
Learn to Code, Get Hired - RosieA
http://blog.careerfoundry.com/learn-code-get-hired
======
king_magic
For what it's worth, I think articles like this do a huge disservice to people
looking for an easy way to "get hired coding", at least in terms of setting
peoples' expectations. Reading this, this article makes it seem (to me, at
least) like there are just thousands and thousands of companies who will
happily hire you right away once you go through a few of these courses.

It's simply just not the reality, at least from my perspective as an architect
at relatively decent sized consulting company (600+ people). It would be
extremely unlikely for us to hire someone without a 4 year degree in a
relative discipline (CS, software engineering, etc.). That's not to say we
don't hire people without a 4 year degree, but those people have years of
hardcore experience and are just as advanced/mature as their counterparts with
degree - a far cry from taking a few online courses and declaring yourself "a
coder".

I'm not trying to be an elitist or anything here - just being realistic.

~~~
RosieA
Hi King_Magic I understand the point you're making, but for people who haven't
studied computer science at university, or haven't been tinkering on a
computer since they were a small child, these courses are a way they can break
into this career. Tech should not be an elusive industry - especially when
their is such a huge shortage of skills. These courses open up the scene for
people who don't have the background in the industry, but want to change
careers or expand in their current roles. No one is saying (and the article
certainly isn't) that you can just jump straight into a job after a few weeks
studying an online course, but what is true is that by studying online people
can acquire skills via a course, then build up their experience over time,
build a portfolio and then get a job.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I'm thinking this may be an illusion. Is there any evidence that this route
works?

I know that the effective programmers I work with, have similar life stories.
They love programming, have done it since they were young, do it for
themselves and not just for work.

The guy who gets a CS degree because there's money in it may get a job
somewhere, but not in the circles I travel in. Which is architecture, design,
backends, libraries and embedded solutions.

So what is the real opportunity to a part-time online-course student?

~~~
fibbery
I know this isn't exactly what you are saying, but just because someone
learned to program later in life doesn't mean that they are only in it for the
money or that they inherently aren't as competent.

There seems to be this attitude in tech that if you weren't coding in
kindergarten then you haven't met the prerequisite for being truly "one of us"
in the tech elite, so why bother trying?

But to address your main question, there are many roles that benefit from
programming knowledge aside from the 'hard CS' ones you list. For example, in
my previous job as a technical writer learning to program was helpful for a)
documenting our APIs and writing sample code, b) creating web-based
documentation and c) running scripts in Adobe InDesign to generate automated
documentation.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Grant all that. The question remains: what kind of skills can you get taking
the 'soft' route? They won't be the same as a University degree, and not
nearly the same as a lifetime of devotion to the art. Did we really address
that yet?

"Programming knowledge" is a deep, deep well. Its not going to be captured
without real effort over a long time.

~~~
RosieA
Of course 'programming knowledge' covers a spectrum. At CareerFoundry we have
never claimed to be training people to become Senior Full Stack Web Developers
- like with many careers there is progression within the job. You start off at
one level, you learn more, you progress and hopefully get promoted. We teach
Ruby on Rails, HTML5, CSS and Javascript. With these coding languages under
your belt, and the sufficient experience, you could get a job as a Junior
Developer. Of course, like you said - and like with so many careers - reaching
that next level takes real effort and dedication over a long time. But there
is absolutely no reason why people can't get started in their careers at the
bottom rung of the web development ladder with these skills, and work their
way up by learning on the job and alongside their colleagues and peers.

Many thanks for your comment.

------
7Figures2Commas
It's like 1998 all over again, when basic HTML knowledge promised the key to a
comfortable middle class existence. And if you knew tables and how to use
spacer GIFs, the sky was the limit!

The only difference is that in 1998, you actually _did_ have a realistic
chance of finding a job in tech with limited knowledge and skill. Today's
supposed tech labor shortage is more the result of a lack of experienced,
highly-qualified candidates who fit a certain mold and reside in a handful of
geographic areas. There is no shortage of the inexperienced, under-qualified
candidates bootcamps and online programs produce.

