
Ask HN: Are tech bootcamps the only way to get people out of poverty? - sadok
Trying to decide on the best way to teach people &quot;how to fish&quot;.<p>There are a significant number of for-profit and non-profit companies, including some YC companies, that just give people &quot;fish&quot;.<p>Don&#x27;t get me wrong, this is great: some of those things are entire houses for people that don&#x27;t have anywhere to live. However, this is not scalable to the millions of people living in poverty. In Mexico, for example, only 27 out of every 100 poor people will leave poverty behind.<p>I know coding&#x2F;design&#x2F;tech bootcamps have helped people break out of poverty, but are they the only option?
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duxup
I did a coding camp as part of a career change and I'm doing well.

Having said that I have a couple issues with the camp I attended and others
that follow the same pattern:

1\. The camps are poor at identifing good candidates, or just don't. They want
to get as many people as possible through the program as that is where the
money is.

2\. Camps don't filter out existing students who just aren't working out. They
call them "boot camps" but generally people don't get booted... even students
clearly struggling with the concept of a cli remain in the class and slow
things down tremendously... even weeks into the class.

3\. I put in a ton of out of the classroom time to be what I thought was an
"ok" boot camper. Most poor have very little time as being working poor uses a
lot of time and energy.

I think the system maybe can work, but I'm not sure anyone is doing it right.

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gshdg
No, and for most people, breaking out of poverty requires a lot more than just
high-demand skills.

Mindsets, networks, seed funds (to buy interview clothes and travel to
interviews), safety nets, self-confidence, time, cultural assumptions,
knowledge of (or someone to ask about) white-collar professional etiquette,
and a whole host of other things that people from upper middle class
backgrounds take for granted can make it difficult for people in poverty to
find or keep jobs with those new skills.

And if you have no rainy day fund, an unexpected expense like a car breakdown
(because you couldn’t afford a reliable car in the first place) can derail you
and force you to start all over again.

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clintonb
No. There are plenty more jobs outside of tech. Other skills are in demand and
pay well. The US currently has a plumber shortage. A cursory Google search
shows median salaries around $60K.

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PaulHoule
No.

