Note some selection bias may exist in the answers.
If you did a tech bootcamp three years ago and it went fantastically, you're probably reading HN today and will see and reply to this. The more success you had, the more likely you're a developer today!
If it went terribly, you might still be working at Starbucks and don't read HN very often.
Seriously, though, after some early career burnout I did a stint at a restaurant job to pay the bills while I decided what I wanted to do with my life...and that was by far my most productive period of time as far as keeping up on general tech news, personal projects, academic research/reading/conferences, etc...
A non-code day job can be a great way to have the mental energy to spend on non-job code. :)
My point isn't that non-programmers can't or don't read HN. My point is that there are more programmers reading and posting on HN than Starbucks baristas. If you hated your boot camp, the odds of you reading HN is lower. Selection bias doesn't mean absolutes, it means probabilities.
> after some early career burnout I did a stint at a restaurant job to pay the bills while I decided what I wanted to do with my life
I really respect that. I think I'd like to do the same, but the mortgage can't be paid on minimum wage.
I'm sure my specific case isn't that common, but I'm fairly confident that there are a non-trivial number of people out there who can code but choose not to as a career path.
I'm not questioning the argument about frequency, I'm questioning the underlying assumption that "success" in a bootcamp is only measured by employment as a developer.
Why would someone that doesn't want to code as a career path go to a coding boot camp? I'm sure there are a few managers that want to understand the technology they are managing, but by and large, I can't believe that non-coders make up a significant fraction of attendees.
If you don't measure the success of a coding boot camp by "employment as a developer", what would you measure it by?
I was running a brick and mortar business. I just wanted the coding skills for more leverage. After finishing a bootcamp, I did take a job at a large tech company and then one at a YC startup but I never had any intention of a "coding career". I just wanted to continue learning and see the industry from the inside and to assess what the level of competition truly was in SF/SV.
It's been 4 years since my bootcamp experience and I very, very much doubt I'll ever seek "employment as a developer" again except in the case of failure as an entrepreneur.
I just met two vets at a makers faire. One was a cop for 8 years, the other doing sales for his small biz. They both are now enrolled in a local code camp (sorry, spacing name). They LOVE it. They're both deeply chagrinned they had never tried that "math geek" stuff before.
Now they're talking about starting code camps targeting other vets, help with transitioning to civilian life, build community, mitigate PTSD, work with kids, etc.
You could be strict and limit this conversation to formal boot camps, but the reality is that this training is happening in a lot of different places.
I've been mentoring a number of our senior support folks on coding, and they've been doing something along the lines of a boot camp. My management finds that support team are able to better understand how things work, attempt to debug things they'd have been afraid of, and ask better questions of software engineers. Support engineers get to do something different and are building skills. They have seen "coders" move quickly through support to the engineering team. Another group manages our tools, but I hope they'll be able to hack on some tools for our team. Some people will stay in support, but it should be less stressful because they can understand how things work better. From a distance you can see how the online communications have changes between the two organizations.
From my past experience in Pharma I know there was similar interest from scientists to learn to code (if they didn't already). I also know that some of the designers working on electronic detailing apps for sales at the time really wanted to learn to code because they had to transition from Flash to HTML 5 and JS.
For these reasons, I think that the make up of coding boot camps may surprise some. A differentiation may be related to where someone is in their career. Someone laid off, or without a job is probably more like to jump to a boot camp than someone who has a job. Quitting to take part in a boot camp is probably a huge jump for people, if they are in the tech sector because they may have more awareness of what is involved, or other means to make the jump to coding.
No bootcamp myself, but I think more people learn to code than are employed as developers, although it may not be widespread. I switch between Product Design, development, and Program Management, based on market opportunity. Development is my least favorite, and I know many PMs and designers who take a short course with no intention to strictly switch gears (becoming a higher paid technical PM is a good example).
You are missing the point. It's not whether there are a trivial number or not. It's about the relative sizes of the groups in the population versus the sample.
The fact that there is not a single negative response is basically proof positive that people who don't succeed at coding boot camps do not read HN. Unless you happen to believe that almost everyone does succeed after coding boot camps. I find that notion incredible, personally.
People who have careers in tech are likely to read an internet forum whose readership is directed at people who have careers in tech. So we aren't going to get much "people who don't have careers in tech" side of the story.
Hypothetical example: Say only 1% of coding bootcamp graduates find the program to be a "success" for them. All of that 1% read hacker news and zero of the 99% read hacker news. If you ask about bootcamp on hacker news you'll only get HN reader's perspective, then you'd believe bootcamps are wildly successful whereas the real number is the opposite.
I think that OP point was not that there is something special about Starbucks. It was that people who were unsuccessful after bootcamp or had otherwise bad experience are less likely to read these forums.
There is a YouTuber I like to watch sometimes because he
occasionally uploads videos demonstrating really unique and high level programming skills.
His day job? A bus driver.
I saw that in the comment section of YouTube, people always ask him "why don't you go code for a job and make tons of money!". His response is that coding is something loves to do, and he wouldn't want to risk losing that love for it, by making it a job.
