develop a lifestyle or hobby. They can access a ton of free and inexpensive resources for that.

They might want to consider that there are a lot of people out there who could change their life by getting some additional skills. Why do you assume that everyone is not capable just because they did not major in CS in college? Whether it is monetarily or otherwise, there are a lot of reasons. There is nothing wrong with dangling a bump in pay as the potential outcome of gaining new skills. Your nurse analogy might as well be that of training to be a doctor instead of being a programmer or nurse.

I should back up and qualify my thoughts on this a bit more. I do not support some blanket idea that "trade schools" are a good idea or that they can help. I do support the idea that good skills education can help. I also support the idea that certain "trade schools" are better than others. The same is true of classes whether they are brick and mortar classes or MOOCs.

@famousactress, I think you and I are definitely aligned. I think you thought RosieA replied instead of me?

I think this is a really really important point. Even at our company (a bootcamp) we receive resumes like what you're talking about.

We definitely advocate quality bootcamps for their teaching, but one thing that's upsetting is the lack of focus on the "career" aspect. Like, how spamming a billion contacts with your github account is REALLY not the way to go about it.

We see the problem all the time though, even in our own student's perspective of the industry.

The one point I would disagree with, at least from the perspective of our program as I can't speak for others, is that while sometimes we end up with people strictly in the first bubble, those are generally the ones that never finish the courses. It becomes to hard, the actual scope of a "career" becomes to realistic for them, and its no longer about the potential pay check but what they want to be spending their time on. If they don't have the stamina or mental mojo to land in the middle of your venn diagram they never finish, and don't try to become career devs.

And the final line of your comment is so so so so so important. As a startup of course we want growth and push for it, but we restrict so much of what we could "sell" with on enrolling students based on the fact that we don't want to risk perpetuating this problem.

I'm sure we still do though, certainly on our front-end of the site no matter how much we pan down the sale to enrollment. So the perfect solution, for us at least, is as of yet to be found.

> "especially when their is such a huge shortage of skills"

This is the piece I take issue with - the reality is that if you're coming from a 0% background, and you go through a few of these courses, you may really only be at 5%. Even with a million people going through these courses, there is still a shortage of skills if there are a million new coders who are only at 5%.

Sure, there are going to be a few great standouts here and their, but I strongly suspect that is the exception rather than the rule - as an example, of my initial class of CS majors, only 10% of the original group graduated at the end of 4 years - because it's just really hard work.

> "No one is saying (and the article certainly isn't) that you can just jump straight into a job after a few weeks studying an online course, but what is true is that by studying online people can acquire skills via a course, then build up their experience over time, build a portfolio and then get a job."

Sure, in standout, exceptional cases. But back to the article - just the title alone - "Learn To Code, Get Hired" - don't you think that could give people just a tad bit of a wrong impression about how difficult it is to get hired?

I see your point, totally. The title is of course designed to get views, right? Marketing does have its role in any business, so we try to bring people with the interest into the fold. Pretty hard to educate them about the commitment without them even trying to code something though, so give them the mission and the avenue, right?

Ok but yes, it is a serious problem, so much sell for something that might only produce, as you said, a 5% talent outcome. The thing is, and I'm willing to take criticism on this, we have to start somewhere! The skills gap is literally growing faster than we're producing even junior level devs in the world. In Europe (where CareerFoundry is based) the problem is literally a good few steps farther than the US even. So isn't one path to solution to try and onboard as many interested potential developers as possible?

Problems with this? Depending on the bootcamp of course, the person walking out with 5% actually knows and understands they have only 5% or they don't. If the don't they become a "problem" for the industry, they become noise. But if they know it, and are taught to perpetuate their own learning, to take steps towards the great goal of actually becoming a fully fledged and accomplished developer... and they actually understand what that means... well then the bootcamp has done a good job.

How many bootcamps are doing that? No idea. We're working on it, we're not there yet but trying. And of course we always have to get as much shallow interest in the front door to then weed through potential students and try and get the geniuses to work with us. :-)

Would love your thoughts!

I'm thinking this may be an illusion. Is there any evidence that this route works?

I know that the effective programmers I work with, have similar life stories. They love programming, have done it since they were young, do it for themselves and not just for work.

The guy who gets a CS degree because there's money in it may get a job somewhere, but not in the circles I travel in. Which is architecture, design, backends, libraries and embedded solutions.

