19 Comments

As someone on the other side of programmer hiring, I can try to explain why bootcamps have had some success (and why many employers have no degree requirements):

1. Pretty much all the skills involved can be self-taught, to a level sufficient for employment. This isn't necessarily easy, but it's possible with little tools and no mentor, unlike any other STEM field.

2. Conversely, schools rarely teach much of the skills needed (not a surprise for readers of your book), and the variance in quality is very big (between schools, classes, and even instructors of the same course). The worst are actively harmful to learning.

3. There's a large degree of skill-reuse between jobs, and so someone who was productive at Company A and moves to a Company B that uses a similar tech stack, may be productive from day 1. Companies like this and try to only hire people who require that little onboarding.

4. It's relatively easy to test for the needed skills, and there's a lot of graduates who aren't going to be productive for a long time, so there's an incentive to weed them out. On the flipside there's a lot more openings than (actually good) candidates in this field, so over-filtering will make it much harder to fill positions.

Combine all of these and you have a perfect situation for employers willing to disregard the resume entirely (or at least the degree part of it) and rely on more direct tests of skill. The most famous one may be this post:

https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/

and they're pretty extreme, but even just a trivial take-home problem (just a bit harder than fizz-buzz) is sufficient to reject most applicants with almost no more effort than filtering resumes by educational attainment, and is much more accurate (our biggest source of false positives came from plagiarism).

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Using algorithms in interview makes decent sense. It's and IQ test combined with proof that you can put in the work to learn - not a bad combo.

Also we may be wrong, but there's the general feeling that programming changes the way you see the world. I don't think there's many types of work out there that force you to think about things quite in the same way. And algorithms are key to that... whatever you want to call it. Capacity to play with that particular kind of concepts.

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I wrote a review of Bloom Institute of Technology (another boot camp) from my perspective as an experienced software engineer and the father of a recent graduate over here: http://spyced.blogspot.com/2021/09/a-review-of-lambda-school-from-father.html

TLDR getting a job is the hard part, if Iz is seeing nearly 100% placement of graduates that is very unusual.

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Bootcamps always seemed like decent evidence of for computer science as being mostly signaling. I mean it shouldn't be possible to get 90 percent of the value of a 4 year degree in 4-6 months, but it is, especially with the higher tier boot camps.

Another random note: A lot of variance in math knowledge gained in high school by country/ and also some variance in the length of B.A. If we could find similar countries with different math/b.lengths and then compare graduate worker productivity it would be interesting.

Or maybe just teach office workers more advanced math and see if they get better at their job?

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Maybe this is a good place to ask for recommendations for further learning. I’m trying to learn machine learning/AI using online resources and self teaching during my spare time. I’ve started Andrew Ng’s Coursera course which is quite good so far. Anyone here have any success self teaching in this field ? Any recommendations?

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Hanging around MIT in the 80s and 90s, I observed that computer programming seemed to be the default way for smart people (mostly men) to earn a living. It paid better than most other professions, and didn't have any real entry requiremnts - you just had to be able to do it.

Programming doesn't have much "content" to it - it's simple logic, a little knowledge of syntax (learned in a few weeks), and a lot about experience and native talent. There's not much to learn. The interview fetish with algorithms is mostly BS - that stuff is almost never used in practice. I agree it's mostly a filter.

Boot camps exploit these facts. I'm not sure they add any real value, or are just selling certification at a discount to university prices.

They only work for exceptionally bright people - bright in a certain way. If you're that kind of person, probably you could spend a few months learning this stuff on your own and do just as well.

And yet the vast majority of CS graduates (CS is not programming or software engineering, tho it's an educational stand-in for those) can't program their way out of a paper bag. Google "fizzbuzz". Getting the degree != competence. At all.

(FWIW, I'm a 60 yo college dropout who made a successful career in software engineering.)

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May 15, 2022·edited May 15, 2022

Regarding the 20% failure rate:

In grad school for Computer Science, I helped at the student computer lab. I used to see Computer Science undergrads come through who just could not grasp programming. Their frustration always broke my heart (and obviously theirs).

It happens.

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Most of my teachers warned me I was too intelligent not to attend university. I'd started coding in Sixth Form, decided I'd do that instead, and after spending a few months making an iOS app, got a job after one interview. This industry cares more about experience than qualifications.

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I'm working in software development as a first-year university dropout.

I struggled to get the foot in the door at my first job, but everything after that has been a cake walk.

I studied mathematical problem solving and algorithms on my free time in high school, and this is all that comes up in terms of technical stuff during most interviews.

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