
As Tech Booms, Workers Turn to Coding for Career Change - samsgro
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/technology/code-academy-as-career-game-changer.html
======
seibelj
We made a conscious decision to try and hire someone from these camps as an
experiment. I went to their demo day and winnowed the graduating class of 40
down to 6. Of the 6 we interviewed we decided to give 6 month internships to 3
of them, 2 developer and 1 qa. Despite being hourly with minimal benefits,
they were making the yearly equivalent of 50k a year which I found more than
reasonable given the fact they had no coding experience other than 12 weeks of
study.

On the first day, the woman who was QA quit because she wanted to do
development, despite being explicitly hired as a QA.

2 months later I had to let one of the developers go because she produced very
little and was surfing YouTube for much of the day.

The last developer I did not opt to hire at the end of his internship. He was
a smart guy, but he needed years more experience to operate at the level of
our other engineers and he was demanding a 75k salary.

I used the 75k he wanted and hired a competent developer with a CS degree and
a couple years experience. He is orders of magnitude better than the boot camp
guy was.

It is possible that a boot camp graduate could be useful after several years'
experience, but fresh out of school they are extremely raw and need years of
training. Therefore I won't be hiring any fresh graduates again.

~~~
ennuihenry
What area are you in? 75k in NY or SF for an inexperienced developer seems
high.

~~~
cairo140
Just sharing my experience here: I've been hiring in SF and found some boot
camp grads, usually stronger but still far from mid-career, with expectations
around 90-115k. Most of these folks got hired (some of them to us/away from us
with offers all in that range).

These were folks who were months to years away from hitting the ground
running, and the value of the offer was entirely on their future potential. I
found great difficulty finding a mid-career developer for the 130-150k range
that it started making an "investment hire" feel like a viable alternative.

~~~
winter_blue
> I found great difficulty finding a mid-career developer for the 130-150k
> range that it started making an "investment hire" feel like a viable
> alternative.

Wow, are talented developer really _that hard_ to find? (Especially,
considering you're offering 130-150k.)

Are you insistent on a developer being "mid-career" (I interpret that as
having "years of experience") -- or would you accept a highly talented who has
just begun career (e.g. a recent CS grad)?

~~~
cairo140
I felt similarly incredulous when we first started searching. I'll add some
details for color.

Our hiring needs didn't feel too crazy to me. We were a multi-million dollar a
year e-commerce shop, I was the first in-house technical hire, and we wanted
to expand the team for personnel redundancy.

Ideally, we wanted someone who would be capable of running a business-critical
website. On the technical side, I was hoping for a full stack of skills (top
to bottom web app security, server ops, managing technical vendor
relationships and integrating third-party modules, zero downtime rollouts,
performance and architecture, metrics/instrumentation, and fully-independent
backend and HTML/CSS/JS skills to build a secure and pixel-perfect feature
beginning to end). Plus, we wanted an early technical hire to be able to work
the indirectly technical parts, including technical hiring, capacity planning,
and expectations management.

None of this felt to me like we were asking for something crazy unreasonable,
but you don't learn a good enough coverage of this to independently steer a
ship of this scale until a few years on the job. You can learn bits and pieces
on the fly with the documentation around, but it's both risky and slow. Given
the hiring climate, it was a risk we ending up being comfortable taking, but
it fell short of what would be ideal.

In response to some remarks about adjusting our expectations (remote work,
higher salary), our particular situation was not doable for remote---there was
zero 100% remote staff among 30+ FTEs and none of our workflow was set up for
it---although I wish I had influenced the organization of work in more
formative stages of the company to optimize more for remote given the
personnel advantages. Regarding salary, it's very hard to increase salary past
$150k+ because I found it very hard to publicize it in a way that meaningfully
increased the quality of candidates we found entering our funnel. I wish there
were a job site for "will pay very well above market for strong candidates".

~~~
PopeOfNope
Just out of curiosity, What's your hiring process look like?

 _We were a multi-million dollar a year e-commerce shop_

 _top to bottom web app security, server ops, managing technical vendor
relationships and integrating third-party modules, zero downtime rollouts,
performance and architecture, metrics /instrumentation, and fully-independent
backend and HTML/CSS/JS skills to build a secure and pixel-perfect feature
beginning to end_

Even at a lower end startup not making multimillion dollars, you've just
described 4-6 engineer's worth of talents for 1.5x of a single developer's
salary. I look at that list and think I'm never going to get a decent night's
sleep while in your employ.