So what is the real opportunity to a part-time online-course student?

I know this isn't exactly what you are saying, but just because someone learned to program later in life doesn't mean that they are only in it for the money or that they inherently aren't as competent.

There seems to be this attitude in tech that if you weren't coding in kindergarten then you haven't met the prerequisite for being truly "one of us" in the tech elite, so why bother trying?

But to address your main question, there are many roles that benefit from programming knowledge aside from the 'hard CS' ones you list. For example, in my previous job as a technical writer learning to program was helpful for a) documenting our APIs and writing sample code, b) creating web-based documentation and c) running scripts in Adobe InDesign to generate automated documentation.

Grant all that. The question remains: what kind of skills can you get taking the 'soft' route? They won't be the same as a University degree, and not nearly the same as a lifetime of devotion to the art. Did we really address that yet?

"Programming knowledge" is a deep, deep well. Its not going to be captured without real effort over a long time.

Of course 'programming knowledge' covers a spectrum. At CareerFoundry we have never claimed to be training people to become Senior Full Stack Web Developers - like with many careers there is progression within the job. You start off at one level, you learn more, you progress and hopefully get promoted. We teach Ruby on Rails, HTML5, CSS and Javascript. With these coding languages under your belt, and the sufficient experience, you could get a job as a Junior Developer. Of course, like you said - and like with so many careers - reaching that next level takes real effort and dedication over a long time. But there is absolutely no reason why people can't get started in their careers at the bottom rung of the web development ladder with these skills, and work their way up by learning on the job and alongside their colleagues and peers.

Many thanks for your comment.

I tend to find a lot of the folks coming out of online or bootcamp-level courses start off as front-end or app (usually web app) developers, and then gradually pick up the backend and architecture pieces as they grow as a developer.

There are also simply those who want to pick up these skills and apply them in their job -- one of the Thinkful students I mentored was a GIS data analyst who just wanted to be able to write scripts around the data he was working with.

Deeefinitely relevant. We teach a full stack course (as many other bootcamps both on and offline) but sometimes the goals of students aren't that broad to begin with. They start with a small chunk, and then pick up projects that perpetuate their learning as they go. I can totally get behind that!

I think the real opportunity is to explore (hopefully in depth) whether or not development is the right thing.

Its definitely not fair (and not true because I know people who are the far other extreme) to say that you have to grow up being a developer to be a great developer.

Example?

Our CTO had a traditional engineering education almost 2 decades ago, but never touched web development. He worked as a project manager for 8 years. Nokia, Textr, etc etc. 2 years ago he started to learn web development. Today he's built a major platform and directs a team of crack developers. Is it a unique and special example? Hell yes. Can everyone do that? Almost definitely not. But is it proof that not having grown up coding doesn't mean you can't become a coder? Yes, very much so. And he's not my only story like this.

On hacker news we also talk a lot about developers with developers, many of which take it that to be a dev you have to be crazy talented across the board. I personally am totally ok with people who learn the basics of code, to start building sexy looking and simple websites as a freelancer. Hell I know people who learned front end, ruby (because it's "cool"), a little PHP then started working with a group of common platforms like Square and Wordpress, designing front ends and making an incredible living for themselves. I think that's totally a valid outlook for people in bootcamps, and not always considered in the conversation here....

Would love your thoughts!

Perhaps I'm just an old get-off-my-lawn skeptic, but the phrase "Learn To Code, get hired" really brings up bad memories.

I was in school during '97-'01 and when I got my BSCS our dean gave the CS department a special speech about how messed up it was out there and told us to consider just going back to get our masters degrees. My CS classes had plenty of cheaters and those who used their academic-powers to brute-force memorize enough to get through the course but you knew they didn't truly understand what they were doing. These are the people I think of when I give fizzbuzz(with a twist) in my job-interviews. I had classmates drop out of school because some company gave them 90k salaries and _an actual car_ because they had a webpage at csdepartment.myschool.edu~/studentID - by writing one HTML file, saved it as index.html and put it in the /home/studentID/public_html directory.