~~~
famousactress
This is exactly right. In '98-'00 people in this situation were actually
getting hired, _in droves_. I'd venture to guess most of them lost their jobs
a couple years later and fell out of software development altogether, though.

~~~
RosieA
Really? I feel like most people I know who were developers before the bust are
either millionaires or still rocking. A few moves on when the bubble blew out,
I even lived in an apartment in SF of a failed 2 man company during that time
period; they both went to back to being finance guys. But that was the
catalyst of the industry we're now all talking about, and its grown more and
faster than many other.

It also took a lot of crappy people to produce the few genuine talents that
took the industry by storm. The industry is growing faster than talent because
its not standardized or accessible enough for all potential to be found. The
problem is greater than a discussion of the validity of bootcamps, and though
business driven I would argue bootcamps are a step towards understanding the
true needs on a global scale.

~~~
famousactress
_> most people I know who were developers before the bust are either
millionaires or still rocking_

My experience varies. Of the (admittedly few) people I can think of that I
knew personally and who were trained-on-the-job during this time none are
still developing software (though one works in QA and one is a project manager
of a tech company last I heard).

 _> I would argue bootcamps are a step towards understanding the true needs on
a global scale_

Yeah, I buy that there's non-zero insight to be gleaned from some experience
running these code camps for the industry at large. But we'll be doing that on
the backs of people who guinea pig these programs in the short term with
misaligned expectations, and relatively short term desires for new employment.

You're selling people something they can "sell" to others (marketable skills).
The people being expected to evaluate (and then pony up for) the value
proposition here are _by definition_ uniquely unqualified to do so.

That's why it feels like a scam. If Facebook decided they wanted to run people
through these programs for free because they thought it might have some value
and solve a real need for talent that they have, I wouldn't be complaining.

As a matter of fact, it's telling that they aren't.

~~~
RosieA
> You're selling people something they can "sell" to others (marketable
> skills).

Of course we are, but that's part of any career motivation so I'm not sure I
see this as criticism. "I went to university to learn XYZ skills, which are
marketable to the industry and people I want to work with...". At the end of
Uni most people are lucky to get an internship. Students leaving our program
are looking for exactly that, at best a junior position or their first couple
small freelance contracts.

Its not that I disagree with the claim that many, most, maybe almost all
bootcamps fail to educate their students on the status they leave the course
in (before they do the course) and on how to effectively approach the
industry, but that's business side unfortunately.

I also don't see it hurting the industry at all, but that's not what you're
saying. What you claim is that it hurts the individuals who are misguided,
therefore the guinea pigs. Totally fair. We work pretty closely with each
student and though we might sell big at signup, the conversations before
enrollment are all based around realistic expectations and getting them
psyched to start the long haul towards a new career. Of course I could just be
saying that, but its one way we try to define ourselves and the quality of our
students.

I'm not sure I understand the Facebook comment. Do you work there? I had a
friend at Facebook and there were all sorts of CPD programs available to him
in different formats. He did several I believe...

I keep coming back to the topic of traditional education because I think
that's where the saturation and awareness should be happening, instead of the
bootcamp level. Lots of governments and school systems working towards this.
We actually launched something today which is part of our first attempt at
helping this effort along, providing training specifically designed for
teaching teachers how to teach code, as that's currently the ed system's
biggest barrier. Would love your thoughts on the concept, not as a business
but as a way of advancing technology, filling the "skills" gap by creating
early awareness, and then putting bootcamps in a position to advance people
with perspective should it come to that... [http://bit.ly/teach-the-
teachers](http://bit.ly/teach-the-teachers)

------
kabdib
"Matchbook programmers"

Imagine a talent shortage; you are lacking skilled programmers. No, really!
:-)

So what you do is print out (say, on matchbook covers) a very small ad "Learn
programming! Start a career!" with a phone number to call and you basically
spam the whole country / world with these things. And a few people call in,
and you screen them, and a few of those you bring in and talk to, and a few of
those you might wind up hiring. And you plonk them into a classroom and teach
them some programming, and a few people turn out to be just incredibly good
natural programmers that you might not have gotten otherwise. (The ones you
hired that didn't work out so well? You use them on government contracts).

IBM's model in the 1970s (and probably a few other shops as well).

It takes quite an investment, and you need to be able to deal with people at
scale, which is something that start-ups and even most big companies (like
Microsoft) are terrible at, for various reasons.

