The experience we've had with hiring people from these bootcamps has been about 50/50. 50% of the people are completely unable to engineer and instead just know a language. 50% of them are hard workers and eventually learn how to be an engineer. 100% of them ask for outrageous salaries for not actually having any professional experience. I think the bootcamps spend a decent amount of their time setting high expectations and how to ask for a large amount of money.
Schools within the big expensive areas (NYC, SF) seem to boast an average salary of around $75+K...this is for graduates who may have not done any programming before they started the session.
And then there are the intensive programs that say they can get you $100K when you graduate. But these involve students who have already programmed (either through school or professionally) but in another language. IMO, a seasoned Python or Java developer who spends 10 weeks intensively learning Rails/iOS (and going beyond the curriculum, if the curriculum is also aimed at beginners) is probably worth $100K in the NY/SF area.
> a seasoned Python or Java developer who spends 10 weeks intensively learning Rails/iOS (and going beyond the curriculum, if the curriculum is also aimed at beginners) is probably worth $100K in the NY/SF area.
That's it?
Man, I'm suddenly feeling better about my higher salary in relatively less expensive LA.
I think that's a bit low. I'm a seasoned programmer with no CS degree, but an advanced degree "in a related field", live and work in the Bay Area (not SF) and my salary is closer to the mid-$100's per year.
A Rails "developer" might be worth just $100k, but that's because there are so many hipster/naive fresh graduates in the area willing to work for (relative) peanuts on social web app fluff.
$75k is about what the typical new college graduate with no industry experience gets as a salary for any major CS company in the bay area.
For a program that does 9-6 PM 5 days a week for 10 weeks, that's ~8 hours (not including lunch) x 5 days x 10 weeks = 400 total hours. That's about the equivalent class time to 8 semester-long CS courses.
Realistically, in terms of what they actually cover and what projects students have produced by the end of them, these programs are the equivalent of about 3 semester-long CS courses, in the best case. At best they are equivalent to around 10-15% of a degree.
> these programs are the equivalent of about 3 semester-long CS courses
I currently study at a top-5 CS school and previously attended a bootcamp. This comparison feels awkward to me, because they have neither equivalent structures nor goals.
The aims of most bootcamps, if I am to generalize, is to teach a relatively specific skillset applicable to industry. The most reasonable comparison would then be CS / ECE courses that aim to do the same (e.g. java & j2ee, web application development, java for android, etc.).
In this particular respect I would consider a bootcamp to be the equivalent of at least 4-5 "CS" courses, if not more. For one thing, the student teacher ratio is almost orders of magnitude better, and the material is often more relevant to current industry needs. I would also go as far as to say the quality of instructors at "bootcamps" teaching this material (at least, the one I attended) is superior.
On the other hand, there are more than a few individual semester long courses that are easily as grueling as a bootcamp. The courses I'm thinking of are traditional CS & ECE fare : compiler design & OS being prime examples. These are topics the bootcamp I attended (and, I assume all bootcamps) barely touch on, if at all - and all individually require almost as many hours as an entire 3 month bootcamp [1].
However, effort is pretty much also the only metric that can be used to compare the latter with "bootcamps". Since there is virtually 0 overlap [2] in material, it really is a matter of apples and oranges.
[1] For anyone but the exceedingly gifted, these courses require a minimum of 50 hrs a week.
[2] this lack of overlap also extends to classes on data structures & algorithms. This is material that's only taught obliquely (albeit somewhat effectively) at coding camps.
So we've had a couple ask for $130k that went to HackReactor. Found it interesting that they both asked for the exact same number. We also had a couple from 2 different Chicago bootcamps asking for nearly 100k.
I do not live in Silicon Valley or NYC or Chicago. I live in Utah. Average household income is under $60k.
Average household income is a poor way to look at it, since tech jobs typically command much more than the average household income, even/especially in SF. (Average household income is 72k there).
Obviously they are different markets though, so I think your point stands.
> 100% of them ask for outrageous salaries for not actually having any professional experience. I think the bootcamps spend a decent amount of their time setting high expectations and how to ask for a large amount of money.
Yep. That's a higher percentage than what I'd expect, but it still seems pretty natural. Bootcamps literally sell the idea.
This, incidentally, is part of the reason why there's regulation.
It's the "get high-paying jobs on graduation" aspect of these programs that's never quite gelled for me. I can think of very few jobs I'd be solidly qualified for after a few months of training, no matter how intense the training. Engineering seems no different, and maybe even harder than most. People should be enrolling in bootcamps to learn the basics, not to get some sort of shortcut to a theoretically sexy job -- the true sexiness of which is entirely unknown unless and until they've actually tried it.
If these programs were/are feeding internships, awesome. That's a different story. And on that note, I see no reason why big tech companies can't create their own coding academies, or partner with bootcamps on more structured working internships and externships. The bootcamp --> full-time job connection doesn't make a ton of sense. But bootcamp --> internship --> job makes more sense.
There are a lot of smart, hard-working people out there who, for one reason or another, just never got a deep exposure to computers in childhood, high school, or college. (Reliable childhood access to a decent-quality computer, much less programming resources, is not as common as we might expect.) Giving them a shot at learning is a noble and justifiable endeavor. Not all of them will enjoy it, and not all of them will make it through. But a lot of them might. They need to be going into it with the right expectations, though.
>>And on that note, I see no reason why big tech companies can't create their own coding academies, or partner with bootcamps on more structured working internships and externships.
You mean actually train people? Don't be ridiculous. Why do that when you can just fire and replace? /s
Legal internships require you to be in a degree program, so it's not a good path for those of us who are older and looking for a career change.
I have the aptitude and experience to do well in an internship, if I could get one. Having to go from bootcamp to internship would cut off the only structured path available to land a programming job, short of going back into a degree program which is both undesirable and financially not feasible.
I'm in a bootcamp right now that I don't entirely need, but I'm building up my GitHub account and looking at following up with something like thoughtbot's Apprentice.io or (if I'm crazy lucky) getting into ThoughtWorks' junior developer program rather than trying to get a job with a large salary. I want to learn the ropes in this industry by consulting.
Edit: Also, if anyone reading this is looking to hire someone junior (and degreeless) and is committed to training, we should talk. Relocation is not a problem and neither is making an extended commitment on my end (as far as time and/or compensation). I do have a tech background, just not in dev. (Sorry, I gotta hustle! :D)
"Legal internships require you to be in a degree program"
Fair point, so let's take this a step further and make it something other than an internship. A training program, perhaps. An apprenticeship program, wherein you're paired up with a recognized master/mentor on a team, working on an actual product that will actually ship.
Seems to me that the biggest hurdles are the regulations surrounding what an "internship" requires. So let's hack internships.
The two companies that I mentioned are doing a good job at that but they're surely outliers. Also, only making $12/hr for 3 months in New York City is a big hardship, but not as big as paying for a bootcamp.
I think the biggest problem is most selection processes will merely maintain the demographic status quo for the industry. How do you rank older people pivoting careers and folks with the aptitude but no degree or industry experience where they'll be on a fair footing with all of the new CS grads who will be applying who could otherwise land a job anyway?
"How do you rank older people pivoting careers and folks with the aptitude but no degree or industry experience where they'll be on a fair footing with all of the new CS grads who will be applying who could otherwise land a job anyway?"