I too really don't want to sound elitist, but I've actually seen people get burned by this. I personally really respect the approach http://go.expression.edu/ takes to this. I was at an open-house back in '06, you could feel the energy of the people there. So excited to break into the world of 3D animation and land a job at Pixar or SONY. There were even well-known people from the media scene. I got to talk to one of the developers of Sonic the Hedgehog music team, a Pixar employee was there(Pixar is like a 5min drive from this college) and someone from Industrial Light & Magic(ILM) was there. One of the presenters was very honest about the possibility of job placement. She made it clear to everyone that the chance of landing a dream job is not high at all; that anyone who goes through this program is doing it for personal passion and internal drive. She set expectations properly. Having the skill from classrooms was one thing, but it was up to the individual to really breath life into their skill and it took some luck on who you know to really make it in. e.g., these are the people hoping to make it: http://galleries.cgsociety.org/

I just hope that the students of careerfoundry know that it's one thing to learn coding in school, but it's up to the student to really go the extra-extra mile and learn things on their own.... and a bit of luck as well.

"I just hope that the students of careerfoundry know that it's one thing to learn coding in school, but it's up to the student to really go the extra-extra mile and learn things on their own.... and a bit of luck as well."

Going the extra-extra mile is something we absolutely promote ;)

Many thanks for your feedback smtddr.

>Tech should not be an elusive industry - especially when their is such a huge shortage of skills.

1) If you consider tech to be an elusive industry because of this, would you consider the same for biology, chemistry or other industries/sciences that require a degree to effectively get a job in the field? Why is there no counterparts to "learn to code" for those fields?

2) Is there really a shortage of skills in the software development industry in comparison to other fields?

2) Is there really a shortage of skills in the software development industry in comparison to other fields?

A shortage of skills is often the interpretation people get (or at least voice publicly) when they think labor costs are too high.

e: Not that I'm arguing that it's the case (or the alternate). You'll run into business politics, politics politics, lies, lies people tell themselves, and statistics before getting any actual insight on the issue.

The only convincing argument I've heard is that wages aren't increasing to match the reported demand. Which doesn't indicate anything directly. It suggests sufficient labor pools but rests on the assumption that if there are insufficient talent pools employers would pay more to attract talent.

Do you have a link or resource for that argument you mention in the last line? I'd actually be really interested in digging into what that means.

The industry always calls it a "skills gap" (guilty as charged here), but our developing theory is that its an gap in education. Not privatized business-like education like ours, but in the core standard of education. In Europe certainly this is the more relevant discussion anyway as mandates are falling into place in the UK and other countries that enforce children to gain a rudimentary understanding of code through their traditional schooling. We're actually working really hard to help with this effort with a CPD for teaching teachers that we just launched. Yes its a savvy business move, but I'm really excited that we're trying to approach what we feel is actually the core issue.

Let me know if you have a resource for that argument, and let me know your thoughts on my comment!

I'm going to vote for a simple answer on this. We don't have enough solid talent because there simply isn't a high enough saturation of learning opportunities. not even on the most basic levels. Higher ed CS degrees don't train you up to work in the million and one startups that are looking for engineers of all levels.

You might argue that in the tech scene (those of us in locations where it exists and is prominent + we pay attention to the news because we're in it) its VERY saturated. But your examples of other industries are those that have been standardized by higher ed. Apart from MBA's and (for the most part agency-focused which don't teach you much about modern digital tactics) marketing degrees, the start up industry, even to some extent the tech industry, lacks the educational infrastructure that fields like the sciences do.

If it was on that level, businesses like the bootcamps wouldn't exist. Is it a problem that should be fixed? Yes, but bootcamps are the current solution. Some of them ::cough::careerfoundry::cough:: are rapidly working to help with the efforts of bringing things like teaching code to schools. Yes its a good business play, but it builds awareness around the problem at its core rather than creating a business to capitalize on it... which is what we do now.... obviously.

> No one is saying (and the article certainly isn't) that you can just jump straight into a job after a few weeks studying an online course

That's not what you're saying. It is, however, the fantasy that you and those like you are selling.

A lot of us find this deeply troubling.

I understand your point Kalium but I'm afraid I'm not persuaded on this 'selling a fantasy' idea. For many people that come to us, the decision is something they think long and hard over before making that leap, being fully aware of what they will learn and what their continued learning will have to be in order to gain employment upon completion of a course.

Many of our students want to improve their overall job prospects, knowing that with tech skills (basic knowlege of coding, for example) their overall market value is significantly increased as every industry becomes more and more reliant of those with this knowledge. And not just developers. Hiring managers, CEO's, designers. The list goes on and on. Of course for those who do want to become developers this is an excellent start.

