Comment by i-machine-learn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by i-machine-learn | Hacker News Reader

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i-machine-learn

You are over generalizing.

I am a bootcamp grad who specialized in undergrad in electrical engineering. I worked for a few years as a research for the one of the top tech universities in the country; I have found that I have a stronger math and physics background than many CS grads. However, many times when doing something I have been stopped by saying "wait aren't you a bootcamp grad? can you even understand this?"

I'm not alone; my bootcamp had plenty of STEM majors. One of colleagues was a biomedical engineer and worked in a research lab and now works in the front end at a top firm in SF. Another was a math major at an Ivy before working full stack. The top guy at my bootcamp went to Berkeley in Biochem and was way way smarter than me.

So stop generalizing. I understand that they are unaccredited institution so you get a wide variance of talent but you can't shit on everyone.

To be honest, your issues probably in how you screen talent. My current company has found success in hiring bootcamp and top schools in the area (Berkeley, Stanford).

How is he over generalizing?

It's just a very simple fact that 90% of the bootcamp grads can't program their way out of a paper bag. In fact, most self-trained programmers are vastly better than even the best bootcamp graduates.

The problem with bootcamp grads is that they don't know what they don't know. And they don't know a lot. Undoubtedly some of them will turn out to be great programmers, but not after 3 months. Or even 6. Or even a year.

I wasn't under the impression we were separating bootcamp from self-taught.

I took them both to mean "no formal schooling" and "self-taught". In my brief experience with I.T. training; some knowledge already had to be assumed.

Again I think you are overgeneralizing since I follow the careers of my class and at least 1/3 of it is doing extremely well in their careers. I think you should be able to program a "paper bag" working at companies like Pivotal Labs, Microsoft, Pinterest, Airbnb, etc. which is where my classmates work at. Maybe I'm not interacting with the right grads though or have a representative sample set, but then again I know you pulled that 90% number out of thin air.

And you know how I know what I don't know? I constantly read, get mentorship from senior engineers at my company, build side projects, etc. The learning process hasn't stopped and it hasn't for many of my colleagues.

I do agree self trained programmers are better, because frankly thats way harder.

Yeah people with hard science degrees and/or from top schools, I'm less skeptical about. The guy who was a waiter 3 months ago and now saying he's a software engineer, very concerning.

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