Denver's gSchool: 6 months and 60 hours per week turns you into a web developer

http://www.fullcontact.com/2012/12/01/denvers-gschool-6-months-60-hours-a-week-60k-per-year-career-as-a-web-developer/

by lorangb • 14 years ago

36 51 14 years ago

intellegacy2• 14 years ago

I've been looking into these schools as of late (including the one in SF - forgot the name)

And I've been trying to calculate how good of an investment these programs are. They help with job placement, which is valuable. Then again, the market is so hot for developers now that anyone who self-studies for 6 months could find a job fairly easily on his own.

As for the instruction itself, there are so many resources online (free, I might add) that it seems almost wasteful to drop 20k to learn when you could learn for free, assuming one possesses sufficient self-motivation and knows where to look.

Finally, there is the possibility of a potential huge opportunity cost one can't overlook:

the option of finding a paying jr developer job where one learns on-site. Instead of -20k you get 30k (based on 60k/year working for 1/2 year) and I assume end up roughly even in coding ability. That's $50,000 extra in your pocket, with demonstrable real-world experience rather than "school" experience.

dbecker• 14 years ago

All of this just begs the question of how good these guys are.

Yes, you can find a job on your own. But not all jobs are the same. Maybe they'll find you a better job.

Yes, you can learn on your own. But I don't think there's any question that a good teacher can help you learn faster.

gSchool is new. So it's too early to find hard evidence either way about the quality of jobs you'll get, etc. But if they give you the right teacher, education can be a good investment.

lorangb5• 14 years ago

The guys at gSchool believe strongly that truly learning everything online is really hard. The instructors are world class - IMO that will make all the difference.

steveklabnik6• 14 years ago

gSchool is run by Jumpstart Lab (my employer), who also did Hungry Academy for LivingSocial a while back. I wasn't directly involved in teaching HA, but I did do evaluations of the students from time to time, and they were all competent developers.

What they weren't was super quick to resolve errors. That can only really come from experience. They'd be able to figure out if something went wrong, but whereas I (#50 on the Rails contributors list) would know instantly what was wrong, it'd take them some time. That's to be expected from new devs, though, no way around that but time.

jfarmer• 14 years ago

Caveat lector: I help run Dev Bootcamp (http://devbootcamp.com), which is probably "the one in SF" whose name you forgot. :)

I have two thoughts.

First, there's more to learning how to be a software developer than downloading a bunch of information into your head. Most software projects fail for human reasons, not technical reasons. Giving feedback effectively, receiving feedback non-defensively, articulating your ideas to other people of varying backgrounds and skill, convincing teammates to follow your plan, inspiring your co-workers with your clarity of thought and action, etc. are all real, hard-to-learn skills that are critical to being a great software developer which. One would also be hard-pressed to learn on them on their own since each is, by definition, an interpersonal skill.

As someone who has interviewed and hired dozens of engineers, my experience is that "junior developers," as deep as their knowledge of data structures and algorithms might be, are lacking in exactly this dimension. It's the #1 reason people are afraid to hire them and dismiss as "too junior."

As a case study, Hipmunk (http://hipmunk.com), a Python shop, hired a summer student from Dev Bootcamp. He was a great developer, but they obviously didn't hire him for his mad Python skills since DBC teaches Ruby and Rails. He had no significant prior programming experience when he entered DBC.

I know, I know: anecdotal, etc. etc.

Second, when developers talk about self-learning, I think there's a huge selection bias. The way people are "meant" to learn computer science, software engineering, etc. selects for autodidacts. There are so many more dimensions to how people learn effectively.

This is coming from someone who taught himself C using K&R in high school.

The two things you said are categorically false for many people: they just don't possess the internal mental models necessary to learn how to program on their own, and don't know how to find answers. They might not even know what they're seeing is an answer, unless they've formed the question correctly.

When friends ask me what programming language they should learn, I tell them they should learn whatever programming language more of their friends know.

Social support, similarly motivated peers, role models, and even just the knowledge that they have access to expertise that can get them unstuck when they're tired and frustrated are huge factors in getting people to learn. They will be more fearless, more intrepid, and work their way up to a place where they have the confidence and skill to both learn on their own and on the job.

If you're curious about the skill level of some of the students graduating from programs like gSchool and Dev Bootcamp, here are some examples from the fall:

* http://0xfffc.tumblr.com/post/35751220092/6502-assembler-and...

* http://www.grocery48.com/

* https://gist.github.com/aafabcfadafb4563fd3e

* http://flavorite.tumblr.com/post/35185577034/behind-the-scen...

