I changed careers via a coding boot camp. I have highly mixed feelings about how coding boot camps are sold, and run, but I think for some people such short term training could be a sort of new future for trade schools.
This could be particularly useful if we're entering an age of sudden disruption as far as jobs and career paths goes where a career that once was might be gone (or greatly diminished) tomorrow. Provided business are willing to recognize and hire those people.
The change I see happening now is that many of the jobs people are hoping to “skill up” to are themselves being automated out of existence.
A combination of targeted AI and good old-fashioned process automation are going to put a lot of white collar workers out of work; including software developers at the lower end of the skill curve.
Make a tool that automatically converts a designer's spec/mockup into a performant webpage with high fidelity? Sounds very hard but certainly possible
To be fair there are already a lot of services that do this. They are just so commonplace we don't think of them as automation. And they don't allow super complicated setups so they're definitely not quite there yet in the general case. I'm thinking of Wix, Squarespace, basic wordpress.
Just like the old gypsy woman said, today a huge percentage of white-collar office work could literally be replaced with a shell script or a couple days' work by someone who knows their way around excel. But it still hasn't happened and attempts to add more software to these jobs seem usually to do very little to improve efficiency, often just adding more jobs to support the software. Every time more software's added, actual automation gets harder, too, as more systems become involved. Pretty soon a couple macros and a script won't cut it, because there are so many pieces involved they'd certainly break all the time.
I'm not even sure most office technology's helping that much. I suspect most of the efficiency gains from tech have been in a handful of "knowledge" work areas, and manufacturing. Plus new markets. The rest... might actually be losing everyone money.
This is actually kinda what the person you’re replying to is talking about. You have a piece of software that replaces some knowledge workers’ task. At first it seems like you are saving money, but the specifics of the task require an adaptable workforce over the course of years, and the RPA requires an adaptable collection of workers to learn from. Now, instead of just having a job that processes those inputs and outputs, you have the same thing but made more baroque by being connected to RPA, plus software developers to maintain the RPA software itself.
Short term, it seems to eliminate workers. Shortly after those workers are eliminated, truth on the ground has changed, and now there’s an ADDITIONAL cost to updating the software, which is harder and more expensive to do without the workers that have been eliminated.
RPA does eliminate workers. Modern RPA isn’t just “write a screen scraper and never think about it again” — you use BAs and line workers to (cheaply) build out a bunch of RPA integrations, see which ones are the most popular / valuable through usage data from your RPA platform, then implement those via less brittle methods as part of your existing roadmaps. The important part is that the front-end that users access stays the same — you’re basically just swapping an API call to an RPA platform with a direct API call to a backing webservice.
This allows for rapid development of functional integrations delivering real business capabilities — without the overhead of an SDLC. It helps wrangle shadow IT tools into a manageable system and generates lots of structural data on how the actual users of the system interact with it to guide investment in feature development. The RPA scripts with little / no value will naturally fall into disrepair, while the valuable ones will be maintained / improved.
I promise you, it’s way cheaper this way. Software teams stop getting inundated with one-off feature requests that take a ton of work to coordinate, scope, evaluate and test — even if they never get built. Business users get to eliminate time-consuming manual processes. Also keep in mind the first jobs to get replaced by RPA are the ones that have already been shipped offshore... An RPA team for a large enterprise is usually only 2 or 3 engineers and an army of BAs and PMs — but they’re replacing a bunch of individual projects that no longer need to be staffed.
A tonne of mostly front end work is now done in tools like wix and even on the higher end wordpress has taken over a lot of it. The only custom front-end web design work tends to be clients with deeper pockets but local web design shops for small business are largely a thing of the past along with the hosting etc.
Aside from the job losses we've lost a gateway into our industry for graduates.
Indeed. The minimum skill required to find long-term employment becomes a much higher standard. Entry-level office jobs are going to vanish before most people realize. Many low level processes that are currently done by clerks/bookkeepers/analysts will be replaced by scripts.
If you don't mind elaborating, what was your experience like with coding boot camp? I entered the profession "traditionally" (via a comp sci degree) so I don't know much about the boot camp experience.
My program was "full time" (5 days a week) for 12 weeks.
The camp was through my local university, but really they had bought a snap in program from an outside company.
The course was basically front end to back end via, HTML - CSS - JavaScript - Node - React (in that order). There were other items covered but those were the big focus. Little to no CS, CS theory, algorithms or anything like that. IMO it does a good job getting you started in a specific area and a place to keep learning / jump off from.
My instructor was great, his assistants were horrendous (couldn't help with anything, seemed disinterested, straight up were terrible at debugging).
