
Coding Boot Camp Enrollment Soars as Students Seek Tech Jobs - adventured
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-08/coding-boot-camp-enrollment-soars-as-students-seek-tech-jobs
======
madaxe_again
I guess my main query here is who is actually going to be hiring these people.

As I see it, there are two "camps" of coders - those who code because they
love to code and to solve problems, and those who code because it's a job.

The former solve problems, not because the boss is breathing down their neck
but because the problem is interesting, and they will learn whatever needs to
be learned to solve the problem. The latter look at a problem and go "but I
wasn't taught this!", and despair.

Yes, those are hyperbolic examples, but are very real phenomena - we employ a
lot of developers, and the ones who stick around are all from the former camp
- the latter tend to wash out during probation.

I'm not at all saying that more people shouldn't learn to code, however I am
saying that people who are learning to code _because it 's a career_ rather
than as a vocation aren't doing themselves too many favours, as I would (and
will) argue that the mentality of "how does this work? Don't know. I'll find
out!" is absolutely core to being a coder, and those who have this mentality
tend to gravitate towards code and other similar disciplines naturally.

There is of course the segment which comprises people with the aforementioned
nous but who haven't had the opportunity to explore it, and these are the
people for whom bootcamps are likely a brilliant idea, and a great bootstrap
up into the industry - and I suppose this is reflected by the apparently very
high drop-out rate seen.

~~~
busterarm
I love to code and solve problems and have been programming as a hobby since I
was 6.

I followed a different career path (systems administration & support) and at
30 decided to change careers and develop software. I had to learn how to write
better software to go after the work and the problems that I'm really
interested in. I feel that writing software should be a means to an end.

Because of this, I made the decision to go through a coding bootcamp and look
for a job. I'm not alone here, but you're right that a lot of folks are
looking for a paycheck.

I see a lot of folks on this board write off bootcamps entirely (though it
seems to be swinging the other way). It's a little disheartening.

~~~
madaxe_again
Yeah, I definitely don't write them off, but I will usually probe a bit harder
about a candidate's motivation if they've gone through one.

You sound like you're doing it for all the right reasons!

------
lordnacho
I've been helping out a friend with an app MVP, and he's found a lady to
supplement the dev team from a bootcamp.

\- She told me most of the people dropped out. Only a handful managed to
actually finish the course.

\- She's an ex designer with iOS experience, so that makes it easier.

\- She's got a job already. Had to cross the US, but she was being wooed by a
number of firms.

\- She knows the tools. XCode, Git, SourceTree. Cuts down intro time by a lot.

\- She's pretty good at the work (very keen as well), but not experienced.
Anything I show her, she seems to understand. Basically it looks like they've
given her a good practical foundation, but not a whole lot of breadth (how
could you in such a short space?). So she's seen all the internal bits of iOS
and can start hacking at our app, but if I go through the big-O of an algo
(which actually came up), it might take a while to sink in.

Comparing this to my brother, a CS undergrad from an Ivy, it's like he's got
the theoretical foundations, but not a lot of the practical side. To actually
be productive, you need to spend time on things like version control, and the
specifics of various languages and IDEs. He does come across these things, but
it appears to be incidental. Yet there's so much work on these courses, the
sheer volume of practical things will probably add up.

------
thekevan
[Emphasis added]

"William Dembinski, 24,...will pay $17,780 to take classes _six days a week,
11 hours a day_ for three months."

" Dembinski said. “That type of mentality is _healthy,_ and I want to be
pushed.”"

A little scary.

~~~
LaurensBER
The guy is 24, ambitious and perhaps a bit desperate. Given the choice of
call-centre/fast food jobs or a three month grind I would have preferred the
boot-camp.

Now the costs are just crazy, for that kind of money you could get a bachelor
degree in Europe.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>Now the costs are just crazy, for that kind of money you could get a
bachelor degree in Europe.

I think the point is that bachelor's degrees are not very useful these days in
terms of getting a high-paying job. That's what is attracting people to these
boot camps.

