Comment by famousactress | Hacker News Reader

Comment by famousactress | Hacker News Reader

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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 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.

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?

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