Startups Court Dev Bootcamp’s Ruby Grads, 88% Have Offers At Average Of $79K

http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/dev-boot-camp-is-a-ruby-success/

by lachyg • 14 years ago

47 53 14 years ago

callmeed• 14 years ago

I think the key for a new, disruptive education model will be hiring endorsements from large companies. This seems like a good start.

damian20006• 14 years ago

I agree that the new online courses being offered by udacity and coursera etc have potential to be disruptive, but I don't see anything disruptive in this case to be honest ... the "intensive, job oriented training" model has been done before. But this one seems to have a founder who obviously has the industry connections to setup the students with jobs at the end.

SilasX3• 14 years ago

I don't think he ever used the connections to actually get students jobs/interviews though, even when asked. He just used them to get employers to show up and talk to us, and show up for a five minute "speed dating" session with us (though I guess you could count that).

purewater2• 14 years ago

Isn't $79k somewhat offensive for a software engineer? At a time when new college grads are making well over $150k their first year?

mehulkar6• 14 years ago

Seriously? Entry level devs make $150k?

purewater2• 14 years ago

Yes, ask any Facebook/Google new grad. Standard offer is $100k base salary + $15k bonus + $30k stock a year + $XXk signing bonus.

endlessvoid94• 14 years ago

...in 10 weeks. Not years.

patio11• 14 years ago

One assumes there is a tacit acknowledgement being made that the "product" here is not a 100% substitute for, I don't know, a 2350 SAT Stanford undergrad who has been programming since the age of 6. That may or may not be rational discounting.

On the plus side: someone who is both a) a productive engineer and b) not as abominably terrible at negotiating as the typical engineer will, two years out of this program, be able to lateral into an intermediate engineer position at their next company for a compensation package worth north of $150k.

(P.S. Folks who think purewater or I are grossly off the mark for current conditions in Silicon Valley may wish to take a few people on coffee dates. What you learn will buy an awful lot of lattes.)

snow_mac4• 14 years ago

Where can I find these $150k jobs? I graduate next year.

dpritchett• 14 years ago

It may already be too late. The folks snapping up these jobs have top-tier CS degrees, move to the valley, and most importantly have 2+ internships at major internet companies (Amazon, Google, FB, MS, etc.). You may be able to sidestep some of that if you publish some amazing products or OSS in the next 12 months.

mehulkar6• 14 years ago

What's the old adage? Oh yeah, the numbers speak for themselves.

jmtame2• 14 years ago

Holy crap. 10 weeks. $80K. This is the holy grail, and these guys are doing it: taking someone who has no programming experience and getting them jobs, completely sidestepping accreditation.

Nice work Shereef.

eblume• 14 years ago

Probably more relevant material taught (well) than in my 4-going-on-6 year education right now, too.

kabuks4• 14 years ago

Thanks Jared.

While we're at it, if anybody can't come to SF for dev bootcamp, and/or can't afford it, I highly recommend Jared's http://www.bloc.io/

joejohnson3• 14 years ago

Part of me hopes this spread to other cities... but I'm wary of for-profit "colleges". As soon as it becomes apparent that there is a market for this type of trade school, the market will be flooded with competing schools that quickly train people to code. Then, each school becomes less unique, and they have fewer employers to connect their grads with. Additionally, the schools themselves expand to accept more students (and make more money), but then the average student aptitude is lowered, and employers learn this, and the whole system implodes. Soon, grads can't get jobs right after their training and instead get stuck with student loans they can't repay.

And then recruiters just return to traditional schools for their first-round of screening.

mehulkar6• 14 years ago

Sounds like the definition of capitalism. Dev Bootcamp worked because the people behind it had good intentions. Other programs will fail of that's not the case.

jmtame2• 14 years ago

That's why reputation plays such a major role. You can't just create a school and expect people to sign up for it, unless you're doing accreditation which is expensive, and eventually employers will see how poor candidates are from technical interviews and word will spread about those schools.

What DBC is doing is building a brand and a reputation for having really smart people in their program. That's defensible and scalable. There are a lot of high-caliber people being involved with DBC now, it's no longer just Shereef (who is awesome).

joejohnson3• 14 years ago

I guess that makes sense, but the concept is only scalable if they can keep differentiating themselves from the inevitable charlatans that they will be competing with.

angelixd• 14 years ago

If this program only selected 10% of the applicants, I am sure that they chose the top 10% that would have succeeded anyways. I would be more impressed if they were less selective in their admissions process.

damian20006• 14 years ago

They've said they chose the 10% based upon motivation alone, not existing programming skill, and it seems to have paid off.

lobati3• 14 years ago

I think a slight clarification would be in order here: motivation and attitude are huge weighting factors in our selection process, but another important part is that we feel you can learn enough in ten weeks to be able to get a job. This doesn't require any programming skill, and the bulk of our students have little to none, but we definitely look for problem solving ability. Anyone can learn to code, everyone should. Just not everybody can learn it in ten weeks. As we nail down the curriculum and improve our teaching we'll probably take on more challenging students, and move closer to the goal of assessing students based on attitude alone.

