
Startups Court Dev Bootcamp’s Ruby Grads, 88% Have Offers At Average Of $79K - lachyg
http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/10/dev-boot-camp-is-a-ruby-success/
======
philaquilina
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
As a fellow incoming student, I couldn't agree more!

------
kabuks
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).

~~~
damian2000
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
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.

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

------
damian2000
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.

~~~
mehulkar
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.

~~~
damian2000
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.

~~~
mehulkar
I think that's because learning is all about being in a conducive environment.
DBC got the environment part right. Online courses might be structured really
well and have the best material, but they still can't provide you 20 people
who've put their livelihoods on the line to get through this stuff right
beside you.

------
zedshaw
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.

~~~
lachyg
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.

~~~
SilasX
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.)

~~~
lobati
We're actually not counting you towards the total. Here's hoping your
assessment goes well, though.

------
snow_mac
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

~~~
damian2000
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_mac
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.

~~~
DomKM
Not everyone is looking to become a computer scientist. Some people just want
to make things. Musicians don't need to know every little detail about how
their instruments are made. Painters don't need to know the process by which
canvas is produced. Why should beginner programmers need to know everything
that underlies their craft?

~~~
snow_mac
Because programming is different from painting or music. Programming is a
skill that's through understanding of systems and how they work. Sure you can
build something small with basics skills, but beyond that you need
understanding. It takes knowledge and understanding on why your code is
performing slow, knowing how memory works, knowing how activation records get
built. Yes you can build basic stuff with these basic skills but to be a truly
wonderful and competent programmer you need to understand the system and your
responsibilities.

------
joejohnson
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.

~~~
jmtame
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).

~~~
joejohnson
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.

~~~
kabuks
Scaling is over rated.

------
angelixd
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.

~~~
damian2000
They've said they chose the 10% based upon motivation alone, not existing
programming skill, and it seems to have paid off.

~~~
lobati
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.

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

~~~
damian2000
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.

~~~
SilasX
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).

~~~
patrickyeon
I would count that. I've never had an interview that didn't lead to a job
offer. As soon as I can talk to the people who matter (as opposed to HR
gatekeepers), I can demonstrate that I'm the person they want for a job. On
the other hand, when I'm applying through HR, even for jobs that I know I
would be a perfect fit in, I get a response well under 5% of the time.

~~~
SilasX
Well, the people at the speed dating thing were generally recruiters closer to
the HR end of things, so ...

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

~~~
mehulkar
Seriously? Entry level devs make $150k?

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

~~~
mehulkar
Median entry level salary for SOMA area is around $68k. Not sure if comparing
to the Facebook/Google entry level is the best comparison to draw.

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

