
They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia - pfortuny
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/us/mined-minds-west-virginia-coding.html
======
coconut_crab
My experience with code bootcamp trained developers is positive, due to the
follow reasons:

\- Most of them have engineering background: electrical engineering, civil
engineering, petroleum engineering.

\- Since they lack formal education in IT, they have to train twice as hard,
which our company encourages (2 months of probation = 2 months of training,
it's almost impossible to find developer with Scala experience around here
anyway).

\- We work with the Bootcamp to improve their program: giving reference to
'hard', 'theoretical' books such as Algorithms & Datastructure or Database
Design and cutting down some unnecessary parts.

\- Most importantly, we strongly prefer people who switched to IT because they
actually love programming, not just looking for higher wage.*

* It may sound weird but actually many people here didn't picked their university by themselves but by the guidance of their parent, so they might study something else than their favourite.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
>almost impossible to find developer with Scala experience around here anyway)

I feel you.

I think there is no pool more shallow than the one of C programmers that can
work on embedded in my area.

Regardless of what your background is, I’ve already had to commit to 6 months
of training for anyone I hire.

~~~
cannonedhamster
There's no such thing as someone you're not going to have to train. Every
single company does something different. To suggest that you're not going to
have months of train up isn't feasible. I wish this mindset would go away.
Training is, and should be an integral part of any workplace. It's what makes
your whole team better, it's what makes everyone have a similar style, and
shows people the expectations. This goes for internal code process as well as
external code and tools. Embedded especially is going to be hard because it's
a specialized skill set that's far harder than people realize especially once
you get into space constraints.

~~~
nitrogen
I agree with this 100%, even as an experienced engineer I want to continue to
give and receive ongoing training. Yet I've actually been told in some
settings not to even mention the "T" word because it would be seen as
offensive. Instead as an industry we have ridiculous expectations in hiring
and an inefficient, informal training process in the form of production
failures.

~~~
0_gravitas
I bet the job post reads "Searching for self-starter that can hit the ground
running!"

------
mothsonasloth
[Warning Exremely Controversial Post Ahead]

I am currently working for a big corporate in the UK, who have been showing
off their "pioneering" and "visionary" strategy to focus recruitment from code
boot-camps.

All I can say is that as a senior developer, it has made my life misery. I've
gone from writing code and producing features, to a full-time mentor and
babysitter. Half of the boot-camp graduates I believe have become coders for
the wrong reasons like:

* developers have an easy life, getting into work whenever they choose

* they get to wear t-shirts and baggy jeans

* they get all the latest toys to play around with and shiny MacBooks

* I hated my last job, looking at developers on TV in these Silicon valley places looks like the dream life

* I am a single mother who was given the course for free

The others, have aptitude but are so inexperienced from their 3 month session
that it will take them atleast two years before they can be fully independant
engineers.

These codecamps are licenses to print money it seems, they charge the students
a hefty fee for the course and companies then pay a recruitment fee at the
end.

Needless to say, I will be leaving my company very soon to go to a place where
there is a coding test and filtering to prevent most of these bootcampers from
getting in.

Yes its snobby, but I didn't study and spend my student loan on my passion
just so I can train up a bunch of people looking for the "easy life".

~~~
hatchnyc
This has been my experience, and I'll add I have noticed there is a massive
disconnect from the reality of just how complicated modern software is. I
remember beginning my career what I think used to be a quite common experience
of being quite a bit overwhelmed by how much I had to learn, very aware that I
didn't even know what I didn't know and this definitely motivated me. This
awareness is completely absent from 100% of the boot camp grads I've
encountered, who have been sold and apparently internalized the idea that
"everything is easy" and are quite resistant to the suggestion that they might
not fully grasp the scope and difficulty of the situation. I'm sure there are
exceptions, but I also suspect these people would have found their way into
software development without going to a boot camp.

~~~
mothsonasloth
Completely agree, I would like to blame it on this dichotomy of "frontend and
backend development".

Most of the bootcampers did three months of "frontend" work and are oblivious
to what goes underneath in the murky world of business logic and services.

Until they have been able to demonstrate they are confident in:

* Presenting data to a user

* Validating inputs

* Making correct requests and understanding the interactions of an API (whether its REST, RPC, programmatic, internal)

* Processing requests

* Persistance and access of data

* Basic security

* Be able to document and explain all areas to a basic level.

* Debug and provide a root cause analysis.

Then they will remain a junior developer and I think that will be many of
these bootcampers fate, as they are either unwilling or incapable of doing
work outside their comfort zone.