roginc• 14 years ago

I'm one of the cohorts/graduates. Shereef didn't screen us on technical skill and experience, he screened us on passion and determination. I agree that everyone in our class would have been successful without Dev Bootcamp, but not necessarily as developers. But even those of us who would have been developers without DBC I suspect that journey was sped up by many months. But that's not really the most important value of DBC in my opinion. Shereef helped me improve how I learn in general and overcome some personal blocks I had to being a better professional, and I think others experienced similar intangibles. It also gave me two months of incredible memories with an amazing group of people which I'll always value and never forget.

jfarmer2• 14 years ago

Hey Paul, it's Jesse. Go Maroons! :)

I'm helping DBC. It's the real deal. Email me at jesse@devbootcamp.com if you want more info.

damian20006• 14 years ago

There's some important points missing from the '88% have offers' title... - 400 people applied for the course. - 20 were accepted into the course, after interviews and screening. - 17 were "ready to work at the end". (does this mean passed?) - 14 got job offers.

So the prospective employers can be fairly certain after all of this that the student can code, and that's what makes it so attractive to them. For the student, I'd imagine just making it into the course itself is quite hard but if you do get in then you've got a good chance of success.

lachyg2• 14 years ago

Out of the 3 from that 20, 1 is continuing their studies, one is looking for a job still, and another is starting his own startup.

mehulkar6• 14 years ago

Admission wasn't granted on the basis of programming knowledge though, it was on the basis of motivation. Yeah that skews the playing field a little bit, but I like that kind of skew. "17 ready to work" means 17 wanted jobs and didn't want to start their own thing.

damian20006• 14 years ago

Yeah, and the screening of admissions is obviously working well for them. I did a free online course with Coursera recently and was surprised that only something like 5% saw it through to completion, after hearing that 100k had signed up for it.

philaquilina• 14 years ago

As an incoming student for the next round, who just quit his mech engineering job to do this, I can't tell you how nervous I was about signing up a few months back. Before I decided to take the plunge, I talked to Shereef, audited the class, emailed then-current students, and followed their blogs, and I can tell you it quickly became obvious this was going to be very successful.

With less than month before the next cohort begins, the incoming students are already prepping themselves, going to study groups, going to meetups together if they're in the area, asking questions through a facebook group. And the mentors are already helping in any way they can. I love learning but the level of camaraderie and community I feel truly gets me excited for my 10 weeks there. This is teaching done right.

bcamarda• 14 years ago

As a fellow incoming student, I couldn't agree more!

zedshaw• 14 years ago

First off, and I'm not going to just pick on DB since most of these high-price training operations do the same thing, but this makes it seem like they went down to market street and picked 20 homeless guys then got them jobs at 80k/year in 10 weeks.

No, they had 400 applicants, chose the 20 (5%) that could most likely succeed, and then 17 of those got jobs. This is great, but they should stop making it seem like they're training total newbies with no ability in 10 weeks. They're training people who could probably succeed despite any of the training methods. For example, there's a commenter in this thread who has a mechanical engineering degree. Chances are anyone with a mechanical engineering degree with the money could pass nearly any kind of course.

lachyg2• 14 years ago

I'm not sure where the 400 number is coming from. It's actually closer to 200 ("Of the approximately 200 applications that Dev Bootcamp received for its first session, 20 were chosen to participate in the program").

This cohort was also 8 weeks.

But yes, you're right. These are highly dedicated people. Many came straight out of college, one (myself) came straight out of high school. But I wouldn't go and assume that all 20 of us were mechanical engineering grads. All just highly motivated people.

SilasX3• 14 years ago

1, however, did hold a mechanical engineering degree (me).

But I still haven't gotten job offers yet.

(For those in the program who think I told them otherwise: that was not a job offer, but an invitation to a two week assessment with a tiny stipend in a place far from San Francisco, but was still probably counted in the "got jobs" figures.)

jason1098• 14 years ago

As a graduate of the first DevBootcamp class, I can say that some of the comments posted are a bit too assumptive.

First, I had zero programing experience entering class on day one of the session. I graduated knowing how to build web applications. Second, what's wrong with picking students that are most likely to succeed. There's an argument to be made that being part of a group dynamic of motivated, successful people fosters and promotes better learning - I learned more in my AP English, Math, Chemistry and History classes in high school because the other students were also motivated and had the capacity to learn.

Third, why wouldn't you want to select candidates that are interested in getting a job and starting a career in web engineering; it doesn't make sense to select people that want to eventually be hotel managers. Group motivation was critical in the learning process. We as a class took the adventure together; it only makes sense that we all shared the same destination.

I never went to college; it wasn't the path I wanted to take. So to say that the fact that a student had a mechanical engineering degree ensured their passing of the course is like saying that because I grew up on the beach in southern California, I can be a professional surfer.