~~~
cairo140
We gave candidates an option of a take-home screen (build a web app that
consumes our single-endpoint JSON/XML API and renders content) or a live
coding exercise (implement a least-recently-used key value cache to store 100
entries). Folks who could basically code did a 3/4 day onsite that included a
code review of their interview project or an applied exercise if they did the
live coding. Offer out within 24 hours after the onsite. Any recommendations
to improve that process would be much appreciated.

Thanks for the feedback about the 4-6 engineer's worth of talents. It's good
to know, and we realized a similar thing and pared down the JD to be less
oppressive-sounding.

Sleep and balance was important to the team (I personally averaged around
35-45 hours a week, working one weekend and being called in maybe a half dozen
times over a year and a half; the system mostly runs itself), but we didn't
find a good way to surface it in the description. Any suggestions on this is
appreciated too. I struggled in that when we removed or played down aspects of
the job, or emphasized work-life balance, we just got more folks who were
seriously green in some parts (front-end devs who can pull together jQuery but
have never deployed their own code or had to write backwards-compatible apps).

~~~
PopeOfNope
That's a decent interview process, provided the focus of the code review and
the coding exercise is collaborative in nature. When I interviewed at IFTTT,
they did their live coding exercise especially well. I never felt like I was
being given an arbitrary pop quiz. It was a series of actual problems you
might face on the job (a bunch of string replacement scenarios, if I remember
correctly). The environment was more akin to pair programming with a remote
co-worker than an interview. Instead of strictly evaluating and overlooking,
my interviewer worked through the problem with me and even wrote part of the
code. I didn't make it past that first live coding exercise, either. They
wanted someone with deep JS knowledge and mine didn't go deep enough. They
were honest and respectful, even when delivering a rejection. If I ever
decided to move back to SF, I wouldn't hesitate to interview with them again.

 _Sleep and balance was important to the team_ ... _but we didn 't find a good
way to surface it in the description._

That's a tough one. Any company you ask will say they're great on work/life
balance. What else are they going to say? 'No, we're going to work you 80
hours a week every week. If we ever hit crunch mode, say goodbye to your
weekends!' The only thing I can think of is to show them that everybody goes
home at 5pm by having the 3/4 day onsite start later in the day and end at the
same time everybody goes home. It also gives the added benefit of allowing the
interviewee to interact with everybody as a group.

 _front-end devs who can pull together jQuery but have never deployed their
own code_

For what it's worth, that's pretty standard in web development. I've deployed
code through beanstalk or jenkins, but devops sets that up. I've also deployed
side projects to my own servers, but that's a whole different ball of wax
compared to deploying to a corporate data center with load balancers. I
wouldn't trust a frontend jquery guy to set up those kinds of deploy
environments. It's a completely different discipline and field.

------
falsestprophet
Here is some salary data for the two metro areas mentioned in the story for
"Software Developers, Applications" from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
reported for May 2014 [1].

    
    
      Denver-Aurora-Broomfield, CO
      10%ile  25%ile  median  75%ile  90%ile
      64470	  80110	  100140  122350  146930
    
      New York-White Plains-Wayne, NY-NJ Metropolitan Division
      10%ile  25%ile  median  75%ile  90%ile
      66100   83010	  106710  135600  164390
    

The woman hired by Galvanize achieved a 25th %ile salary for Denver on her
first day. Seems hard to believe that someone with so little training could be
more productive than 25% of developers of software applications in Denver.

I think it's at least a little suspicious that the single data point that
demonstrates the success of Galvanize is paid directly by Galvanize. How about
_any other student_?

The math guy did an undergraduate degree in mathematics!, so he is hardly a
characteristic example of waiters in New York who generally shouldn't expect
to achieve a median salary for the industry on their first day.

[1]
[http://data.bls.gov/oes/search.jsp?data_tool=OES](http://data.bls.gov/oes/search.jsp?data_tool=OES)

~~~
jboggan
Salary is not a monotonic mapping of developer productivity. Besides, given
the general increase of salaries across the board and the poor raise-
negotiating skills of coders in general, it isn't hard to imagine the 25% of
salaries under hers were mostly of an older un-altered vintage for
underperforming programmers.

~~~
sarwechshar
I'm just curious, why is there a perception that coders are poor raise-
negotiators in general?

