
Google Launches a Developer Boot Camp, Promising Jobs for Graduates - bko
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-22/google-launches-a-developer-boot-camp-promising-jobs-for-graduates
======
bphogan
_edits to correct typos made on my phone._

I am skeptical of developer bootcamps because they often aren't open
enrollment. You generally have to have the aptitude and background to get
through their admissions process and interview. That weeds out some people
right away.

They are right to have this admissions process, because if you let everyone
in, lots of people won't make it, and then the promise of good paying jobs is
much more hard to advertise.

Let's not forget that it does favor a certain type of people over others;
namely people who have grown up in an environment that teaches them how to
learn. Most people on HN know how to learn on their own and see value in
bootcamps because they feel that candidates from bootcamps can learn the
material easily.

But folks, that's not everyone.

A lot of people don't like school. They aren't good at it, or they had bad
experiences, etc. And a lot of people transitioning into software development
have been trained for many years to do what they were told, so they have to
develop those critical thinking skills.

I think these people have a harder time making it through the application
processes for some of these camps. And that's a shame.

I would be 100% behind an immersive bootcamp experience that had an open
enrollment process. I work at a school that has that right now, and we do have
lots of people who don't make it very far. But we have many more that go from
minimum wage to doing very, very well for themselves and their families.

If I had those students for 12 weeks straight where they could learn and apply
through immersion, oh man, the things we could do together!

~~~
tdaltonc
> open enrollment

Do you mean that the program should be made available to anyone who wants to
take it? What if there just isn't enough capacity to take that many people?

~~~
learc83
The usual solution is to raise prices until demand dies down to a level you
can handle.

~~~
bphogan
It's not entirely effective if you can get grants and loans to pay for it
though.

------
redbluff
My first impulse is like a lot of people to be fairly skeptical. Then I cast
my memories back to when I started, and this is how a lot of big companies got
their developers.

You took the IBM Data Processing aptitude test and if you did OK, the company
inducted you into a trainee programmer role and you were sent on a course and
got your PL/I book. You then spent 6 months working with the senior programmer
gaining experience and making small patches and then eventually moved into a
journeyman status. Basically it was an apprenticeship for coders.

Some stayed at that level, some quit, others would then do a combined CS with
Computer Systems Engineering degree and get honours :-). The point is that it
gave people a look in at the ground floor - people who gained value for their
company who never would have had the chance in a world where the only way to
open the door is a degree.

So despite my initial skepticism, I think there can be a place for things like
this. In the end it depends how it is used. If it is to get people to pay
money for a worthless course, then that is not great. However, if people can
get placements as part of the gig, and they are treated effectively as
apprentices, then it opens doors to a little more diverse crew than we are
getting at the moment, and that's a good thing.

~~~
kotojo
I actually just went through General Assembly's Web Development Immersive
course and finished in July. I'm in a similar situation to that. I learned
HTML/CSS/JS, then ruby on rails and MEAN stack.

After I finished I was at the point to know enough to know I don't really know
much of anything, and got hired into an apprenticeship program a local company
was running, even though the majority of the stack I learned at GA isn't even
used. He hired me with the knowledge that I am teachable and willing to learn.

Everyone but one person from our cohort now also has a development job.
General Assembly at least does a ton to make sure you are prepared to fight
your way into the job market. The only thing I am worried about is what the
market will look like for people coming from bootcamps 5 to 10 years down the
line. Is this going to start to bring out the people opening ma and pops
bootcamp to get a quick buck?

~~~
almostApatriot1
Funny, every GA grad says this on Reddit/HN, yet the ones I've talked to claim
otherwise, and GA still has yet to release any sort of Employment Statistics.
You'd think they'd use some of that 70 million to publish some official stats
before starting up all these new expensive courses...

~~~
kotojo
I will say I have helped ta at General Assembly after I finished, and there is
a reason you don't see those stats, they don't have them. My individual campus
has them now, and the outcomes people kind of had their own list, but there is
no one major list in GA for that info.