~~~
RosieA
This is an awesome comment. Is there documentation on the IMB model you
describe? I'd love to see data on this!

~~~
kabdib
Another drawback: A lot of the candidates you get are smokers. But hey.

------
ilghiro
I'm still excited for the day when a 2 hours a week, 6 week bootcamp sets me
up to easily become a pilot or an architect.

~~~
RosieA
Yes! I guess the only real difference there is that both those skills directly
endanger other people! :-p

~~~
king_magic
So poor software _doesn 't_ directly endanger other people? This is why I'm so
nervous about a generation of "coders" \- they just don't know what they don't
know. Software can get people killed. Or (far more likely) can get peoples'
bank accounts wiped clean.

~~~
RosieA
I think if we're talking about someone coding portfolio websites and ecommerce
shops using validated API's, we're not talking rocket science but we are
talking the basis of a career.

I have a hard time believing that wordpress developers end up endangering many
people. Even more advanced software technicians, guys who are brilliant are
making games and a great living but aren't putting anyone in harm's way.

Cardeology? Yes. Draw bridge tech, probably. Car computers, for sure. A social
responsbility to recognize that you're good enough for that? Yes but I'm sure
the people hiring you aren't going to mess around with that kind of thing.

People who want to learn web development to make fun/cool products and living
don't need to be concerned about the complexities of banking software unless
that's what they want to be doing with their lives, and I would hope that
people like you, people advanced enough to do the hiring, aren't going to hire
any dummies to do it.

------
UUMMUU
This is one of the biggest problems with the industry now; a lot of people
learning to code without learning computer science. Coding is applying
computer science fundamentals and without those fundamentals, you end up
writing terrible and unmanageable code. Bootcamps are one of the worst ideas
because they charge a lot of money, waste a lot of time with overzealous
promises and, worst of all, hurt the industry by cranking out sub-par
developers. Don't push people to learn to code, push people to learn computer
science, math and algorithms.

~~~
angersock
CS grads write shitty code too--and often, it's harder to figure out what
they're trying to accomplish, because they use some weird non-standard
red/black balanced bloom filter with LZ sliding window compression instead of
just, say, a fucking hashmap.

At least with coders you often find code that is obviously wrong, instead of
code that is non-obviously wrong.

~~~
RosieA
I honestly never thought of it this way (your last sentence). But yes, to your
first point many of our students are CS grads who realized they wanted to work
as developers but didn't know how to code... They might start with a stronger
theoretical understanding, and perhaps can code more complex functionality or
software than our non CS grad students, but ultimately they're on a similar
level. Just depends on what the individual wants to be doing long term.

------
pnathan
Gack! No! Nearly all of the recommendations are a really bad disservice.

Learning to code is relatively straightforward. Learning to do it well,
applying the fundamental principles of computer science, is a different kind
of horse (transportation device). People in the industry KNOW this. It's
_obvious_. You have to put in the time to really know what you're about, and
bootcamps & MOOCs don't really bridge the gap between 'ignoramus' and 'junior
professional' as a rule of thumb. Of course, if you subject yourself to a diet
of these things and study the field for some time (months at least), doing
serious investigation of the fundamentals, I don't think you'd be much
different than a particularly motivated intern or new grad. :)

That said - if you are, e.g., a marketing person, learning coding to help do
your job and simplify your work will do _amazing_ things for you, I hear.
Learning source control will drastically make "copy 1 of report final 1" type
problems go away. As patio11 often says, automating business process has huge
value. (Which, by the by, doesn't make you a professional software developer
if you do it).

