[HNcow]

I'm in the process of hiring a junior position and have no bias towards college grads or bootcamp grads. The only negatives towards boot camp grads I've seen so far is:

1) One candidate had no idea what the terms "Class" or "OOP" even meant. I'm FINE with them not understanding stuff like sorts/advanced data structures, but he ACTUALLY had 0 idea what an int was. No lie!

2) I wish there wasn't such a heavy reliance on MongoDB in most of these programs. Some do have SQL as well, but I feel like 80% of workplaces will be dealing with SQL, so I'm not sure what the focus on Mongo is all about if the purpose of these programs is to make you hireable. I think it's that it's an easier concept to relay since you're working with JSON everywhere already, but I've seen a bunch of people have a very strong bias towards Mongo to the point where they seem to not understand why you even would use SQL.

3) This part might get me in trouble here, but we are a small company in NJ and budgeting 50k for the junior 0 experience position. Most of these bootcamps in Brooklyn or Manhattan instill that you minimum should be making 60k and not to even look for anything else. I disagree with that personally, but I realize it is possible for grads to make this (especially in NYC). I've just come across a few that scoff at us for the pay we have, and I do understand it, but some of my higher ups who don't really feel comfortable with the bootcamp concept don't think they are worth it.

Obviously there are a lot of pros with hiring them as well. I think typically they are the more qualified candidates skill wise. None of the ones we've come across have been a great fit so far though, but I think it's because of how close to NYC we are. These programs are based there, and we have trouble competing with the salaries there. That's why we have been having more luck finding college grads from the NJ area though, they don't have these kind of higher expectations.

[autotune]

1) That's not really a "bootcamp" issue as it is with a candidate who can't be bothered to learn basic programming concepts or open a book on their own. Almost every book I've read on programming covers OOP in most languages. You can even hack it together in BASH (http://lab.madscience.nl/oo.sh.txt), not that you should.

2) LAMP stack is still probably the safest bet (substitute PHP for Python maybe), but yeah, just because it's the current hotness for a few startups doesn't mean it'll get you hired to know the most hyped tech.

3) Stop looking for candidates from Manhattan, or only hire those looking to move who have done just a little bit of research? CNN's COL calculator shows $100K in NYC is equal to about $54K in NJ so you don't seem too far off base for what you're looking for (http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/). From personal experience their calculations were accurate when I made my move from the midwest to SF. Regardless, again that doesn't sound like a "bootcamp" issue so much as "candidates who can't be bothered to do basic googling/research issue."

[bobwaycott]

> 1) That's not really a "bootcamp" issue as it is with a candidate who can't be bothered to learn basic programming concepts or open a book on their own. Almost every book I've read on programming covers OOP in most languages.

I wholeheartedly disagree here, and think it very much is an issue with bootcamps. If a bootcamp doesn't even introduce its students to such concepts as classes, instances, OOP, and basic data types, then it has failed to adequately serve its students with fundamental knowledge and offered a shitty introduction to programming. I've worked to mentor a few people who have come out of bootcamps, and I see this lack of knowledge consistently. When I do, it has never been because the student couldn't be bothered to read or study. It has always been because the concepts were never mentioned and introduced, and thus the student didn't even know it existed, thus that it was something they should understand. Whenever I have introduced the concepts, the students eat that shit up, because they really are interested in learning.

Personally, I think a great many bootcamps are poor places to learn programming because they overwhelmingly focus on web-stack. When you're learning to place shit into the DOM, you don't need to care if it's an int, string, dictionary, array, etc. When you aren't being taught to store your data in an SQL table, you don't become aware of data types, parsing ints, casting strings, coercing one type to another, validating types, etc. You're just being introduced to storing blobs of JSON into Mongo or whatever. Hell, when I started with JS so many years ago, I was rather dumbfounded there was a difference between == and ===. This leads to fresh, potentially valuable developers who don't even know what they don't know. And when that's your starting point, it's a bit unfair to think it's the students' fault. We wouldn't say that of CS graduates.

Bootcamps provide an often too-rudimentary introduction to programming with poor technologies chosen for education. They'd be much better if they sought to teach real CS concepts, not just web-stack basics.

[Zeno84]

>If a bootcamp doesn't even introduce its students to such concepts as classes, instances, OOP, and basic data types, then it has failed to adequately serve its students with fundamental knowledge and offered a shitty introduction to programming.

Honestly, if someone doesn't understand these very basic concepts, what's his/her curiosity level regarding computer programming? I would not want to hire him/her based soley on that.