If someone puts in the extra time (and they make it clear that you HAVE to put in extra time outside of class) a capable person can come out of the camp as IMO, a useful entry level web developer with potential and a good place to learn from. I have kids so my life for that time was basically, class - take care of family - code - sleep ... repeat. Actually I've kinda kept that up for a year now.
I had a technical background (network engineer) for a long time and was working with engineering teams and had done some scripting and reading about coding here and there. Even just a little background can help a lot in a a class that throws things at you quickly.
Other folks without a technical background could do well too (one was an accountant, another a director of some sort of organization, some worked odd jobs but were capable folks).
The catch in my class was that they do NOT filter candidates in any meaningful way and that ws arguably the worst aspect of the class. There was a test but I think it was more of a sales pitch (it was virtually the same test as several other camps in the area).
I'd say at least 50% of the class was unemployable, and the worst of it was they were often on everyone's team for group projects. These people were often a net negative impact, they just couldn't do it couldn't finish their own work, and created more issues than helped. I don't look down on them for it, because how do you know if you ... don't know? I think they were brave for trying. But IMO the class should have done evaluations and invited some folks to save them self some time and move on but of course that might involve a partial refund so ... doesn't happen.
That might sound like I'm talking smack about folks in order to talk myself up, but having a class with people who are either not trying (shockingly there were those) and / or not capable really disrupts the flow of the class and the amount of material covered. Everyone struggled at various points in the class, but some from week two and then constantly from there on they were so far behind it was never going to click.
There's a lot of "everyone can code" out there, it's BS, everyone can write it, but troubleshooting and coding and getting a good outcome is another matter.
Despite the negatives I have good memories of the class, it was a great experience. I didn't have a traditional education and I loved going to class every day and working with everyone. I do wish the class had gone about twice as long and filtered out candidates (as someone said, it's a bootcamp, shouldn't people be booted?).
I think the bootcamp system can be useful (let's put aside the robots and AI for a bit) but I do worry the companies involved might be so profit driven that they make it ... less useful for society as a whole.
One side note, a few students decided to go back to school for a traditional CS degree and they really appreciated their bootcamp experience on top of getting into CS where they felt the theory can get a bit deep and academic. They feel their fellow students (and some professors) maybe can't see the forest through the trees / what they're actually learning as it would apply to actual programming you might do when you apply that theory.
This is a fantastic overview - thanks for taking the time to write it. I think probably a lot of the negatives seem more to do with the "for profit education" angle (not rejecting obviously disruptive or incapable candidates) than the "boot camp" format itself, which is interesting. I expected that part of it to be challenging, as I remember a lot of cases in uni where I needed time to let problems "simmer" for a while before I could actually sit down and write the code.
It makes me wonder if there's a way that the public education system could offer something semi accredited (and publically funded) in the boot camp "format" for software education, and maybe alleviate some of the challenges you mentioned. My classes certainly didn't slow down when people struggled or weren't trying, those people simply weren't around for much longer (or mostly weren't there in the first place.
Anyway - very glad that it's worked out for you, and I think you're spot on with the questions bit. At the end of the day, there's too much to know out there, so all one can do is ask questions and stay curious!
I absolutely think a given university could come up with a good boot camp like program. How willing some folks in say a CS department might be is another matter, but there is no reason they couldn't create such a program and dramatically improve it pretty quickly.
I think an accredited system would be a great option to lend some credibility to the system / stand out from the for profit systems that are questionable. It might also address one of the challenges being that even some recruiters I talked to had no idea what a coding boot camp even was.
I remember in middle school and high school we were told in no uncertain terms that we should all get 4 year college degrees because they gave the highest lifetime earnings. My high school was lucky enough to have an auto shop in it with a teacher that had been a mechanic/shop owner for years. He told us some good stories and also told us about how much money he made in the industry.
I didn't think about it much then because I was dead set on getting an engineering degree, but I've had this feeling about 4 year colleges for a while now. I saw so many people at my state college (~30,000 enrollment) that had absolutely no idea what they wanted to do, lacked the skills to be effective in college, or were in a degree program that had no job opportunities. I saw many of them drop out after 1-2 years, but also saw ones that remained and got their degree. Now they are tens of thousands of dollars in debt with nothing to show for it, and the people who did graduate are in more debt with no good job prospects. It feels like we were lied to about college by all the adults in our lives.
I got my EE/CS degree and currently work in software development. I was talking about people I knew from my first few years at college and my high school experience. I was still lied to, but it worked great for me because what I wanted to do requires a college degree and compensation is notoriously good.
Senior software engineer for 7 years. I don't have a degree. I love this field because it is like a modern day trade. You can teach yourself and you can showcase your skill without a piece of paper.
Lying assumes malice, which assumes that the people in a position to encourage a college track vs career track have any understanding of the situation whatsoever. People are incredibly adept at repeating a truism that they've themselves been told. No bearing on reality required.
