Ask HN: If you worked with a grad from a code bootcamp, how effective were they?

When I first came out of Epicodus into working at my current firm Ahalogy, I obviously knew I had a lot to learn. However, the way I've hit the grindstone and just continued to expand my skillset and learn (which is a skill that Epicodus helped me develop) the developers I work with notice constant improvement and I've gone from 'definitely a junior dev' to having projects that I own and work on exclusively as well as other large ones. We also hired another bootcamp grad who is in about the same boat (he came from Dev Bootcamp). Hopefully you get some encouraging results :) I love my job and where I work more than words can describe and Epicodus opened these doors for me after I grew sick of my Physics curriculum in college.

edit for context: I was in Epicodus's last fall class. So, 6ish months of time since I finished up and began working a bit later. Took some time off to find the perfect fit for my first real programming job that wasn't freelance.

On the flip side those who come to me with a liberal arts degree + bootcamp just don't seem to have the same problem solving skills.

This is all a generalization of course but it's what I've seen doing lots of interviews.

ONLY A GITHUB PROFILE

It seems pretty clear that the bootcamps told you we really care about your github profile, and that sometimes gets interpreted as "to the exclusion of everything else".

APPARENTLY BORN SIX MONTHS AGO

Related to the over-emphasis on github profiles is the exclusion of anything not-code related. I get that code bootcamps attract lots of folks who maybe got a political science degree or spent the last three years in real estate. Tell me that. I'd love to see what you've been up to, we're looking to hire you, not your ability to code. I hope these institutions aren't making folks feel like their past isn't valuable because it didn't involve Rails.

ALSO THE GITHUB PROFILE IS BORING

The profiles tend to have some code camp rails homework in them. It's hard to go from learning to code to having a github profile that's impressive in a short period of time (Hell, I've been working for well over a decade and my github profile isn't impressive!).. That said, if you do want me to care about your github profile I'd rather see signs of enthusiasm in the form of personal gists or projects or thoughtful bug reports or feature tickets on other projects.

DISGUISES THE CODE BOOTCAMP AFFILIATION

Seems like the elephant in the room on these things is where you've been learning to code and how you found us. Many of the resumes seem to avoid being transparent about this. I wanna know which bootcamp you did, what got you interested, and how it went.

THEY TOLD YOU TO EMAIL US

It's clear that we're on a list and plenty of candidates email us without knowing (or maybe caring) about what we do. That's a non-starter. Frankly, I doubt that the people who even put us on the list of shops to mail looked any closer than a crunch-base profile or Who's Hiring post on HN.

RAILS

The resumes I'm seeing clearly come from a bootcamp that emphasizes Rails and JS/HTML. That's great, but we're not a rails shop and the candidate is brand spanking new to this. It's probably better that you continue your investment in Rails before doing a wholesale dive into another platform.

At any rate, I love that camps like this exist. I've long thought our industry needs really good trade education to supplement CS programs which are focused and affordable ways to launch folks who are interested into software development. I just think the packaging and presentation of folks coming out of these things could use some work.

In my experience of interviewing, working with and mentoring code bootcamp students, the #1 deficiency I found in every single one of them (a sample size between 10-15), is that for the first year to year and a half after graduation they all lack the ability for trivial problem solving (why am I getting this error?) and finding an answer on their own (read: using Google). It's as if the code in these bootcamps is completely error free and debugging never happens, or my other hypotheses is having mentors/teachers around to hold your hand at any moment doesn't help build the "Just Google It" muscles.

I know intermediate and advanced level coders can do Hacker School as well, but I ask because I worked with a Hacker School graduate who fits your definition (never coded before, only spent 2+ months ramping up at Hacker School before landing his first coding job with us.)

What I think's going on is that many of them want to found startups, so they want to be technical enough to launch prototypes, give investor confidence, etc. but they don't want to invest much further than that. And I think that's ultimately a problematic approach, as it's not going to be good for the people that hire you, and not good for the startup you found either, thinking of the recent poster who, as a 'technical cofounder', is being squeezed out of his company by the CTO because he's just not good enough.

I read in another comment this survey did not prevent multiple voting, so I'm sharing my opinion here as it's unclear if the survey will be skewed.

My main concern with bootcamp grads is that it is not much of a positive signal. My (admittedly biased and unscientific) sense is that you really have to be hopeless to flunk out. The training period is so short that the assignments are necessarily small and limited in scope, so they don't test any kind of tenacity or the problem solving and lateral thinking required as a professional. Granted, University degrees have this same problem, but there at least for a proper CS degree there is some heavy math and theory and exams which over a period of four years will tend to winnow the field a bit more. Plus, if someone has gone through four years of CS assignments, they should be able to show some kind of programmerly reasoning ability and debugging techniques—if they don't at all I think they are pretty easy to write off, whereas someone who has only been coding for 3 months should not necessarily be written off so quickly because they still may need to pass a few eureka moments.

