
Ruby on Rails Bootcamp in Seattle - danso
http://www.codefellows.org/rails
======
adennis4
I went through a similar program in San Francisco - Devbootcamp. They are
opening a sister program in Chicago. I went on to a 6 month apprenticeship at
Groupon, and am now accepting a position at Hashrocket.

Some feedback - depending on the starting level of the class, 4 weeks is
INCREDIBLY short. Taking a look at our class (Devbootcamp #1) - over 75% of
the class went on to take dev jobs in some capacity with a $80k average
salary...I don't know the validity of those marketed numbers. However, we put
in 8-10 weeks. I wrote a HN post after that class "334 Hours of Ruby on Rails"
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3794069>). Weeks are compounding...I
don't believe you can really hit your stride in just 4 weeks without prior
ruby experience. This would be a great introduction class - but job ready, I'm
highly skeptical. Apprenticeship ready - sure.

If you want more than just a taste of Ruby on Rails - I would take the leap
and try to get into one of the Devbootcamp classes in Chicago or San
Francisco. I've also heard good things about Hacker School in NY.

------
netcan
It's interesting looking at the arc that education related products/startups
are going through. It's obvious that the internet should be revolutionizing
education, but Universities and other traditional institutions still seem more
or less unchanged. Various (mostly free) mass online education
platforms/products/startups emerge. A lot of interest follows. Results are
good but not revolutionizing education in 2 years good. A lot of people get
frustrated with some of the hurdles (benchamarking, coaching, commitment) and
find they can be overcome with in person education. A bunch of intensive,
small, energetic courses with high teacher/student ratios emerge that squash
those problems.

I'm not saying its not a productive process. It might be just what's needed.
Education is hard and important and it seems like progress is happening.

Since it's free to comment, I'll comment that I'd like to see these two newly
invigorated paths cross-pollinate. Is there a way of getting all the
advantages of in-person education at scale and with lower costs? Can
technology be used to lower teacher student ratio without costing
effectiveness?

 _This is all of course through the lens of the stuff reaching me via articles
& blogs & HN. In reality I am sure that the majority of people learning stuff
are completely unaffected by either MIT Open courseware, Corsera... It's
really more an arc of HN interest, but still._

~~~
cglee
I think we strike a great balance of what you're looking for at Tealeaf
Academy.

If you're looking for an online option, check out Tealeaf Academy for an
online bootcamp: <http://www.gotealeaf.com> Disclaimer: I'm a cofounder.

Our courses are project driven and you learn with a cohort. We want to
maintain the quality and intensity, without forcing you to relocate or quit
your job. The trade off is that we mentor you for a longer duration. If that
appeals to you, then Tealeaf Academy could make sense for you.

hint: hover over the faces on the world map for student testimonials

~~~
netcan
Cool.

Would you guys should consider doing a podcast or something to document your
progress & ideas. This is an area with a lot of interest and I think its
likely that people would like to listen to conversations about what its like
to run these 21 century courses. Might also be an opportunity to interview
smart people and market your academy.

------
CesareBorgia
If you like codefellows' pricing model, you may also want to check out the
hacker academy that I help run: <http://www.appacademy.io>.

We only charge tuition if you find a job as a dev after the course. Also,
we've done this before: 93% of our grads have offers or are working in tech
jobs now at an average salary of $83,000.

Companies that have hired from the program include: Facebook, Twilio, Zendesk,
Thoughtbot and Carbon Five.

~~~
beachhouse
I sent in my application and am now doing the Ruby prepwork to prepare for the
coding challenge (no prior Ruby experience), is there any advice you would
give for the interview? App Academy is everything that I am looking for.

~~~
CesareBorgia
Practice, practice, practice! The more hands-on experience you have, the
greater your facility with the material will be.