~~~
jen20
> Then they will remain a junior developer and I think that will be many of
> these bootcampers fate

This is a fair assessment - not just of boot camp developers but of all
developers. I don't think I agree that it is a problem that some people
working as a junior developer today will never become a Technical Fellow,
however.

I've personally found (especially in the "enterprise") that many senior
developers do not actually have fifteen years of experience - but one year of
experience fifteen times, and are functionally junior developers with the
wrong title. Educational background does not tend to be an indicator of this.

~~~
Kalium
I think it's worth bearing in mind that people who sign up for bootcamps
generally expect to have a normal career trajectory. They do not expect to
spend their careers as effectively junior developers. They genuinely believe
they will become Technical Fellows, and expect that a bootcamp will get them
started.

Few bootcamps seem to do a good job of teaching students what to expect in a
career path or what they'll need to do to advance in it.

I think our industry is headed for a collective reckoning, though I would not
begin to speculate on a timeline. We're going to have to square seniority as a
measure of skill with seniority as a measure of time, and no matter how it
happens a number of people are going to be unpleasantly surprised.

------
in_cahoots
The real shame here is that apparently nobody throwing money at this company
did any due diligence. In an interview, the co-founder claims that all of its
graduates get jobs, and that the skills taught are worth $200-$250 an hour
(i.e. 400-500k a year) in San Francisco. The website’s success testimonials
include quotes from a co-founder and one from a co-founder’s brother. If the
people donating a million dollars had done ten minutes of background research
they could have prevented this debacle in the first place.

------
BlackJack
We can discuss code camp pro/cons all day, but the article spells out that
there was little coding being taught here.

Instructors with little tech experience, high rate of firing and stuff
turnover, students being told to "google it", operating without licenses, all
while the founder has fancy offices in Chicago with rapacious and alcoholic
parties.

Amanda Laucher, the founder, essentially stole funds from governments and made
false promises and is now going to Law School in Chicago. Meanwhile, these
people quit their jobs on false hope and now are unemployed or have to rejoin
at the bottom of the rung.

Assuming the article is fair, this is a sad situation and Laucher should be
prosecuted.

~~~
iguy
It sounds uncomfortably close to a cynic's view of aid projects in poor
countries. The customers aren't the students, but rather the Commission, and
they were apparently sufficiently impressed with the TED talks to part with
$1.5 million to start this thing. Maybe someone trying to get re-elected got
to cut a ribbon on TV too. And I bet this also made a great story for the
founders to tell in their law school applications.

------
commandlinefan
I guess people believe what they want to believe, but it should be obvious
that if programming is really something you can learn in a few months in your
spare time, it’s not going to be a very valuable skill. Either programming
requires extensive education and experience to be really proficient (read:
employable) in, or it’s going to be a minimum wage “we can throw a rock and
replace you this afternoon” call-center job.

~~~
jimmaswell
You can learn it in a few months in your spare time if you're cut out for it,
which the vast majority are not. CS education for programming jobs is mostly a
very expensive formality to convince hiring managers you know what you already
knew before enrolling, or at least it was in my case.

~~~
mratzloff
"You can learn how to be a lawyer in a few months in your spare time if you're
cut out for it" would be considered a ridiculous statement. Perhaps you could
learn enough to be an assistant to a legal secretary.

The same applies to programming.

~~~
jimmaswell
They're not the same thing at all. Being a lawyer involves cramming in an
enormous volume of rote information over many years and passing an exhaustive
exam; programming is just a combination of problem solving, being able to deal
with abstract concepts and how computers work, and learning a relatively small
amount of syntax and general concepts. You can easily get a grip on all that
in a few months if it's your thing.

~~~
yawaramin
> learning a relatively small amount of syntax and general concepts

In what programming job?! Junior frontend dev churning out React components?
Even there you're dealing with a dizzying array of HTML, CSS, and ever-
changing JavaScript/Babel/Webpack/etc. insanity. In a few months you can
barely produce some simple, low-quality code. It takes a lot longer for the
concepts of good quality code to sink in.

~~~
pas
junior PHP dev. basically on the job training.

it's always very costly, because it requires a very involved supervisor.

------
rayiner
This is a byproduct of the (in my view, very positive) tradition in
programming of not requiring a college degree. It offers the political class
an easy message for dealing with the ramifications of the jobs exodus in
places like Appalachia. Nobody would suggest, for example, training people up
as doctors or lawyers or accountants to be a solution to that problem. The
degree requirements are a signal: “this is not for everyone.” With
programming, politicians have gotten this idea that because there are no
formal educational requirements, programming and “tech” jobs are an avenue for
employing the large numbers of economically displaced. But of course,
programming is hard. Most people don’t have the analytical/mathematical
mindset necessary to be even competent programmers. All of these coding boot
camps and public programs just capitalize on this misconception and wishful
thinking.