I think that's why the internship structure is crucial. Or maybe it's an externship. Or a part-time thing. Generally speaking, I would not put undergrad CS students at top universities into the same internships as I'd put recent grads of crash-course bootcamps. Bootcampers go into a different pool, in different roles, unless and until they graduate to better positions of more responsibility. If a bootcamper kicks serious ass and demonstrates him/herself just as good as a CS-trained graduate, then awesome, he/she can get fast-tracked into the regular job pool.
The goal of these programs should be to create runways for the career switchers and experience-deprived folks who show a decent aptitude for the profession. This would be a supplement to traditional recruiting pathways, rather than a conflict with or cannibalization thereof.
There was another article about this posted a couple days ago. Essentially the reasons the law exists in CA is because there were recent high profile civil judgments in the state against similar schools targeting other fields. Suing someone is a major PITA and takes a year or more really not practical in a lot of situations.
No, its not. No one is talking about banning "hacker schools".
Schools that have chosen to operate without state-mandated licenses are being told they need to get the license to continue operating. The enterprise isn't being banned.
Of course you can, I suspect that in this case it comes down to specific claims the academies are making in their marketing, and/or perhaps benefits they are claiming, which put them under the purview of these regulations.
Ah, yes, teaching coding without a licence can lead to some unprecedented consequences. Like what if some crypto-anarchist after learning how to code invents a decentralized currency and undermines the banking system. This shall not happen, we must regulate things, or innocent people will get hurt.
Speaking seriously, here's how regulation works in a nutshell. A company that wants to prevent/eliminate competition approaches a legislator (through lobbyist, of course) and offers a bribe, say $100k. That legislator then passes a regulatory law that requires around $1m of taxpayers money to be spent on regulation. The company then makes $10m thanks to that new law. The legislator made money, the company made money, the public thinks it is protected. A perfect crime.
I don't think the actual anarchists, crypto- or otherwise, have been hassled (at least, not for this reason). There are free coding clinics at a number of anarchist infoshops and anarchist-inflected hackerspaces, and afaik none has received a complaint.
I wasn't being completely serious, but whenever I hear government trying to get its dirty hands to something not yet regulated, it disgusts me. Regulation robs consumers and prevents innovation and competition, while making politicians rich. That's all there is to it. The side-effect of protecting consumers is unreliable and questionable in 99% of cases.
I guess I have a more in-between view, in that I'm sympathetic to the anarchists (with reservations), but less sympathetic to the profiteers, many of whom are simply hucksters. I think the trick with government is directing more of its energies against the hucksters than the good guys. Tricky to do, but then also tricky to the do with market forces, which often reward fraud and parasitism. Not always, of course! But I also can't really buy into "government is always oppressing the innovators", since the innovators are often innovating more in the realm of how to separate people from their money...
> He added, however, that the stern language in the cease-and-desist letters was designed primarily to get the operators' attention and that it was unlikely the bureau would be moving to shut them down as long as they made a good-faith effort to come into compliance.
> "We are trying to get them to become licensed," Heimerich said, adding that the agency has not received any complaints about the boot camps and learned about them from a staff investigator who saw them mentioned on a technology blog. "So if they are doing that, they fall to the bottom or close to the bottom of our enforcement priorities because there are many more serious threats to student consumers."
You don't believe the state has a legitimate interest in making sure that schools actually teach what they claim to?
No. Caveat emptor. The State should only get involved in the case of outright fraud - you pay your money, and they don't actually run the class, or the class is taught by a 6th grader or something.
Outside of that, we should just let the market operate. Firms that don't deliver on their promises won't be around long.
> No. Caveat emptor. The State should only get involved in the case of outright fraud - you pay your money, and they don't actually run the class, or the class is taught by a 6th grader or something.
This sounds frighteningly arbitrary. So if I pay for a class that will teach me to be a programmer and I get a class that has no realistic hope of accomplishing that, it's caveat emptor, while if I'm in exactly the same situation but the teacher is a sixth grader, caveat emptor doesn't apply? How do we determine when a case of ripping people off is excused by caveat emptor?
I think the problem is with the claims these programs are making, not the expectations the students have.
If I decide to go to a traditional non-profit university to study, say, paleontology, and I actually expect to get a job digging up dinosaur bones, that is my own problem. The state shouldn't step in and start slapping the University's hand unless the University was falsely advertising high placement rates after graduation.
Slapping down educational institutions for the unrealistic employment expectations of their students will end poorly. The best that we should do is make sure the schools aren't lying to anybody.
I think it has to go further than that. For example, if a school makes no claims of employability, but they do claim that a class will teach a skill and then (as in mindcrime's example) it turns out that the professor is ten years old and spends the whole class time playing League of Legends, surely that's fraud too.
I would expect that would be bog-standard fraud (I suspect that most of the actionable concerns are).
I mean like, if a paintball arena claims to let you play paintball, then after you pay them they hand you some water pistols and tell you to have fun, that is surely fraud. I doubt we'd need to have any sort of special regulation to tackle that sort of issue.
Sure, fraud is fraud, and that's the idea behind "rule of law". If someone defrauds you, you have a claim against them to be compensated accordingly. But that's orthogonal to the idea of having The State decide, a priori, who is and who isn't allowed to do business.
You realize this is precisely the mandate of BPPE, the agency in question, right? They're a consumer fraud agency, part of the California Department of Consumer Affairs, and their rules include such nefarious things as...
"The institution shall employ administrative personnel who have the expertise to ensure the achievement of the institution's mission and objectives and the operation of the educational programs."
"An institution shall not promise or guarantee employment, or otherwise overstate the availability of jobs upon graduation."
But also, it's an agency that's existed only since 2010.
Looking through your link, I see 16000 words of new paperwork, inflexible mandates, silly gotchas that could trip up a small organization, and redundancies. (False claims and advertising are already illegal.)
I had a long reply to your deleted comment. In its absence I'll note that another cost of the BPPE's discretionary regulatory power here is a chilling of speech by knowledgeable operators, who now can't risk angering the regulators or sharing information that could increase later compliance burdens.
Is this a rhetorical question or do you actually want to know? The way you've phrased the question makes it seem like you've already decided what your opinion is.
BPPE requires programs like these to assess $0.50 per $1,000 charged to students who are California residents. These assessments go into a state-wide "Student Tuition Recovery Fund," which is used to mitigate economic harm to the student in a variety of situations where the school might refuse or be unable to, e.g., the school closes mid-class. See http://www.bppe.ca.gov/lawsregs/regs.shtml#76020 for the full list.
Programs like this charge students $10k-$20k, so we're talking $5-$10 assessed per student. This is like a very lightweight version of a surety bond.
There are other fixed and variable costs related to complying, but (AFAIK) this is the only money that flows into the state's pockets.
There's a delicious irony in the phrasing of that!
Yes, I really do want to know. Though I am a biased listener as my confidence in the motives of state officials is not high and I'm not a great believer in set curriculums or standardised testing.
I know when I'm in the presence of a strong educator and I'd rather just spend time with them, talking and listening to what they have to say.
You can get the details on tech by RTFM - it's the direction, the opinion, the experience and talent that is valuable to be around.