Also you will hear wildly different GA experiences because every campus
tackles the curriculum differently. Mine went JS prework, first 3 weeks of
HTML/CSS/JS, next 3 Ruby/Rails, next 3 full MEAN stack, next 3 either random
lessons about things like web sockets, comp sci topics, or any other thing the
instructors found important. I talked to a LA grad though, and it was
completely different. They had Ruby prework, and then day one started learning
about Angular.

It's really all about the campus. If you want to go to GA, find out about that
campus, not GA in general.

------
laveur
I am skeptical of "Developer Boot Camps". I think they over promise people
that they will be skilled developers when they are done. If you go in with a
degree in Computer Science or something that teaches you how to program
properly sure you will probably be able to get a job. But the idea to take
someone that has never been a programmer and make them suitable for a job is
laughable to me. It does a disservice to everyone. And to me are just a scam.

~~~
segmondy
Stop it. I think it's really an uncomfortable feeling for plenty of us that
someone can learn to program in a few months. It makes plenty of people in the
industry free inadequate and I see this argument of yours repeated over and
over. It doesn't stand.

A developer and a computer scientist are two different things.

There are awesome developers who are terrible computer scientists. They can
build a great website/small web application in RoR or Django, fast and get the
job done. The site will never scale tho.

There are awesome computer scientists who can't build a great web app but can
scale the hell out of it.

Most companies want developers, not computer scientist. You might get asked
all sorts of questions about algorithms ^& data structures, but in reality day
to day problem is CRUD.

Now, I would imagine Google would want more of those CS types than developer
types...

~~~
manish_gill
> A developer and a computer scientist are two different things.

No, they are not. A good developer is someone who, by virtue of the fact that
he or she has to write software whose theoretical underpinnings are rooted in
CS, must be good in CS as well. It's ok if you're not a CS person, but stop
generalising and saying no dev has to be.

> There are awesome developers who are terrible computer scientists. They can
> build a great website/small web application in RoR or Django, fast and get
> the job done. The site will never scale tho.

No. These are people who are good at gluing together a framework. If that's
your definition of a developer, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but you are
mistaken. Web development is not the be-all/end-all of Software development.

Scalability is a very very specific topic, but it's not the only one. CS
includes a vast number of things.

Good developers write things like compilers, infrastructure tools, operating
systems, libraries, the _frameworks_ that you so like to use - someone wrote
them, and chances are, they knew their CS. Video Games - try writing one
without knowing much about Linear Algebra. See how far you get.

> Most companies want developers, not computer scientist. You might get asked
> all sorts of questions about algorithms ^& data structures, but in reality
> day to day problem is CRUD.

Partly agreed here. The thing is - as the CRUD things become more and more
common, everyone wants in on the next stuff - Analytics, Data Science, Machine
Learning! Who is going to provide that for the companies? The guy who did dev
bootcamp or the guy with a CS degree under his belt who says he can learn it?
Who are you going to hire?

~~~
whiteboarder
My definition of a "software engineer" is someone who gets paid 6 figures for
writing code, any code.

And it just so happens there there are quite of lot of 6 figure jobs that
solely involve building crud apps by gluing together frameworks.

You can shit it on all you want, and talk about how "us real computer
scientists are solving the Hard Problems by building compilers and OSs".

But at the end of the day, the person going to the bootcamp doesn't care about
this opinion. All they care about is that they were able to spend 3 months of
there time in order to double or triple their salary.

And the only other price they have to pay is having to put up with people like
you shitting on them for not working on Hard Problems. And to me, that seems
like a very small price to pay.

~~~
bko
Parent's argument reminds me of a No True Scotsman fallacy.

Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

Person B: "But my uncle Angus likes sugar with his porridge."