Philosophically I would disagree that lying assumes malice. We don't really have a word in english to describe "lying without malice", and I suspect the reason why is because we don't recognize a significant enough difference between them to warrant its own word.
Not sure what dictionary you got that out of, but to me "tact" means to tell someone something in a less abrasive way, or politely. Tact is about how the information is presented, not the content of it.
In addition to what the article points out, another issue is that many tradespeople are employed by small or family owned businesses, so your prospects for getting into a decent job may depend on your family and connections. Otherwise, you'll be working behind the parts counter at Auto Zone.
The earnings for college graduates are very misleading because virtually all the children of wealthy people graduate from college, and they get high salaries, but those high salaries are due to nepotism and exploiting their parent's networks, and have nothing to do with their college degree.
For poor/lower-middle-class students college is mostly b.s. and you can be doing the exact same job for half the wage because you don't have the connections to get the high salary.
To my knowledge you don't need nepotism to get good jobs in STEM or high paying professions like dentistry, nursing, physical therapy, medicine, or law (well, actually in law if you are only a mediocre graduate nepotism can help a lot).
In my view it's not just connections. The children of wealthy people are also, for the most part, children of educated people. As a result, they know how to navigate the college system and to get the most out of it. There are things about college that I've explicitly told my kids. Someone who doesn't know, or is predisposed to believe that college is worthless, won't ever know what they missed out on.
Also, by the time they hit college, kids are already highly differentiated, and this affects their access to the more fructifying opportunities in college. There's this giant Sorting Hat, and it's called Math.
So I don't deny the wealth effect, but I don't think it's fully explained by connections.
totally true. but even the dumbest children of wealth will end up in six-figure jobs while the average ones will be top corporate lawyers, sales people, or professors, and the extraordinary ones will be CEOs. The smartest poor kids can excel in college and get the same salary as the dumbest rich kids, but will never move up the ladder because they lack the network.
Yes, and it's worse, screening for a college degree is an attempt not just to hire people you know specifically, but people _of your social class_ generally. Wealthy people prefer to hire children of wealthy people they don't even know.
(and even more clear when considering how degrees from some institutions are rated higher than others).
We weren't lied to about college being the pathway to a good job; industries just took advantage of that fact and found ways to profit from it.
There is a reason why so many people don't want to learn a trade: because they know it sucks. For every anecdote I hear about some tradesman living the good life, I can give them three about miserable workers who can't get out. Work is inconsistent, you lack much of the security and benefits that other jobs offer, it tears up your body, and working conditions are often poor. My dad had to do carpentry for months with a broken hip, because he couldn't afford to take the time off after surgery. My uncle--another carpenter--lost his job, found work in a factory to pay the bills, and lost three fingers in a machine. I briefly worked in a sheet metal shop, and many of the workers had carpel tunnel in both wrists, arthritis, and bad eyesight from all of the welders in the shop. I saw a flare from a TIG welder as I walked by someone's stall with the curtain halfway closed, and my eyes burned and watered halfway through the night. In another job, I cut off the tip of my thumb on a circular saw while building a deck. I'm a statistician now.
Learning a trade, along with the almighty STEM fields, are not the solution to the college problem; they are a red herring. The real issue is that a college degree is used to screen applicants for almost every good paying, secure job in the US, regardless of whether or not a degree is really necessary to do the job. College became more available, and any entry level worker with a degree had an edge in the job market, which forced everyone else to go to college to stay competitive.
In my mind, telling people to skip college and learn a trade because someone they know makes good money at it is like telling people to skip college and start acting because they know an actor that makes good money.
Let me clarify: There are people out there that just should not go to college. It would be a waste of time and money for them. These are the people that need to take a look at alternate career paths, but those same people were in the room with me when the teacher was telling us about how poor you will be if you don't go do college.
I agree that the prestige of a college degree has been watered down, but that is simply a supply and demand thing. If there aren't enough workers with a college degree, then the employer will hire people who don't have one, especially if the job doesn't actually require a degree.
> There are people out there that just should not go to college. It would be a waste of time and money for them.
Wouldn't you say this is a bit 20/20 hindsight-y? You can be an A/B+ average student in HS and be completely out of your depth in college, depending on your course choices and rigor of the institution.
I didn't realize until maybe sophomore year that I perform better in applied scenarios rather than theoretical. I'd fail my stats midterms because I didn't understand hetero/homoskedasticity, but I would ace the final project because it gave you a dataset that you were supposed to analyze in STATA to answer specific questions. Got a B- overall though, due to the bad midterm grade.
Now, I'm not the kind of person who would fall into the typical "college isn't for you" category, but I did still graduate in 2009 with a 5-figure debt load, an average GPA and a recession economy. I'm sure there were tens of thousands of students like me. We likely have paid off the debt by now and are gainfully employed, but we still question the value of the degree in terms of both financial and time-based opportunity cost.
