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Comment by moocow01 | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious what sort of success people are having getting hired after going through one of these. Without knowing much about them, these feel a little bit like the ITT tech of the startup world. Sometimes CS degrees rightfully get criticized but I'd much rather have someone who went through the rigor of CS fundamentals who can apply those fundamentals to whatever technology rather than someone who went through what I assume boils down to a very in depth HTML, CSS, Ruby tutorial.

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For full disclosure, I work at RoleModel, one of the companies mentioned... but I think the intention of all the academies is to be a lot more than targeted, long-term tutorials. They'll provide a lot of the same information you'd get from a CS degree, but in the context of a real-world projects instead of classroom problems. And they'll provide a lot of the information you ~didn't~ get in that CS program. Like real world software practices, current tooling, and so on.

Yesterday we had a junior team member run into a problem with a data structure, so that led to an off the cuff tutorial on data structures (linked lists, hash tables, benefits, trade offs, etc) for several team members, but in the context of the current project. And wasn't a part of the academy, just how we mentor our team. We've found that kind of "in context learning" is much more effective than many classroom environments.

I'm not sure how far back the idea goes, but I've only seen it recently, so I'm not sure what you'll find in terms of formal employment rates. However the RoleModel program is lining up sponsors. A "sponsor", among other things, gets first crack at interviewing the graduates. http://craftsmanshipacademy.com/sponsor/ But I must say, I don't think you'll find Ruby a bad skillset to have. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3404616

I strongly suspect these programs are just the beginning of the backlash against what many are calling the higher education bubble. People are tired of graduating thousands (or tens of thousands!) of dollars in debt after investing years of their life. These programs compress down the process, and eliminate a lot of the non-core learning, to help you become productive as quickly as possible.

I have a CS degree, but have seen and worked with a number of the people that have come through the RoleModel mentoring program in past years. I think the academy concept is a more formal iteration of that same idea. I'm looking forward to our first class in a few months.

Thanks, very informative response

Do you teach 'hardcore' cs? Like the master method for working out big O? That's is what I think he is trying to say people might be missing.

There are plenty of tutorials on the internet about data structures, relatively few about algorithm analysis.

Big O came up yesterday, but you're right... we didn't go that deep. There are some jobs where you'll want that depth of background, but in my career they've been rare. At the end of the day it's about finding the right fit for yourself. This type of training will suit some, but not others.

Getting hired isn't always the goal, and some people (people who didn't have the luxury of a CS degree and/or college) want a better place to seriously get started once they exhaust online tutorials and books.

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