~~~
wutbrodo
> But of course, programming is hard. Most people don’t have the
> analytical/mathematical mindset necessary to be even competent programmers.
> All of these coding boot camps and public programs just capitalize on this
> misconception and wishful thinking.

It works both ways too; When bootcamps first popped up, I was dismissive of
them until I realized that there was (to be fair, relatively new) high demand
for people who could even do the bare minimum of stringing together CRUD apps,
forming a labor market that had nothing to do with me, despite nominally being
an "engineer". I think a lot of the pathologies of eng hiring stem from the
broadness of the role "engineer", which just ends up causing credentialism and
the metaphorical ghetto-ization wrt talent of parts of the stack, like
frontend.

------
dsfyu404ed
The untrustworthy city slicker stereotype doesn't come from nowhere. Nobody
ever engages with these people except to take their money or tell them they're
backwards hicks and their way of life is somehow wrong/bad (this being an
example of the former).

~~~
redisman
Some do care about people left behind but they usually don't care about a big
social media boost to their ego so you don't really hear about their work

------
RhodesianHunter
I know I'll catch flak for this, but where did this idea that "anyone can
learn to code" come from? Coding requires a certain drive and curiosity,
without delving into the capability side. What makes anyone think that they
can take a bunch of people who never or barely passed highschool and have been
working in a mine for a decade+ and teach them this?

By all means subsidize a laptop and point them at some great online (free)
resources, but beyond that if they won't/can't help themselves...

~~~
chomp
To adapt a quote from one of my favorite movies: "Not everyone can become a
great coder; but a great coder can come from _anywhere_." That's what (in my
opinion) you should take away from "everybody can code."

I think it's obvious that not every single person in the world has the
external characteristics to be a great software developer. But those with
passion and curiosity will be able to make a great career for themselves.

~~~
pmiller2
Why does everybody need to be “great”?

~~~
chomp
Not everyone really needs to be great. The person who learns coding to scratch
an itch like creating a small website for their family business just needs to
know how to put their ideas on a screen.

But these initiatives that try to promise high paying jobs to everyone who
applies, it's just not going to work out for everyone who goes through the
mill. And yeah, I think to have a long career as a software developer, you
need a little more than "meets expectations." You need the drive to improve
and grow after you leave the program and even once you land your job. So, I
think when you get a newbie who has passion, is personable, and who submits
themselves to iterative improvement, I really do think that makes a great
developer.

------
hluska
I’m not shocked by HN’s attitude towards bootcamp grads, but I am very
surprised that so many here are blaming the grads and not the bootcamps
themselves.

Bootcamps use absolutely disgusting marketing techniques to appeal to people
with little ability outside of being able to pay tuition. Their grads are
closer to victims.

~~~
slow_donkey
They absolutely are the victims but it's also a students responsibility to do
due diligence on the bootcamps just like you would (should?) research an
employer before signing the job offer.

~~~
hluska
Let me pull out a quote from the article.

“But Tori and her mother, Stephanie, 45, stayed. Every weekday morning, Tori
would wake up early, her mother would feed the chickens and together they
would head down the serpentine mountain road to Beckley. Nights and weekends
they spent in the glow of their laptops — bought from a website on credit —
learning the rudiments of Ruby, the programming language.”

To steal a shitty term from mainstream media, let’s unpack this. Tori [Frame]
used to be an assistant manager in a Family Dollar location. She decided to
take a bootcamp with her mom so she quit her job. And, the family bought
laptops on credit from a website. I’m pretty sure we can all guess what kind
of website that is.

With all due respect to the Frames, I don’t buy that either of them were
qualified to assess whether the bootcamp was any good. Instead, they sound a
lot like desperate people caught up by predatory marketing.

------
auston
Any ideas on how we (HN) could help these people that dealt with Mined Minds?

Perhaps some free remote tutoring?

Some interview coaching?

Resume review?

A whole lot of bagging on coding boot camps, the founders of Mined Minds &
people looking for an easier life. I’m game to help myself!

If anyone knows those folks & they want some help - I’m happy to connect &
spend time doing any of the above!

~~~
Kalium
It might be worth considering that the underlying question - does this model
even work at the scale it was sold as? - goes unanswered.

With that in mind, it sounds like what might be needed is the education they
were looking for in the first place. Resume review, remote tutoring, and
coaching are great ideas, born of a genuine blossoming of kindness and
compassion. It may be possible that these well-meant ideas could be of perhaps
slightly limited value for people who, based on the contents of the article,
seem to have roughly as much marketable knowledge of Ruby as they did before
they started the program.