Yes, there are some people that by all measures should do well in college, but just don't. That is going to happen in any population of people. What I was talking about was students that I met early on (i.e. in the dorms or 2nd year) that were just there for posterity. They were there to get a degree just to say "I got a degree", and not the knowledge they gained there. I also knew quite a few of the athletes, but that is a separate discussion.
Yes, your situation is pretty rough as far as college grads go. My brother graduated a few years after that, but luckily got a job somewhat quickly as the economy was slowly rebounding. Maybe it is 20/20 to talk about this because not many people saw that recession coming. Kids entering college in 2004 were seeing a good economy, and that affected the cost/benefit for them.
I mean what you're describing with trades is just as rampant in college educated jobs, minus the back breaking work but adding in other ergonomic nightmares of an office and more political and social stress. Not saying you're wrong but I think the problem is workers aren't getting their fair share for the progress of society. No matter their background.
I wonder what they are really screening for when they require a college degree for jobs it is not necessary for. They're not doing it for no reason... I expect it's attempting to screen for class, basically. No poor people, or at least people that seem like poor people and can't fake it.
Most business people are fundamentally interested in the good of the business. They require a college degree because they think someone with a college degree will do a better job.
Now there can be two reasons for that.
1. Skills learnt while getting the degree
2. The degree is a proxy for things not learnt during the degree. Think which things improve business value? General aptitude. Connections. Perseverance.
To the extent that 1 dominates, increased college attendance is great. To the extent that 2 dominates, increased college is an expensive signalling game.
Which is which? A little rule of thumb I have. If jobs require a degree from a good school, but the subject doesn't matter, then it's mostly signalling. If jobs require a particular degree, but the school doesn't matter as much then it's probably dominated by 1.
If interviews in the profession focus more on live demonstrating skills it's probably more 1. If interviews in the profession focus on telling a story that puts you in a good light it's probably 2.
How many people can a field absorb? Is it a fairly constant need of x carpenters are needed per capita to supply everyone with furniture (risks turning to signalling game about those fixed opportunities)? Or is it the more people we have, the cooler things we can build, the sky is the limit (clear this bar and your good to go)?
Is there a immigration of people in the field because domestic schools are not capable of meeting demand? That indicates a skill gap, 1. It can also mean the job is so shit no one wants to do it, but differentiating those cases should be simple.
He told us some good stories and also told us about how much money he made in the industry.
Good on him for being open about earnings. Most Americans are not so transparent and I wish I had known that many trades offer similar earnings potential to most careers for 4-year degree earners.
I am an engine mechanic for a chain of diesel shops in the Midwest. I hit trade school after age 17 and slid into a nice apprentice program for aspiring automotive mechanics. I can confirm my trade school, a state school, was one of the best decisions I'd ever made.
I can also confirm that some of the heaviest weight on my heart is the friends I have that struggle to maintain basic health insurance and employment despite having a biology or chemistry degree. I don't know what the solution is, but I feel bitter about the kids sold down university avenue with nothing to show.
So if I could say anything to the kids its this. We are hiring. We are hiring for work you'll be paid well for and a job you can be proud of. Welder, plumber, mechanic, these cannot continue to be four letter words. Talk to your vocational tech schools or your guidance counselor.
One question I'd have is how easy is it to get into an apprenticeship program? I have a friend who's working at a dealership driving and shining cars with the hope that after some period he'll become an actual mechanic apprentice, so the situation seems like it's less than a sure thing (my friend had a scare when someone tried to pull scam claiming my friend had dented his car and police report would be filed, which can be bad for a commercial driver).
I'm no expert but if you are at a dealership trying to become a mechanic by detailing cars that seems like a weird/longshot unless there is a specific program to take people without certification and apply them to their specialized program from being a porter. I imagine that most people that start off at dealerships probably start off certified or with experience. If I was this person I would ask an independent shop and also a chain shop (Midas, Jiffy Lube) what the best way into the industry was if they don't want to go through trade school and get a basic automotive certification. I feel like dealerships for better or worse generally aren't in the business of training people from scratch (or have stringent requirements from corporate on who they can have service cars for warranty work) unless they have a damn good reason.
Then there's also the usual questions you should give your friend: are you sure that this dealership knows you want to become a mechanic? Are they just wanting you to be porter? Are you friendly with the head mechanic and the mechanic staff or are you more friendly with the sales part of the dealership? Does the head mechanic know you want to become an apprentice? Have other porters become apprentice mechanics at this dealership?
It also is worth asking if the mechanic's shop is an hourly or flat rate shop. A flat rate shop maybe not be the easiest place to get an apprentice compared to an hourly shop where taking an extra five minutes to explain something is not going to cut another mechanic's pay.
