Speaking for myself only: I think it's great. It's the same view that I have toward people who learn my native language as their second language - it opens up a path of communication with them that I did not have before.
These people are going to be competing directly with you for jobs; the net effect of this will be downward pressure on our already flat wages, and probably also lower quality software (due to bootcamp grads being incompetent and only in it for the money). And you think this is great?
>These people are going to be competing directly with you for jobs
Okay, and? There's already a lot of competition out there for jobs. A little more won't hurt. Being a programmer is not like being part of a religious order. We don't need to weed out those who speak orthodoxy to the preisthood.
>probably also lower quality software (due to bootcamp grads being incompetent and only in it for the money)
Do plumbers that go into it for the money necessarily produce inferior work product? Do mechanics? There are a whole set of professions that have to deal with this already, and there's no evidence that it produces inferior product.
>And you think this is great?
I think anybody doing what they want to, so long as it does not harm themselves or anybody else, is great.
Junior developers are junior developers: regardless of whether they've been coding since age eight, started in college and graduated with a CS degree, or bounced around odd jobs before doing a bootcamp, you can't let their code near production without substantial oversight from more senior developers. (I fit into the first bucket and it is frankly amazing to me that they let me touch a keyboard at all in my first two years in industry. I used to pronounce projects done which did not compile, as a result of "just one quick fix" on the last day.)
Engineering organizations either a) understand this fact and build teams around it, b) accept that their salary floor is now +/- $140k or so (in Silicon Valley), or c) whine incessantly about the engineering shortage.
Speaking as a self-taught programmer since I was in my early teens: I have nothing against it, some of my coworkers are bootcamp grads and I make sure they know I am available to help them. I also pull them aside to show some tricks or things to pay attention to.
Who is the lifelong programmer that dislikes showing others what they know about their favorite thing? Not me.
> Who is the lifelong programmer that dislikes showing others what they know about their favorite thing? Not me.
I used to hide tricks I'd do to extract more performance. Not any more. I tell people till I'm blue in the face how to do it, and they never figure it out :-)
As a CTO, I strictly will not hire them. They have an incredibly basic outlook unless they really do their homework and apply themselves. I'll take the college grad with good fundamentals and decent coding skills over the bootcamp grad with hardly any fundamentals and an overinflated confidence in knowing how to code (thanks to the bootcamps' marketing BS).
I'm sure many of you think I'm coming across as harsh, but actually my first company took on three apprentices with similar backgrounds and we paid the cost. Never again is all I can say. Let other start ups and businesses throw the dice, but I'll take a foreign (cheap) freelancer in the interim of looking for a real onsite dev. There's a very good chance the foreign coder is more skilled than any of these boot campers.
That's ok if you think that, but look at it from the perspective of time management. I don't have all the time in the world to give everyone a chance. I would love to, but I can't and so a simple rule like "No bootcampers" is an effective filtering mechanism. With a little patience, I find better talent rather than forcing myself to hunt for potential in anyone who applies.
To be honest, I find it presumptuous that I should be giving them a chance. I went to school to get to where I needed to be. I had to pay off student loans. I had to learn data structures, compilers, and all sorts of advanced things that I don't use on an everyday basis (but no doubt help me). Who are you to say I'm being harsh in denying the get-rich-schemers of the bootcamping world for the diligent one-step-at-a-time college folk? And of course that's a generalization.. so please, let's not say "but there's always exceptions."
"I had to go through a longer, more expensive program, and learned harder things, therefore, why do they deserve to be given the chances I was?"
It doesn't matter what you had to go through - what matters is whether you are capable to do the job.
I went through a 4-year program. I'm a programmer at a startup. I use very little of any knowledge I acquired at school on a daily basis. Graphics? Compilers? Advanced algorithms? Nope. I just need to solve relatively simple problems and write code that's maintainable. The second part you don't learn in school - in fact, you probably learn the opposite. The first part requires a bit of a shift in thinking if you've never programmed before.. Hence bootcamps. I'm not deluded into thinking I'm really that much more capable at doing my job than someone who spent less time learning not-so-practical things. Obviously this depends on what you're doing - bootcampers can't just go be machine learning experts. But web devs? Of course.
I've interviewed people from 4 year programs, and I've interviewed bootcampers. My guesses on their respective resumes pretty much matched up with how I graded them on their interviews. In both groups, you have the people who get it, and the people who don't. Obviously, the percentage was higher in the CS education group than the bootcamp group. But there are some really good bootcampers. There's also lazy fucks (get-rich-schemers) in both crowds. And I can tell the difference pretty easily in resumes.