I love the idea but sadly in the US, living on a bus driver salary would be very difficult. He was based in Finland I believe, so I assume their bus drivers make more money.
living on a bus driver salary would be very difficult
As is often mentioned, that depends on where you choose to live. Around here, I know someone who was a bus driver and a homeowner. She was quite happy with it.
I suppose that's true, and I should keep that in mind more often. I live in California, and though some rural areas do reach that kind of affordability, they're also so remote and disconnected from society that I don't consider them an option.
I second that a non-code day job can be a great way to have the mental energy to spend on non-job code. I am a SAP consultant at IBM and my morning starts with checking out HN.
I search for next books to read by searching first on HN and also the constructive discussion that takes place here always leaves me being a bit smarter.
Most people outside of the startup scene, including myself, especially those over 35, are only in this for the money. That doesn't mean we can't find both personal and professional success.
I had a great experience, which I shared in another comment here. I agree, however, that there are plenty of folks I studied with who either washed out because they weren't prepared, or haven't accomplished that much because they frankly aren't that smart or hard-working. Those people probably aren't posting here.
Boot camps are no silver bullet. Like any kind of education, more is better, and the quality of the student is a factor. I will admit that while I got a great job, but there are fundamental CS concepts I'm still playing catchup with. Not sure if I would really be all the more effective as a developer if I did have a traditional degree, and maybe I would, but I can provide for my family and have no regrets.
All said, I think you might be right about some selection bias.
I'm glad you had a good experience, but I'm uncomfortable with your analysis here.
If plenty of folks enter a boot camp and wash out because they aren't prepared, I don't think that's much about the students. I think that's a huge failure on the part of the boot camp program.
The theory of boot camps is that you turn anybody who qualifies into somebody basically competent. E.g., US military boot camp drop out rates are around 10%. If ill-specified student quality is used to justify higher failure rates, then we end up with something almost tautological: only the quality students succeed, and the way you measure quality is by whether or not they succeeded.
>I don't think that's much about the students. I think that's a huge failure on the part of the boot camp program.
If you want a silver bullet for success, go to an ivy league or similarly-pedigreed school. There are plenty of people graduating from the top schools that burn out on their programs, but still get into successful gigs based on the reputation of their degree, and the connections they made.
Didn't study hard in high school, or Mommy And Daddy didn't send you to private school? Too bad. Life is competitive, and it needs to be that way if we want to make progress as a species.
No one is saying failure should come with punishments like unemployment or homelessness, but not every program out there needs to be as easy to coast through with C's as Harvard is. Not everyone needs to be a developer, doctor, pilot, etc., either. But the military needs almost everyone to get through boot camp.
This seems pretty much unrelated to what I was saying.
I am fine with the programs being hard. But these programs should only accept students who are likely to make it through. If they create a hard program but take anybody who can write a check, then it's a badly run school.
I thought your argument was that 'a school where many don't pass is a bad school,' but now I see you were saying something a little different, 'that they should only accept qualified students.' I missed that. But even if accepting qualified candidates, I'm not xonvinced everyone passing is necessary. It just depends on the goals.
I hope you can see how the above disagreements are still related... It seems self-evident, no?
The one I attended assumed their students have spent a good amount of time trying to learn on their own. They also had a long list of work to be read and done before the program even started.
In my limited experience, the ones that struggled most were the ones who simply didn't do the prework that was asked of them. Some people think education is something that will happen to them if they pay somebody enough, compared to those that went to a boot camp to accelerate the self-education they had already started.
Apart from selection bias of readers, there is completely different kind of selection bias, by which the person posting here has some very positive or negative views for bootcamps. It is well known in surveys and reviews. If the person reading this post has gone to bootcamp 3 years ago, they are much more likely to write their experience if he/she have failed 100 interviews, or if they became CEO of the startup, rather than say work as an average programmer which is the most common outcome.
HN seems to be getting more popular as software "eats" up other industries. Topics on the site have definitely migrated away from pure programming and startups - not that that's a bad thing of course.
If I might ask, what is it exactly that you do in finance that requires you to stay informed on emerging tech/software? Is it more so just out of interest?
Renewable energy development and investment banking. I would say I'm a tech enthusiast. I rarely read the meaty programming articles, but there are a lot of other interesting things posted here. I actually considered doing a boot camp to change careers and reading this article was a follow up as to whether that might have been worth it.
I think its pretty obvious that there will be selection bias in any answers here.
HOWEVER, that doesn't mean the answers are uninteresting or of no value. It is still very interesting to see what what some people who have gone through a bootcamp do with their careers.
>>"What are you doing now? Do you feel that the bootcamp prepared you for the jobs you got? Do you think most of your cohort are still working as developers?"
I don't think selection bias is a problem for the questions the OP asked.
If (let's say) only 10% of boot camp developers went on to get a development job, and that's roughly the 10% that still reads HN, then they're all going to answer "Yes, I feel that the bootcamp prepared me for the job I got." the other 90% of bootcamp students will answer no, but if they aren't here on HN they won't answer at all. That's selection bias and it's a huge problem for the exact questions the OP asked.
If you did a tech bootcamp three years ago and it went fantastically, you're probably reading HN today and will see and reply to this. The more success you had, the more likely you're a developer today!
If it went terribly, you might still be working at Starbucks and don't read HN very often.