I remember my first year of CS after having been generally obsessed with computers and fooling around with programming for over a decade in HyperTalk, AppleSoft BASIC, Pascal and even C. There was this moment when it just clicked in my head how code was logic manifest. I know it sounds trite, but there really was this moment where I went from thinking of code as a magic incantation to achieve some result to understanding that code can be anything you imagine, and that you can map your very thoughts to code. There was some transformation that happened from years of curiosity and obsession, and from what I can tell a lot of people never pass that phase of thinking of code as magic incantations. I'm not sure what's necessary to make that leap, but I'm fairly certain a 3-month bootcamp will not be sufficient to draw it out for most people.

The other problem with bootcamps is that they are just too visible and attractive to people looking for a good career. I see parallels to Indian outsourcing attempts I was involved in 10-15 years ago. It was apparent there were a huge number of programmers who had no interest in the craft, but went into the field simply because their parents thought it was a good job. 20 years ago I don't think anybody in the US wanted their kids to be programmers, so if someone showed up looking for a programming job they were already most likely brimming with the requisite curiosity to become a passable programmer (even if they weren't a genius!). With the US economy tanking and startup culture being glorified and mainstreamed I feel like bootcamps are the obvious outlet for people seeking the media-fueled romance of being a bonafide Silicon Valley engineer.

All of this is a bit unfair to bootcamps. They may well be the fastest way to learn, and the curriculum may be top notch, but for me personally it's a negative signal. I would be more impressed with a candidate who saved their money and spent 3 months teaching themselves to code using on-line resources. Perhaps that's unfair, but that's my bias. God I would have killed for the web in 1987. Do you have any idea how much Inside Macintosh (the Mac OS API reference) cost? Or a C compiler for that matter?

Obviously I came to DBC because I believe in what they do. My experience as an engineer on the Wealthfront team was that:

1. DBC Grads were incredibly driven, hard workers, who had an exceptional ability to "drink from the firehose" and learn what we needed them to learn rapidly. After seeing my first 9 weeks here, it's clear that _no other kind of person_ can make it through DBC.

2. DBC Grads were very effective communicators. I think there's a lot of value in DBC's "engineering empathy" curriculum.

3. DBC Grads had a solid enough basis in CS fundamentals and web development to be effective immediately as new hires.

Both our DBC hires were adding value right off the bat, and rapidly grew into their role. Wealthfront has a strong mentoring culture, and mentoring had an outsized impact on their ability to grow, because they had already "learned how to learn." To be honest, they were more independent than some fresh CS grads I know. There's no textbook once you're in industry.

We rejected some DBC grads too. Like in all things, there is a spectrum of talent and ability across DBC graduates.

In the end I was impressed enough to leave an incredible team to become an instructor here. Like any junior engineer, graduates of these hacker schools are investments. I happen to think the graduates we produce are particularly good ones.

If you're curious, here's an interview my students did with me about DBC. We talk a fair amount about my experience with our two DBC grads at Wealthfront:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viLYR0kAqAc

It was definitely an interesting experience. I've worked with a number of fresh college grads, and I more or less know where they tend to be weak/strong. The dev bootcamp grad was pretty much the opposite of a college grad. He was strong with our specific tools (rails), good development practices (scms, tdd, agilish development), and solid communication skills. However, he was weak with a lot of the stuff you get taught or pick up in college, like programming paradigms, basic algorithms, unix tools, and any domain besides web development.

For example, since he knew only ruby, he struggled a lot with js. I can understand why- when I first learned my second language, I struggled a bit too. Every language after that becomes a lot easier, of course, because you've learnt how to learn a language. Since he hadn't done that yet, it took longer than expected to ramp up.

On the other hand, he was pretty well versed in the rails way to do anything. He was adamant about our test suite, and would argue for good separation of concerns.

If I had to sum it up, I'd say that college gives you intermediate skills in computer science, and basic skills in the practice of software development. You're expected to develop the latter at your first job.

Dev bootcamp, on the other hand, gives you basic skills in computer science, and intermediate skills in the practice of software development. Presumably you're expected to develop the former on your own if you want to succeed as a developer.

To that end, I've found that the people I've worked with from these schools are just as capable and talented as anyone from anywhere else. It's just that the company I work for is as selective with them as we are with someone from any other background.