It's fine that you have that heuristic - if you're running a tight ship and can't afford the time, then that makes sense. But to justify it like that is a bit silly.
Both of you guys are implying that my cause is entitlement when really it's just part of the overall equation. I don't understand how judging character by simple generalizations such as "Ok, you went to college, which means you got into college, which means you must have studied, which means you must have XYZ..." makes me a callous person out of nowhere and acting out of mere entitlement. Your argument is fallacious because it sits on a false premise.
I do not think I got scammed by university (as the guy below me said), but rather was gifted by it. Nor do I think that everyone has to go through the same path as me. Did I ever say I would deny a programmer who has been working in the industry for a few years with noticeable results despite a college education? I'm pretty sure my top foreign dev right now has no college education, but is self-taught.
I read my sentence again and you know I'm just being honest with you guys. It's not about a "me vs them", it's about an overall character evaluation. I look at myself as someone who I think generally went about things in the right way. I'm sorry if this offends you, but it's how I make up my judgment calls for who's worth looking into and who's not. What works for me might not work for others. I think college did a lot for me. I like talking with people who did go to college because I can typically talk at a lower level. I don't like having to constantly mentor or teach topics I am skilled in, which is what I would have to do with the guys who learned to code, but don't know much else. Is it important? That's up to the person doing the hiring who is going to have to deal with them on a day-to-day basis.
So, I need to worry a lot more about culture and productivity than I do some perfect ideal of hiring. In fact, I think by placing culture first and hiring who I think I would like the most, I do a big win for the company. In the future, when we're huge, maybe not so. Then it will be up to the hiring managers who actually have to work with them who they like.
I don't care that you got scammed by Uni. One of the best software engineers I know dropped out after 2 years because he couldn't afford to sink himself in debt. He now does some pretty impressive work.
There are MIS guys (IT degree pretending to be CS-lite) that put out great programmers, too. And of course, there are those that are self-taught or only need a best practices guide (bootcamps) to get them engaged.
I, on the other hand, wish I had done full CS because I'm interested in systems programming, which does require some groking of the OS and memory management. But webdev and front-end work doesn't.
Your last sentence truly unwinds your argument. If half the programmers out there are different than your premise, it's not an exception. It's part of the rule.
As somebody who works extensively with foreign freelancers, I have to agree. There is a wealth of talent overseas. The major issue I have with these consulting firms is my inability to retain talent in the long-term. It's often the case that a good person finds another position and I'm not given the opportunity to counter it, or the consulting company itself pushes talent to move to a new position because of apparent visa issues.
I don't agree with the cheap freelancer part, but I can understand the nervousness around bootcamps. They teach for the 80% of basic cases that a Jr. Dev will encounter. This may be good in theory, however, I get very nervous about the 20% of the cases that they have not encountered which require fundamentals to be able to work through. This is just one example.
I've seen guys with good fundamentals grab onto new languages and theories very, very quickly because they had a solid foundation. I'm not completely against giving bootcampers an opportunity, but I do have my reservations regarding what I mentioned above and a few others.
They're junior. They might be very smart and have tons of potential, but they're junior and will take substantial time to season into skilled programmers.
It's the classic salary vs. experience tradeoff: you pay less in salary and pay more in training and oversight until they become seasoned programmers.
But if you choose to ignore the part where they've been coding for maybe 12 weeks, you're in for a world of hurt.
People who have been coding for years make well more than $64k, even in entry-level positions.
Coding bootcamps are essentially the nursing equivalent to doctors. They graduate people who can do an adequate job of their specific role and certainly can be helpful on a team, but you don't put them in charge of the project.
It is almost like bootcamp grads have not been programming for years. If only we had a word we could use to describe people relatively new to the profession, a keyword that we could use to compare reported salaries across areas and see if what you said is true or not.
Somebody oughta build a system like that. It'd be neat.
Not just junior (i.e., fresh grad), but ridiculously junior, at the level of a freshman in college, well below the par for an intern.
I don't dislike or like them: I know that they are incredibly junior. I would prefer to work with people more experienced, given the option. If the project allows for inexperience and has the ramp-up time needed, they can do it. The management must understand that the bootcamp graduates are going to take significant time and cost to come up to speed. The bootcamp grad must be willing to drink from a firehose, though... If all of that is satisfied, then sure, I'll work with them.
As part of the mentoring process, I will pass them CS books: algorithms, data structures, and other key fundamentals of the field, and expect them to come up to speed on the fundamentals. They need to know this stuff to do the job well; I will explicitly refer to their willingness to learn the fundamentals in my peer evaluations with our manager.