Coding is a great skill, applicable in many places, but professional software
creation with the high salary comes at the cost of serious competition with
people who have seriously studied this topic for a long time.

~~~
RosieA
Totally agree with this. Reaching the top level of anything takes time and
dedication, but there is huge value to having a rudimentary understanding of
code regardless of your professional focus.

Code is slowly becoming a mandatory part of education in primary and secondary
schools in Europe. Do you think this helps approach the greater infrastructure
of tech?

~~~
pnathan
A followup:

Do you support the idea of "professional guilds" or other associations that
delineate the "people who just learned to code" from "people who have
seriously invested the time to learn the fundamentals of their field in a very
professional fashion"

~~~
RosieA
This is a crazy interesting concept. In part because I just never considered
it before, but also because its kind of a midway: Let the elitists feel elite
and set the standards, and the rebels and riff-raff fight amongst themselves
for status.

Honestly, having worked in media (film) and with those guilds (SAG, DGA, etc)
its very difficult for me to say this is a good idea. The guilds were
constructed the way they are because of the in-and-out nature of working in
production. Without going into detail, the model just doesn't fit unless all
devs turn freelance.

Now a union, as the states has for many different labor professions etc: this
is a concept that could work, but without an effective standardization system
(something VERY hard to do in a world of open source, fast moving technology
development, and new coding languages) it would be for show and simply an
opportunity for the 5% who shook the right hands to sit on their golden
thrones. Sounds very American though. ;-)

The thing is, neither guilds or unions were really built to enforce standards
of work-quality. They were built to protect the workers against potential
abuse from corporations/foundations/government firms/private sector
contractors. So this would be inverse to the problem we're trying to solve,
which is qualification of good devs versus "bad" or under qualified.

So what would work? Well if we all started by doing Oracle IT and Microsoft
certificates, the furiously patient devs of the world could at least recognize
each other for it. Actually... they already sort of do. :-p

I think ultimately the next form of standards is going to have to be written
by the academic world OR some other government sponsored party of incredibly
savvy individuals who's entire "business" revolves around standardization
testing for devs. Not that there aren't companies kind of doing this, but
well? And on a government level of respect and reach? Nope.

I suppose the only back draw is that it risks removing the creativity and how
problem solving abilities are associated to personality type. I'm sure you
could eventually formulate that as well, but sheesh, what data mayhem. Would
be awesome. I guess one point for it is hell, if google and amazon can do it
for themselves, who's to say evaluations couldn't be built across the board?

That was really long, sorry, but super interesting question!

~~~
pnathan
H'm.

Kinda surprised that you've not heard it before, it's knocked around the
professional programming circles for a while now. Anyway.

You're quite right that it's not a trivial problem. IEEE promulgated the
SWEBOK, which the ACM publically refused to support (I read through the
SWEBOK, it's, imo, generally irrelevant).

It's also not a question of creativity and problem solving, it's a question of
quality assurance - i.e., the downside of being in such a group would be the
culpability for being sued for malpractice. :-)

~~~
RosieA
I guess I heard talk about SWEBOK, but honestly didn't have it in a context
that lead me to compare it to guilds and unions like that.

I DO like the idea of "coding malpractice" law suits though. ;-P

------
adregan
I haven't an opinion on boot camps as they currently run (but am entirely self
taught and having a great time architecting and building APIs and front end
applications); however, I wish that the " Interested in learning to code, but
not so keen on leaving your current employer?" section was the focus of the
article and the boot camps.

A buddy of mine told me about the cascading discounts that he and his
coworkers calculated by hand. They all know how to do it, but he wanted an
quicker way. A little recursive function later and I made him a simple little
calculator he could pull up on his phone. It saves him—and his coworkers—time
and would completely be within everyone's grasp to create with a little bit of
training.

I wish there was a push for practical programming and automation for everyone.
Boot camps to help you improve your work through simple programming.