[bobwaycott]

Honestly, if someone doesn't know these very basic concepts exist, the fundamental error of attribution here is passing judgment on them and their curiosity level. If we fail to teach, we cannot blame the students for not knowing they were failed, and specifically how.

If someone goes through and passes a bootcamp, it is fair to be generous in granting them some level of curiosity about programming. If the bootcamp doesn't introduce the fundamentals of programming, that's no more the student's fault than it would be the fault of an art history student to not know what chiaroscuro is if it wasn't introduced as part of art history.

Bootcamps market and position themselves as good alternatives for people to learn how to program and, often, get a job. I see no reason to neglect holding them to their promise.

[st3v3r]

It's still the bootcamp's fault for not at least introducing them to those concepts. I mean, you can't really google what an int is if you don't even know that an int is a thing.

[Zeno84]

Oh, bootcamps are certainly failing here, but if I were to google "Computer Science," or "Computer Programming," I'd eventually run into the concept of types.

As an analogue, I learned about the functional programming paradigm far before it was ever brought up in a classroom setting. Sure I knew what programming paradigms were, so maybe it's not a perfect example...

[HNcow]

We're not looking, they are applying. Like I said, I understand why they aren't a good match COL/salary wise, just kinda of was writing about how I think it's interesting that they teach what salary they should be seeking minimum. That was never brought up in my BS degree.

[35bge57dtjku]

Are the candidates aware of the differences in CoL?

[st3v3r]

I have to disagree with #1. If they don't even know what an int is, that's a complete failure of the bootcamp.

[tps5]

Every number in JavaScript is a floating point number of type, you guessed it, "number."

[jkaptur]

It's just an IEEE 754 double.

[sotojuan]

> This part might get me in trouble here, but we are a small company in NJ and budgeting 50k for the junior 0 experience position. Most of these bootcamps in Brooklyn or Manhattan instill that you minimum should be making 60k and not to even look for anything else. I disagree with that personally

I'm graduating from a Manhattan college Saturday and I would never take less than $60k for a programming job. In fact, I see most people recommending minimum $70k (and that matches my experience based on jobs offered to me). Most of my peers range from $70k-90k based on experience.

IDK where in NJ you are, but I trust that in your area, $50k is a comfortable salary to live on. In my hometown I'd also expect that much because it's a cheap place. You need to make this clear to your applicants (tell them the cost of living). Since you live near NYC then, sorry, most people will take $60-70k and live in the city with maybe a roommate than $50k in NJ even if they end up making less in NYC.

That said there's a lot of people eager to get some experience in their resume, so you'll find someone eventually.

[HNcow]

Totally. I'm not looking for sympathy or an explanation, I completely understand. Was just explaining that most of these candidates from NYC bootcamps are conditioned for NYC jobs, and seem to have very little desire to move out of that area / except different pay ranges. I feel college students are different in this regard. Probably because they live on campus and have to change where they live anyway.

I get it, just kind of writing about my experiences.

[sotojuan]

You may also get college students who live near your business. I know I'd love to live at home for some time—can save a lot of money.

[busterarm]

It really depends on which bootcamp. I finally picked up SQL while at App Academy and while we did use JSON, we spent no time working with NoSQL databases. Backend ended up being my strength and my primary role at my (full stack) jobs.

The monetary worth as a junior developer is also very dependent on the bootcamp. A decent App Academy or Dev Bootcamp grad in NYC? 60k is a reasonable minimum IMO and a wage below that in NY isn't really livable. On the other hand, bootcamps like GA? Sure, hiring them is more of a crapshoot. None of the NYC bootcamp grads I know are looking in Jersey though.

[HNcow]

That's good to hear about the SQL. Honestly, we sort of didn't even bother with AA candidates because I went to the website to check it out, and first thing it says is "graduates earn an average of 89k in NYC". Instantly knew that whatever they were telling the students, we couldn't afford em.

On Indeed, we get a lot of crossover because of our proximity to NYC. I think we come up if you do a 50mi radius and search junior, not sure honestly. I totally get it, but it's getting to the point where we see NYC on the resume, we pass them aside cause we know we can't afford them. Probably better for both parties.

[busterarm]

You're right, you probably can't afford them. Salary range in my cohort was 60k-105k, but it's typically higher. a/A grads are in the unfortunate position of having their camp be "free" ($5k deposit) up front and 18% of your first year salary upon hire. They basically have to earn more to pay off the bootcamp. I had to pass on my dream gig (apprenticeship at 8th Light in LA) in part because the debt to App Academy would have meant I was starving in LA (flat 18k if you leave NY/SF).

