[ichbinlegion]

I don't have formal CS education, but I've been working as a developer for 25 years. In the firm I've been in that last 15 years, only developers with 10+ years of experience actually make a difference. Others are either still learning, or just doing menial work.

It makes me a bit sad this trend of "become a developer in 3 months". It's just a dream.

[sanitycheck]

I have a similar background, and my initial path into this job in the late 90s was definitely "become a developer in 6 months" using only books on HTML and Perl (and a pirate copy of Photoshop), so I can easily believe with instruction one can become a developer in 3.

There's a lot I couldn't do, of course, and there will be a lot that bootcamp devs can't do. But it's a start, a foot in the door. And it's also a kick up the ass for anyone who doesn't have the discipline to just sit at home studying for months.

I suspect both you and I made useful contributions before we hit the 10 year mark, if your young devs are just doing menial work either they're just not very good or they aren't being given anything solid to work on.

[ichbinlegion]

Ok, I probably was a bit too harsh in my judgement. Those "junior" devs are helping us a lot, and I was in that position for long, too.

Just as an example, let me tell you that we currently have a (self-taught) intern which is years ahead of two developers from bootcamps which have been working with us for over a year.

Getting a job position doesn't automatically mean you are suited for that job, or that you're good at it.

And while there are good dev bootcamps, getting out of one and finding a job, doesn't make you a developer (or an "engineer" either, which in my country is a regulated title)

[sanitycheck]

I could easily imagine a self taught intern being ahead of bootcamp devs, especially if the intern spent their childhood messing with Linux or something.

100% agree that getting a job doesn't mean you're good at it - but getting paid to do programming is the easiest way to keep learning. Maybe a good way to get people improving quicker could be to give them self-contained individual projects and allow them to get stuck and solve their own problems, I don't know? I do see devs spending days asking each other for help on stuff they could probably solve if they thought hard for an hour. Collaboration is good, sure, reinventing the wheel is bad, yes - but just diving in and wrestling with a problem is good practice and (eventually) fun.

I also won't call myself an Engineer for similar reasons, though an American company did give me that job title once.

[taurath]

Respectfully it’s not, and I’ve never heard of needing devs with 10 years of experience to do non-menial work.

Within my first year without a formal education I was shipping major features out to customers. Yes most of that year was big squashing, perf optimization and helping others with features. 10 years later, I am still learning - I hope that part never stops.

[ichbinlegion]

Maybe we're just unlucky with recruiting.

In my team there are people with 2 or 3 years of experience who need 5x to 10x the time it take a senior developer to do.

As I said, maybe we're just unlucky. Or maybe the whole IT sector is used to low-quality, low-efficiency jobs. Who knows.

[johnthewise]

There are plenty of web dev work around and you don't need 10+ years of experience to do it.

[ichbinlegion]

Do you understand that is just intern-level work?

[Server6]

It's still work and needs done. How do you expect someone to get "25 years of experience" without giving them work to do?

[mrtranscendence]

TIL that there are only interns and people with 10+ years of experience.

[ichbinlegion]

TIL I can become a surgeon with a 3 months bootcamp

[mrtranscendence]

I'm not arguing that someone with a 3 month bootcamp is going to be a highly-qualified, productive software developer. But 10+ years to get to a productive state? That's not my experience, and I don't think that's because all the work I've ever been exposed to is "intern-level".