Person A: "Ah yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

I feel the much of the negativity towards bootcamps is partially due to people
feeling threatened by new entrants. Kind of like black cars in London claiming
that to be a cab driver you'd have to know the streets by memory, while in
most cases GPS would be good enough. To me, it seems like a lot of bootcamps
get you to good enough. That doesn't take away from all the years of
investment and learning that other developers might have gone through to get
where they are. There's room for both.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman)

~~~
manish_gill
Would you be willing to extend the same logic to the medical profession? What
about law? Or perhaps architecture? Would you let a 12 week bootcamp graduate
design your home? Or really, any other type of engineer. After all, the
argument about "theory" differing from "real world practice" and becoming
"good enough" can be made for those as well. You don't need to know about how
germs work in order to treat a cold. You just need to know which medicine to
prescribe.

The only difference between the above mentioned professions and Software
Engineering is that there is no formal "examination" that you have to pass to
demonstrate your qualification - which is the barrier that is there to ensure
quality students. It comes down to qualification. Unlike doctors and lawyers,
the barrier to entry in our industry is much, much low. Which most assuredly
leads to a decline in quality.

So yeah, thanks for the passive aggressive attacks about me feeling
threatened, but no. I've never seen a 6-figure salary, I don't live in US/Bay
Area. I just like quality code and working with quality people. Bootcamp devs
aren't those. Can they be? Sure, but as some graduates in this thread
themselves admitted, it took them 2-3 years to reach that position anyway.

~~~
bko
> Medical

Yes. There is plenty of work that can be done by a nurse that doesn't need to
be done by a doctor. It seems silly that someone gets sent to school for over
a decade to talk to me about whether I can take a drug to bring back the spark
in my relationship.

> Law

Yes. There are plenty of routine legal procedures that should be allowed to be
performed by someone that doesn't have to go through the costly process of
going through law school (routine divorce comes to mind)

> Architecture

Don't know much about architecture :-/

Didn't mean to be passive aggressive. So for that I apologize.

~~~
sanderjd
Becoming a nurse or paralegal requires far more certification than software
development. It's actually quite amazing how much of an outlier software is in
the realm of professional qualification.

Accounting is perhaps a more interesting corollary because it doesn't have the
built-in awe and long history of respect as the medical and legal professions:
perhaps we should have 12-week tax accounting bootcamps! I'm being a bit
tongue-in-cheek, but there are real benefits on both sides of this argument:
there are real quality of work and quality of employment (salary, respect,
etc.) advantages to professional certification enforcement, but it is
difficult to imagine the pace at which the technology sector is growing if
employment were controlled by certification.

~~~
blumkvist
Nobody stops you to do your own book keeping or management
accounting/budgeting.

~~~
sanderjd
Sure, but there are plenty of accounting tasks that you _do_ need to be
certified to be allowed do. Is there an analogue to that for software (in the
US)?

~~~
blumkvist
Certification, no. Practicalities - yes.

------
itslennysfault
To all the skeptics...

I spent a year teaching the web development immersive program at General
Assembly. I felt skeptical about the program too, but I always wanted to try
teaching so I thought it was worth a go.

by the way, I'd recommend it to anyone. It's a great way to take a break from
dev work and teach the next generation of developers. It is extremely
rewarding to watch people go from next to zero knowledge to being able to
build functional apps, and they are always looking for new instructors.

So, does it work?

 _Admissions_ \- We did have a fairly high admissions bar (as to not waste
anyones time or money), but the bar was really about motivation and ability to
learn the basics (they have to do some basic html / css). The program is VERY
fast and demanding and people need to be able to do nothing but code for 3
months. Their personal life gets put on hold and they live, breath, and eat
code.

 _Completion_ \- Every class I taught had exactly one student drop toward the
beginning, but outside of that everyone that started the program made it
through (thanks in part to the admissions process).

 _Outcome_ \- Every student that finished the program and actively tried to
find work got a job. Each class (of 20+ people) had a couple people that
decided to do something else with their lives, but everyone that decided they
wanted a job in development got one.

I can't speak for all "boot camp" programs, but I can say that the program
that I taught was very effective and IMO people got a great return on their
investment.