I'm guessing they had a really low sample size, especially for some of the lower languages (objc/java). Most of the salary per langauge breakdowns i've seen rank mobile skills (android/iOS) nearly highest.
It wouldn't surprise me. Android apps sell less, are pirated more, and attract more 'free' users. Piracy is a problem with iOS apps as well, but there's far less money coming in overall for Android developers.
It also doesn't help that Java is one of the most widely 'known' languages since pretty much every CS major has been exposed to it for the last 15 years.
I'm immediately skeptical of any reports that put "piracy" anywhere in the top n list of problems for a platform. The great majority of people use the play store and buy their apps just like everyone else.
..Now whether it's a bogus perception, and the perception is causing people to eye the platform with suspicion, is a legitimate question. Correcting misinformation is hard.
There's been a lot of criticism for that comment and it really shouldn't be taken without a large pinch of salt. For example, it didn't account for people buying it once and installing on more than one device. That's a pretty big oversight.
Much as I love ustwo, it was a stupid comment for that developer to make.
Yeah, "Java jobs" as a category is going to run from the kids coming out of schools in the Midwest and going to work at an insurance company in Omaha to senior devs at Google. That's a big range, and there're a lot of jobs at the bottom end of it to pull the average down.
Actually, in my (admittedly limited) experience, Android developers can charge a premium because more people want to be developing for iOS. But companies still need people to maintain their Android apps, so experienced Android devs are in short supply.
My guess is that the salaries here have absolutely nothing to do with Android and are more a reflection of the fact that Java is still the language of choice at large corporations which treat technology as a cost center.
The fact that Java is used for Android doesn't mean these people were hired to make Android apps. It has many other uses.
It's more likely these people were hired into IT departments with legacy systems (and thus IT is treated as a cost-center, and they received lower salaries to minimize company costs).
Google just partnered with General Assembly to get more Android programmers [1] which is odd given the pay is so low. Does anyone know if the Android platform is considered "untapped" compared to Apple's? That's the only explanation I can come up with.
I'd like to see such reports disclose whether or not the job numbers include bootcamps that hire graduates to teach, which to me inaccurately skews the numbers. Moreover, I'd like to see numbers on bootcamp graduates who are still in the industry after 5 years.
While we didn't report directly on this, 10 (out of >700) respondents did say that they worked as a teaching assistant after graduation (Table 14).
We'll continue to conduct this outcomes survey (as well as report on market sizing and growth) yearly; since the industry itself is 2-3 years old, we don't have 5 year out data yet, but will soon-ish!
-Liz (Co-founder, Course Report)
Is this bootcamp craze and the overall increased media coverage of 'coding' as an easily learned unskilled trade making anyone else consider a career change? I am pushing 40 and the diminishing earning potential, lack of respect, and relentless ageism are really making me wish I'd done something else.
Indeed that may be true for the most rudimentary programming jobs (HTML/CSS/JS developers come to mind), but not for all. Data science/Stats, AI, ML, HCI...these are highly-specialized disciplines of computer science that require intense study and (as of now) cannot simply be developed over the course of a 12 week camp. If you're looking to future-proof your career, learn all the stuff they don't teach you in boot camps.
I wouldn't worry about the effect of bootcamps and the surge of unqualified programmers. All they do is create even more demand for senior developers to manage them and clean up after their messes.
I know it's ridiculous for someone half your age to give advice, but if you're worried about diminishing earning potential, ageism, and lack of respect, consider consulting. Your experience is directly valued and the earning ceiling is much much higher (if it exists at all). I know several 40+ year-old developers who have had tremendous success working as consultants and getting lots of respect from companies which otherwise exclusively employ 20-somethings.
You sort of nailed it, but most 40+ somethings need to get out of 'full time employment' status in to consulting or some other more independent status to keep the money and status going up. Not everyone, of course, but that tends to be the trend. The 40+ folks I know who just want to go get a 9-5 coding job seem to have a harder time landing one than the 20 somethings I know.
The diminishing earning potential means there are more resources capable of fulfilling what role you're performing. Hoping to remain exclusive is not in the best interest of the field, is it?
I see relentless ageism as the result of the flood of new computer science talent. It biases recruiter expectations to seek out a certain type of candidate. Your experience as an older programmer is unique here and this could be an important opportunity for you to disrupt the status quo (eg. affect HR.)
Regarding lack of respect, I'm assuming you mean respect for the field of Computer Science? I think this is the result of the explosion in industry/applications of programming. Dollars drive attitudes, which has resulted in Ruby on Rails being the pinnacle of many programmers' fascination in computer science, as an example. Not that I dislike Ruby on Rails, of course!
java is extremely popular in big businesses. Just think about some corporation in a rural state that needs an application (maybe a company that isn't mainly a tech company). Python on the other hand is more "hip" and used mostly in smaller companies, more likely to be in the bay area.