The state is not even notionally regulating for the benefit of tech companies, but for the benefit of consumers, so raising the fact that tech companies will do evaluations is a complete non sequitur.
I meet university graduates on a regular basis that have come through regulated programmes of education and paid plenty of money -- no, sorry, borrowed plenty of money -- to gain an accredited degree.
I wholly believe in the quality of the subject matter in the books they read and written on the board in the lectures they maybe attended.
Whether it absorbed, was digested and can now be readily applied is a different matter entirely. Regulation is not a guarantee of quality and if people want to sign up for code schools then good luck to them - they're the buyer so "caveat emptor" and let them assess whether the code school is providing what it has promised.
Bright people are who I would hire. And bright people don't need state regulation.
The field of programming might evolve similarly to the the field of law as time goes on.
A lawyer friend told me his field used to be more accessible to everyday people. Anyone could study cases and even learn enough to represent themselves and members of their communities.
Law schools and licensing boards were developed to protect the lawyers' wages and prestige, and to insulate them from outside competition.
The regulatory hoops did increase lawyers' salaries, but they also made it impossible for most people to afford legal services. Costly law school requirements prohibited women and ethnic minorities (e.g. Irish people) from entering the field.
Programming is a young field. If the history of similar industries is any indication, it won't stay this open and loosely regulated forever. And incidents like the one in California demonstrate that the tides are changing...
I wonder what is so magical about government that only it can determine whether something is safe or not. I'm pretty sure private consumer protection companies would do a much better job for less money.
Ahh, and that's the point. It wouldn't need to. Because no one should enforce anything. It would only inform. Consumers must have a choice. When you start banning businesses from operating, you have countless possibilities for corruption and you remove choice from consumers, treating them as mindless idiots incapable of making an informed choice. And if you think they are, then they also shouldn't be allowed to vote.
"Sorry none of the water suppliers in your area provide water safe for human consumption. Good luck!"
Now that would be helpful. But sure, you can just move elsewhere. It's going to be easy selling your old house given that there is no clean water available.
Edit: As a bonus, health insurance companies should deny you coverage because you live in a high risk area.
If there is a demand for clean water at the price level where it is economically feasible to supply one, it will be supplied. If people prefer to spend less money and have dirty water, they made their choice too. Your case is completely hypothetical.
There are probably areas in this country that it would be more profitable for the water companies to stop serving. I think that it is a good thing that they cannot do that.
If you are right, then these areas would remain without water supply at all. Last time I checked, government cannot force private companies to do business.
Government can set the conditions under which a private company can do business. Companies that provide fundamental services - like water, power, and sanitation - often have government granted monopolies over an area. In exchange for existing without market competition, such companies are subject to more regulation, and often have to service particular areas.
Then in this case it turns out that taxpayers from developed regions subsidize those in the remote ones. I'm not saying helping people out is a bad idea, but forcing people to help out other people certainly is. It is absolutely no ones fault that some people live in remote regions.
Personally, I like that the federal government has the authority to shut down food production plants if they are deemed unsafe. Consumers rarely have full information, and individuals are demonstrably bad at evaluating long-term risk.
By that logic, people shouldn't be allowed to vote either. Also if you don't allow people to learn to make choices, they never will, always relying on the nanny state.
I wish people would stop using this phrase to mean "I can invent a chain of reasoning which leads to your conclusion and also to this ridiculous conclusion, but has no resemblance to any premise you've actually stated, and I'd like to pretend that that chain of reasoning was yours".
No, it's just pure logic. If you're saying that "individuals are demonstrably bad at evaluating long-term risk" then they shouldn't be allowed to vote. Electing someone is a huge long term risk and it is much more difficult to get rid of an elected official (takes 4 years at least) than to switch to another product or service.
> If you're saying that "individuals are demonstrably bad at evaluating long-term risk" then they shouldn't be allowed to vote.
Sure, if you further assume the premise that "people who belong to a class that are demonstrably bad at evalauting long-term risk should not be allowed to vote".
Of course, that's not a premise that was raised, or is even directly relevant to the argument made in, scott_s's post upthread. It's, at best, a premise that is extremely loosely analogous to something one might reasonably interpret as an implied premise of scott_s's argument, but if you want to argue against scott_s's argument it would be better to address it directly rather than by trying to pretend that the conclusion of a chain of requiring a premise which is, at best, loosely analogous to something that might be an implicit premise of his proceeds from "the same logic" as his argument.
It's not that individuals are demonstrably bad at evaluating long-term risk, but don't have all the facts pertaining to every single decision they have to make daily, and don't have the time to seek out all of those facts.
Do you have the ability to make sure that every single piece of food you purchase is safe for human consumption?
I agree. But nobody asks people to do that. I'm just saying that consumer protection agencies could inform people "hey, this is an unreliable business, don't buy from it". Then people would be able to choose among various consumer protection agencies they trust. Government is just a giant monopoly on the consumer protection market and the one that also has the power to shut businesses down, leaving even less choice to consumers. Now consumers cannot even make the choice of trusting or not trusting the government on its decision.
And those agencies, they're all working for the consumers best interests and not their own, as is what the system you're advocating for would dictate they do without regulation, something your arguing against?
Who's going to create those agencies? In your advocated system the companies being investigated are the ones more likely to make the agencies than outside individuals because their isn't enough incentive to enter that market. Especially because without regulation companies can decide to open their facilities to agencies that are on good terms with the companies in question.
You're right, I'm sorry. Having one centralized consumer protection agency with the power to shut businesses down, an agency that people cannot stop paying to (with their tax money) will create less possibilities for corruption and more choice for the consumer.
The problem you have is that you can't see a situation where people aren't consumers, and where the acquisition of wealth isn't the only goal of everyone. The problem is that the current system encourages corporations instead of cooperatives.
Treating humanity like a collection of profit-maximizing individualists means the only possible solution to you is more competition. Were humanity only a collection of profit-maximizing individualists we'd still be uneducated cavemen. Society moves forwards because it realizes that it needs to work together.
Did the Great Depression occur because of too much governmental power? Did the 2008 crash occur because of too much regulation?
Then what are you arguing for? My understanding is that you say free market cannot be better than having some degree of regulation. Regulation assumes government, doesn't it?
You're equating regulation and centralization. You're also equating refutation of your points as taking a position completely opposite your points.
If you take even a tiny look at the rest of what I had to say (which you also neglected to respond to) my argument is collectivization, which is not the same thing as centralization.
How can you achieve collectivization without any central entity like government enforcing it? And what exactly do you mean by collectivization in the context of the subject being discussed?
(I saw your comment and questions above, in the other thread, but I cannot answer them until I understand this one better).
You have government, just not centralized. Collectivize on a local level, and form a confederation of localities, giving localities more power.
Additionally, and I've said it before, replace corporations with cooperatives. This is the more important part, you need to get rid of the idea that an individual can exist without society and outside of society. If everyone thought that individual wealth and profit-maximizing were the most important things higher education (and most education) along with a host of other institutions and almost every social institution wouldn't exist. And while I understand that a good deal of people are arguing against social institutions, they forget that wouldn't have received the same education they did.
If everyone was wealth-maximizing most professors wouldn't be professors because they're able to make more working in private industry. The same is equally true for a large number of public educators, at least in the hard sciences.