~~~
eru
Also, the bachelor degree takes longer.

------
guyzero
16K is roughly the number of university CS graduates the US produces in a
year. Holy crap. See
[http://cra.org/resources/taulbee/](http://cra.org/resources/taulbee/)

------
strathmeyer
Got a CS degree a decade ago, haven't been able to find a programming jobs
since (I don't know Java or C#, learned some esoteric languages called C and
C++ nobody is hiring for.) Boot camps promise jobs, after a decade of looking
at jobs that require 5+ years of experience, I hope something like that can
finally be my ticket into the industry. As opposed to all those projects I
worked on over those four years. The webserver, the proxy, the file system,
the kernel, the terminal, the shell, the ML parser written in ML, the
raytracer, the networking stack, the video games. All my personal project.

So what do they have to you at bootcamps that is so special?

~~~
eru
> Got a CS degree a decade ago, haven't been able to find a programming jobs
> since (I don't know Java or C#, learned some esoteric languages called C and
> C++ nobody is hiring for.)

If you think that's important, why didn't you fix that in the mean time?
Knowing nothing else about you, I'd be immediately put off by you not learning
on your own..

~~~
sown
> If you think that's important, why didn't you fix that in the mean time?
> Knowing nothing else about you, I'd be immediately put off by you not
> learning on your own..

Speaking as someone in a similar situation, even after I learn what I can,
it's still difficult to get a job using the newer languages I've learned. I
know that I don't know what I don't know; perhaps I'm missing something, but
it's still difficult to convince employers to hire when you've got no
experience.

~~~
eru
Indeed. So all the talk about C and C++ vs Java and C# was just an excuse. I
am willing to bet there are more excuses hiding.

By the way, I'm happy to give mock interviews and refer people to my employer.

~~~
sown
> Indeed. So all the talk about C and C++ vs Java and C# was just an excuse. I
> am willing to bet there are more excuses hiding.

Maybe. That was another poster, though. :) For me, I've spent most of my
career fixing bugs. not much new code development. I'm trying to do more in
that direction but I lack real honest development experience, even several
years into it. I didn't even know design patterns were a thing until recently.
_shrug_.

> By the way, I'm happy to give mock interviews and refer people to my
> employer.

I might do that. Thanks for the offer.

> I'd be immediately put off by you not learning on your own.. > ...was just
> an excuse. I am willing to bet there are more excuses hiding.

However, I get the impression you'd hate working with me or near me. I'm kind
of slow; I have to take things in kind piece wise until I understand them. It
appears to people on the outside that I am a dullard, I suspect. I try to work
hard as I can, but people at Google, and you I bet, are smarter and harder
working than me. :)

~~~
eru
I'm lucky that I'm good at technical interviews. That doesn't correlate very
much with being an effective developer, but it gives a leg up in the job
market. (And even somewhat makes up for dropping out of college.)

> I might do that. Thanks for the offer.

My email is in the profile.

------
owlee
Does anyone have an idea of what the dropout rate is for the typical bootcamp
program? Seems like it would be hard to accurately measure, but perhaps
there's an "industry insider" lurking around here.

~~~
slykat
This depends significantly by program but at AppAcademy the attrition rate was
around ~6%.

~~~
busterarm
In my cohort our attrition rate was 16%, but I think ours was unusually high.

I'm pretty happy with a/A though. I can't speak for every program, but it
seems we cover a lot more than most. That said, I think people need to come
into it with more to be successful - I know other programs take folks with
absolutely zero experience.

Only a few of us had any kind of CS background though. I was one of another
16% in my cohort who had any idea about different data structures, Big O, etc.

------
Kortaggio
What I'd like to know is where the graduates from 3-month programs are
working, it seems like the vast majority of job postings I come across look
for only mid-level or senior engineers.

