[Jormundir]

These results aren't very surprising because this is about interviewing performance. The goal of bootcamps is "teach you enough to get a job"; they're basically gaming the interview process by teaching to the test. University programs on the other hand are "teach you CS theory"; learning to interview well is up to the student and the specific school's offering of interview training.

I think there's a strong argument to make that university programs are too focused on theory, when the vast majority of their students are going to go out and get practical engineering jobs. I don't want the pendulum to swing too far to the practical side, though, because then you lose the long-term benefits of getting a CS degree. Although, schools can certainly buff up their practical material.

Anecdotally; when I participate in hiring, I tend to discount the bootcamp grads. Maybe it's unfair, but my experience hiring them has been that they know how to interview well, and know their tools well, but when you compare them a year in, they're pretty far behind their university counterparts. I see a plateau, where it's hard for a lot of bootcamp grads to move from doing generic web development to designing more challenging systems. Obviously it depends on the individual, but this seems to be a categorical struggle for bootcamp grads with little technical background. A lot of companies really just need more people doing web development, so being open to the bootcamp pool is essential, and ruling out bootcamp grads is silly.

[tetrep]

> I think there's a strong argument to make that university programs are too focused on theory...

Is there? I found practical programming knowledge to be very easy to pick up due to having piles of theory that back up why it's a good idea, why it makes sense to do so, etc. You just need someone or something to tell you to do it. It's why side projects are such a good idea, you get a great wealth of knowledge just from your own mistakes/failures that will occur naturally as you map theory to reality. But you can learn so much more so much more easily when you have that theory to start with.

[uptownfunk]

At the least something like a 1 unit weekly seminar on how to approach interviews would be super helpful. It would also make it feel like Unis were coming from a good place if they said "Hey, we're gonna teach you the theory, but we're also gonna make sure you kickass at an interview as well so that you come out strong when looking for a job". I'd really appreciate that attitude more.

[serge2k]

> I think there's a strong argument to make that university programs are too focused on theory

What would you see dropped and replaced?

[AnimalMuppet]

Dropped: I don't know.

Replaced: At least one class where they have to deal with a decade-old million-line-plus code base, and get to experience first-hand the consequences of decisions that seemed like a good idea (or "the right way to do it") when the code was written. Nothing punctures "too much theory" like a hard dose of the real world.