Education is considered a great equalizer. Society cannot get better if we privatize education, meaning only the rich can afford high quality education (and this is a problem that America is experiencing today). If only the upper classes can pay for high quality education the education gap widens, and it becomes nigh impossible for someone to be upwardly mobile.
And that's where my main problem with the American Libertarian movement, privatizing everything can at best keep society stagnant.
How are consumers supposed to evaluate risk when private companies are under no obligation to provide them with information? It sounds like such a system would be amazing for companies, but quite terrible for anyone else.
How can I evaluate risk when I vote when politicians are elected for 4 years and regulatory agencies are not even affected by elections? Can I switch a regulatory agency? Can I stop paying taxes, so my representative, whom I no longer trust, stops receiving his salary? No I can't.
The answer to your question is competition. If a consumer protection agency wants my money, it has to earn my trust and be better than its competitors.
Seriously? Because when every consumer protection agency in your free market utopia fails to perform adequately they no longer exist.
If no consumer protection agency earns anyone's trust, how does it continue to exist in your perfect world?
On a related note: what incentive is there for an individual to create a consumer protection agency? What incentive is there for a company to open their doors to a consumer protection agency that isn't going to give them a good rating?
What's to keep an entire industry from creating their own protection agency, and excluding all other agencies from inspecting their facilities? Who protects the consumers then?
Without regulation what's to keep an agency from intermixing legitimate ratings with false ratings? What's to keep a company from paying every agency for false ratings, especially if everyone is profit-maximizing, and every other agency is going to say the same thing? Even if you found out, what can you do about it?
Does being excluded from the ratings give an advantage to their competitors? All it says is that they weren't rated, not that they're better or worse, and what if their competitors are terribly rated?
What's to keep an agency from being vindictive? This goes with the above mixing legitimate and false ratings.
What happens to a company if it's not doing the right thing and is not providing me with a good service (in that case, consumer protection service)? It first loses money because I stop paying immediately and then it goes out of business pretty fast if I spread the word and people agree the service is bad.
What happens to a politician if he doesn't keep his promise or if an agency doesn't perform as it should? Nothing. A politician keeps his office until the next election and the agency stays in business, possibly with the very same people in charge of it. Can I stop paying taxes? No. I go to jail if I do.
> I wonder what is so magical about government that only it can determine whether something is safe or not.
The magic isn't the ability to determine whether something is safe; the magic, insofar as there is anything like that involved, is that government is the vehicle empowered by the people to do something about it once it has made the determination.
You have not shown that our drinking water is not, in fact, dirty. Nor have you shown that it is any cleaner than it would be in the absence of the regulations you seem so proud of.
American drinking water is perfectly safe to drink basically anywhere in the country. Many places on earth don't have safe drinking water due to a lack of infrastructure and regulations mandating it. The expectation is that those people will buy water or attempt to purify it themselves, whereas in this country we're expected to be able to consume water delivered to us without a fear of getting ill.
Regulation with the intention of saving lives is not a bad thing. I doubt anybody would say we should abolish driving laws and driver's license requirements because they're "regulations that limit innovation." Saying we should have safe drinking water in no way limits innovation or freedom either, yet some people seem to think we need to scrap this.
I actually do advocate abolishing driving / vehicle registration / inspection / etc. laws, but it has nothing to do with innovation. They just aren't needed and impose an unnecessary burden on many people, especially the poor.
There exists "for profit" schools that take young, naive students and don't end up giving them an education or value equal to the life-time of indebtedness that they bestow.
Regulation of post-secondary educations programs, be they "game design", "communications", or "hacker" schools, is a a reasonable idea.
I don't understand the dislike of "for profit" schools. Its a tax designation. The president of "non-profit" schools is still pulling in a fortune in salary.
Days later, the Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities Brad Duguid got involved and let the program continue under a careful watch, after some restructuring.
As a developer, this sounds to me like a nightmare scenario. There is nothing more meritocratic than software development. It's the results that count. Once we start allowing regulation and systematic barriers to entry, it will be bad for everyone. I personally do not see the law as a model to aspire to along any number of dimensions.
I disagree. Regulation can be beneficial in many cases, even if it drives up the barrier to entry a little. Certification for big projects, specifically public projects, is important, and exists in most fields (including ours, the US government requires contractors to be a certain CMMI level).
Codifying certain requirements in law is not a terrible decision, going too far can be.
Specifications must be presented by a properly accredited government sponsor for the formal specification submission to the House of Specifications. Any changes to the specification will be voted on during one of the three days during the week in which the gathering is in session. Upon agreement by the House, the amended specification will be presented to the Deliberative Committee on Specifications,during which time the honorable Speaker of the Deliberative Committee on Specifications will query the members for additional amendments. If the specification is amended, it will be returned to the House for further deliberation and promoted again to the Committee. Upon agreement by the Committee, the specification will be published in the Specification Czars vestibule for community exposure for at least thirty days.
As a self taught developer, I love how open programming is.
Also, I don't see how licensing could keep anyone from being a (successful) self taught programmer. Would they outlaw text editors for all but the accredited?
Don't forget, you can still represent yourself in court.
Maybe. You've never heard of a practicing lawyer who never went to law school. But you have heard of talented engineers who never went to college.
The difference with software is that your work will always stand for itself, because the barrier to creating anything is so low. Unless you have to be credentialed to access an IDE and compiler, you'll always be able to learn and improve.
Programming is such a wide field though. There's people writing yet another CRUD web app backend, and there's people writing autopilot software for auto-landing passenger jets. (And many categories in between, or perhaps even outside that spectrum). I, for one, hope the people writing autopilot software have some formal training along the lines of a four year degree to back them up, rather than just a Githib account and some commonly used open source software.
_Some_ "software engineering" really does have the risks and responsibilities of civil or mechanical engineering. There does need to be some sort of evaluation/certification of people who've been trained and tested appropriately for that - without at the same time denying completely unschooled enthusiasts to do what the want with less life-threatening hardware and software.
And look at how many douchebags became lawyers. If we develop further into a technocratic society than we already are we will see people like Schmidt and suck dictating how our lives, rights and privacy evolves for their ability to make a profit.... Oh, wait....
My wife applied to one of those "Coding Academies" to learn basic web development. They had a phone screening interview and they asked my wife to write HTML and CSS code!
Then later they replied that she is no qualified for the course. While their website had no indication that you need to know any programming language or specific computer related background, they rejected my wife.
I was suspicious that this might be a racist discrimination so I look around to see who regulates them. Guess who? No one!
I'm glad that they are facing mandatory regulation. Also I think the way they try to teach computer science is wrong. You can't be a good Rails developer in 6 months if you don't know basic computer science.
My wife no is going to San Jose state university and leaning boring Operation System basics and Assembly. But that's the right way of starting you career in computer science world.
> "They had a phone screening interview and they asked my wife to write HTML and CSS code! Then later they replied that she is no qualified for the course. While their website had no indication that you need to know any programming language or specific computer related background, they rejected my wife. I was suspicious that this might be a racist discrimination so I look around to see who regulates them. Guess who? No one!"
Barely more charitable explanation: rejecting people who are not already familiar with the subject matter might be how they 'manage' such high success rates.