~~~
jboggan
Just going off my own admittedly limited personal experience combined with the
observations of many around me - but we tend to have very limited ability and
information to articulate our business value within our own organizations.
It's easier to look at the messages in our LinkedIn inbox and see how
switching jobs can give us a bigger and better raise than engaging in a
socially-awkward conversation about our own worth. But just empirically, I see
many coders far more brilliant and hard working than I am languish at low
salaries because they actually stick around a company for several years and
merely take small raises proposed by management at levels calculated only to
avoid insult.

For most programmers I've met it is a "calling" in a certain sense - many of
us would be doing these things for fun anyway, you are only really paying us
for the 20% of the time that we are really engaged in true drudgery and
"Charlie work". I share a sentiment with several other programmer friends that
we still can't quite believe we are paid (and paid well) to create things and
play with computers all day.

------
npalli
So, everyone knows that Software is eating the world and coding is hot.
However, something about this article seems off to me

1\. All persons quoted are coding camp organizers/owners. Could it be they
have some vested interest in pushing forward the idea that you can go from
zero to hero in a few weeks of coding bootcamp.

2\. The 'hot' areas that have been listed - mobile, analytics, cloud are
actually a very tiny percent of jobs!. A quick Glassdoor search showed 25/1
ratio for software engineer/mobile engineer. In fact, if you go away from SF
and NY, the number of jobs in these areas are even rarer. Which calls into
question the whole premise of what is being taught.

Paul Graham's submarine article is spot on about these PR stunts.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

------
omouse
Millions more lines of instantly legacy code written by inexperienced
programmers? Thank the gods we'll all be employed for decades! Decades I tell
you! ;p

~~~
civilframe
As long as these rookies aren't writing nuclear reactor firmware, who cares?
Most of programming is mundane. Have them make CRUD apps while we experts work
on something interesting ;)

~~~
vorg
> Have the[se rookies] make CRUD apps while we experts work on something
> interesting

The reality is the opposite: the smooth-talking aptitudeless "rookies" with a
years experience 7 times get themselves onto teams designing "interesting"
stuff from scratch, then the programming experts are put on the team to clean
up the many bugs for years to come.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
This happens way more often than it should.

~~~
nostrademons
That's not really a fair comparison: the "rookies" (somehow, I doubt that
always applies) are working in an environment where they often don't know the
requirements and the only way to find them out is through trial and error, and
the fact that the organization can even afford "programming experts" means
they must have been somewhat successful. Put a programming expert in a
situation where the boss doesn't know what he wants and the only way to find
out is to build it 20 times and he'll produce a pile of crud too.

------
danso
The lede anecdote talks about a 26-year-old math major who went from
$20,000/yr as a writer to $100,000/yr as a data scientist, after a bootcamp.
Ignoring the "but what is data science" debate for now...this to me seems
totally reasonable. _He 's a math major_. Programming is founded upon
math...and at the very least, requires the same kind of mathematical deduction
and ability to not be freaked out by symbolic representations of values.

Now, if it were a pure writer (i.e. literature/English major)...I would not
expect that person to make the necessary growth in the short span of a
bootcamp. Three months may be enough to cover syntax and some base engineering
concepts...but it's definitely not enough to become a rigorous mathematical
thinker.

~~~
ritchiea
While I'm sure it helps to be a math major anywhere, anyone who has been
trained to be a careful analytic thinker would be a good candidate to become a
programmer. For instance if you were a humanities major from a school with a
strong academic reputation and you actually took your coursework seriously as
an undergrad.

As much as programming is applied math, most companies are not Google or
Facebook and have problems that can suffer the inefficiency of a non-expert. A
lot of programming jobs ask you to get data from a form or API, do something
with it and show some HTML. And that HTML needs to be styled in CSS and have
some neat UI elements that are fine tuned in Javascript. There is nothing
about that kind of work that favors a math major over English major.

The situation changes if your company is huge, handling thousands of requests
a second so small inefficiencies add up and are wasteful on a large scale or
even cause the software to break entirely. But assuming you have a smart
CTO/Lead you should know where potential pain points in your code are and
still be able to hire a relatively inexperienced junior and get good work out
of that person. I have a friend who was an Ivy CS grad, worked at Google then
worked at Squarespace. He said he was intimidated by designers who knew HTML,
CSS & Javascript and were good with forms because a lot of work for developers
could be handled as quickly by those type of developers as he could handle it
with his vastly more technical background.