If you're looking for more material/exercises, check out the prep work that
all of our accepted students complete before the course:
[https://github.com/kushpatel72/App-Academy-prep-
work/blob/ma...](https://github.com/kushpatel72/App-Academy-prep-
work/blob/master/App-Academy-prep-work.md).

~~~
beachhouse
I really appreciate it, thank you. I'm very motivated to get accepted and do
exceptionally well in your program, I will dive into this prep work asap!

------
steveklabnik
It's good to see these programs continuing to pop up, but almost all of them
are far too short, in my opinion.

When we (Jumpstart Lab) did Hungry Academy and now gSchool[1], they were six
months long for a reason. There's a _lot_ to learn to be a competent Rails
developer, and you just can't get that from a few weeks of morning
instruction.

1: <http://gschool.it>

~~~
fescue
For the 4-week bootcamp, we're aiming for engineers who know how to program
and want to move to Rails. They will probably already have a CS degree and
work in tech, but they don't know Rails. We'll migrate their skills to Rails
and connect them with area startups (we're also aiming at professional
designers who know HTML/CSS and want to move up the stack).

Our instructors feel 4-weeks is enough time for training these experienced
engineers. If it isn't, we'll extend the course. If someone is changing their
life and paying money to take this bootcamp, we're going to do our best to
care of them.

For absolute beginners, we'll offer a different track. It's remarkable what
you guys accomplish in a six-month program.

~~~
steveklabnik
Roger! That seems _much_ more reasonable, but I didn't get that from your
site:

    
    
        > Ideal candidates will have some programming experience.
    

Maybe I'm just being overly critical, but this implies to me that it's good if
you have it, but not required. Just a thought. :)

~~~
fescue
True, I'll improve the wording. The site's a week old; we're now working on
properly setting expectations and funneling people toward the right class.

------
btian
The bootcamp is a very good idea. 4 weeks should be enough for people with
programming experience to get a basic idea of how RoR works. I especially like
the "1:1 Mentoring" idea. Personally I learned a lot from small group (2-3
students to a supervisor) supervisions (also known as tutorial/recitation
elsewhere) in university.

------
UnoriginalGuy
That's one heck of a bold claim.

There are some details:

> want to get a job, attend the events and meetings we set up for you

Nothing too bad there, although I'm not sure how "want to get a job" is
proven.

I like how the web-site forgets key details like "where is this course being
run?" "Are you accredited?" "What supplies do I need to bring?" "Basic
qualifications to start?"

~~~
ewolf
"4-week RoR bootcamp in South Lake Union, Seattle."

"You do not need to know Ruby or Rails, but it helps if you're familiar with
basic programming concepts and tools, like running terminal commands and using
a text editor."

Admittedly, the latter is not too precise, but they do state it.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
Where is the South Lake Union thing? I just re-checked the FAQ and still
cannot find it.

~~~
ben336
Its right in the main "hero box" when you open the site. Right in the big
header.

------
fescue
Hi guys, I'm Brad and I run Code Fellows. I'm here to answer questions. Ask
here or write me at...my first name at codefellows.org.

~~~
abeh
Are you accepting international applicants? (i.e. from Canada) Would you be
able to get them hired in the US after?

~~~
tjarmain
Take a look at Bitmaker Labs, we're located in Toronto and are helping our
grads get placed into positions with companies in the area:
<http://bitmakerlabs.com/>

~~~
fescue
Thanks--abeh, shop local with bitmaker!

------
mikey_p
Similar idea/concept in Portland as well:
<http://www.portlandcodeschool.com/program.html>

And yes, we have way more jobs for most types of positions than programmers
available.

------
koralatov
How good a salary is $60k? In the UK, £60k is a really good salary, and about
three times the earnings average. (I know that £60k is more like $96k, once
you convert it, but I'm not sure how good a salary that is in US terms.)

~~~
cookiecaper
It depends on the area. In Seattle, it'd probably be seen as junior-mid-level
compensation. In the Midwest, it is more solid-mid-level. Generally speaking,
$60k income is solidly middle class, perhaps with a hint of "upper middle
class", again dependent on the region.