I think that's a given. I don't think any school has ever claimed to take someone from 0 to developer in 3 months. That's unrealistic.
There's obviously a baseline below which any short, high intensity training course isn't viable.
A similar analogue would be baseline fitness levels expected out of candidates at, well, real bootcamps. If you can't jog more than a block or do 1 pushup, chances of making it through are relatively slim.
Yeah, on second thought the "barely" in "barely more charitable" is going to far. Universities definitely do the same thing (though to the credit of universities, they are up front (or even brag) about having stringent admission standards).
Your standard university CS department has no problem accepting freshman who have never even heard of HTML, but they are also operating on a different timescale. In universities it is reasonable to spend a few months getting freshman up onto their feet. When the entire program is a few months, you have to operate differently.
> Your standard university CS department has no problem accepting freshman who have never even heard of HTML, but they are also operating on a different timescale.
Moreover, HTML has very little to do with CS. You can probably graduate with a CS degree and know virtually nothing about HTML (and that's not a bad thing.)
I'm sorry that your wife had a bad experience, but your statement "that's the right way of starting [your] career in computer science" is ridiculous. There are many paths my friend.
But if you want to go to "school" there is just one right way that is build upon many years of experience.
Just because your doctor does basic screening and tells you you have flu doesn't mean you can be a doctor if you learn those basic screening skills, my friend
Also I think the way they try to teach computer science is wrong. You can't be a good Rails developer in 6 months if you don't know basic computer science.
So...you're suggesting they should pre-screen people, say, on the phone, to make sure they know the basics of computer science?
> My wife no is going to San Jose state university and leaning boring Operation System basics and Assembly. But that's the right way of starting you career in computer science world.
Disagree. Without proper context, low level system implementation details are pretty dry and uninteresting.
There's certainly a level of abstraction that's too high for beginners (rails, I'm looking at you). However, there's also a level of abstraction that is far too low.
I highly doubt that it's racial discrimination, but I'm not going to back that sentiment with 100% certainty, because you never know. However, the whole concept of a "coding bootcamp", literally they're bootcamps that can be mentally exhausting. They're going to try to expose you to an intense array of information in a short period of time, from the basics (HTML/CSS, JS) to intermediate/advanced subjects/languages (Ruby, Python, PHP, etc.). So it's not farfetched for them to reject applicants who would struggle to keep up if they don't know the basics.
And another thing, they're not trying to teach CS. CS is a discipline all its own. Code bootcamps focus on web development, so you can have the practical knowledge and skill for entry level web development positions.
This is too bad. As a graduate of a similar bootcamp program who is currently working as a Jr. Developer it makes me really sad to see this kind of interference from the Government. As with everything else in life, situations that sound "too good to be true" usually are, and consumers need to exercise due diligence before giving people money they aren't comfortable losing.
I hope the schools are able to work this out because my Bootcamp absolutely changed my life.
Oh, no! Not a $50,000 fine! It's not like they are raking in $400k every 3-4 months. If they want to really hurt them they should fine the school $50k every time they use the word "cohort."
I don't know what your business is, but I doubt you are charging as much as these hack camps or claiming that your students will get huge salaries after they are done with your service. You should be fine.
It seems like it's basically a whole lot of bureaucracy the schools would need to go through to ensure that they're not selling snake oil, haven't been involved in felonies, etc. Nothing too absurd, but an unnecessary hassle.
Perhaps I'm too much of a free-market loving, meritocratic startup junkie, but all of this seems completely unnecessary. If "colleges" like University of Phoenix et. al can make it through this process, it isn't really going to rule anything out. It introduces a lot of record keeping, forces some self-regulatory procedures, and implements other things that will only slow down the classes.
Are coding bootcamps perfect? By no means. Trying to pack a basic understanding of programming into a three-month course is by no means an easy task (and debatably an impossible one). That having been said, it gets the fundamentals in place so that someone can start to learn on the job, and the demand so highly outweighs the supply that I've seen recruiters and startup founders literally lining up to talk to people who have been coding for three months. It says something when the people that annoy programmers the most are recruiters - people trying to give them a job. You don't see recruiters being hated by people with English degrees.
Sure, a coding bootcamp is no CS degree from Stanford; I don't think anyone would pretend like it is. But it gets you into the coding world as quickly as you can, and the more programmers the better. The people I've seen go through bootcamps would not claim to be the best programmers in the world, but they get their foot in the door and start getting paid to learn. The companies hopefully realize that's who they're hiring, and make their hiring decisions accordingly. I can't see any need for this type of regulation whatsoever.
There's a need (or at least a market), people are willing to pay, they seem to be able to find jobs, and employers are becoming smart with regard to how to properly find/hire/train programmers coming out of bootcamps. Regulation like this, while possibly well-meaning, will only slow things down.
Yeah, I have two basic takeaways from all of this:
1) These bootcamps are complaining about basically nothing. As you said, even the 'University of Phoenix' is able to operate...
2) The people making points about how these programs are predatory and need to be regulated are really not going to get what they want from this regulation. As you said, even the 'University of Phoenix' is able to operate...
I'm conflicted. On the one hand, it seems like a Randian dystopia, with the government stepping in to prevent you from telling somebody else how to do something. Want to tutor your cousin? Fill out 80 pages of paperwork, register as a school, submit to time-consuming performance reviews and curriculum evaluations.
On the other hand, the law is addressing a real problem, and as the article points out, these schools are charging top dollar, and making some very big promises. If nobody is calling them on it, or if somebody is, but they wield no authority, then we have a problem. I'm not a libertarian, and I have no problem addressing these things on a case-by-case basis.
The problem I see is that the law seems to be very broad, and could be applied arbitrarily to private study sessions just as well as the diploma-mill-minus-the-diploma situation we're seeing here. I think the law needs to be more targeted towards the problematic aspects of these schools, like grandiose claims in their advertising.
If the standard truth-in-advertising laws are too toothless to apply here, then inspections are in order. But they should only apply to schools that make the kinds of claims that triggered the crackdown in the first place.
Bootcamps remind me an awful lot of the certification mills of 15 years ago. It's the same 2 months or so and $10K or so with the suggestion that a well-paying job is waiting on the other side, just swap out MCSE / CCNA for Ruby / CSS.
I'm sure the cert mills launched some great admins, but I know from experience that they shoveled through plenty of people who had no real aptitude or enthusiasm diluting the field and completely devaluing those skills.
It took years and surely a number of painful interviews for those people to filter back out.
It's hard not to expect that bootcamps will play out the same way.
How much of the short duration of these bootcamps is teaching to the test that is the modern software developer interview? I have a really hard time imagining that somebody coming out of a 8-12 week program, even with some prior experience, properly understands the depth and breadth of material that should be necessary to get through a technical interview. It seems like most of them are focused on hacking applications, and not necessarily the fundamentals of data structures, algorithms, software architecture and design, working in a team, etc.
I think it's great that these bootcamps are options, but have long been suspicious that the statistics they like to share are only indicative of either who they decide to admit, or who they decide to let graduate. For instance, how many people who make it through these bootcamps have a strong technical background, perhaps even a computer science degree, and only need the short time to dive deeply into modern web application design and implementation?
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 202 ms ] threadSo what's an outrageous salary for a new programmer these days? (Also, what area are you in?)