------
siavosh
There's nothing special about programming. Everyone wanted to be a trader and
banker until 2008. Everyone also wanted to buy a house or be a real estate
agent until 2008 too. And everyone wanted to be a web developer until 1999.
People follow the money signal that an economy broadcasts. You can't blame
individuals who want to better their prospects.

What we can do is blame the following:

1\. Predatory schools (not all) with big price tags producing ill equipped
developers

2\. Greedy herd like VC's making bad investments that society has to pay for

3\. And finally often overlooked, shoddy and uncritical journalism like this
article that fail to provide context and attempt at finding the deeper real
story

------
AtmaScout
Sounds eerily similar to the 2000s bust when English majors were being
vacuumed up for web development. Maintenance will be fun, I'm sure.

------
GuiA
Somehow I have a hard time believing that if you have a math major, the only
difference between you waiting tables and living on the brink of poverty or
making bank as a software engineer is a 3 months Ruby course (I have a double
math/CS major); I feel like there may be something more going on here. I'm
happy for the gentleman's success, but it seems like a poor example to use in
any case.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Shouldn't a math degree already have at least a little programming? Matlab?
Python? Something?

~~~
browles
Should? Maybe. But plenty of math graduates have little to no programming
experience, even from top schools.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Interesting. I did not know that. So do math majors do any numerical analysis?

------
narrator
I went to a meetup at a coding bootcamp. It was weird. All these people from
different backgrounds wanting to be programmers. Being a computer nerd since
the 80s, it's so strange how the culture has shifted.

------
dreaminvm
While the demand is real, I am just not sure it will last with the level of
skills being pumped out of these bootcamps. I recently interviewed a few
candidates from a coding bootcamp mentioned in the article and while they can
write basic rails code, they all lacked problem solving skills. Most
candidates were hung up on basic performance related questions.

~~~
Johnny555
Even "experienced" developers who haven't had formal computer science training
can run into performance problems. At my last job, our application was running
slower and slower as we added clients. None of the Ruby devs could figure it
out, the code was "fine", all of the tests passed and ran quickly (with a
stubbed 10 item customer table), and everything ran great until we grew beyond
a hundred or so customers so it fell on me to optimize the database which was
clearly the problem. I finally took a look at the code and found the problem
-- it was a loop within a loop within a loop doing a full scan across the
entire customer table disguised by the two inner loops being inside separate
Gems. The application had O(n^3) performance. None of the developers knew what
that meant so I gave a "lunch-and-learn" presentation on big-O notation and
what it means for performance.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
I've seen this happen with experienced developer with a CS degree. They say,
it's "not my job" to test with large data. B.S., it is your job so sit down,
shut up and do it. The job of QA isn't to find all your bugs, it's to ensure
you don't have any.

------
sosuke
I don't remember a time since the first boom that workers weren't interested
in the fast easy money image of programming and startups. Combine that with
the bootstrap programming education companies selling ITT Tech style train and
earn big bucks package I bet business is booming.

The math grad was a silly story. Before I started working I made 0 dollars,
now that I am working I make money! When I was in a grocery store I made
minimum wage, when I got a job with more responsibility I made a lot more
money! Of course there is a part of me a bit sore, my first coding job was
$27k for full-time.

Also, this is a very long ad for Galvanize isn't it?

------
mooreds
I for one think this trend is great. We need more developers.

But... I lived through the last boom when it seemed anyone who could spell
'java' was hired as a developer. (OK, it wasn't that bad, but there was
definitely a giant sucking sound as folks were pulled into technology for the
money.)

I hope this time is different.

~~~
robalfonso
I think we need more _good_ developers. 100% you can get a great developer
from this education channel, but that person would be good whether they came
to you via a code school or a more traditional route.

I also think people should be encouraged to better themselves and work towards
higher paying careers. That said, as someone who hires engineers the signal to
noise ratio continues to go up. It makes it that much harder to find good
developers in the forest of bad. I make it a point of seeing almost anyone who
is close to fitting the bill so I kiss a lot of frogs, and I could be more
harsh weeding out people at earlier stages but I've had absolutely spectacular
hires being a bit more flexible (I do tend to fire fast though, no reason for
everyone to pretend its not a good fit) Flooding the market with folks though
just makes it more challenging for those hiring.

~~~
mooreds
Hard to argue that we need more good developers. In my experience, some
component of 'good' is experience, some is aptitude, some is knowledge, and
some is willingness to grind. The code schools can take care of the latter two
(depending on the quality of the school).