~~~
pigscantfly
I'm more curious about what's generally covered in the curriculum. Three
months doesn't seem like enough time to learn much in depth, even if you're a
total workaholic.

~~~
doomspork
The basics and that's about it. IMHO, these schools do a very big disservice
to the people they pretend to help. I think it's particularly bad for woman
and under represented groups looking to springboard into technology, as it
sets an unreal expectation.

------
xerophyte12932
I was thinking of starting a coding boot camp because I love programming and I
love to teach.

So my question is, what do people look for in coding boot camps? What do they
expect from them?

~~~
slykat
A coding bootcamp is basically a vocational program. Grads are looking to get
placed in web developer roles so that's what their metric of success - can
graduates get junior web roles?

------
thewarrior
This is just the beginning of the commoditisation of the average developer's
skillset.

In the 20th century organisations employed hundreds of clerks to keep their
operations running smoothly. Now we pay them slightly more and call them
programmers.

Either skill up significantly to work at a top tier company or take up
something boot camp proof like Medicine , Law etc.

~~~
loco5niner
> below average...

------
nickysielicki
This is absolutely awful news. This should be on the front page of CNN in big
bold letters: The Department of Education and post-secondary institutions are
both utterly and completely failing students in their curriculum.

We teach roughly 400,000 high school students AP calculus every year. [0] How
many of them go on to use it in their daily life? Meanwhile, we teach 1/10th
as many students AP computer science. [1]

You might note from reading this article that these camps aren't cheap,
meaning that the type of people who can afford to make up for the shortcomings
by their schools are rich kids who probably went to ivy league schools
anyway[2], or people in the middle of their career realizing their career
prospects are limited.

I might also state, though I'm not bothered to look up statistics for it, that
I believe the demographics of highschools offering AP-CS and AP-Calc are
probably mostly districts from upper middle class communities. In other words,
rich kids.

The take away from that is that the DoE and colleges aren't just failing the
disadvantaged here, like they always have. They're even failing the rich kids!
\ _gasp\_

There are two huge causes of this, IMHO:

* Colleges are privatized luxury camps rather than places to get an education. I go to UW-Madison. Our CS chair just left because the state is defunding UW schools and he got an offer elsewhere with more security.

Meanwhile, our out of state tuition is likely to double in price. But that's
okay, they'll still pay. After all, we're spending $200M[3] on new flashy
gyms. Look how much fun they're having! Fuck job security, I want that! [4]

* DoE and colleges are not nearly responsive enough to the changing job environment. Too afraid to make a leap. Too broke to make a leap. I'm not sure if the answer is common core or not. But I know whatever we're doing now is completely failing.

It's going to be absolutely brutal. If the US wants to remain anywhere near
the top of the world, we better start making some mind-blowing startups,
because the effect of this isn't a matter of if, it's when.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Calculus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Calculus)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Computer_Science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Computer_Science)

[2]: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-07/coding-
cla...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-07/coding-classes-
attract-college-grads-who-want-better-jobs)

[3]:
[http://host.madison.com/news/local/writers/pat_schneider/uw-...](http://host.madison.com/news/local/writers/pat_schneider/uw-
madison-students-to-vote-on-million-recreation-facilities-
improvement/article_61c50a43-0910-592f-ad0a-7a5fc0208925.html)

[4]: [http://www.kahlerslater.com/expertise/recreation-
wellness/un...](http://www.kahlerslater.com/expertise/recreation-
wellness/university-of-wisconsin-recreation-master-plan)

~~~
rimantas
> How many of them go on to use it in their daily life? > Meanwhile, we teach
> 1/10th as many students AP computer > science.

How many of them will use brains in their daily life? And why do you want
everybody to be a programmer?

~~~
nickysielicki
I feel you've missed my point. I don't want everyone to be a software
engineer.

> How many of them will use brains in their daily life?

I'm not saying that mathematics isn't worth learning. I'm just saying that
there are obvious gaps in our education system. Clearly, by the article,
people are coming out of 4 year schools wishing they had some background in
it. I think everyone should be able to program in the same sense that everyone
can do algebra. And I believe the blame for that not being the case falls
squarely on the DoE and universities.