~~~
pbourke
The students in the article were taken advantage of. It sounds like nobody
even got the chance to find out whether they would like or succeed at coding.

So many responses in this thread are written from a middle/upper-middle class
context. Folks who had reasonably good schools, access to computers at a young
age, a stable home environment in which to work with them, a culture (parents
and/or peers) that supported them, an expectation and pathway to higher
education at a young age. Maybe not all of those boxes are ticked for every
successful software engineer but I bet a good number of them are.

The people in this article didn’t have as many of these factors. Maybe they
had none of them. That doesn’t mean that they’re dumb, untrainable or not cut
out to be coders. I think what it means is that an appropriate approach to
training needs to be taken.

That approach is probably something akin to a gateway aptitude test to
demonstrate ability and commitment followed by a significant period of
apprenticeship combined with some formal classes at the community college
level.

This is the way that people enter the skilled trades, and also seems similar
to military occupational training. I don’t see why it couldn’t produce
competent entry-level folks who are capable of working on 95% of business
systems/websites/etc at the end of their training.

------
dvtrn
For anyone here, that went through one of these
CodeSchools/Bootcamps/training.jargon[2] courses, I have a question:

At any point in these camps was there a section on interviewing and job
seeking?

I'm asking as both a hiring manager who has seen a very fair share of...sorry,
_BAD_ resumes coming from people who finished a local code school, who
struggled through the interview (only one made it to a technical assessment,
he struggled on the syntax but seemed to grok the concepts. He ultimately did
not get hired)and as a friend of someone who went through a code school and
has absolutely _zero_ interview skills,.

Their resume-upon reading-would have you wondering if they've applied for a
"Junior React Developer" by mistake (restaurants, service industry jobs,
stints at hotels, and at the very bottom: "React Bootcamp, Chicago -
2017-2018"). The generic cover letter this friend had me read jumped from
topic to topic and was at least 5 paragraphs and two pages long, their only
portfolio item was a single page "Hi I'm Bob" they made in the class.

It just makes me wonder what else these schools are doing to help their
students actually succeed.

~~~
barbecue_sauce
I went to a bootcamp. I won't say which one. It was in a major city, and it
was a residential program (anybody who was in the bootcamp but not local lived
together in apartments included in the cost of the program). The program was
structured beginning with a quick review of language basics (you were expected
to know JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to a reasonable degree before the course
began) and layouts, then moved on to Angular (this was a few years ago during
MEAN stack hyper) and its associated patterns and best practices, then Node.js
APIs and Mongo (the program has since shifted to PostgreSQL instead). Along
the way, students were given assignments to augment these areas, such as
reimplementing popular javascript libraries (like Underscore) against a test
suite. The mid-point of the course culminated with presenting a solo project
to the class, which was a good indicator of who was and who wasn't excelling.
By this point, several students had dropped out and returned home or just
stopped attending. After this, students were funneled into groups, with the
higher performing students clustering together. The groups were given
suggestions for projects to work on, typical web applications built on a
combination of your own backend and third-party APIs. My group's project, for
example, was a hybrid mobile budgeting application using Plaid and APN/GCM for
push notifications. We had an exploratory phase where we tested the limits of
the Plaid API (response times, features, webhooks, etc.) and determined user
stories and requirements, then had stand-up meetings every morning and worked
off of wireframes and ERD diagrams that we had designed. We were required to
use git versioning so that we would inevitably experience merge conflicts and
integration issues. There was about a week towards the end of the program that
was focused on practice interviews (though these were admittedly somewhat
half-assed) and resumes, in addition to the daily toy problems. At the end of
the program, recruiters and local businesses were invited to see group and
individual projects at a showcase day and this led to interviews for most of
the students.

A "Hi I'm Bob" page seems like it would not be the product of an actual full-
time bootcamp, but maybe a short part-time bootcamp? Even the relatively lower
achievers were capable of hooking up some sort of front end for a public API
by the mid-point of the course, putting it on github and getting it up on
Heroku.

That said, many of the people I attended with had higher education or
experience. My group was a former QA engineer, a bioengineering bachelor, an
MBA, another biologist, and myself (Masters in Information Systems). By the
end, we were relying more on the members of our group for disbursing useful
information than on the instructional infrastructure of the bootcamp. I think
subsequent jobs came mostly through networking between the groups of whoever
was left by the end rather than the bootcamp itself.