I think you're right, its not always easy. Apprenticeship is mostly based on the strength of a union. Mileage varies state to state
That having been said if your friend is young I'd absolutely recommend trade school. Its relatively inexpensive and based around regular adult working schedules for the most part. 2 years is always faster than just hope, but if not, definitely hold management accountable for offering that hope. Make sure its known that buffing fenders is his temporary goal and ask about the requirements for apprenticeship often, if there are any.
Cars are not going away, large diesel engines used today won't be replaced by electric ones in decades (because if they could be, they'd already had been), and you can retrain to work on different type of machinery.
That only sounds bad because of how used we are to a steady paycheck.
Working a paid 40 hour week, 48 weeks a year, for 60$ an hour for even 10 years in a row is extremely unusual for a carpenter. Owning your own company can result in more stability at the cost of non billable hours. Working for someone else means being at the whims of the economy and or weather etc. Injuries or heath issues present longer term issues.
PS: Granted you need some flexibility as highly specialized work is always less stable over the long term.
That link is for prevailing wage contracts, usually performed by union tradespeople, where wages are about double what a non-union worker will make in the Seattle area. Less than 20% of construction workers in the US are in a union.
Amount that you make while making your way to the four different worksites of the day? $0 / hour. Amount that you make while out sick? $0 / hour. Amount that you make when you take two weeks of vacation? You guessed it, $0 / hour. Amount that you make when you can't fill your day with work? Amount that you make when the client, or the contractor who subcontracted to you stiffs you, and you've given up trying to collect? Amount you get for 401k matches, or in medical insurance? Zero, zero, zero, and zero.
The advice for programmers who turn freelancers is to bill at double your hourly salary. Reverse this equation, halve those numbers.
Now, throw in the wear and tear on your body, potential for a life-changing injury, and trade school doesn't look like a meal ticket to prosperity. It's a way to make a living. Better then unskilled work, but that's not exactly a high bar. Pushing papers 9-5 for $25/hour suddenly doesn't look that bad in comparison.
> The one big pattern you see is the abandonment of the liberal arts in favor of vocational majors
Why not have both? The American College of the Building Arts awards a 4 year liberal arts degree with concentrations in masonry, timber framing, forged architectural ironwork, and other programs.
And with the fire at Notre Dame, there is assured work for graduates for generations helping rebuild.
A friend of mine who is 75 years old was a mason his entire adult life. His father was as well. He told me how sad it is that so much knowledge and skill has been lost. He attributes a lot of that to the change in the management of the way buildings are built. It was not that long ago that master builders oversaw everything, design and construction. That has been fragmented of course. For some kinds of buildings it makes sense (e.g., skyscrapers), but for most it does not.
As for masonry itself, it's in decline. When he sees new brick buildings, for example, none of them have bricks that stick out a bit over openings (doors and windows mainly) to ensure that rain water and snow melt drips away from the bricks below. As a result, the structure ages much faster than it would if it were built right.
Since then, I've spent a lot of time looking at brick buildings. It's easy to spot old versus new now.
I wonder how much skill and knowledge has been lost to the idea that college is the best way to learn things. I also wonder how that could be regained. Most of the people who know such things are dead, or nearly so.
It seems to me that it's more expensive to go to an Ivy League school than to simply hire faculty as personal tutors.
Looking back, I can see where working with your hands would have been a lot of fun. No doubt you hit the ennui inherent in any profession. Maybe the right answer is to start over every ten years.
Biased because I work there, but App Academy (coding bootcamp) has been running ISAs (Income Share Agreements) and deferred tuition models for the 6 years we've been around. I'd be shocked if this sort of model doesn't catch on soon and becomes a more de-facto way of monetizing. Pretty similar to trade schools in both form and timing.
Purdue started implementing ISAs[1] but they're crazy expensive. Hopefully the university system can get closer to the value of the education instead of a multiplier on the students' results. Minimum payback threshold is also only 20k[2] which is absurdly low. a/A has a higher minimum threshold that seems more humane to me (50k salary for in-person cohorts and 60k for online cohorts).
68 comments
[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] threadThis could be particularly useful if we're entering an age of sudden disruption as far as jobs and career paths goes where a career that once was might be gone (or greatly diminished) tomorrow. Provided business are willing to recognize and hire those people.
A combination of targeted AI and good old-fashioned process automation are going to put a lot of white collar workers out of work; including software developers at the lower end of the skill curve.
Of course, the fact that the smartest people in the world do exactly that is in itself part of the problem...
To be fair there are already a lot of services that do this. They are just so commonplace we don't think of them as automation. And they don't allow super complicated setups so they're definitely not quite there yet in the general case. I'm thinking of Wix, Squarespace, basic wordpress.