The salaries look really, really low. I'm wondering if these people with bachelors degrees in CS are screwing themselves by paying additional for these bootcamps. It looks like prospective companies are taking advantage of fact that they know their candidate attended a bootcamp and is offering artificially low salaries.
I wonder if they would have better results by applying for jobs directly, instead of through the bootcamp recruiters.
48 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 86.3 ms ] threadNot like you, right? You're not in it for the money; heck, you'd keep working at your company even if they cut your salary in half tomorrow.
ETA: Also, they're all incompetent! And not one of these people hiring them has noticed. Helluva con job.
So yeah, some of us do think it's great, actually.
Okay, and? There's already a lot of competition out there for jobs. A little more won't hurt. Being a programmer is not like being part of a religious order. We don't need to weed out those who speak orthodoxy to the preisthood.
>probably also lower quality software (due to bootcamp grads being incompetent and only in it for the money)
Do plumbers that go into it for the money necessarily produce inferior work product? Do mechanics? There are a whole set of professions that have to deal with this already, and there's no evidence that it produces inferior product.
>And you think this is great?
I think anybody doing what they want to, so long as it does not harm themselves or anybody else, is great.
Engineering organizations either a) understand this fact and build teams around it, b) accept that their salary floor is now +/- $140k or so (in Silicon Valley), or c) whine incessantly about the engineering shortage.
Who is the lifelong programmer that dislikes showing others what they know about their favorite thing? Not me.
I used to hide tricks I'd do to extract more performance. Not any more. I tell people till I'm blue in the face how to do it, and they never figure it out :-)
I'm sure many of you think I'm coming across as harsh, but actually my first company took on three apprentices with similar backgrounds and we paid the cost. Never again is all I can say. Let other start ups and businesses throw the dice, but I'll take a foreign (cheap) freelancer in the interim of looking for a real onsite dev. There's a very good chance the foreign coder is more skilled than any of these boot campers.
To be honest, I find it presumptuous that I should be giving them a chance. I went to school to get to where I needed to be. I had to pay off student loans. I had to learn data structures, compilers, and all sorts of advanced things that I don't use on an everyday basis (but no doubt help me). Who are you to say I'm being harsh in denying the get-rich-schemers of the bootcamping world for the diligent one-step-at-a-time college folk? And of course that's a generalization.. so please, let's not say "but there's always exceptions."
"I had to go through a longer, more expensive program, and learned harder things, therefore, why do they deserve to be given the chances I was?"
It doesn't matter what you had to go through - what matters is whether you are capable to do the job.
I went through a 4-year program. I'm a programmer at a startup. I use very little of any knowledge I acquired at school on a daily basis. Graphics? Compilers? Advanced algorithms? Nope. I just need to solve relatively simple problems and write code that's maintainable. The second part you don't learn in school - in fact, you probably learn the opposite. The first part requires a bit of a shift in thinking if you've never programmed before.. Hence bootcamps. I'm not deluded into thinking I'm really that much more capable at doing my job than someone who spent less time learning not-so-practical things. Obviously this depends on what you're doing - bootcampers can't just go be machine learning experts. But web devs? Of course.
I've interviewed people from 4 year programs, and I've interviewed bootcampers. My guesses on their respective resumes pretty much matched up with how I graded them on their interviews. In both groups, you have the people who get it, and the people who don't. Obviously, the percentage was higher in the CS education group than the bootcamp group. But there are some really good bootcampers. There's also lazy fucks (get-rich-schemers) in both crowds. And I can tell the difference pretty easily in resumes.
It's fine that you have that heuristic - if you're running a tight ship and can't afford the time, then that makes sense. But to justify it like that is a bit silly.
I do not think I got scammed by university (as the guy below me said), but rather was gifted by it. Nor do I think that everyone has to go through the same path as me. Did I ever say I would deny a programmer who has been working in the industry for a few years with noticeable results despite a college education? I'm pretty sure my top foreign dev right now has no college education, but is self-taught.
I read my sentence again and you know I'm just being honest with you guys. It's not about a "me vs them", it's about an overall character evaluation. I look at myself as someone who I think generally went about things in the right way. I'm sorry if this offends you, but it's how I make up my judgment calls for who's worth looking into and who's not. What works for me might not work for others. I think college did a lot for me. I like talking with people who did go to college because I can typically talk at a lower level. I don't like having to constantly mentor or teach topics I am skilled in, which is what I would have to do with the guys who learned to code, but don't know much else. Is it important? That's up to the person doing the hiring who is going to have to deal with them on a day-to-day basis.
