Comment by RosieA | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RosieA | Hacker News Reader

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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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