Salaries for web programmers in the US usually cap out around $100k for the
most senior guys, +-20k, depending on the region (the Bay Area being the
exception, where senior-level guys will get closer to 200). Programmers who do
lower level stuff (OSes, etc.) can usually expect to cap out at something like
140, +-20k. In most cases, you're not going to get more than that unless you
either a) become a manager or b) have unusual circumstances around your
employment (like name recognition).

~~~
philwelch
If you're in some sort of "web developer" ghetto, maybe that's possible. If
you have a software engineering job title, you can get over $100k entry level
in Seattle, even if your actual job duties involve web development. This is
total comp, not base.

~~~
edwinnathaniel
Microsoft offers $72k (or used to) for entry-level SDE.

Over $100k for entry-level around Seattle seems too much unless that company
is printing good money every milliseconds.

~~~
jlgreco
I don't think that MSFT figure is accurate at all anymore. From what I
understand from some of my peers, they start somewhere around $85-90k now,
base salary. Glassdoor more or less agrees, for whatever they are worth.

------
netcan
These courses are themselves a sign of how high demand for programmers is.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
I disagree. The courses just show how high the demand is for courses.

In general you often hear stories in the newspaper about "we cannot hire
programmers!" but I know tons of unemployed programmers.

If you go actually look at the job postings in a lot of areas it is slim
pickings right now. The pay is bad, the benefits are worse, and the
competition is high.

Schools continue to pump out CS grads and compensation continues to plummet.

I think what they mean when they say "there aren't enough programmers" is "we
have to pay them too much, look at India!!"

~~~
btian
I highly disagree with that statement. Personally I'm a recent CS grad, and I
don't know any of my classmates who is unemployed.

I also wouldn't describe my current job as "pay is bad, the benefits are
worse, and the competition is high" because that would be lying.

Also, we're hiring. Check out the careers section <http://www.rhythmia.com/>

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
That's odd, because when I graduated CS I myself spent a year unemployed as
did many of my peers (some of which who wound up going into other fields
entirely).

From people who graduated after me (in particular 2008 and beyond) they talk
of even longer unemployment and even worse prospects.

Unless you work in a niche area it is damn hard out there.

~~~
btian
I can only speak for myself, but as what andrewem also mentioned, I have been
getting emails from recruiters too albeit at a lower frequency of about once a
week. I got my current job 6 months before graduation.

Won't call C++ a niche area. I don't know where you are, but have you
considered moving to a place with more developer jobs?

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
I have considered it but the cost of living is a fair bit higher (e.g.
London). So we're talking about a 20% cost of living increase.

Even the jobs coming out of London aren't that good. My current job is better
than most. As I said there is a lot of unemployed programmers around here and
competition remains tight.

A lot of people got thrown out when a bunch of service and or financial
companies went bust, and they've been stealing all of the interesting or well
compensated work.

------
benhebert
As a marketing guy who has dabbled in learning programming online and failed,
I think that these bootcamps are the answer. Mentorship and development of
projects with peers is engaging, teaching myself from a book is not.

This is just me though.

------
gregd
As someone with little to no experience with coding boot camps , can I get
some feedback on someone in his mid-40s attending one of these? I have a lot
of coding background, mostly in C#, asp.net and MSSQL experience.

~~~
keithwarren
If you know C# and asp.net, (especially MVC) and have experience with SQL
Server then this course is probably right up your alley. Often times people
have skill sets in one stack and lack the opportunity to learn a new stack
because they are in a company committed to one particular vendor (ie a
Microsoft shop) and immersion is the key method for picking up these other
skills. I think you are exactly the target audience.

~~~
fescue
Agreed!

------
bicknergseng
I'm both happy and sad to see these bootcamps spread. Happy, because I think
they're a good way for people to get into the industry or learn
rails/node/ios/whatever. Sad, because they indicate the failure of colleges
and universities to teach modern development tools, environments, and
frameworks. Yes, I understand that education is supposed to "prepare" for the
workplace rather than "train." But the notion that in 4 years of undergraduate
study a 200k education can't bother with what these bootcamps do in 6-12
weeks....