The fact of the matter here is that DevBootcamp worked. It worked well. As it was Shereef's first session, there was a lot of things that I'm sure he is changing for the next rounds. I'm confident that after the Summer session, the numbers coming from the graduates will be even more impressive.

jfarmer2• 14 years ago

I invite anyone who is skeptical and in the SF Bay Area to reach out to us and say "hi." I'm jesse@devbootcamp.com.

You can read my HN profile -- hopefully it's credible enough that you don't think I'm in the business of blowing smoke.

kabuks4• 14 years ago

There are couple of inaccuracies in this article:

First, I only had 200 applicants, and they were all a result of this post about 6 months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3267133

Second, the article seems to give me and dev bootcamp all the credit. In truth, the spring cohort was a collection of some INCREDIBLY motivated people. I had all these ideas about how I was going to keep people motivated, and by day 3 it was clear that I wouldn't need any of them. Instead, I started worrying about how I can get them to go home and get some sleep every now and then.

I am committed to making any and all of our numbers public. Ask me anything and you'll get the straight facts (as long as it doesn't violate any of my students' privacy).

damian20006• 14 years ago

This is a great achievement. I'm interested to know why you didn't just accept anyone who was willing to pay the fee, as some other training institutions do. Was it limited to 20 due to your teaching resources on hand?

adennis4• 14 years ago

Not speaking for Shereef...but, he mentions that the spring cohort was incredibly motivated. Accepting anyone willing to pay the fee would really take away from the power of the program. I don't know if that was Shereef's plan, but the spring class motivated themselves and each other. It was an infectious environment to be around others who were determined to bang their head against the wall until they broke through. If the class was not pre-filtered for these qualities - it would have been a very different atmosphere.

kabuks4• 14 years ago

My biggest constraint was talented, and heart-ful teachers.

And, like Andrew said, I put a lot of weight into students' attitude.

snow_mac4• 14 years ago

I can't see how any of this can really be all that good. Sure they might be able to whip up a quick ruby script and write some OOP code. Is that all the value a programmer is? I think not. Higher education teaches you about how computers work. I've taken classes on the fundamentals of computers, from the lowest level (transistors) to writing programs in machine language, assembly & C. I understand how using a set of logically complete instructions, I can build ANY computer system. From there I understand how C, and C++ works and I've gotten massive dose of Java, OOP, Polymorphism, inheritance, abstraction, recursion, memory management, heaps, stack, memory allocation, algorithms, analysis of algorithms, and not to mention 2.5 years of continual programming experience both through academic work and internships. Next semester I'll be learning about Mobile application development, more on C++, Operating Systems, threading and multicore application development. Just a small snapshot of what it takes to become a great programmer.

These "code schools" are great for one thing. Wasting money. These classes cannot replace the rigor of my education; especially when working 25 hours a week and going to school full-time, taking classes that require minimum 15 hours each of homework outside of class. Soon these companies will see how they have wasted money on recruiting the top "code monkeys" instead of recruiting real Computer Scientists. #end rant

damian20006• 14 years ago

You have to look at the outcomes though - these guys now have jobs and will be working alongside people who studied for 3+ years to get to the same place ... that's fairly incredible. I don't want to demean a degree in any way (I have one in CS myself), but in the end how many CS grads end up programming in just a couple of languages in one or two platforms during their first job? - most.

snow_mac4• 14 years ago

But the value of the education isn't just the job you get at the end. These are Ruby job's we're talking about. That's really not that incredible considering quite a large number of people in our fields don't have degrees. The value of a CS degree will pay off far from the first job you get.

lobati3• 14 years ago

You seem to be operating on the assumption that the hiring companies are just "trusting" that we put out good students, when in fact they each have their own rigorous interview processes designed to weed out people who have just read the books from those who actually have the ability to think and solve ambiguous or complicated problems, as well as who have the curiosity and passion to continue their education. At my previous jobs I interviewed quite a few potential hires and didn't find a great deal of correlation between having a degree in CS and their fitness for the position. In fact, those who taught themselves tended to need a lot less ramp-up and hand holding than hires straight out of undergrad--the knowledge sticks a lot better when applied to real world projects.

At DBC we're not just a bunch of opportunists trying to make a quick buck. We're people with advanced degrees in CS and educators who believe that education can be done better, at least when it comes to engineering, and we aim to prove it. We choose students who are eager to make a career switch and who have the right attitude for growth. Zed's right--these people would be successful on their own, but we're giving them a leg up by helping them to make it happen in a few weeks instead of a few years. We're not just training a bunch of script monkeys. We're ramping passionate people up on the tools commonly used in a modern web-based company, as well as giving them the mental resources to solve messy problems and to continue their education once they leave. Not to mention a strong sense of the community they are joining and where they can contribute. They won't be experts, by any means, but they'll be ready to carry their weight as entry-level engineers.

Startups Court Dev Bootcamp’s Ruby Grads, 88% Have Offers At Average Of $79K

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