Some of us optimized for culture fit and life balance over salary. I did this because I was lucky enough to be able to. I earn less than a bunch of people from my group who work 20+ hours more a week than I do and I'm happy with my decision - love where I work, love my coworkers.

I'll let the quality of my work determine the direction of my salary :D

[huehehue]

It looks like App Academy is still claiming no upfront cost. I successfully applied a few years ago; despite hearing the "X% of your first year's salary" speech over and over, I was told I would not only need to pay a heavy deposit, but the entire program cost. Kush Patel (the founder) claimed people were bailing after the program and my young age made me a risk.

I can understand those kinds of problems, but waiting until I was accepted to disclose them left me a bit upset. I suggested they update their site, but it appears they still haven't done so.

[busterarm]

Yeah they have some hidden terms regarding this and I wish they were more up front about this.

If you are under 21 and without degree, they will require the full program cost up front. Also if you are not a US Citizen, they will require the full program cost up front (for more obvious reasons).

The $5k deposit they also only disclose upon acceptance and it was not something I had planned for but found a way to pay it somehow (I had only budgeted 6 months no income and a 900 mile move back to NYC originally).

These little details regarding payment and also the new internal recruiting company they've started (that works no different than any other standard recruiter and treats their alumni mostly like cattle...) have left kind of a bad taste in my mouth towards the company, but the TAs were amazing and the curriculum is solid (and accepts pull requests!).

[justinv]

http://www.appacademy.io/faq/deposit

Their FAQ seems to have a fair amount of information. Though, it was hard to find from the homepage.

[busterarm]

This is a recent addition since their site redesign in the last < 12 months.

[lloyd-christmas]

I think there is nothing of distinguishing value between all three of those boot camps. Trying to place them in tiers, I assume, is just a form of self-flattery.

[busterarm]

While you're largely right, there are pay in full and up front boot camps out there that tend to churn through people and either not care about or grossly inflate their placement rates.

And there's a big difference between "12 weeks of structured curriculum" that you get from the ones mentioned vs the "12 weeks of follow the Hartl Tutorial and meet with a mentor for 3 hours a week" variety like Bloc.

[lloyd-christmas]

I can definitely see that distinction. We've never interviewed from anyone excluding the three you mentioned and fullstack academy, which all have the same general process.

[busterarm]

FA and I think Flatiron School are also in the "alright" category. All of these mentioned are just "alright".

I don't think any of them are really excellent.

I have just met a high percentage of GA grads who aren't successful in their search and give up after a few months.

[chris11]

So what are the excellent programs in your opinion?

[ThrustVectoring]

I know salaries are lower in NYC than SF, but even $80k/yr probably won't get you an App Academy graduate in SF. If it does get you an App Academy graduate, well, we actually talk to each other about compensation so they will almost certainly get poached after 6 months to a year.

The issue isn't what the bootcamp grad is worth. The issue is what the next best option is - spending more time job hunting and getting a position that values you better. An $80k/yr offer in SF isn't good enough to convince you to call a halt to the process, not when so many of your peers are accepting offers between $100k and $120k.

[busterarm]

Yeah I'm in NY thankfully. I wouldn't even consider taking a job in SF below $120k. I don't know how I'd make it there otherwise.

I'm too old to bother with having roommates anymore.

[SilasX]

Funny story: Before I started a camp, I went to a "hack night" where they had professional RoR devs as the mentors.

I was still learning Ruby at the time and didn't know how to access an object's member (instance) variables. I asked one of the mentors how to do it (I couldn't find the answer quickly from the documentation). He was stumped and had to hit the docs.

That's like a professional C programmer being stumped at how you refer to a variable's memory location.

Funny how far people can get when knowing little.

[Akkuma]

Your #3 is absurd. Almost 10 years ago I came out of college making nearly that much in a city and state with a lower cost of living than NJ.

[llamataboot]

MongoDB (MEAN stack) seems to be a recent shift?? Most bootcamps have historically been Rails/SQL.

[jedc]

It is. When I hired last summer the Galvanize full-stack course was all Ruby/Rails. By this winter/spring it had shifted to full MEAN stack. I get the sense that it's an industry shift. (Which I personally find a bit frustrating...)

[sotojuan]

I think Maker Square does Mongo, not sure. Most I see are still SQL-based as they should be. Mongo isn't used that much... and probably less than a few years ago (seems like it has gotten bad press).