~~~
saraid216
Except that they do. A friend of mine currently in school seems to be spending
half his time writing Android apps. I find this a little disgusting, since
it's like teaching political science students by asking them to write speeches
for current politicians, but I guess industry is king.

I'd be okay with it if it were a vocational school, but it's not.

~~~
bicknergseng
I suppose I have to asterisk what I said. My university didn't, and few
friends with eng/cs degrees from other schools did anything like that.

I'd be interested to know why you find writing Android apps disgusting. My
personal opinion is that hands on, real world experience like actually
building software drives home theory far better than talking about building
software. I'm not saying that schools should only teach android or something,
but I would have been far more satisfied with my education if I had actually
built things as part of it. Have students build a webapp one year, one or two
mobile apps another, an os another year, a compiler another year. Something
like that with the order shuffled, and you should be able to ram home all the
theory you want AND students can graduate with a small portfolio, a strong
understanding of current topics in industry and computer science, and strong
theoretical knowledge.

Maybe what I'm saying is that the current "accredited" degrees are so sparse
compared with these bootcamps that the value proposition of a 200k, 4 year cs
degree vs a 10-20k, 10 week program is so fatally flawed as to be... not worth
it.

~~~
saraid216
> I'd be interested to know why you find writing Android apps disgusting.

The long and short of it is that industry is not the purpose of education. The
knowledge gained should be for the sake of gaining knowledge, not for the sake
of making money.

CS students don't feel like they understand theory? The correct response is to
set up "bootcamps", hosted and endorsed by the university and vetted by the
faculty, _outside_ the classroom. Research practica and MIT's Battlecode and
the like are examples of hybridizing this: using the structure of a class
schedule to explicitly set aside time for building software.

It doesn't really matter; my opinion isn't going to sway anyone. The
university has largely already been commoditized and that's a part of why it's
so vulnerable to disruption. The purpose of the university is now hugely to
serve as a state-owned racket at the behest of industry. And of _course_
industry is unimpressed by the transient state it's currently in, as you are
unimpressed: what industry really wants is, well... these bootcamps: ways for
industry to make money so that industry can have more workers who make them
more money, neatly cutting the state out.

~~~
bicknergseng
>It doesn't really matter; my opinion isn't going to sway anyone. The
university has largely already been commoditized and that's a part of why it's
so vulnerable to disruption.

Ah, but that's what I'm saying. I would fully agree with industry not being
the purpose of education iff the only people who went to universities had the
financial means to not need to join industry afterwards, and our world didn't
require highly educated people for something other than research and
education. It is unfortunate that the two are so incompatible at the moment,
but I think they will adapt to each other in the next decade.

To address the initial point, I don't feel strongly about it but I don't think
programming Android or iOS apps in college as part of a curriculum is a bad
thing, even if it is tied to industry. As long as it's used as a vehicle to
drive home cs fundamentals and theories, that is. Best way to learn to code is
to code and all that.

------
materialhero
Does anyone know of a program like this in CT, MA, or RI? I'd gladly pay, but
I can't seem to find anything as immersive as this.

~~~
andrewem
It's not quite Connecticut, but in New York City there's
<https://www.hackerschool.com>, which lasts about 3 months. An acquaintance of
mine did it and liked it a lot.

~~~
materialhero
Yeah, I've looked at this one before. Forgot the name though, so thanks for
the link! Not a huge fan of NYC, but I think it's one of the better options
out there.

Side Note: I've been teaching myself Python on Codeacademy, but am still
pretty early in the coursework. I've noticed most of these programs focus on
Ruby. Without getting into the ruby vs. python fight that is so easy to find
online, does anyone know why these classes focus so much on ruby and not
another language? Am I going down the wrong path?

~~~
bitsoda
I have the same question. The ubiquity of these Ruby/Rails bootcamps make
Python/Django feel like some archaic language and framework when that is
hardly the case. What gives?