Shameless plug

Dev Bootcamp's fall cohort graduates next week, and December 7th is our hiring day. If you're interested in attending, sign up here: http://bit.ly/hn_dbc

xiaoma3• 14 years ago

>"Social support, similarly motivated peers, role models, and even just the knowledge that they have access to expertise that can get them unstuck when they're tired and frustrated are huge factors in getting people to learn. They will be more fearless, more intrepid, and work their way up to a place where they have the confidence and skill to both learn on their own and on the job."

Yes! That's what makes this kind of thing worthwhile!

cjoh• 14 years ago

I know Jeff. Jeff taught me rails. If my kid was of the age where it was productive for me to spend this level of money on Jeff teaching him, there's no question in my mind I'd do it. Fwiw, I've been trying to get Jeff to teach me a "How to Teach" class for 5 years.

lorangb5• 14 years ago

Yep. The real thing here is the quality of instruction. Really top-notch.

simonebrunozzi• 14 years ago

Interesting! My view is that "how to teach" is way more difficult, and therefore important, than simple subject knowledge. I can find dozens of very expert Developers, willing to teach for a good salary. However, rarely these people have the skills to teach effectively. Can you tell us more about why Jeff is great at teaching? Examples?

steveklabnik6• 14 years ago

Disclaimer: Jeff is my boss.

Jeff in particular taught high school in inner-city DC with Teach for America. He then went on to help start-up a school and served as principle-ish, if I remember my history right. So he has quite a bit of Actual Teaching Experience.

As someone who's taught alongside him, Jeff's really good at making sure that everyone is paying attention, that he's not going too fast or too slow, and balancing questions with moving the lecture forward.

Oh, and Jumpstart believes in its teaching so much that we put our curriculum online: http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com/ We sell teaching, not secret-sauce lessons.

jthree5• 14 years ago

Agreed 100%. There's a big difference between a developer with a big heart and a developer who actually knows how to teach.

Teaching, just like programming, takes a ton of practice. I spend four years in the classroom, another two coaching teachers, and have been running training classes for Jumpstart Lab since 2009. I don't think I'm a gifted teacher, I've just practiced more than most.

Frank Webber, who's joining me, spent a significant amount of time teaching a year-long course at the University of Washington as well as spending time 1-on-1 mentoring other developers in Seattle.

Steve Klabnik has spent a lot of time with me co-teaching private training sessions and spends a tremendous amount of time "teaching" online through open source work.

It's just a matter of understanding the methodologies of teaching and a bunch of practice. We've practiced more than anyone else.

charlesju• 14 years ago

$20k seems pretty steep for 6 months of education, or am I completely out of the loop?

loceng2• 14 years ago

It depends on what your starting salary would be, I suppose.

lorangb5• 14 years ago

It's guaranteed to be at least $60K, but lots of people will likely end up at around $80K. Plus, you can defer a big chunk of the $20K into $199/mo payments.

gmkoliver• 14 years ago

And what they mean by "60 hours a week".

biscarch• 14 years ago

avg U.S. college semester is ~ 14-16 weeks, including testing. We'll call it 16 for some easy math.

16/4 = 4 months * 2 semesters/yr = 8 months.

We are naively assuming that semesters don't include test-weeks or other vacations and that all 16 weeks are education-filled.

Pricing for a college education [1] in-state public college avg ~22k private college avg ~44k

44k/8 months = $5500/mo

22k/8 months = ~$2750/mo

20k/6 months = ~$3333/mo

Pricing seems about right for a low end year of college.

[1] http://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tmp...

[edit: formatting]

shawndrost3• 14 years ago

Consider that this course probably bumps its students' earning potential by ~$30k/year, and that there aren't many cheaper substitutes. (Imho, learning on your own isn't a substitute for this program -- your odds of getting a dev job 6 months in are pretty low, and the odds of your getting distracted/frustrated and never achieving your goal are pretty high.)

Disclaimer -- I'm a cofounder at a similar program.

steveklabnik6• 14 years ago

Disclaimer: I work for Jumpstart Lab.

To give you some perspective, I am in $70,000 in debt from my undergrad CS degree, and that took four years. If this program would have existed when I was a freshman, I would have done the math, dropped out, and done this in a heartbeat.

ph0rcyas• 14 years ago

It is nice to see these more expensive variants of colleges spring up. At least they're more honest than most universities - but then as [intellegacy] already noted, the opportunity cost is well hidden under this startup craze. Indeed, one does make more money by selling axes to gold miners than to mine gold.