And then there are the intensive programs that say they can get you $100K when you graduate. But these involve students who have already programmed (either through school or professionally) but in another language. IMO, a seasoned Python or Java developer who spends 10 weeks intensively learning Rails/iOS (and going beyond the curriculum, if the curriculum is also aimed at beginners) is probably worth $100K in the NY/SF area.
http://www.airforcetimes.com/article/20130426/NEWS/304260032 http://www.businessinsider.com/flatiron-school-coding-progra... http://www.quora.com/Kush-Patel-1/answers/Flatiron-School
That's it?
Man, I'm suddenly feeling better about my higher salary in relatively less expensive LA.
A Rails "developer" might be worth just $100k, but that's because there are so many hipster/naive fresh graduates in the area willing to work for (relative) peanuts on social web app fluff.
For a program that does 9-6 PM 5 days a week for 10 weeks, that's ~8 hours (not including lunch) x 5 days x 10 weeks = 400 total hours. That's about the equivalent class time to 8 semester-long CS courses.
I currently study at a top-5 CS school and previously attended a bootcamp. This comparison feels awkward to me, because they have neither equivalent structures nor goals.
The aims of most bootcamps, if I am to generalize, is to teach a relatively specific skillset applicable to industry. The most reasonable comparison would then be CS / ECE courses that aim to do the same (e.g. java & j2ee, web application development, java for android, etc.).
In this particular respect I would consider a bootcamp to be the equivalent of at least 4-5 "CS" courses, if not more. For one thing, the student teacher ratio is almost orders of magnitude better, and the material is often more relevant to current industry needs. I would also go as far as to say the quality of instructors at "bootcamps" teaching this material (at least, the one I attended) is superior.
On the other hand, there are more than a few individual semester long courses that are easily as grueling as a bootcamp. The courses I'm thinking of are traditional CS & ECE fare : compiler design & OS being prime examples. These are topics the bootcamp I attended (and, I assume all bootcamps) barely touch on, if at all - and all individually require almost as many hours as an entire 3 month bootcamp [1].
However, effort is pretty much also the only metric that can be used to compare the latter with "bootcamps". Since there is virtually 0 overlap [2] in material, it really is a matter of apples and oranges.
[1] For anyone but the exceedingly gifted, these courses require a minimum of 50 hrs a week.
[2] this lack of overlap also extends to classes on data structures & algorithms. This is material that's only taught obliquely (albeit somewhat effectively) at coding camps.
I do not live in Silicon Valley or NYC or Chicago. I live in Utah. Average household income is under $60k.
Obviously they are different markets though, so I think your point stands.
Yep. That's a higher percentage than what I'd expect, but it still seems pretty natural. Bootcamps literally sell the idea.
This, incidentally, is part of the reason why there's regulation.
If these programs were/are feeding internships, awesome. That's a different story. And on that note, I see no reason why big tech companies can't create their own coding academies, or partner with bootcamps on more structured working internships and externships. The bootcamp --> full-time job connection doesn't make a ton of sense. But bootcamp --> internship --> job makes more sense.
There are a lot of smart, hard-working people out there who, for one reason or another, just never got a deep exposure to computers in childhood, high school, or college. (Reliable childhood access to a decent-quality computer, much less programming resources, is not as common as we might expect.) Giving them a shot at learning is a noble and justifiable endeavor. Not all of them will enjoy it, and not all of them will make it through. But a lot of them might. They need to be going into it with the right expectations, though.
You mean actually train people? Don't be ridiculous. Why do that when you can just fire and replace? /s
I have the aptitude and experience to do well in an internship, if I could get one. Having to go from bootcamp to internship would cut off the only structured path available to land a programming job, short of going back into a degree program which is both undesirable and financially not feasible.
I'm in a bootcamp right now that I don't entirely need, but I'm building up my GitHub account and looking at following up with something like thoughtbot's Apprentice.io or (if I'm crazy lucky) getting into ThoughtWorks' junior developer program rather than trying to get a job with a large salary. I want to learn the ropes in this industry by consulting.
Edit: Also, if anyone reading this is looking to hire someone junior (and degreeless) and is committed to training, we should talk. Relocation is not a problem and neither is making an extended commitment on my end (as far as time and/or compensation). I do have a tech background, just not in dev. (Sorry, I gotta hustle! :D)
Fair point, so let's take this a step further and make it something other than an internship. A training program, perhaps. An apprenticeship program, wherein you're paired up with a recognized master/mentor on a team, working on an actual product that will actually ship.
Seems to me that the biggest hurdles are the regulations surrounding what an "internship" requires. So let's hack internships.
I think the biggest problem is most selection processes will merely maintain the demographic status quo for the industry. How do you rank older people pivoting careers and folks with the aptitude but no degree or industry experience where they'll be on a fair footing with all of the new CS grads who will be applying who could otherwise land a job anyway?
I think that's why the internship structure is crucial. Or maybe it's an externship. Or a part-time thing. Generally speaking, I would not put undergrad CS students at top universities into the same internships as I'd put recent grads of crash-course bootcamps. Bootcampers go into a different pool, in different roles, unless and until they graduate to better positions of more responsibility. If a bootcamper kicks serious ass and demonstrates him/herself just as good as a CS-trained graduate, then awesome, he/she can get fast-tracked into the regular job pool.
The goal of these programs should be to create runways for the career switchers and experience-deprived folks who show a decent aptitude for the profession. This would be a supplement to traditional recruiting pathways, rather than a conflict with or cannibalization thereof.
0_o
Why doesn't civil law provide adequate protection for people against sham schools? Has anyone complained about these organizations?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7147664
Talk about strawmen.
Schools that have chosen to operate without state-mandated licenses are being told they need to get the license to continue operating. The enterprise isn't being banned.
Speaking seriously, here's how regulation works in a nutshell. A company that wants to prevent/eliminate competition approaches a legislator (through lobbyist, of course) and offers a bribe, say $100k. That legislator then passes a regulatory law that requires around $1m of taxpayers money to be spent on regulation. The company then makes $10m thanks to that new law. The legislator made money, the company made money, the public thinks it is protected. A perfect crime.
Any tech company worth its salt will do technical evaluations of candidates, regardless of their education.
So what advantage does state regulation give, besides putting money in officials' pockets?
> He added, however, that the stern language in the cease-and-desist letters was designed primarily to get the operators' attention and that it was unlikely the bureau would be moving to shut them down as long as they made a good-faith effort to come into compliance.
> "We are trying to get them to become licensed," Heimerich said, adding that the agency has not received any complaints about the boot camps and learned about them from a staff investigator who saw them mentioned on a technology blog. "So if they are doing that, they fall to the bottom or close to the bottom of our enforcement priorities because there are many more serious threats to student consumers."
No. Caveat emptor. The State should only get involved in the case of outright fraud - you pay your money, and they don't actually run the class, or the class is taught by a 6th grader or something.
Outside of that, we should just let the market operate. Firms that don't deliver on their promises won't be around long.
Caveat emptor.
This sounds frighteningly arbitrary. So if I pay for a class that will teach me to be a programmer and I get a class that has no realistic hope of accomplishing that, it's caveat emptor, while if I'm in exactly the same situation but the teacher is a sixth grader, caveat emptor doesn't apply? How do we determine when a case of ripping people off is excused by caveat emptor?