------
throwaway2015
Does anyone have experience hiring people from these camps vs. those who did
study on their own?

I'm in Boston, did some programming in college (mostly C++, a bit of HTML and
CSS - a few web sites for family, mostly for fun) and then had the slight
misfortune of going to law school just before law crashed. We all make
mistakes, but I did mostly IP so I hope it comes in handy down the road.

Anyway, I've been helping with a startup doing a little bit of everything and
have been using Team Treehouse to work through Ruby and iOS (since that's what
the coders do at work). I'm basically working for free and can only find
"internships" for non-tech people. (I do have another part-time job that pays
something)

I can't afford $10k for a bootcamp. If I keep going with Treehouse and Code
Academy, produce some small projects, will that be taken seriously? These
camps are full-time for a few weeks, but I'm learning part-time for months.

------
eranation
I wonder if there is Anything like this in the Atlanta area, if there isn't,
then I think it would be a great idea, there is a very vibrant rails community
here, lot's of startup activity, mentoring programs, incubators and
accelerators, and the number of recruiters in the ruby meetup is almost larger
than the number of developers, if I wasn't too busy doing my own things I
would have opened a program here, cost of living is very low and salaries are
not that far from NY / SF (buying power is much, much higher, and housing is
pretty cheap) so more and more companies move things to the area. If anyone
reads this and plans to open a similar program and can allow themselves to be
geographically flexible, I would have Georgia on my mind.

------
jere
>If you want a job, complete the program, work with us on finding an employer,
and _don't get an offer within six months of finishing the program_ , we've
screwed up and we'll give you your money back.

On one hand that seems like a pretty safe bet for them. How many programmers
go six months without finding a (relatively low paying) job? Worst case: they
give back the tuition. Not really a big deal.

On the other hand, I'm wondering how many start ups really hire people with
only 4 weeks of training and no experience. Maybe a lot? I really don't know.

~~~
EliRivers
Start-ups; probably not many.

Big-corps; a lot more.

~~~
jere
Big corporations are hiring programmers with no comp sci degree and only a
month of training to write Rails apps? Really??

Boy, did I waste 10 years of my life.

~~~
EliRivers
Yup. I know a lot of people with physics, maths and engineering degrees hired
as programmers.

------
codegeek
This is a very interesting take on the problem of "finding engineers". I guess
the model is to partner with companies who need engineers and then connect
thsoe engineers with the sponsoring companies once they are trained. I am not
sure though if 4 weeks is enough for someone with no background in computer
science or programming. But it is probably a great idea for people with _some_
background/experience already in programming.

~~~
fescue
It's a selective program; the students will have some programming experience.
We'll run a different track for absolute beginners.

------
asveikau
I live in San Francisco now, but I used to live in SLU before it was Amazon-
land. The phrase "one of the many SLU lunch trucks" sounds absolutely
ridiculous to me. I used to get frustrated at so few lunch options around
there. I was back recently; there's a lot that's new and a lot still in
transition; it's funny to see things change in such a short time.

------
Michael_Zaro
Awesome idea. It seems like this would be a great way to capture a different
part of the market than a codecademy or teamtreehouse. Especially with the
"guaranteed job" afterwards, it's much more of a crash course focused on skill
building. I wonder if this type of thing is what companies like degreed.com
are going for in changing education.

------
AtTheLast
I'm a designer working on learning ruby on rails. This seems like an awesome
program and a great way to learn. I'm not looking to land a job as a rails
developer, but I want to learn how to build projects I design. Do you think
this bootcamp would be a good fit for someone like me?

------
sushilewis
I was thinking why a programming class can't be run online, but I imagine the
local component is important to help students secure jobs in the students'
hometown.

------
caphill
I applied for this a few days ago. I hope I get in because I am not having any
luck in the job department. Read that they are only taking 10 people.

~~~
fescue
We'll have 20 students in the first bootcamp.

