

Code Fellows Alumni Stats - mikeyanderson
http://www.codefellows.org/alumni-stats

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GuiA
What really bothers me about coding schools is that their application process
pretty much sets them up for success.

They aggressively filter applicants (on prior work experience, passion, etc.)
to only keep the ones most likely succeed and make their program look good
(not unlike most private high schools, and a lot of private universities). And
a lot of them charge crazy tuition (not far from the most expensive US
universities if you bring it to a cost per week of instruction), further
narrowing the funnel.

There's not a lot of merit in having a very high success rate if your students
were going to succeed anyway. That's where the real educational challenges
lie, and why public universities or non-profits who aim to reach precisely the
people who couldn't get in those bootcamps have much lower success rates.

At my current workplace, we just hired a developer who came from a dev
bootcamp. She's fantastic- but she also has an undergraduate degree in math,
she wrote some C++ out of college, and has an MBA as well as pretty impressive
work experience. Of course she was very likely to do well in a cookie-cutter
Ruby course!

Try teaching former convicts, unemployed people, veterans, teenagers from poor
neighborhoods, etc. But, it's much harder work, less glamorous, and surely
less profitable (I've taught CS/programming in public universities and to
disadvantaged teenagers).

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dmunoz
It's not only the application process. Some of these programs kick out some
successful applicants in the first few weeks, further reducing the field from
which they pluck these success figures.

To be fair, Code Fellow seems to be upfront about this, since only 88% of
successful applicants actually graduate.

Edit: More related to your point above, they are also up front about previous
degrees held. 82% of their students had degrees before entering their program.

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salemh
Any stories on this / links?

 _Some of these programs kick out some successful applicants in the first few
weeks, further reducing the field from which they pluck these success
figures._

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lispylol
>Our alumni tell us that learning how to code professionally is like learning
a super power

I feel like the real super power is the ability to learn effectively. Not just
how to write code, but how to do _anything_. I get the feeling that a lot of
people who have had just the right combination of upbringing + opportunities
take this ability for granted. They do it very naturally.

Coding is only as powerful as your ability to think. I don't care how many
monkeys are coding in PHP you're never going to get Facebook.

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DangerousPie
Isn't this pretty much just an advertisement? How is this different from the
usual numbers that lots of schools publish to attract new students?

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bruceb
Anyone have thoughts on why nearly 14% of their students already studied CS?
Maybe they reflect people who studied CS but did not graduate?

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mikeyanderson
We've had folks fresh out of CS degrees but didn't feel that they had software
development skills, team skills, interview skills, negotiation skills, etc.
Also we've had quite a few that studied CS, didn't use it for a long time or
got stuck in a particular stack and used the intensive 8 week course as a way
to quickly pick up and put the new skills to work. Make sense?

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minimaxir
A $75.6k average salary (with 70% of graduates making <$80k) seems low for a
development position in Seattle.

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trose
Probably the salary they deserve I'd guess. I worked at a company that hired
someone from a similar school in NYC. They ended up letting her go after a
month or two. These schools are a scam for the people that think they'll gain
a career from them as well as the companies that think they'll get a competent
dev.

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trose
When is this fad going to die out? You can't produce a competent web developer
in 8 weeks. Maybe this would be useful to an experienced dev who is looking to
pick up some web technologies in a structured atmosphere but there are so many
resources available online, why bother?

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minimaxir
The real interesting statistic would be to illustrate the correlation between
post-secondary study and salary. (The post had the distribution of both, but
no relationship)

It's entirely possible that the higher salaries are caused by the prior
education and not the boot camp.

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killertypo
exactly my thoughts