I'm not sure how the idea of teaching people valuable skills is in any way troubling. It's fairly discriminatory to older learners, or those who simply did not have the opportunity to learn at university to say that there is no hope for them now. Online programs like ours give people who haven't been exposed to programming a chance to learn in a supportive, mentored environment. Our mentors, who work the rest of the time as freelance developers, are able to pass on their knowledge and experience to their students in a similar way to how an apprenticeship would traditionally work.

And if our students do decide to become developers then learning coding languages is a pretty good place to start, I would say. It is a start that will, with the right experience and learning curve one day lead to a job. We all have to start somewhere and personally I think it's unfair to ostracize talented people simply because they haven't been lucky enough to have been exposed to a specific skillset earlier in life.

Many thanks for your comment.

Spare me the pitch, please. Spare me the specious accusations. I'm well familiar with bootcamps, the people that go through them, and the results they provide. I'm linked to one myself.

The idea of teaching people a little bit of skill while selling them on the potential that comes with a lot of skill is a problem. That you implicitly accuse me of wanting to keep others out shows that you aren't really thinking about my objection.

Please, come back when you do. Pay close attention to what famousactress and others are saying.

EDIT: And no, learning a language is not a good place to start. But you have too much invested in that idea to seriously consider otherwise.

Hey Kalium! You definitely bring a passion to this, so I definitely want to understand you.

Perhaps you can explain your opposition a little more specifically?

My response was really to explain our methodology, perhaps mistargeted in your eyes but we're not talking about a dream, we're talking about the mission our students are on, the opportunity we work to provide.

So no, not accusing you of anything. just perpetuating the discussion. Thanks for your input!

The article goes on and on about six figures, including strategically placed bold type. You're trying to sell hope for a bright future. That's not a bad thing by itself.

Just admit that you're selling a dream. You prefer to call it a "mission" and an "opportunity". Fine. Branding. Whatever. Tomato, tomahtoe.

The problem is that bootcamps don't produce that with any degree of reliability. No three-month bootcamp is going to turn you into the equivalent of someone holding a bachelor's in computer science. Yet that's exactly the concept that this article is based around - you too can be a six figure IT consultant!

It's not remotely common for someone whose entire technical skillset consists of a bit of a web framework, a bit of JS, and a bit of CSS to make six figures. Or to have a reasonable career path ahead of them without a staggering amount of self-teaching. Which while ideal, is very rare in practice.

I see what you mean. There is a tough balance to be struck, so what then would you call realistic? If you're trying to explain to someone the potential of becoming a developer, and committing yourself to that learning and industry how would you position it?

And to be clear I don't mean it in a marketing sense so much as I mean how would you actually reword what you just called "not remotely common". I think its a totally relevant point, and while Lauren positions the ideal outcome, isn't that what we're all striving for...?

I think you're absolutely right that many, maybe most, perhaps even pretty-much-all bootcamps don't effectively teach students to problem solve, to self perpetuate learning. They don't even talk thoroughly about the commitment to their courses, much less the commitment to becoming a developer.

We're in a position where for instance, we sell the "dream" as you like to call, to bring as much initial interest as possible. But the commitment is definitely more than just an ideal, not something that converts a signup.

To be fair though, in our experience over 90% of our students do a call with us before actual enrollment in a course. That is to say a "purchase", and if there is anything we're clear about in that call its what they're really getting into. We don't have a sales team for that, Martin and I do the calls because we designed the courses and did the career leg work.

Why? Well because most students who don't have the stamina and understanding to become a developer over time drop out of our course within the fist 3 weeks, which is terrible. Not only does that just suck, but we're an education company, drop outs are simply the worst thing in our lives.

Now, could you assume I'm just trying to sell you with what I want you to hear, of course, but I want to be clear I totally agree with you. Actually we're just still trying to find our answer to it.

Lauren wrote an article from the perspective of capturing interest, and I think as a piece of content she did that beautifully and, even more to the point it triggered discussions like this one which we can learn from.

Interested in your continued thoughts, but thanks again for responding.

A bootcamp graduate stands a decent shot at an entry-level web-dev job. That's 60k-90k, depending on location. But that's just the beginning - to have a solid career trajectory from there is going to require self-directed learning of much of the material typically learned in a 4-year CS program.

I think honesty is the best policy. Real completion rates, placement rates, and a distribution of starting salaries goes a long way. As does where-are-they-now data, but I know that that is hard to collect reliably.

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