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mgirdley

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Seed Investor: Geekdomfund.com

Entrepreneur: Codeup.com

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Few code schools accept GI Bill because it requires them to have been in business for 2 years prior to applying to accept it. There's little stopping schools from getting approved, but the problem is most haven't enough track record or get denied when the VA investigates them.

If you dig in with employers to understand those job listings, there's a big difference between what they ask for and what they settle for in terms of qualifications.

Another significant percentage of those job listings are designed to game the H1B system as well. So, are basically fictitious.

I loathe these type articles.

They're complex arguments to justify the attitude that "only we chosen few (men) with serious tech degrees are gifted enough to do important work in code."

Tech is a big, prosperous industry and will be bigger if we act welcoming rather than creating complex arguments to protect our turf.

Disclaimer: Am a white male with a CS degree who runs a coding bootcamp.

I think there's a wide spectrum of bootcamps. Some are elite and some aren't.

It's important to recognize bootcamp grads for what they are: people who've been coding for 3-4 months max. Many folks expect them to be seasoned devs with 5 yrs experience but they truly are entry-level.

Most people, as I said, are missing motivation, structure, connections and auto-didactic skills to even get to the point of doing Hello World.

[Oh, and if you interviewed someone who'd been to a 4-week (?) bootcamp, that explains why they couldn't do much. Nothing great in life is accomplished by working for 4-weeks.]

Hack Education 11 years ago

Accreditation is double-edged sword. Many awful providers of educational value are accredited and the requirements of accreditation often inhibit innovation in educational models.

I don't think that's the message.

We are focused on making people professional, employable programmers. While I agree that everyone can play with scratch or build a basic webpage, that's different than the programming skills required to be employed in most dev jobs today.

(Codeup CEO here.)

Codeup CEO here: For our purposes we want to only take students we know we can help and will eventually succeed. If we bring in people who fail during and after class, it's bad for business.

It may be controversial but running this place has shown me that not everyone can program competently or is cut out to be a professional programmer. Anyone who says "everyone can code" is mistaken.

Agreed that an objective measurement would be ideal and this is second best.

However, we've had a hard time creating or locating an objective measurement of general programming skill. As demonstrated by the industry's non-use of standardized tests for programming, I don't think anyone else has either.

If you have a lead on something, would love to see it.