If I decide to go to a traditional non-profit university to study, say, paleontology, and I actually expect to get a job digging up dinosaur bones, that is my own problem. The state shouldn't step in and start slapping the University's hand unless the University was falsely advertising high placement rates after graduation.
Slapping down educational institutions for the unrealistic employment expectations of their students will end poorly. The best that we should do is make sure the schools aren't lying to anybody.
I mean like, if a paintball arena claims to let you play paintball, then after you pay them they hand you some water pistols and tell you to have fun, that is surely fraud. I doubt we'd need to have any sort of special regulation to tackle that sort of issue.
"The institution shall employ administrative personnel who have the expertise to ensure the achievement of the institution's mission and objectives and the operation of the educational programs."
"An institution shall not promise or guarantee employment, or otherwise overstate the availability of jobs upon graduation."
You can read them for yourself: http://www.bppe.ca.gov/enforcement/institution_minreq.shtml
Looking through your link, I see 16000 words of new paperwork, inflexible mandates, silly gotchas that could trip up a small organization, and redundancies. (False claims and advertising are already illegal.)
BPPE requires programs like these to assess $0.50 per $1,000 charged to students who are California residents. These assessments go into a state-wide "Student Tuition Recovery Fund," which is used to mitigate economic harm to the student in a variety of situations where the school might refuse or be unable to, e.g., the school closes mid-class. See http://www.bppe.ca.gov/lawsregs/regs.shtml#76020 for the full list.
Programs like this charge students $10k-$20k, so we're talking $5-$10 assessed per student. This is like a very lightweight version of a surety bond.
There are other fixed and variable costs related to complying, but (AFAIK) this is the only money that flows into the state's pockets.
There's a delicious irony in the phrasing of that!
Yes, I really do want to know. Though I am a biased listener as my confidence in the motives of state officials is not high and I'm not a great believer in set curriculums or standardised testing.
I know when I'm in the presence of a strong educator and I'd rather just spend time with them, talking and listening to what they have to say.
You can get the details on tech by RTFM - it's the direction, the opinion, the experience and talent that is valuable to be around.
I wholly believe in the quality of the subject matter in the books they read and written on the board in the lectures they maybe attended.
Whether it absorbed, was digested and can now be readily applied is a different matter entirely. Regulation is not a guarantee of quality and if people want to sign up for code schools then good luck to them - they're the buyer so "caveat emptor" and let them assess whether the code school is providing what it has promised.
Bright people are who I would hire. And bright people don't need state regulation.
A lawyer friend told me his field used to be more accessible to everyday people. Anyone could study cases and even learn enough to represent themselves and members of their communities.
Law schools and licensing boards were developed to protect the lawyers' wages and prestige, and to insulate them from outside competition.
The regulatory hoops did increase lawyers' salaries, but they also made it impossible for most people to afford legal services. Costly law school requirements prohibited women and ethnic minorities (e.g. Irish people) from entering the field.
Programming is a young field. If the history of similar industries is any indication, it won't stay this open and loosely regulated forever. And incidents like the one in California demonstrate that the tides are changing...
Oh yeah. It isn't.
Regulation can solve many more ills than it can cause.
Now that would be helpful. But sure, you can just move elsewhere. It's going to be easy selling your old house given that there is no clean water available.
Edit: As a bonus, health insurance companies should deny you coverage because you live in a high risk area.
I wish people would stop using this phrase to mean "I can invent a chain of reasoning which leads to your conclusion and also to this ridiculous conclusion, but has no resemblance to any premise you've actually stated, and I'd like to pretend that that chain of reasoning was yours".
Sure, if you further assume the premise that "people who belong to a class that are demonstrably bad at evalauting long-term risk should not be allowed to vote".
Of course, that's not a premise that was raised, or is even directly relevant to the argument made in, scott_s's post upthread. It's, at best, a premise that is extremely loosely analogous to something one might reasonably interpret as an implied premise of scott_s's argument, but if you want to argue against scott_s's argument it would be better to address it directly rather than by trying to pretend that the conclusion of a chain of requiring a premise which is, at best, loosely analogous to something that might be an implicit premise of his proceeds from "the same logic" as his argument.
Do you have the ability to make sure that every single piece of food you purchase is safe for human consumption?
Who's going to create those agencies? In your advocated system the companies being investigated are the ones more likely to make the agencies than outside individuals because their isn't enough incentive to enter that market. Especially because without regulation companies can decide to open their facilities to agencies that are on good terms with the companies in question.
The problem you have is that you can't see a situation where people aren't consumers, and where the acquisition of wealth isn't the only goal of everyone. The problem is that the current system encourages corporations instead of cooperatives.
Treating humanity like a collection of profit-maximizing individualists means the only possible solution to you is more competition. Were humanity only a collection of profit-maximizing individualists we'd still be uneducated cavemen. Society moves forwards because it realizes that it needs to work together.
Did the Great Depression occur because of too much governmental power? Did the 2008 crash occur because of too much regulation?
Then what are you arguing for? My understanding is that you say free market cannot be better than having some degree of regulation. Regulation assumes government, doesn't it?
If you take even a tiny look at the rest of what I had to say (which you also neglected to respond to) my argument is collectivization, which is not the same thing as centralization.
(I saw your comment and questions above, in the other thread, but I cannot answer them until I understand this one better).
Additionally, and I've said it before, replace corporations with cooperatives. This is the more important part, you need to get rid of the idea that an individual can exist without society and outside of society. If everyone thought that individual wealth and profit-maximizing were the most important things higher education (and most education) along with a host of other institutions and almost every social institution wouldn't exist. And while I understand that a good deal of people are arguing against social institutions, they forget that wouldn't have received the same education they did.
If everyone was wealth-maximizing most professors wouldn't be professors because they're able to make more working in private industry. The same is equally true for a large number of public educators, at least in the hard sciences.
Education is considered a great equalizer. Society cannot get better if we privatize education, meaning only the rich can afford high quality education (and this is a problem that America is experiencing today). If only the upper classes can pay for high quality education the education gap widens, and it becomes nigh impossible for someone to be upwardly mobile.
And that's where my main problem with the American Libertarian movement, privatizing everything can at best keep society stagnant.
The answer to your question is competition. If a consumer protection agency wants my money, it has to earn my trust and be better than its competitors.
If no consumer protection agency earns anyone's trust, how does it continue to exist in your perfect world?
On a related note: what incentive is there for an individual to create a consumer protection agency? What incentive is there for a company to open their doors to a consumer protection agency that isn't going to give them a good rating?
Being paid by people who would like a reliable information about the products and services they purchase?
> What incentive is there for a company to open their doors to a consumer protection agency that isn't going to give them a good rating?
Being excluded from the rating altogether to the advantage of their competitors?
What's to keep an entire industry from creating their own protection agency, and excluding all other agencies from inspecting their facilities? Who protects the consumers then?
Without regulation what's to keep an agency from intermixing legitimate ratings with false ratings? What's to keep a company from paying every agency for false ratings, especially if everyone is profit-maximizing, and every other agency is going to say the same thing? Even if you found out, what can you do about it?
Does being excluded from the ratings give an advantage to their competitors? All it says is that they weren't rated, not that they're better or worse, and what if their competitors are terribly rated?
