Sorry, developer bootcamps: I was wrong

https://medium.com/@dillonforrest/sorry-developer-bootcamps-i-was-wrong-ea37fcc5572c#.6ghk7lpss

by dillonforrest • 10 years ago

21 16 10 years ago

medium.com

mLuby• 10 years ago

Definitely agree—boot camps are pools of self-selecting risk-takers.

burrows2• 10 years ago

Dillon Forrest, Product Manager & Growth Hacker in San Francisco via New York City

As a developer, not sure I care what kind of engineers a "Growth Hacker" wants to work with.

dang• 10 years ago

That reads like a status putdown. Please don't be uncivil.

burrows2• 10 years ago

Replace "Growth Hacker" with anything that isn't Engineer/Developer/Hacker: Waiter, Gym Teacher, Airline Pilot, etc.

cyphar2• 10 years ago

I'd think that people who work on free software in their free time would be a much better top 10%. They saw a problem, fixed it, worked with the community and contributed.

spacemanmatt• 10 years ago

This approach has classist implications. See also unpaid internship.

cyphar2• 10 years ago

By classist, do you mean "people who can't write software because they have problems in their life"? I don't understand how someone like that would be able to get a job as a software developer anyway. They might be able to get a trainee job or something, but I assumed we were talking about "people who have experience" jobs. However, unpaid internships are a very different thing:

If you work on free software in your free time, you're contributing to a commons that everyone (not just potential employers) benefits from. The fact that you contributed to a community of free software users shows that you have community involvement, are self-motivated and have the technical knowledge to work with the project you contributed to.

On the other hand, unpaid internships are a way to get free labour for mindless tasks that have nothing to do with actually working in the field. In many cases they are illegal, and many people from poorer families can't afford to work on an unpaid internship.

See the difference?

smt882• 10 years ago

I think the first problem with this article is that it's based on anecdotes and, judging by LinkedIn[1], the author doesn't seem to be a coder.

The problem with bad code is that it takes a long time to really bite you, and then it infects your body until you have gangrene and die. But when it's first written and it works, many non-technical people think that's all that matters.

An experienced coder will see code that "works" and know whether it's going to bite you badly in the future. That's insight that only comes with painful, long-term experience.

Most critics haven’t even worked with or hired a bootcamp grad

This is a straw man. Most critics aren't basing their criticism on the quality of the graduates, but rather the concept of teaching someone how to code (well enough to be paid) so quickly.

I’d bet they still interviewed better than the average university candidate

Well, yeah, of course. Universities aren't directly teaching coding interview questions. Why didn't he also mention that coding interview questions are, generally, bullshit?

One of my bootcamp grad friends told me, “Bootcamp ROI beats college any day.”

Again, that's a single-person anecdote. Even if it's true, I'm terrified to live in a society where people spend a few weeks in a trade school rather than going to college.

College has a lot of benefits that can't be measured in salary or jobs. Students learn how to learn, they learn how to manage unstructured time (hopefully), and they're exposed to subjects they didn't necessarily like before. It's a great time to figure out what you want to do with your life, meet people that are different from you, and find great mentorship from smart people.

Boot camps should be part of college or an add-on. In a society that relies on citizens to be intelligent and worldly when they vote, a trade school should not widely be used as a substitute for college.

Many engineers feel bootcamps diminish their profession by suggesting that programming can be commoditizing and packaging into a 10-week bootcamp. For their own self-worth, they want bootcamps to fail.

Again, how do you know this? I have two fears about boot camp: 1) that I'll inherit terrible code written by a novice, and 2) that boot camp grads are being ripped off. #1 has certainly happened to me, and #2 may or may not be happening (I don't know).

Thankfully, we don’t have to be so contentious. This industry has more than enough room for everyone to be better off.

There is enough room for many more people, but those people should still be properly trained. The JS community is a total mess because of how many poorly-trained people are working in it. They don't understand that reinventing the wheel is a problem, and I don't blame them. That's something you learn with experience.

If you’re considering a developer bootcamp, I’d highly recommend you do it.

Everyone who's considering it? Even people who don't know if they want to be a CRUD coder for the next 10 years? Even people who are on their last $20k? Even people who are 45 and will run head-first into age discrimination?

If you’re looking for a cofounder for a startup or a project, do NOT forget about bootcamp grads!

No no no no no no no no! When you're starting a company, you don't have time to wait for someone to learn how to do X or Y. Your coder needs to be someone who has done those things a dozen times and can crank out a new iteration of your product daily or weekly, if necessary.

1. https://www.linkedin.com/in/dillonforrest

guifortaine2• 10 years ago

Hello,

Excuse me but I don't think that you are a "good coder".

First of all, I have found nothing about you on LinkedIn and even less on GitHub.

But, to prove me that I am wrong, show me your strength on Codewars and a few Katas later (1 kyu for you, as you claim to be "experienced", language of your choice), we will be able to talk. These ones could be a great fit :

-Tiny Three-Pass Compiler

http://www.codewars.com/kata/tiny-three-pass-compiler

-Simple Interactive Interpreter

http://www.codewars.com/kata/simple-interactive-interpreter

Before having tasted the power of Codewars, I wasn't able to assess the coding abilities of developers whom I met. Now, it's not the case anymore ;)

(but don't get me wrong : I too do believe that school with its strong theoritical foundations is necessary and that a bootcamp could only have all its meaning by being an addon to it)

Très cordialement / Best Regards,

dan_nolan• 10 years ago

Those are two great kata, I enjoyed completing them! On top of that, from the creators of Codewars comes Qualified (https://qualified.strive.co/), which allows you to use already created challenges to test developers skill. You can also create your own challenges and playback their programming frames step by step!

human77• 10 years ago

I regularly interview bootcamp grads. They all come with the same impressive training, skill set and portfolio. I don't know how to differentiate between them. Their performance in coding interviews is uniformly good (feels like they train for it) and they have no career history to judge them on. So on objective measures, they all look the same. Yet, I don't believe all bootcamp grads are equal. Like all junior devs in their first gig, some will excel and some will struggle (and some will completely fall off.) I try to dig into their background and personality to make an educated guess as to how they might do, but I'm guessing.

smt882• 10 years ago

(feels like they train for it)

They do.

ubernostrum• 10 years ago

It's almost as if the tech-interview process, supposedly designed to prove that someone actually has studied and internalized mystical knowledge about inverting trees, can be gamed with a bit of effort and actually isn't a reliable approach!

(that said, bootcamp grads and other people who were self- or unconventionally-taught, in the sense that they don't have CS degree, do seem on average to be better than the people who have CS degrees, probably for the reasons the article gets at)

ozy123• 10 years ago

I taught at a bootcamp. My takeaway was that out of a class of 30 there were roughly 5 individuals I would want to work with as developers for sure and maybe another 5 potential. The remaining 20 I wouldn't want to work with at all. I disagree on the conclusions from the author here. A lot of these people were just naive and foolish. They genuinely believed they were going to be interviewing with facebook and linkedin and get several job offers (they didn't).

The reason we don't hear more about them is because they feel shitty about it and keep a low profile.

tryitnow• 10 years ago

My impression is that bootcamps are a useful adjunct for people who are already teaching themselves how to code. Maybe they can accelerate the process.

But taking some random person off the street and turning them into a developed, no.

There are a lot of self taught developers who are quite skilled.

Just treat a bootcamp grad the same way you would someone who is self taught, no better, no worse.

Sorry, developer bootcamps: I was wrong

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