FireBeyond2• 14 years ago

And a fairly sweet deal for the instructors involved. 24 spots at $20,000 a pop = $480,000 split 3 ways for 6 months work, an annualized income of over $300,000.

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

Yup. The ol', it's not the miners who make it big but the guys selling them shovels.

steveklabnik6• 14 years ago

As one of those three instructors, I can assure you that you're leaving out quite a bit there. I will not be making that much money.

jthree5• 14 years ago

Assume that other people's economics sound a lot easier from the outside :)

One big consideration is that there'll be a three-month window in between sessions for the instructors to recuperate, revise the curriculum, and recruit a new class. A facility for 24+3, the laptops, administrative help, marketing, design...

If we were each making 300K the first thing I'd do is drop the price. The costs dictated the tuition.

barry-cotter2• 14 years ago

I'm planning to write an overview article about the various bootcamps and online courses teaching programming. If you know of any I'd appreciate pointers so I can have as broad a survey as possible.

CesareBorgia• 14 years ago

Hi Barry!

I help run App Academy (appacademy.io), a hacker academy based in SF.

Feel free to reach out to us (contact@appacademy.io) if you have any questions about our program!

Here's a list of hacker academies to get you started: http://qr.ae/1pZOh

barry-cotter2• 14 years ago

Thanks so much. I will be reaching out.

knwang• 14 years ago

Hey Barry, we teach an instructor led online Ruby on Rails course at http://www.railstutors.com - would like to be in touch.

creativeone• 14 years ago

10x.org.il is a new course up about to start in Israel. English info: http://www.10x.org.il/syllabus/

shawndrost3• 14 years ago

If you're interested in gSchool, you should take a look at the following:

http://catalystclass.com/

http://devbootcamp.com/ (mentioned elsewhere in this thread)

http://appacademy.io/

http://hackbrightacademy.com/

http://flatironschool.com/

All are based in SF, except Flatiron, which is in NYC.

(I'm a cofounder at Catalyst. Ask me anything!)

xiaoma3• 14 years ago

I fully buy into the value of apprenticing and have been trying to get into a program since moving to SF this summer. You'll be seeing my application shortly. Any suggestions on the video that would maximize my chances of acceptance?

lorangb5• 14 years ago

be original! While I don't run the program, I know Jim Deters well, and if you email me: bart@fullcontact.com, I can put in a good word.

shawndrost3• 14 years ago

Don't read from a script. Be yourself. Talk about something you think is really interesting. Looking forward to reading your application!

morningwarrior• 14 years ago

Don't forget about The Starter League (http://starterleague.com) formerly known as Code Academy in Chicago.

codeonfire• 14 years ago

For $8-10k you can get an associates degree in web development from any of the Denver area community colleges. Buyer beware.

icelancer• 14 years ago

Which would teach you what exactly?

heimidal• 14 years ago

You certainly would not walk away from those classes with a strong understanding of Ruby, Javascript, HTML, and CSS, plus a primer on agile project management. An associate degree in web development will probably teach you the basics, but there's no way it would be equivalent to six months of intensive training.

jthree5• 14 years ago

And at a community college you can qualify for traditional student loans, GI funding, etc -- making the equation a lot easier. If you know of anyone who's completed one of these programs and is now a full-time developer I'd love to meet them and pick their brain.

Having taught at Boston College's Center for Digital Imaging and Arts (CDIA), I was not impressed with the curriculum and, most importantly, the expectations for students were disappointingly low. It was more of a "pass the time, get the certificate" than a genuine learning environment. I hope it's different here in Denver.

mewmoo• 14 years ago

"You don’t need to be an expert to apply. If you’re a novice that’s totally fine."

If I were an expert why would I apply? :\

nu2ycombinator• 14 years ago

"More often than not, graduates receiving Computer Science degrees are not very good software engineers." Lot of people make these statements, but are there any statistical data to back this up. In opinion CS Degree person is always better bet to invest in long term (even if they wont be productive in webapp development right away) than one who finished 6 month webapp development crash course.

jthree5• 14 years ago

Having a CS degree is going to be a tremendous advantage in a program like this, for sure.

But I'm guessing Bart, like me, has interviewed kids coming out with CS degrees who just can't program. To be honest, it breaks my heart. If you complete a four year program and can't program FizzBuzz in a language of your choice then you have been completely bamboozled. I would not have believed this possible until I saw it myself.

Denver's gSchool: 6 months and 60 hours per week turns you into a web developer

Related Stories