~~~
mrguyorama
>you were expected to know JavaScript, HTML, and CSS to a reasonable degree
before the course began

As a clarification, it seems you did not go to a "Coding" bootcamp, but some
sort of engineering one. They seem to be the exception, rather than the rule

~~~
barbecue_sauce
It was actually billed as a "Web Development" bootcamp.

------
erentz
The “anyone can code” and “just learn to code” phenomena needs to die in a
fire. This reminds me of many other scams in our education system, it’s
disgusting how much money is being leeched out of people on private “schools”.

This “anyone can code” idea is actually an easy thing to test if we were
serious and _honest_ about it. But we are not. And I believe boot camps give a
false sense that more people are successful at it than aren’t. It really seems
boot camps are in reality is a very expensive filtering system to separate
those with some ability to teach themselves coding from those who can’t.

~~~
vsskanth
As a counter-point, I would like to point out India's IT industry.

When the IT outsourcing industry was booming and there was a serious
programmer shortage, outsourcing firms such as Infosys, Cognizant, Tata would
hire college graduates en-masse regardless of major (like, entire batch of
20XX would get a job offer). They would then spend 6 months actually training
them and weeding out poor performers. The ones who get through would be placed
on actual projects for their clients. I do not know if this still happens
today due to the sheer number IT majors on offer in India.

Now you can rightly argue with regards to the overall quality of products they
created and the culture they proliferated but for their clients it appeared to
suffice to achieve their business objectives. Sure most of them won't be FAANG
grade but might be totally adequate for making some CRUD app or maintaining
some system.

IMO, I don't think one needs a four year degree to code, two years at the max
would suffice (obviously not for cutting edge work) . In fact, I would go as
far to say beginners can be trained on a good declarative low-code (not low
code) guardrails-type DSL incorporating best practices to create simple CRUD
or reporting web apps. There have been many attempts but I don't know if this
is solved yet.

~~~
hhjinks
That's not a counterpoint. That essentially corroborates their statement. As
you say, they weeded out the poor performers, and still the worst coders I've
ever met have all been from Indian outsourcing agencies. Granted, I've met
great coders from the same agencies, too, but the fact remains that even when
you weed out the worst offenders, you still get people who should never be
anywhere near production code.

------
jen20
This article seems (at best) poorly researched and one-sided - and it does not
chime even slightly with my experience of this group.

I have personally met several people who have been through Mined Minds
training with no prior coding experience - and those people were the first who
convinced me that development “boot camps” were not a completely lost cause.

------
WoodenChair
Ms. Laucher on Twitter responding to a critique from the article:

"Retraining won't fix it. Give them UBI. Free training programs should only
have viable candidates when it isnt for quick $"

Is the last sentence a little ironic given the article?

Source (perhaps will be deleted):
[https://twitter.com/pandamonial/status/1127627288676270081](https://twitter.com/pandamonial/status/1127627288676270081)

Edit: To be fair, in other comments she claims many of the statements in the
article are false and refused to comment for the article based on legal
advice. I assume there are two sides to this story and the NY Times article
does seem pretty one sided.

------
tyingq
Not terribly surprising that 16 weeks of training doesn't make you ready for a
coding job. The only way I see that working is a pretty aggressive pre-test
that washes out most of the candidates. You'd need some related experience and
programming aptitude for 16 weeks to make you employable.

~~~
DoctorOetker
I totally agree about the 16 weeks = 4 months being insufficient:

I think we can all agree that most of the coal miners went to school in a
different era, and so probably never had much of a high school education, and
even if they did we can all agree that half a career in the coal mines
(combined with the prospect of working there until retirement) would pretty
much obliterate the motivation to keep up your high school knowledge.

So essentially (without pointing fingers) if the goal is to end up with a
programming job, we can say that at entering this course they are pretty much
at the level of midway highschool.

The problem is not re-educating these people to become programmers (which I
believe could work). The problem is the claim it can be done in 4 months
without proof or trials. It's unethical to trial and thus social experiment
this on people who may be giving up their current status and jobs believing it
is already proven.

If the technology was available today to achieve such a feat in 4 months, why
are people going to colleges and universities? Why isn't this already being
done in high schools, so that they can always become a programmer as a backup
job? Because the feat has not been achieved yet.

4 months seems very short, but I do believe such a feat is certainly possible
in a few years. Perhaps even within a year if it's really intensive and
education technology would become so advanced that software recognizes your
mistakes in thinking, can answer why questions, etc...

But that is not today.

This was just a fig leaf proposal to abdicate social responsibility...

~~~
JoelMcCracken
I think people need to realize that these boot camps are a start, not an end.
They give you the minimal viable education to do the job. After that, you need
to keep educating yourself.