What's to keep an agency from being vindictive? This goes with the above mixing legitimate and false ratings.
What happens to a politician if he doesn't keep his promise or if an agency doesn't perform as it should? Nothing. A politician keeps his office until the next election and the agency stays in business, possibly with the very same people in charge of it. Can I stop paying taxes? No. I go to jail if I do.
The magic isn't the ability to determine whether something is safe; the magic, insofar as there is anything like that involved, is that government is the vehicle empowered by the people to do something about it once it has made the determination.
Regulation with the intention of saving lives is not a bad thing. I doubt anybody would say we should abolish driving laws and driver's license requirements because they're "regulations that limit innovation." Saying we should have safe drinking water in no way limits innovation or freedom either, yet some people seem to think we need to scrap this.
But why does this mean it should be able to shut down programming schools?
Regulation of post-secondary educations programs, be they "game design", "communications", or "hacker" schools, is a a reasonable idea.
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/06/24/ontario-investi...
Days later, the Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities Brad Duguid got involved and let the program continue under a careful watch, after some restructuring.
http://readwrite.com/2013/07/03/canadian-coding-camp-bitmake...
Codifying certain requirements in law is not a terrible decision, going too far can be.
All that for a to do list app :)
Programming has been around for a century.
Law has been around for a couple millennia.
Do you have a different metric you'd prefer to use?
> Besides, laws ARE indeed becoming more complicated whereas programming languages don't.
Most newer versions of programming languages introduce new concepts. How is that not "becoming more complicated"?
Also, I don't see how licensing could keep anyone from being a (successful) self taught programmer. Would they outlaw text editors for all but the accredited?
Don't forget, you can still represent yourself in court.
It is one more barrier that does not currently exist. Surmountable? Sure. But nevertheless yet another obstacle.
The difference with software is that your work will always stand for itself, because the barrier to creating anything is so low. Unless you have to be credentialed to access an IDE and compiler, you'll always be able to learn and improve.
_Some_ "software engineering" really does have the risks and responsibilities of civil or mechanical engineering. There does need to be some sort of evaluation/certification of people who've been trained and tested appropriately for that - without at the same time denying completely unschooled enthusiasts to do what the want with less life-threatening hardware and software.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7147664
I'm glad that they are facing mandatory regulation. Also I think the way they try to teach computer science is wrong. You can't be a good Rails developer in 6 months if you don't know basic computer science.
My wife no is going to San Jose state university and leaning boring Operation System basics and Assembly. But that's the right way of starting you career in computer science world.
Barely more charitable explanation: rejecting people who are not already familiar with the subject matter might be how they 'manage' such high success rates.
There's obviously a baseline below which any short, high intensity training course isn't viable.
A similar analogue would be baseline fitness levels expected out of candidates at, well, real bootcamps. If you can't jog more than a block or do 1 pushup, chances of making it through are relatively slim.
Your standard university CS department has no problem accepting freshman who have never even heard of HTML, but they are also operating on a different timescale. In universities it is reasonable to spend a few months getting freshman up onto their feet. When the entire program is a few months, you have to operate differently.
Moreover, HTML has very little to do with CS. You can probably graduate with a CS degree and know virtually nothing about HTML (and that's not a bad thing.)
Just because your doctor does basic screening and tells you you have flu doesn't mean you can be a doctor if you learn those basic screening skills, my friend
So...you're suggesting they should pre-screen people, say, on the phone, to make sure they know the basics of computer science?
Disagree. Without proper context, low level system implementation details are pretty dry and uninteresting.
There's certainly a level of abstraction that's too high for beginners (rails, I'm looking at you). However, there's also a level of abstraction that is far too low.
And another thing, they're not trying to teach CS. CS is a discipline all its own. Code bootcamps focus on web development, so you can have the practical knowledge and skill for entry level web development positions.
I hope the schools are able to work this out because my Bootcamp absolutely changed my life.
It seems like it's basically a whole lot of bureaucracy the schools would need to go through to ensure that they're not selling snake oil, haven't been involved in felonies, etc. Nothing too absurd, but an unnecessary hassle.
Perhaps I'm too much of a free-market loving, meritocratic startup junkie, but all of this seems completely unnecessary. If "colleges" like University of Phoenix et. al can make it through this process, it isn't really going to rule anything out. It introduces a lot of record keeping, forces some self-regulatory procedures, and implements other things that will only slow down the classes.
Are coding bootcamps perfect? By no means. Trying to pack a basic understanding of programming into a three-month course is by no means an easy task (and debatably an impossible one). That having been said, it gets the fundamentals in place so that someone can start to learn on the job, and the demand so highly outweighs the supply that I've seen recruiters and startup founders literally lining up to talk to people who have been coding for three months. It says something when the people that annoy programmers the most are recruiters - people trying to give them a job. You don't see recruiters being hated by people with English degrees.
Sure, a coding bootcamp is no CS degree from Stanford; I don't think anyone would pretend like it is. But it gets you into the coding world as quickly as you can, and the more programmers the better. The people I've seen go through bootcamps would not claim to be the best programmers in the world, but they get their foot in the door and start getting paid to learn. The companies hopefully realize that's who they're hiring, and make their hiring decisions accordingly. I can't see any need for this type of regulation whatsoever.
There's a need (or at least a market), people are willing to pay, they seem to be able to find jobs, and employers are becoming smart with regard to how to properly find/hire/train programmers coming out of bootcamps. Regulation like this, while possibly well-meaning, will only slow things down.
1) These bootcamps are complaining about basically nothing. As you said, even the 'University of Phoenix' is able to operate...
2) The people making points about how these programs are predatory and need to be regulated are really not going to get what they want from this regulation. As you said, even the 'University of Phoenix' is able to operate...
On the other hand, the law is addressing a real problem, and as the article points out, these schools are charging top dollar, and making some very big promises. If nobody is calling them on it, or if somebody is, but they wield no authority, then we have a problem. I'm not a libertarian, and I have no problem addressing these things on a case-by-case basis.
The problem I see is that the law seems to be very broad, and could be applied arbitrarily to private study sessions just as well as the diploma-mill-minus-the-diploma situation we're seeing here. I think the law needs to be more targeted towards the problematic aspects of these schools, like grandiose claims in their advertising.
If the standard truth-in-advertising laws are too toothless to apply here, then inspections are in order. But they should only apply to schools that make the kinds of claims that triggered the crackdown in the first place.
Bootcamps remind me an awful lot of the certification mills of 15 years ago. It's the same 2 months or so and $10K or so with the suggestion that a well-paying job is waiting on the other side, just swap out MCSE / CCNA for Ruby / CSS.
I'm sure the cert mills launched some great admins, but I know from experience that they shoveled through plenty of people who had no real aptitude or enthusiasm diluting the field and completely devaluing those skills.
It took years and surely a number of painful interviews for those people to filter back out.
It's hard not to expect that bootcamps will play out the same way.
I think it's great that these bootcamps are options, but have long been suspicious that the statistics they like to share are only indicative of either who they decide to admit, or who they decide to let graduate. For instance, how many people who make it through these bootcamps have a strong technical background, perhaps even a computer science degree, and only need the short time to dive deeply into modern web application design and implementation?