So, I need to worry a lot more about culture and productivity than I do some perfect ideal of hiring. In fact, I think by placing culture first and hiring who I think I would like the most, I do a big win for the company. In the future, when we're huge, maybe not so. Then it will be up to the hiring managers who actually have to work with them who they like.
There are MIS guys (IT degree pretending to be CS-lite) that put out great programmers, too. And of course, there are those that are self-taught or only need a best practices guide (bootcamps) to get them engaged.
I, on the other hand, wish I had done full CS because I'm interested in systems programming, which does require some groking of the OS and memory management. But webdev and front-end work doesn't.
Your last sentence truly unwinds your argument. If half the programmers out there are different than your premise, it's not an exception. It's part of the rule.
I've seen guys with good fundamentals grab onto new languages and theories very, very quickly because they had a solid foundation. I'm not completely against giving bootcampers an opportunity, but I do have my reservations regarding what I mentioned above and a few others.
It's the classic salary vs. experience tradeoff: you pay less in salary and pay more in training and oversight until they become seasoned programmers.
But if you choose to ignore the part where they've been coding for maybe 12 weeks, you're in for a world of hurt.
People who have been coding for years make well more than $64k, even in entry-level positions.
Coding bootcamps are essentially the nursing equivalent to doctors. They graduate people who can do an adequate job of their specific role and certainly can be helpful on a team, but you don't put them in charge of the project.
Somebody oughta build a system like that. It'd be neat.
I understand for webapps companies. (although the bubble has or will burst soonerish)
I don't dislike or like them: I know that they are incredibly junior. I would prefer to work with people more experienced, given the option. If the project allows for inexperience and has the ramp-up time needed, they can do it. The management must understand that the bootcamp graduates are going to take significant time and cost to come up to speed. The bootcamp grad must be willing to drink from a firehose, though... If all of that is satisfied, then sure, I'll work with them.
As part of the mentoring process, I will pass them CS books: algorithms, data structures, and other key fundamentals of the field, and expect them to come up to speed on the fundamentals. They need to know this stuff to do the job well; I will explicitly refer to their willingness to learn the fundamentals in my peer evaluations with our manager.
Is this typical for Android development? I'm surprised there are very many software jobs out there with such low pay.
However the statement actually isn't saying anything about Android development salaries, just that the language is Java.
There are a lot of low paying Java jobs but Android is not one of them.
It also doesn't help that Java is one of the most widely 'known' languages since pretty much every CS major has been exposed to it for the last 15 years.
..Now whether it's a bogus perception, and the perception is causing people to eye the platform with suspicion, is a legitimate question. Correcting misinformation is hard.
http://venturebeat.com/2015/01/05/monument-valley-developer-...
Much as I love ustwo, it was a stupid comment for that developer to make.
My guess is that the salaries here have absolutely nothing to do with Android and are more a reflection of the fact that Java is still the language of choice at large corporations which treat technology as a cost center.
It's more likely these people were hired into IT departments with legacy systems (and thus IT is treated as a cost-center, and they received lower salaries to minimize company costs).
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/22/general-assembly-and-google...
We'll continue to conduct this outcomes survey (as well as report on market sizing and growth) yearly; since the industry itself is 2-3 years old, we don't have 5 year out data yet, but will soon-ish! -Liz (Co-founder, Course Report)
I know it's ridiculous for someone half your age to give advice, but if you're worried about diminishing earning potential, ageism, and lack of respect, consider consulting. Your experience is directly valued and the earning ceiling is much much higher (if it exists at all). I know several 40+ year-old developers who have had tremendous success working as consultants and getting lots of respect from companies which otherwise exclusively employ 20-somethings.
I see relentless ageism as the result of the flood of new computer science talent. It biases recruiter expectations to seek out a certain type of candidate. Your experience as an older programmer is unique here and this could be an important opportunity for you to disrupt the status quo (eg. affect HR.)
Regarding lack of respect, I'm assuming you mean respect for the field of Computer Science? I think this is the result of the explosion in industry/applications of programming. Dollars drive attitudes, which has resulted in Ruby on Rails being the pinnacle of many programmers' fascination in computer science, as an example. Not that I dislike Ruby on Rails, of course!
I wonder if they would have better results by applying for jobs directly, instead of through the bootcamp recruiters.
Also, I was under the impression that most of these bootcamps were for people w/o a CS degree(or degree at all).