~~~
DoctorOetker
I somewhat agree for legitimate boot camps, but breaking promises (of payed
learning, of job guarantees, ...) while syphoning off subsidies doesn't sound
very legitimate.

By the description of the course (google everything yourself), it sounds like
it would have been cheaper to study at home...

------
chillacy
That’s disappointing. I remember I was very supportive of coding as trade
education when I first heard of it but it hasn’t really panned out. I can’t
quite decide if it’s because we’re bad at teaching (the example in the article
seems like an execution failure) or if it’s fundamentally infeasible
(programming is hard and unintuitive for most people).

~~~
tyingq
16 weeks is just unrealistic though. Credible auto mechanic trade schools are
a year or so. And once you graduate, there's plenty of low end work for you to
earn your keep while you continue to skill up.

~~~
shiburizu
This is correct. Actual trade approach to coding basically doesn't exist
because people are sold on learning to code in a couple of months versus year
or two, which I think would easily land people some jobs in web or junior
devs.

------
sheeshkebab
Do these bootcamps ever give programming aptitude tests to people before
accepting them into programs? Or is it all about money grab from grants for
“learn to code” (which it sounds like it is based on this article)

~~~
erentz
A lot of them do. This one seems like an outright scam, but for example well
known boot camps like Lamba School put you through some tutorials and tests
before hand. When you look at these tutorials it really seems to be a filter
for “can you teach yourself coding”. IMO making the bootcamps fairly useless
given the huge amount of online courseware and free tutorials available now.

~~~
sheeshkebab
I guess if lamda school has a consistent track record in the industry &
companies are hiring from them, i could see that being of value to someone
switching careers. (Employers seem to be inept in interviewing for programming
positions - and otherwise - On their own)

~~~
erentz
Yes, I tell people thinking about a boot camp to first try really damn hard to
teach themselves first, then if they still want to, to just use something like
Lambda School as interview preparation and to “credential” yourself.

------
duxup
I went from a different technical career through a coding camp. I loved the
experience.

Having said that I'd say at least half my class was unemployable by the end.
The camp did not filter candidates nearly enough and really hurt the class and
I fear their own financal well being.

I think coding camps could be done right, I just don't know if anyone is
really doing it right...

~~~
ng12
The problem is there's no incentive to fail out a paying customer. And this
isn't isolated to bootcamps -- I've noticed many universities babying CS
majors by dumbing down CS101 and offering enough soft-skill electives that you
can basically get a degree without knowing how to code.

~~~
duxup
Agreed, the incentives are all wrong for camps.

A classmate said "it's a boot camp... people should be kicked out / quit".

But presumably that might mean a partial refund and the camps do not want to
do that.... so they sit in class weeks behind not doing well and dragging the
whole class down with them.

At least in universities you MIGHT fail a class. Not so much in coding camps.
But yeah I've ran into and worked with some CS folks I wondered about... like
dude you should know a lot more than me... you're having trouble logically
doing anything here...

------
lgleason
quelle surprise!

Most of these programs are a joke. I remember when Tech Square Labs in Atlanta
did a program to "help" inner city black kids. I went down to talk to them and
get more information. For one year of this program they were charging the
sponsors $57K. That is more than the tuition at many private schools. But it
gets better. They had The Iron Yard (which is now closed) doing the course
material so I had a chat with the people teaching the courses etc.. It was
very apparent they had no idea what they were doing. The supposedly
"disadvantaged" founders of this did not even understand the kinds of things
they kids in the program actually were going through, such as having a lack of
financial literacy or even a bank account at times. I'm white but live in a
disadvantaged neighborhood and knew this because I don't live in the rich
bubble that these "disadvantaged" founders did.

When the political climate was right they were bilking the tax payers for this
program with funding from the city of Atlanta, the feds etc., but after 2016
the funding went away, as did the founders profits. There have been many
programs like this one in Atlanta and the one for the people in Appalachia.

I'm all for bringing people who do have the aptitude to the industry. That
said, not everybody has the aptitude to be a developer, in the same way that
not everybody has the aptitude to be a prize winning author, language guru,
doctor, top athlete etc.. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. The coding
bootcamp industrial complex appears to be a movement of grifters from a non
tech background trying to make a quick buck and flood the market with cheap
labor. In the end most of the students were poorer than they would have been
in an accredited program, without training that would actually get them a job
and as an industry we've had to deal with the fallout from it.

I'm saying all of this as someone who actively supports one of these, but the
one I support is run by computer science majors, who grew up poor, have made
enormous personal sacrifices to run the program and targets people who truly
have no option to go to the university and do it for far less than what the
grifter orgs were doing it for.

Truth be told, "learn to code" is not the way to economic prosperity. Paying
livable wages for things is, irregardless of the country etc..

------
mathattack
Looks like the allegations of fraud were in the air in 2017 before WV started.

[https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2017/12/21/miners-sue-
mined-...](https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2017/12/21/miners-sue-mined-minds-
program/)

------
cavisne
The issues with these bootcamps are

1) Developers tend to sneer at this model, because they learnt themselves
online (and dont think sitting in an intensive bootcamp would help) or went to
a university for multiple years. This means these bootcamps are often run by
people on the fringes of tech, recruiters or in this case "consultants"

2) There is no reason for a developer to teach these bootcamps, they pay less
than an equivalent job and most firms would look at experience teaching at one
of these bootcamps as a red flag (because most of the teachers are students
who couldn't get jobs). University is different here, as your research can be
viewed valuably by tech companies, even if while at the university you earn
less money, and there are other quality of life benefits

3) Once they get in most students get the impression (even subconsciously)
that they've been scammed. Thats mostly for above reasons (founders and
teachers who don't have tech experience), combined with a hard sell getting
them into it. This gives graduates intense imposter syndrome. Even worse they
follow the lead of people who run the boot camp and "fake it till they make
it", mainly because these bootcamps offer them TA jobs to juice their stats
and incentivizing them to say nice things about the bootcamp.

The combination of these factors means you get graduates who have been taught
by people without experience, with a bunch of baggage that makes them worse
developers, afraid to ask questions for fear of being seen as an imposter,
exaggerating any real projects/experience they've worked on, resistant to
learning anything new because they've only been taught specific frameworks
with no theory.

------
asveikau
> When word spread of a trip by the Mined Minds leadership to a tech
> conference in Lithuania in November, she saw an opportunity.

I am partly of Lithuanian descent. With respect, I don't understand why
someone in the US would think to attend a tech conference in Lithuania, when
there is a much larger tech industry closer to home.