Building a good relationship with the people in charge of the school is key, I think. They want to help their students get good jobs and they also want to build the prestige of their institution. I want to find the brightest students to help solve my engineering goals. Working with the leaders helps us both accomplish our goals at the same time.

Here's a note from a DBC employee that is dead for some reason:

-----

Full disclosure: I am a former Wealthfront employee, and am now an instructor at Dev Bootcamp. We hired two DBC grads onto my team while I was at WF, and a third after I left. We also interviewed DBC grads who didn't make the cut. Obviously I came to DBC because I believe in what they do. My experience as an engineer on the Wealthfront team was that: 1. DBC Grads were incredibly driven, hard workers, who had an exceptional ability to "drink from the firehose" and learn what we needed them to learn rapidly. After seeing my first 9 weeks here, it's clear that _no other kind of person_ can make it through DBC. 2. DBC Grads were very effective communicators. I think there's a lot of value in DBC's "engineering empathy" curriculum. 3. DBC Grads had a solid enough basis in CS fundamentals and web development to be effective immediately as new hires. Both our DBC hires were adding value right off the bat, and rapidly grew into their role. Wealthfront has a strong mentoring culture, and mentoring had an outsized impact on their ability to grow, because they had already "learned how to learn." To be honest, they were more independent than some fresh CS grads I know. There's no textbook once you're in industry. We rejected some DBC grads too. Like in all things, there is a spectrum of talent and ability across DBC graduates. In the end I was impressed enough to leave an incredible team to become an instructor here. Like any junior engineer, graduates of these hacker schools are investments. I happen to think the graduates we produce are particularly good ones. If you're curious, here's an interview my students did with me about DBC. We talk a fair amount about my experience with our two DBC grads at Wealthfront: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viLYR0kAqAc

The good thing about DBC is its intensity. We're asked to work upwards of 100 hours a week.* I'm dubious as to exactly where that number comes from and how accurate it is, however it is clear that students work long hours and almost always stay late. I'm told at least a few drop out each term. At least to me, this indicates that the students who complete the program are motivated.

I think the problem is when applicants rely entirely on a three month program to get work. I'm attending DBC not so I can put it on my CV and hop straight into a startup job, but because I genuinely want to add Ruby to my toolbox.

IMO bootcamps shouldn't be taken just to have another line on a resume. They should be a stepping stone, giving the student the tools to contribute to real projects that will give them real experience. I think these contributions that the bootcamp experience allows are where the real value comes from. I apologize if I've been rambling, my point is that bootcamps work best as a part of a bigger and longer story that shows a dedication to the craft of programming.

*Someone mentioned this isn't the case. I'll see if I can dig up where I read this.

http://www.programmingisnothard.com/bootcamps

A few things I noticed (through just a quick inspection):

  1) Average training time is about 10 weeks;
  2) 28 out of 50 teaches Ruby/Rails, 15 out of 50 teaches JavaScript, 5 teaches Python, 3 teaches iOS, and 3 teaches Android.

So, yeah, the curriculum is pretty practical. I doubt many of the curriculums cares about C.S. basics as long as it is enough to let them write Rails code.

I think one way to filter out the inept students is may be let them do some algorithm problems during interview? Also if your company does Ruby, then let a part of interview process be solving the bugs or issues on company's current project, and try to see how to approach the problem and whether can get it done. Understanding other people's code and reproducing/tracing/fixing bug is something very important. Also a big thing is when a bootcamp grad candidate say "you should do X in Rails", probably ask them why is a good idea. Do they do X just because their teachers say so, or there is a good reason for really doing so.

Disclaimer: don't have any experience with any bootcamp grad, but with experience working with X (place Rails, Django, etc. here) only guys.

Why? A lot (not all) of CS programs are out of date when it comes to the ever-changing state-of-the-art. Unless they are exceptional, these students won't know much about applying modern open-source technologies, and still think of building webapps in Java.

Also, those who go through a bootcamp show an intrinsic motivation and passion for the work. They put themselves through an intense program, because they want to. And pay money for it.

In the end, the best devs are continuously self-taught. A bootcamp jumpstarts that process better than a degree.

@glaugh, maybe your friend will find this tool useful (in addition to all the great feedback we've already seen in the thread).

Let me know if you have any questions or feedback!

I was so impressed from this experience with Dev Bootcamp that I quit my job, joined Dev Bootcamp, and launched Dev Bootcamp in Chicago.

This was ~2 months ago; she's learned enough in two months that we're going to hire her at the end of her contract as a full-time Rails developer. I'm not sure that the 10 week bootcamp was enough for her to pass our screening, but in the two months she's been here she's more than proved herself as capable.

As a business guy, I can't comment much on why she was denied originally, but so far it's worked out.