The SaaS marketplace became so crowded that companies sought out a wide range of differentiated niches and automated a lot of specific use cases.
I'm not even sure most office technology's helping that much. I suspect most of the efficiency gains from tech have been in a handful of "knowledge" work areas, and manufacturing. Plus new markets. The rest... might actually be losing everyone money.
Short term, it seems to eliminate workers. Shortly after those workers are eliminated, truth on the ground has changed, and now there’s an ADDITIONAL cost to updating the software, which is harder and more expensive to do without the workers that have been eliminated.
This allows for rapid development of functional integrations delivering real business capabilities — without the overhead of an SDLC. It helps wrangle shadow IT tools into a manageable system and generates lots of structural data on how the actual users of the system interact with it to guide investment in feature development. The RPA scripts with little / no value will naturally fall into disrepair, while the valuable ones will be maintained / improved.
I promise you, it’s way cheaper this way. Software teams stop getting inundated with one-off feature requests that take a ton of work to coordinate, scope, evaluate and test — even if they never get built. Business users get to eliminate time-consuming manual processes. Also keep in mind the first jobs to get replaced by RPA are the ones that have already been shipped offshore... An RPA team for a large enterprise is usually only 2 or 3 engineers and an army of BAs and PMs — but they’re replacing a bunch of individual projects that no longer need to be staffed.
Aside from the job losses we've lost a gateway into our industry for graduates.
The camp was through my local university, but really they had bought a snap in program from an outside company.
The course was basically front end to back end via, HTML - CSS - JavaScript - Node - React (in that order). There were other items covered but those were the big focus. Little to no CS, CS theory, algorithms or anything like that. IMO it does a good job getting you started in a specific area and a place to keep learning / jump off from.
My instructor was great, his assistants were horrendous (couldn't help with anything, seemed disinterested, straight up were terrible at debugging).
If someone puts in the extra time (and they make it clear that you HAVE to put in extra time outside of class) a capable person can come out of the camp as IMO, a useful entry level web developer with potential and a good place to learn from. I have kids so my life for that time was basically, class - take care of family - code - sleep ... repeat. Actually I've kinda kept that up for a year now.
I had a technical background (network engineer) for a long time and was working with engineering teams and had done some scripting and reading about coding here and there. Even just a little background can help a lot in a a class that throws things at you quickly.
Other folks without a technical background could do well too (one was an accountant, another a director of some sort of organization, some worked odd jobs but were capable folks).
The catch in my class was that they do NOT filter candidates in any meaningful way and that ws arguably the worst aspect of the class. There was a test but I think it was more of a sales pitch (it was virtually the same test as several other camps in the area).
I'd say at least 50% of the class was unemployable, and the worst of it was they were often on everyone's team for group projects. These people were often a net negative impact, they just couldn't do it couldn't finish their own work, and created more issues than helped. I don't look down on them for it, because how do you know if you ... don't know? I think they were brave for trying. But IMO the class should have done evaluations and invited some folks to save them self some time and move on but of course that might involve a partial refund so ... doesn't happen.
That might sound like I'm talking smack about folks in order to talk myself up, but having a class with people who are either not trying (shockingly there were those) and / or not capable really disrupts the flow of the class and the amount of material covered. Everyone struggled at various points in the class, but some from week two and then constantly from there on they were so far behind it was never going to click.
There's a lot of "everyone can code" out there, it's BS, everyone can write it, but troubleshooting and coding and getting a good outcome is another matter.
Despite the negatives I have good memories of the class, it was a great experience. I didn't have a traditional education and I loved going to class every day and working with everyone. I do wish the class had gone about twice as long and filtered out candidates (as someone said, it's a bootcamp, shouldn't people be booted?).
I think the bootcamp system can be useful (let's put aside the robots and AI for a bit) but I do worry the companies involved might be so profit driven that they make it ... less useful for society as a whole.
One side note, a few students decided to go back to school for a traditional CS degree and they really appreciated their bootcamp experience on top of getting into CS where they felt the theory can get a bit deep and academic. They feel their fellow students (and some professors) maybe can't see the forest through the trees / what they're actually learning as it would apply to actual programming you might do when you apply that theory.
I've worked with ...
It makes me wonder if there's a way that the public education system could offer something semi accredited (and publically funded) in the boot camp "format" for software education, and maybe alleviate some of the challenges you mentioned. My classes certainly didn't slow down when people struggled or weren't trying, those people simply weren't around for much longer (or mostly weren't there in the first place.
Anyway - very glad that it's worked out for you, and I think you're spot on with the questions bit. At the end of the day, there's too much to know out there, so all one can do is ask questions and stay curious!