~~~
jen20
Have you looked at the line ups of Build Stuff in Vilnius? It has many of the
same speakers as QCon, historically at a fraction of the price, and attendees
from across Western Europe and the US.

I have priced it out several years running, and with flights from major US
cities or (especially) Europe, a hotel and expenses it is substantially
cheaper than attending a US conference in the same tier.

Disclaimer: I have worked on the CFP for that conference several times over
there last few years, but have no financial interest in the conference.

~~~
jen20
Also since this came up out-of-band (ugh) and apparently is not the norm for
US conferences: Build Stuff pays full travel expenses for all speakers,
whether they come from Kaunas or San Francisco.

------
whack
I understand that building a startup is hard. I've often heard founders being
advised to "overpromise" and operate in a "reality distortion field" in order
to get the ball rolling. That all works out great when things eventually go
well. But sometimes, there's a lot more at stake than simply investor money.

This article does a great job of showing the human carnage that happens when
founders overpromise jobs and riches that fail to materialize. Please keep
that in mind the next time you are pitching your startup's mission to change
the world.

------
peter303
In the mid 20th century coding was seen as a trade school skill. Perhaps boot
camps are another version of this.

When I attended MIT in the 1970s there was no pure computer science major even
though competitor schools had such. The faculty said it was a skill most of
the students picked up in high school. In 1980 MIT made computer science a co-
major with electrical engineering. And finally last year an independent
school.

~~~
redisman
My highest level of education is trade school (electronics). Trade school
doesn't take 4 months, it's usually 2-3 years with multiple internships and
apprenticeships.

------
gyc
Don't they have community colleges with programming courses in Appalachia? I
remember years ago I took a single 3-month long summer class at a local
community college that taught C, basic data structures, and basic algorithms.
Based on what I learned in that class I was able to actually pass tech white
boarding interviews and get a summer internship at a local tech company.

------
mynameishere
They just hint at it, but the solution to the problem is already there for
such people. Keep your job, go to a community college, and if you have the
aptitude and build up the credits, transfer to WVU (or whatever) for the
completion. Even failing that last part, an associates degree is still better
than a phony cert.

------
zeade
The HTML on minedminds.org is pretty sad for being a coding bootcamp site.
Ignoring the basic badness of it looking like the output of Google+Stack
Exchange copy-paste, it's not even valid (multiple head tags, div sitting
outside of body/html tags, etc).

------
thwg
Programming is not for everyone. Teaching programming is no easy task either.
In the end, one of them, even if only one, got a real software job. This is
enough to say this program is _not_ a failure.