~~~
RosieA
But did he WANT to code that himself? Or was it really a job for you?

I actually agree, but as a business of course you go where the interest market
is most stable. If nothing else than for the sake of your investor's heart-
rate. ;-)

Jokes aside, I'm wondering if the increasing demand for education in school
systems and traditional education is the long term solution to exactly this
problem. We're working hard in Europe to participate as much as we can as we
feel the skills-gap philosophy is actually an education gap it just hasn't
been figured out yet.

~~~
adregan
He was banging away at excel for a while trying to come up with a way to do
it, and he probably would have hit on something sooner or later but wanted
something for the next day, so I figured I'd give him a hand.

I figure, as programming is able to become more abstract and high level,
"practical programming" will become a lot easier.

------
J_Darnley
What if I can already do the first part, what automatically provides the
second part?

I might post a more detailed comment if I could actually find somewhere to
view this content.

~~~
RosieA
Nothing automatically provides the job. We're talking about a process hidden
behind a click-happy headline.

A huge part of the comments in this feed have been discussing the challenge of
teaching bootcamp students what the actual career is about, what getting jobs
is about, that realistically learning to code is just one small part of being
a developer.

Does the headline say all that? God now. Does the article say that? Nope,
because its trying to draw in all interested parties. The problem is that
some, perhaps many, maybe even almost all bootcamps on that list? They might
not clarify it until to late.

Some of us are trying to figure it out. Both how to communicate it, but maybe
even the actual solution!

In the mean time, if you can code start pitching on elance, man! There is
always work even for those of us who are, quiet frankly, sub-par developers>
our CMO can code, he sucks at it.

;-)

------
redmattred
I'm currently conducting a survey on the effectiveness of code bootcamps. If
you've recently attended one, please share your experiences at:
[http://www.codejobs.io/surveys/codebootcamp/student](http://www.codejobs.io/surveys/codebootcamp/student)

~~~
RosieA
Hey! This is awesome! Will you be publishing your results!?! Would love to see
the data!

------
crazypyro
Site is down for me and no webarchive yet, does someone have another cached
link?

e: Its back, but in case it goes down again:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20141016140435/http://blog.career...](http://web.archive.org/web/20141016140435/http://blog.careerfoundry.com/learn-
code-get-hired/)

~~~
RosieA
We got KILLED by traffic today, sorry about that!

------
EmilLamprecht
But which schools are the best is the question?

Anyone taken courses at these places? What were the good and bad of it?

~~~
chazu
As an entirely self-taught programmer, I say skip these programs entirely.
When I got my first real programming gig, my company sent me to a quick,
7-or-8 session long bootcamp for rails, although I'd already taught myself all
the rails conventions. The program was a huge waste of time for me, and a
waste of money for my employer.

I had already gotten 500% more out of just reading guides.rubyonrails.org than
I did in the entire program. If I had been required to pay for the
instruction, I'd have come out feeling distinctly ripped off, especially if I
had been a web designer who'd never used command-line build tools before.

This might vary with the program. The particular format of the one I attended
just wasn't well-suited to getting people up and running quickly, or
addressing the varied needs of students at different levels. That being said,
learning _how to learn to program_ is much more important. Learning that
failure is the first step to success and a prerequisite to actually
synthesizing knowledge. If they could teach that in these courses, they'd be
priceless.

Hope that helps, kind of rambling but, that's my experience :)

~~~
socialmatchbox
It varies WIDELY with the program. Not all of these are rip offs. Not all of
the students get the same or need the same things as you. There are all kinds
of different ways that people learn. There are also lots of different levels
that people are coming into things on.

------
RosieA
Hi guys, The site is back up again now - please try again!