I absolutely think a given university could come up with a good boot camp like program. How willing some folks in say a CS department might be is another matter, but there is no reason they couldn't create such a program and dramatically improve it pretty quickly.
I think an accredited system would be a great option to lend some credibility to the system / stand out from the for profit systems that are questionable. It might also address one of the challenges being that even some recruiters I talked to had no idea what a coding boot camp even was.
I didn't think about it much then because I was dead set on getting an engineering degree, but I've had this feeling about 4 year colleges for a while now. I saw so many people at my state college (~30,000 enrollment) that had absolutely no idea what they wanted to do, lacked the skills to be effective in college, or were in a degree program that had no job opportunities. I saw many of them drop out after 1-2 years, but also saw ones that remained and got their degree. Now they are tens of thousands of dollars in debt with nothing to show for it, and the people who did graduate are in more debt with no good job prospects. It feels like we were lied to about college by all the adults in our lives.
[1] https://thinkprogress.org/the-harsh-reality-of-being-an-auto...
For poor/lower-middle-class students college is mostly b.s. and you can be doing the exact same job for half the wage because you don't have the connections to get the high salary.
Also, by the time they hit college, kids are already highly differentiated, and this affects their access to the more fructifying opportunities in college. There's this giant Sorting Hat, and it's called Math.
So I don't deny the wealth effect, but I don't think it's fully explained by connections.
totally true. but even the dumbest children of wealth will end up in six-figure jobs while the average ones will be top corporate lawyers, sales people, or professors, and the extraordinary ones will be CEOs. The smartest poor kids can excel in college and get the same salary as the dumbest rich kids, but will never move up the ladder because they lack the network.
(and even more clear when considering how degrees from some institutions are rated higher than others).
There is a reason why so many people don't want to learn a trade: because they know it sucks. For every anecdote I hear about some tradesman living the good life, I can give them three about miserable workers who can't get out. Work is inconsistent, you lack much of the security and benefits that other jobs offer, it tears up your body, and working conditions are often poor. My dad had to do carpentry for months with a broken hip, because he couldn't afford to take the time off after surgery. My uncle--another carpenter--lost his job, found work in a factory to pay the bills, and lost three fingers in a machine. I briefly worked in a sheet metal shop, and many of the workers had carpel tunnel in both wrists, arthritis, and bad eyesight from all of the welders in the shop. I saw a flare from a TIG welder as I walked by someone's stall with the curtain halfway closed, and my eyes burned and watered halfway through the night. In another job, I cut off the tip of my thumb on a circular saw while building a deck. I'm a statistician now.
Learning a trade, along with the almighty STEM fields, are not the solution to the college problem; they are a red herring. The real issue is that a college degree is used to screen applicants for almost every good paying, secure job in the US, regardless of whether or not a degree is really necessary to do the job. College became more available, and any entry level worker with a degree had an edge in the job market, which forced everyone else to go to college to stay competitive.
In my mind, telling people to skip college and learn a trade because someone they know makes good money at it is like telling people to skip college and start acting because they know an actor that makes good money.
I agree that the prestige of a college degree has been watered down, but that is simply a supply and demand thing. If there aren't enough workers with a college degree, then the employer will hire people who don't have one, especially if the job doesn't actually require a degree.
Wouldn't you say this is a bit 20/20 hindsight-y? You can be an A/B+ average student in HS and be completely out of your depth in college, depending on your course choices and rigor of the institution.
I didn't realize until maybe sophomore year that I perform better in applied scenarios rather than theoretical. I'd fail my stats midterms because I didn't understand hetero/homoskedasticity, but I would ace the final project because it gave you a dataset that you were supposed to analyze in STATA to answer specific questions. Got a B- overall though, due to the bad midterm grade.
Now, I'm not the kind of person who would fall into the typical "college isn't for you" category, but I did still graduate in 2009 with a 5-figure debt load, an average GPA and a recession economy. I'm sure there were tens of thousands of students like me. We likely have paid off the debt by now and are gainfully employed, but we still question the value of the degree in terms of both financial and time-based opportunity cost.
Yes, your situation is pretty rough as far as college grads go. My brother graduated a few years after that, but luckily got a job somewhat quickly as the economy was slowly rebounding. Maybe it is 20/20 to talk about this because not many people saw that recession coming. Kids entering college in 2004 were seeing a good economy, and that affected the cost/benefit for them.
Now there can be two reasons for that.
1. Skills learnt while getting the degree
2. The degree is a proxy for things not learnt during the degree. Think which things improve business value? General aptitude. Connections. Perseverance.
To the extent that 1 dominates, increased college attendance is great. To the extent that 2 dominates, increased college is an expensive signalling game.
Which is which? A little rule of thumb I have. If jobs require a degree from a good school, but the subject doesn't matter, then it's mostly signalling. If jobs require a particular degree, but the school doesn't matter as much then it's probably dominated by 1.