Sorry to hear that the signal to noise ratio is going up. That is probably due
to more people being pulled into the profession (just as it was 15 years ago).

> Flooding the market with folks though just makes it more challenging for
> those hiring.

All other things being equal, wouldn't you want a larger candidate pool? I
have done some hiring and while it was a grind to screen applicants, that beat
the pants off of not having any applicants.

~~~
robalfonso
Well if you're letting me order it the way I want it, I wan the candidate pool
to be infinite and to all be extremely qualified :)

What I'm actually finding is the candidate pool is getting larger but the
quality hires are about the same. Ostensibly this is a function of the pay
rate pressuring people to join the hiring pool.

>All other things being equal, wouldn't you want a larger candidate pool? I
>have done some hiring and while it was a grind to screen applicants, that
>beat the pants off of not having any applicants.

No argument, I have played that game and its not fun.

For the sake of argument though if we look at the total number of candidates
you want to hire (1) then any pool size over one does create more work as it
grows (I'd like to avoid that if at all possible :) ). Assuming the individual
that matches your criteria is in your pool at all (again an
oversimplification).

I also can't stress enough aptitude as a component of a good dev, which you
alluded to. I've never seen a dev who was great (whether self taught/code
school/cs degree who had no aptitude for the work.

I've also seen people with tons of aptitude and no credentials absolutely own
people with phd's and masters degrees in a tough problem.

Before we had colleges/code schools there were always engineers, how do you
think we got the wheel?

------
unabashedturtle
As someone that's done a fair bit of hiring for engineer and data scientist
positions, my outlook on these 'coding academies' is pretty grim.

If you want someone that can hack together a web app in
rails/node.js/django/framework of your choice then that's fine. But the
reality is most people going through these code academies tend to get a really
poor foundation in both writing "good" and "fast" code. There's very little
focus on algorithmic fundamentals.

But really, it's the academies that claim to spew out data scientists that I
have a problem with. Every candidate I've interviewed that came from one of
these knew how to run a regression, use R, and fit a variety of classifiers
(eg; random forest, feed-forward ANN). But not one of them could answer really
basic questions about sampling and experimental design (one of them asked:
"multiple comparisons..? What's that?").

I've found that people that come in completely self-taught oddly enough don't
have these issues. Many of them really do focus on the fundamentals first.
It's easier to teach someone that understands experimental design and
probability theory how to fit a few models in R than to teach probability
theory to a kid that knows how to copy and paste from stackoverflow.

------
NumberSix
There are a number of studies that about half of all software developers do
not have a CS degree. From what I have seen, many of these have degrees in
other so-called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)
fields such as mathematics.

Paul Minton's LinkedIn profile lists a 4 year B.S. in Mathematics from the
University of Illinois at Chicago (2009-2011). He apparently was a transfer
from University of Vermont. GPA is listed as 3.31. His LinkedIn profile also
lists courses in probability, statistics, and linear algebra.

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulminton](https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulminton)

Data scientists in particular tend to be people with degrees (often Ph.D.s) in
other STEM fields involving heavy statistics and data analysis. Most do
extensive software development for these data analyses.

It is not clear how much programming experience he had prior to the coding
boot camp either from the New York Times article or his LinkedIn profile.
These days, most people taking probability and statistics probably do some
programming in class.

It is also worth noting that San Francisco is quite expensive with apartment
rents running over $4,000/month in the city. Software jobs are concentrated in
high cost of living areas.

[http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2015/06/02/san-
franciscos-...](http://blog.sfgate.com/ontheblock/2015/06/02/san-franciscos-
median-rent-hits-a-ridiculous-4225/)

------
hiharryhere
There are Plumbers, Plasterers and Bricklayers... and there are structural
engineers.

There's a need for both kinds of coders. I'm all for it. Not all places need a
CS genius, most just need someone with the skills to use established
frameworks and tools. Doesn't make you a bad programmer.

~~~
vonmoltke
> Not all places need a CS genius, most just need someone with the skills to
> use established frameworks and tools.

Unfortunately, many of them _think_ they need a CS genius, or only want to
hire them for the prestige of having an _elite_ workforce.

------
onedev
I guess I should start a consulting company to clean up the messes these
people are going to make :)

------
nmkn
It's an inspiring article, but I wish it highlighted some realities with code
schools. There is something to be said about the cost, time commitment, and
passion needed to succeed.

People who go from 20k to 100k are the exception, not the rule.