These views are my own and don't reflect the views of General Assembly or
Google, blah, blah, etc..

(edits to fix typos and some re-organization)

~~~
cfreeman
Which GA did you work at? I have a friend that went to the one in Santa Monica
and had a bad experience. Of course, he did eventually get a job as a
developer afterwards so I guess it could've been worse. I went to a bootcamp
recently and when I was picking my school I remember the reviews for GA
varying a lot from location to location.

~~~
itslennysfault
I taught in Seattle. I actually read a bunch of reviews before applying and
noticed the same trend. I think the quality of the actual instructors plays a
huge role which reflects on each markets ability to hire top talent with
adequate industry experience. I've met Instructors from all over and from what
I can tell it seems like GA generally does a great job at hiring, but being in
14 different cities there is bound to be some variance.

My advice to anyone considering any immersive program would be to meet/vet the
actual instructor(s) teaching your particular cohort.

------
tcdent
This is a course on developing Android apps, not for preparing you to work at
Google, which most of the discussion here seems to miss.

Students should most definitely be able to write a decent app after a class
like this. Interface and backend communication aren't that hard, nor to they
require an engineering background. Engineering problems, UX design, etc. are
all likely beyond scope.

It's important to identify where on 'the scale' this lies: Google creates
advanced tools that allow people to develop products using simpler concepts.
This program targets the latter audience, which is a sensible business
decision.

------
qntty
_Tuition for the 12-week course in Android development, which was designed by
Google 's developer training team, is $13,500._

 _The full-time course will be offered in early 2016 at General Assembly 's
flagship offices in New York and San Francisco and then spread to its 14
locations around the world._

~~~
Hortinstein
meanwhile I am paying ~$8,000 for a full computer science masters from GA Tech
(OMSCS). Different class of education, but I feel like I am getting a better
deal.

~~~
el_benhameen
Slightly off-topic, but do most members of your cohort have academic
backgrounds in CS? I'm interested in the program, but have a non-CS bachelor's
plus work experience in development, and I'm not sure if it's worth my time to
apply.

~~~
Hortinstein
I have heard of people from all backgrounds getting into the program.

Totally worth your time. Many questions like this on
[https://www.reddit.com/r/omscs](https://www.reddit.com/r/omscs) .

------
_lex
One of the most basic rules of doing extraordinarily well in business -
Commoditize your complements. Google's hope here is to drive the cost of
android developers down, while driving the number of android devs up.

------
notsony
What does Google do with developers who are 40 or 50?

What does age diversity look like at Google for engineering staff?

Sooner or later this issue is going to come to a head when all the
20-30-something year old Javascript hackers grow older...

~~~
skizm
I interviewed at Google. Didn't get the gig, but while I was in the office, it
did seem like their engineers were mostly 30+ somethings. I didn't see a lot
engineers there that looked like fresh grads. I know more than half the
engineers working there interview two or more times before getting an offer.

Google, and most larger tech companies, optimize their hiring process to
aggressively deny candidates if they aren't a slam dunk. The negatives that
come from hiring a bad engineer far outweigh the positives that come from
hiring a good engineer.

Not saying there isn't an age bias, just not an obvious one I noticed.

~~~
walshemj
Why is that is there any verifiable statistics to back this up?

There is very little statutory protection for employees in the USA so the
actual cost of firing some one isn't that high.

~~~
cbr
> the actual cost of firing some one isn't that high

The legal cost is low, but the social cost of a workplace where people often
get fired is high.

~~~
walshemj
What in America sorry I am ROTFL here! didn't seem to stop jack Dorsey making
a lot of people redundant or MS using stack ranking to fire the lowest 10%

------
eshem
Seems more like General Assembly is launching a bootcamp with the guidance of
Google.

~~~
archmikhail
Yea but that title wouldn't get as many clicks.

------
roymurdock
Can anyone in the app development world speak to whether or not there actually
is a shortage of Android devs?