If interviews in the profession focus more on live demonstrating skills it's probably more 1. If interviews in the profession focus on telling a story that puts you in a good light it's probably 2.
How many people can a field absorb? Is it a fairly constant need of x carpenters are needed per capita to supply everyone with furniture (risks turning to signalling game about those fixed opportunities)? Or is it the more people we have, the cooler things we can build, the sky is the limit (clear this bar and your good to go)?
Is there a immigration of people in the field because domestic schools are not capable of meeting demand? That indicates a skill gap, 1. It can also mean the job is so shit no one wants to do it, but differentiating those cases should be simple.
Good on him for being open about earnings. Most Americans are not so transparent and I wish I had known that many trades offer similar earnings potential to most careers for 4-year degree earners.
Reasonable people can disagree on causality, cost-benefit, etc. but the association between earnings and educational attainment is definitely real.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf
I can also confirm that some of the heaviest weight on my heart is the friends I have that struggle to maintain basic health insurance and employment despite having a biology or chemistry degree. I don't know what the solution is, but I feel bitter about the kids sold down university avenue with nothing to show.
So if I could say anything to the kids its this. We are hiring. We are hiring for work you'll be paid well for and a job you can be proud of. Welder, plumber, mechanic, these cannot continue to be four letter words. Talk to your vocational tech schools or your guidance counselor.
Then there's also the usual questions you should give your friend: are you sure that this dealership knows you want to become a mechanic? Are they just wanting you to be porter? Are you friendly with the head mechanic and the mechanic staff or are you more friendly with the sales part of the dealership? Does the head mechanic know you want to become an apprentice? Have other porters become apprentice mechanics at this dealership?
It also is worth asking if the mechanic's shop is an hourly or flat rate shop. A flat rate shop maybe not be the easiest place to get an apprentice compared to an hourly shop where taking an extra five minutes to explain something is not going to cut another mechanic's pay.
That having been said if your friend is young I'd absolutely recommend trade school. Its relatively inexpensive and based around regular adult working schedules for the most part. 2 years is always faster than just hope, but if not, definitely hold management accountable for offering that hope. Make sure its known that buffing fenders is his temporary goal and ask about the requirements for apprenticeship often, if there are any.
- Carpenters: $60/hr
- Electricians: $75/hr
- HVAC Mechanics: $82.50/hr
Almost every item on the list pays better than a typical STEM degree.
[1] https://fortress.wa.gov/lni/wagelookup/prvWagelookup.aspx
Working a paid 40 hour week, 48 weeks a year, for 60$ an hour for even 10 years in a row is extremely unusual for a carpenter. Owning your own company can result in more stability at the cost of non billable hours. Working for someone else means being at the whims of the economy and or weather etc. Injuries or heath issues present longer term issues.
PS: Granted you need some flexibility as highly specialized work is always less stable over the long term.
Not in Seattle. During my exposure to the construction industry, I am the only person I know of not in a union.
The advice for programmers who turn freelancers is to bill at double your hourly salary. Reverse this equation, halve those numbers.
Now, throw in the wear and tear on your body, potential for a life-changing injury, and trade school doesn't look like a meal ticket to prosperity. It's a way to make a living. Better then unskilled work, but that's not exactly a high bar. Pushing papers 9-5 for $25/hour suddenly doesn't look that bad in comparison.
Why not have both? The American College of the Building Arts awards a 4 year liberal arts degree with concentrations in masonry, timber framing, forged architectural ironwork, and other programs.
And with the fire at Notre Dame, there is assured work for graduates for generations helping rebuild.
https://acba.edu/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_stn9qSLOs
As for masonry itself, it's in decline. When he sees new brick buildings, for example, none of them have bricks that stick out a bit over openings (doors and windows mainly) to ensure that rain water and snow melt drips away from the bricks below. As a result, the structure ages much faster than it would if it were built right.
Since then, I've spent a lot of time looking at brick buildings. It's easy to spot old versus new now.
I wonder how much skill and knowledge has been lost to the idea that college is the best way to learn things. I also wonder how that could be regained. Most of the people who know such things are dead, or nearly so.
Looking back, I can see where working with your hands would have been a lot of fun. No doubt you hit the ennui inherent in any profession. Maybe the right answer is to start over every ten years.
Purdue started implementing ISAs[1] but they're crazy expensive. Hopefully the university system can get closer to the value of the education instead of a multiplier on the students' results. Minimum payback threshold is also only 20k[2] which is absurdly low. a/A has a higher minimum threshold that seems more humane to me (50k salary for in-person cohorts and 60k for online cohorts).
[1] https://www.purdue.edu/backaboiler/FAQ/index.html [2] https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2018/Q4/purdue-rese...