------
cr4ig_
Hey, it served it's purpose -- as a shiny prop for whatever political
candidate championed it to come and spout some pretty words and get a nice
photo op.

------
torgian
I still see myself as a junior dev since I am still self-teaching a lot of
stuff. While running my own business, working on projects with my customer.

I’m not a good dev. But I am good at working with others and getting stuff
done. So, there’s that going for me I guess.

I probably wouldn’t be employable if I had to go through coding tests. But I
can fix problems since I study and research a lot.

------
i_am_proteus
> She doesn’t know the motives of the people at Mined Minds, she said, whether
> they had bad intentions or were just “incredibly sloppy” with good ones.

Is there a term for this kind of hustle? Raising money from unsavvy investors
for a technically-complicated effort, then "failing" in a way that isn't
obviously fraudulent.

~~~
mcguire
A "start-up". :-)

------
burfog
What we need is a relatively standardized degree that is like a Bachelor's
minus the Associates. That is, we don't need the two years of useless filler
classes. Taking two years (4% of career time, more of lifetime earnings) for
that gunk is a huge opportunity cost.

I'm still waiting for my employer to ask me to do a Marxist literary criticism
of a poem. When that day comes, I'm prepared!

These coding boot camps could have been what we need, but they are far too
short and not at all standardized. I doubt the students ever write a boot
loader, compiler, or kernel. I doubt the students do much analysis of
algorithms or even know what a Turing machine is.

The same applies to non-coding careers that involve college degrees. We don't
want surgeons with only a 14-week surgery boot camp, but cutting two years off
of the lengthy education would increase the supply of doctors and reduce the
cost (including opportunity cost) of their education. It's better than adding
two years to every career.

------
shiburizu
I find it very important to analyze cases like these when CEOs sound off about
how you shouldn't need a degree to work in the industry. These code camps have
no credibility.

~~~
snazz
I’ve seen many super-talented self-taught programmers who never received any
formal education, and I’ve seen college graduates who can’t get FizzBuzz
working. Of course the code camps are scams, but a degree isn’t much better
for many people who have very little internal motivation to learn.

~~~
learc83
People regularly say this. But there is no way you made it through my program
without literally paying someone else to do your entire degree without being
able to code FizzBuzz. And I went to a no-name state school.

I don't doubt that you've seen it, but my guess as that it either was someone
from a very poor program, their degree was long time ago and they haven't been
doing actual programming since then, or they just get nervous in interviews.

Degrees aren't equal and you should definitely at least look through the
curriculum if you aren't familiar with the program when evaluating a
candidate.

I've noticed several times that a candidate will have a degree from a
department of Computer Science and Computer Information Systems. And everyone
will assume their degree is CS, but if you look through their transcript it's
clear they concentrated in IT/sysadmin stuff.

Also, in general, their is a _huge_ difference between someone who took the
easiest classes and barely passed and someone who has a 3.0+ with challenging
coursework. Look at transcripts.

~~~
johnsimer
I know a few current students who are about to graduate from a top 25 CS
school, who struggle writing simple standalone methods (of analogous
complexity to FizzBuzz). I personally just think these students "just don't
get it"([https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-
java...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-
javaschools-2/)). The ones I am talking about in particular are barely
squeaking by, but still passing and graduating (without job offers) along
classmates who are receiving $150k+ offers from FAANG

If you get enough easy teachers that give partial credit, or that have enough
memorization based questions on their tests, and do well in the courses that
don't really require deep understanding, it appears that you CAN squeak
through and get a degree without really understanding programming.

Albeit, I know plenty of people who "just didn't get it" who did fail out of
the CS program at this university, but some of these people do squeeze
through.

And then because the 10-20% of graduates from top 25 CS schools who can't
really program send in 90%+ of the job applications, you'll get a lot of
interviewers saying "So many people with seemingly-good degrees can't even
code".

~~~
learc83
I can see that explanation. Particularly with respect to those candidate's
overrepresentation. I think that looking through their transcripts would
generally reveal those people pretty easily though.

Also at some top tier schools it's actually relatively harder to completely
flunk out, so that might have something to do with it.

------
TheLuddite
Coding jobs in Appalachia...wow I've heard it all.

The people living in these places are still semi-barbaric, they need a long
civilizing process before they can cut it in the modern world, 2 months long
boot-camps is definitely not going to do this. It's a process that should
start from childbirth.

~~~
murphy214
[https://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Pe...](https://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/People-
are-pooping-more-than-ever-on-the-streets-13778680.php)