Or is Google just trying to spark innovation by getting more engineers into
the Android ecosystem?

~~~
potatolicious
Have been building mobile apps for a living for a few years - which I suppose
makes me a vet in a relatively new field, so maybe I can shed some light:

Demand for mobile developers in general is off the charts, and still climbing.
It's kind of absurd, really - the going rate for mobile devs has increased
200-300% over the past 3 years amongst colleagues I know, which I think is
almost entirely attributable to the demand growth in this sector and the
relatively slow growth of the talent pool.

Looking at Android vs. iOS devs, both are in high demand but Android
especially so. Overall _demand_ for Android doesn't feel particularly
pronounced, but the talent pool of experienced, competent Android devs is
dramatically smaller than the counterpart in iOS-land.

The key here is experienced, competent devs. We've interviewed a lot of Java
people with minimal Android experience trying to make the leap over - it
rarely goes well. Mobile development is substantially more complex than "knows
Java and can work Android Studio".

There are a few posts replying to yours that I want to respond to, but I'll
just do it in one shot instead of littering a bunch of replies everywhere:

RE: simply hiring experienced Java devs. This doesn't usually work - good
mobile devs are also at least partially UX people - we spend a _lot_ of time
knee-deep in UI, and consumer expectations for the fit and finish of apps are
high. Someone who has completed the "Hello World" equivalent of Android
learning has done exactly that - finished "Hello World". It in no way implies
the ability to build apps that aren't an embarrassment to the Play Store.
There is a _vast_ amount of domain knowledge here, and the gap between an app
built by someone who merely knows the API vs. someone who knows _mobile apps_
is pretty darned wide.

RE: iOS gaining a larger share of revenue. This is true, but relatively
inconsequential to most mobile devs. Outside of gaming the number of
businesses directly monetizing apps is dropping. The bulk of attention for
non-game apps go towards service-oriented apps (see: Uber, AirBnb, Facebook)
for whom "app store revenue" is a nonsensical concept. There is _lots, and_
lots* of work for companies that don't rely on direct monetization (i.e., app
sales and in-app purchases) to live (and increasingly so).

RE: the market balancing itself according to supply/demand. Yes, this is
happening, but it's happening more slowly than the demand is rising, so
overall wages are still rising. Much of this is because it's non-trivial to
learn the domain knowledge necessary to really do this _well_ , and consumer
expectations on app quality is high enough that (to be charitable) the value
of beginner-level devs vs. experienced devs is non-linear.

~~~
tayo42
RE: simply hiring experienced Java devs. This doesn't usually work - good
mobile devs are also at least partially UX people - we spend a lot of time
knee-deep in UI, and consumer expectations for the fit and finish of apps are
high. Someone who has completed the "Hello World" equivalent of Android
learning has done exactly that - finished "Hello World". It in no way implies
the ability to build apps that aren't an embarrassment to the Play Store.
There is a vast amount of domain knowledge here, and the gap between an app
built by someone who merely knows the API vs. someone who knows mobile apps is
pretty darned wide.

Why not hire and expect that people need to be trained and train them? There's
a catch 22 situation here. Do most tasks really require amazing android
specialized developers? Cant some decent developers get by with some guidance?

------
my9cents
This is great. There are several such bootcamps around, some of which have had
great success with getting people set up in Jr. Positions. With a big Corp
like Google behind the idea, it certainly sets a precedence -- and in a way,
some leverage for people interested in the idea.

Personally I'm currently 20 years old, and I'm studying and working at the
moment. I intend to self-learn, to enable to to get a Jr dev position as well.
Even with a 20% chance of success, the risk is worth it considering the off-
trade of debt and 3 years for a bachelor.

Does anyone have any input on whether it's viable or not? What would you
require from someone self taught, to hire them?

------
pjmlp
But will they learn how to invert a tree on the whiteboard?

------
Dwolb
I'm missing something here. What is tying Karma and Vice Media to General
Assembly to Google?

