Ask HN: Many people will spend thousands on bootcamps. Why not so much tutors? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Many people will spend thousands on bootcamps. Why not so much tutors?

5 pointsccajas6 comments

I'd like to see more of these kinds of learning resources being offered and promoted, that are off the beaten path of learn the basics of popular tech stacks. Bootcamps are still growing in popularity and in a local Slack channel for technical jobs, a lot of newcomers present themselves as bootcamp graduates.

But there must be lots of people who are willing to be paid to tutor or mentor people in other ways, and in other tech domains besides the popular web dev and mobile dev routes. Suppose you want to learn C/C++, RTOS for embedded systems, computer vision, or distributed computing. There's not much of a limit here. A tutoring program that leverages your current skills with an experienced professional to help you get from point A to point B could be more rewarding than just reading material, whether one-on-one or tutoring a small group.

Where can someone start filtering for good resources to find tutors or specialized learning experiences for other specific knowledge? Do some colleges offer tutor sessions for non-enrolled people? What's keeping such a service from being highly publicized or promoted?

Part of the appeal of good boot camps is the career connection department. Most of the time that’s what people are paying for and why a lot of boot camps only charge you after you get a job.

I think bootcamps are a social signal as much as anything else, if you get a private tutor it's basically invisible.

Sure, you'll most likely learn an absolute ton more but with a bootcamp it's public and you'd network and meet people there too.

> I think bootcamps are a social signal as much as anything else, if you get a private tutor it's basically invisible.

This ^

Another aspect of social signaling is that going to a boot camp signals that you can fit in with a larger organization and eat your meals on schedule, show up on time, etc. This was part of the purpose of public school -- to teach children to do things in a group when the bell rang in order to prepare them for factory work. This was as important or more important than the actual lessons on writing, math, etc.

Tutors are for very wealthy individuals, not corporate employees. People who are used to getting special one-on-one instruction of that sort probably can't actually play well with your organization. They can be assumed to be high maintenance, unable to fit in etc.

So, if you want to write an app yourself and become one of these people who founds something as a solo founder, like the guy who wrote Plenty of Fish, a tutor may get you everything you want out of the experience. But it may fail to teach you some of the social organization you need to know in order to get a standard job.

If you already know all that other stuff, maybe some tutoring will further your goals. But a lot of people need both.

How the information is conveyed teaches you certain things that are important to connecting effectively with others and fitting into an organization of a certain size. Large organizations need that second piece at least as much as they need you to have certain knowledge and skills per se. (And I realize that not all programming jobs are at large corporations, but I'm failing to find a better way to phrase that.)

To build upon what others have commented here, it seems like an unfortunate reality of the hiring world is that it has less to do with your raw technical skill and more to do with "fits desired paper qualifications and societal expectations".

Social signaling is a very real thing and stems from the people doing the hiring. They believe in social signaling, whether knowingly or not. They choose to hire someone they "get along with" rather than "inverts binary trees really well".

Boot camps, just like business schools, serve hundreds of students each year. So they can spend lots of money on branding and advertising (including events, blogs, whatever).

An individual tutor doesn't serve as many students, so even if she spends 10% of her revenue on advertising, it's not going to help much in building a brand image, explaining how she engages with students etc.

Sure, tutors could get together and advertise together, but that would require coordination, and for them to have some commonality in how they support students' learning.

The latter can work for certain markets (e.g. "Chegg - Get 24/7 Homework Help"), but it's hard to standardise for all possible topics.

I'd love to be able to get instant support for learning advanced mathematics, e.g. something using a model similar to HackHands: paying per minute for instant-ish access to an expert.

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