------
aesthetics1
This article sounds inspiring when taken at face value, but it also strikes
fear into my heart. This sounds eerily familiar to the dot-com bubble, and I
can't help thinking that churning out zero-to-hero software engineers, web
developers, and data scientists at this rate is a recipe for disaster.

Sure, there's a huge need right now, but we can't be too complacent --
thinking that it's impossible to saturate the market again, can we?

Hopefully this doesn't end poorly.

------
seansmccullough
Startup idea: 3 month mechanical engineering bootcamp! I'd totally drive on
that bridge.

------
eastbayjake
I knew as soon as I checked the comments on this article there would be a
barrage of negativity. I just wasn't prepared for it to be unanimous.

I've made similar comments on HN in the past but much of this griping seems to
boil down to "I was interested in [thing] way before all these johnny-come-
latelys just bum-rushed it for a paycheck!" It's an irritatingly hipster thing
to do -- I did X before X was cool, but now X is _sooooo over_.

I also wish people who complain in these comments would name the schools when
they complain. Who are you worried about offending? Will you help everyone
else by identifying degree-mill schools that turn out low-quality people? I
hate that great programs like Hack Reactor or MakerSquare -- which never have
people on the job market for more than a couple weeks and continue to have
ridiculous industry demand -- get lumped in with fly-by-night HTML/CSS
bootcamps in third-tier tech markets like Atlanta.

~~~
dreaminvm
I disagree. What I got from the comments was that while everyone is capable of
learning how to program, the expectation that a 3 month bootcamper can
do/learn the same amount of information as a 4 year CS degree is insanity.
Anyone who has studied STEM can tell you, 4 years is actually fast pace for a
competitive program. What's next, a bootcamp to turn out doctors in 6 months
instead of the 8/9 years of schooling?

And yes, most of these bootcampers (regardless of their location) are chasing
a big paycheck because VC money is flooding the markets (many references in
the article).

------
stillsut
I got a degree in Finance alongside lots of Accounting majors. Turns out
that's not who gets hired in most of the top business jobs, e.g i-banking.

I think there's a growing amount of positions that take some coding, but where
the soft skills are equally as important and let's be honest: the average CS
major is not known for strength in that area. (Just as accounting majors
aren't known for having "dynamic" and risk-taking personalities which are
sought in high-finance.)

That being said, I think these code bootcamps are providing an important
injection into tech diversity (the _real_ kind of diversity).

------
paulpauper
_Companies cannot hire fast enough. Glassdoor, an employment site, lists more
than 7,300 openings for software engineers, ahead of job openings for nurses,_

This agree with the post-2008 hollowing out of the middle theme - lots of of
opportunities for high-IQ employment (coders) and the polar opposite: low-paid
service workers and bedpan changers. It's like if you're IQ is not in the top
quartile, go directly to the low-income, do not go pass go, do not collect
$60-100k a year.

I'm very suspicious of the claim that these boot camps can turn novices into
job-ready professionals in just 3 months. There's too much to learn and unless
you're one of those high-IQ people who has an aptitude for math, as the
example in the article, you won't be competent enough get a job and, to make
things worse, you'll also be out $10,000.

Instead, if you're not smart enough to work in tech, take that $10k and buy
Facebook, Google, Amazon or QQQ stock using in-the-money-call options. You can
leverage 5-1 and make $30k a year from a $10k account doing this. The tech
boom has much further to go. You don't need to be a member of Mensa to ride an
obvious bull market trend.

~~~
Nicholas_C
Is this post satire?

------
santaclaus
Also discussed in:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9963720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9963720)

------
JustSomeNobody
Once everyone is a programmer, then what?

~~~
chadgeidel
Once everyone can read and write, then what?

We live in a computer age. Knowing how to program is no longer a "specialized
skill", it's mandatory (on some level) to effectively interact with ever more
complex systems that run our lives.

~~~
a3voices
Mandatory in what sense? Most people get by without having to code anything
more complex than an Excel formula.

~~~
chadgeidel
In my opinion "programming" should be generalized to "instructing the computer
to do a series of tasks", or "applying the output of one system into the next
system". I don't think that's overgeneralizing.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Let's not redefine words. What you're suggesting "programming" be generalized
to already has a definition, "Computer Literacy".

------
adultSwim
_Pop_

------
sp332
Career tests are getting easier
[http://catandgirl.com/?p=4897](http://catandgirl.com/?p=4897)