Here's my logic: Too few developers are developing on Android as there are few
profits to be had. As a result, the Android eco-system is not sufficiently
valuable to customers willing to pay for apps. To break this cycle, Android
wishes to attack the supply issue and raise the value of the platform via
working with groups to train more Android developers. Google is partnering
with General Assembly on this initiative because of their experience running
bootcamps. Karma and Vice are willing to hire every programmer because they're
short on developers?

This is where I'm tripped up. Can Karma and Vice not find a sufficient number
of Android developers? Or are they unwilling to pay enough to compete for
talent? Are developers lured into GA's pipeline to find higher paying jobs? Is
the $13.5k tuition not subsidized by Google or Karma and Vice to filter for
'serious' developers?

------
gotchange
I am skeptical too of their claim that graduates will be valuable and
employment ready as soon as they finish this program.

Maybe this is true for the best of class but for the rest, I don't think so.

The best that they could achieve is that a company would present those
exceptional graduates with an apprenticeship offer under a probationary
period, roughly 6 months or longer, but with a fast-track path to full
employment based on on-the-job performance, but to promise someone that, to
the effect, that once you immerse yourself for 12 weeks in our boot camp and
then make it and graduate successfully, your productivity will match that of
other professional developers who are more experienced or knowledgeable in the
field is overly unrealistic and misleading.

------
ljk
Isn't it more important to focus on the concepts like discrete math, data
structures/algorithm, OS, etc? Is it really beneficial for there to be a
surplus of programmers who only learned how to use libraries?

~~~
random_rr
There are engineers that work on the highest level of machinery - NASA, F1,
robotics, etc - and there are mechanics who maintain and service the vast
fleet of personal automobiles in the world. The Jiffy Lube mechanics may not
be able to map out the physics of combustion and motion, but they can fix your
broken suspension arm. An advanced degree is not necessary for all forms of
trade.

~~~
walshemj
A lot of F1 guys will have BSc's - there is even a University in the UK that
runs Degree programs for the f1 market

------
bcx
I feel like a better title for this article on HN would be "General Assembly
partners with Google to create bootcamp for Android Developers"

The current title implies two things: 1) That Google is creating this bootcamp
on it's own 2) Google is hiring the developers

As written it's pretty linkbaity.

I am not even sure if they are promising jobs in any literal sense "General
Assembly has said in a statement that it will connect developers who finish
the course with jobs in its hiring network".

To be clear I am a big fan of GA and bootcamps in general, I just feel that
the title of this article is misleading.

------
mushroomfractal
I've been looking at different boot camps and it's a bit interesting to me
that even though afaik bootcamps are unregulated, they all seem to cost ~15k
with 12-week courses. Do anyone know it's that the case? I'd expect more
diversity in a nascent sector.

Btw, I'm an electrical engineer and I want to move to web development, do you
guys have any tips on what would be the best bootcamp?

~~~
dreaminvm
I am self taught but I've interviewed a few bootcampers from SF bootcamps that
knew nothing aside from boilerplate Ruby code.

If I were you I'd save the 5 figure fees and go through the python
(learnpythonthehardway.org) and Django
(learnpythonthehardway.org/book/next.html) tutorials.

------
xacaxulu
Every time I see a new Hacker School or something, I make a note of the
technology they are teaching (Rails / Android) and slowly walk the other way,
technologically speaking. I get the impression that companies are really tired
of paying solid 6 figure salaries to devs. For now I'll just keep on focusing
on newer, harder more niche things to stay in high demand.

------
yeukhon
FYI, there is a 12-month engagement with Google similar to the idea of boot
camp, in which you will work for Google and get paid, and possibly getting a
full time offer afterward.

------
lizmrush
So Google gets diversity points for helping non-traditional students access
the technology (thought they still pay 13k for it themselves) but will hold no
liability if they don't succeed? Cheaper PR than an actual training program, I
suppose.

------
code_monster
So the amount of the existing developers are not enough!!

~~~
bdcravens
No, the existing set of developers, with a specific set of skills, that are
willing to work for junior level pay, is not enough for Google.

