[JackMorgan]

I train software engineers with the apprentice model, and it takes about 500 hours to train a person to be able to get hired as an entry level full stack engineer. Maybe not in today's market where even talented engineers are struggling. But over the last sixteen years I've trained sixteen engineers who all still work in the industry.

I use TDD, a list of projects that gradually increase in difficulty, multiple languages, and solo practice on tools like CodeWars. After they are comfortable with basics I'll have them build a personal project of their own design. Between CodeWars and TDD they've now gotten used to getting dopamine hits from programming. Add in intrinsic motivation on a personal project with a full stack website and they are glued to the editor. Time flies as they rapidly achieve a decent level of skill at reading and writing code. By the time they are wrapping up that personal project, as long as they've kept up with algorithm practice they're ready to interview.

Some have taken longer, usually about a third take a break and circle back around later. Some do take more like 1000 hours to feel confident. Sometimes I end up hiring them myself for contract work to help them build a resume and help me with a project. But on average it's only about 500 hours to teach the fundamentals of unit testing, algorithms, data structures, functional programming, SQL, Typescript, React, and a backend language like Python or C#. They'll not be a master of any of them, but know enough to build a website with persistence and use tools like Google and ChatGPT to get answers when stuck.

The "simple trick" is just making them write absolute tons of code, every day, for months. Then making them read other's code to learn new tricks. It's not easy, I'll work them like a rented mule but they'll come out way over qualified for an entry level position. By the time they're interviewing most will have written 10-20k lines of logic, often grinding a problem a half dozen ways to really see the pros and cons of various solutions.

I think most people greatly overestimate how much code the average CS graduate actually writes for their degree. I've interviewed hundreds of new grads who've written maybe a few hundred lines of code total. Sure they know the theory of computer science, but aren't prepared at all to be software engineers.

I'm not saying the bootcamp model is better, generally those students only know basics of copy paste. This is entirely the fault of the bootcamp instructors who are just trying to churn out graduates.

There just isn't much effort in actually teaching software engineering. Bootcamps have students do some basics and stop way before they're ready. Universities just have them study theory. Rarely is anyone teaching how to read and write code so fluently the students are dreaming in code. But this is extremely effective.

[socrates137]

I’m quite intrigued by the number of SWEs you’ve trained through an apprenticeship. I think there’s often this tension between those who have been trained at some university and now have a CS degree and those who have “learned on the job” or by some other means. I think that tension also exists elsewhere in other careers - it is not unique to software. I’d like to think the reality is more nuanced and complicated. Everyone has their preferences for learning. But I wish apprenticeships weren’t so undervalued and under appreciated. This is how we often trained specialized experts for thousands of years. I don’t mean to suggest it doesn’t have its own problems, but I think if it became more normalized it would be an overall positive change.

[JackMorgan]

There definitely is that kind of tension between the two camps. Generally though it's safe to assume a CS degree is optimized to prepare a student to become a CS professor or researcher. A CS graduate typically seems to graduate about 2/5ths of the way through my program, needing 300 extra hours to be at the same level as my graduates. This is not true for all of them, just most of the ones I've interviewed. There's definitely been some though who are way ahead of my students, usually because they went to an extraordinary university and also put in a lot of extra time outside of their coursework.

It's not cheap though, I do it as a charity. I've recently started my own business, so as of this summer I'm able to actually pay them which is epic. Still the program as a whole operates at a loss. So I do it because I want to pay it forward.

[diracs_stache]

What is the application for the training? I don't need payment or job placement but damn if my software engineering abilities don't need a boost (EE/physics background)

[JackMorgan]

Do you have a way I can contact you?