Comment by shawndrost | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shawndrost | Hacker News Reader

I'm a cofounder at Hack Reactor, one of the schools that this article is about.

> I also think good programming is a journey, not something that can be consumed and digested in a compacted 12-week course.

I am in emphatic agreement -- we tell our students that the point of our school is to get to a spot where you can get paid to learn the rest, and we hold classes for alums to encourage ongoing education.

> Personally I'm against charging to teach others how to code.

Sounds like a fine personal philosophy. Our students faced a decision of self-instruction vs Hack Reactor, and they choose to pay the instructors at my school (who took pay cuts when we hired them away from Twitter, Adobe, Google, etc but are nonetheless pretty pricey). I summarized my perception of why in this quora post: http://www.quora.com/Programming-Bootcamps/Self-study-vs-Boo...

> I'd like to hear back from bootcamp graduates on their experiences both in the program and in the real world.

http://www.quora.com/Reviews-of-Hack-Reactor http://www.yelp.com/biz/hack-reactor-san-francisco

> ...good enough so that you're able to build a shitty web app, and then they hopefully place you in a job needing a code monkey...

I'm not a fan of the tone of this article, but it's also aggravating that the content is incorrect. Student projects include 3d space shooters (http://satellite-game.com/), bittorrent clients (https://github.com/rtjoseph11/nTorrent), music visualizers (http://arcanegl.jit.su/), a reddit-focused machine learning / dataviz mashup (http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/17/reddit-insight-interview-ha...), distributed computing platforms (http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/06/43651/), etc.

These Yelp reviews mean very little to be honest. What kind of an idiot would write a bad review when

1. Writing bad review of the code training you got basically admits to others that your skills as a programmer is poor.

2. You risk souring interpersonal relationship you might have built going to the program. When you say the code training you got at X is bad, you are actually telling potential employers that people who got training from X are also bad. Who writes in their grad school application that they got trained in Kaplan?

--- edited point 2

http://www.yelp.com/biz/kaplan-test-prep-and-admissions-san-...

Edit: As pointed out below, this isn't a comparable institution. However, I think we can empirically test the question "Will students offer bad yelp reviews to schools that are their primary credential?" The answer seems to be yes:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/bay-area-medical-academy-san-francis... http://www.yelp.com/biz/los-angeles-film-school-los-angeles http://www.yelp.com/biz/southern-california-health-institute...

I don't think Kaplan is relevant from a credentials or networking standpoint. (My understanding is that it should help you get into a school based on how your score improves on a test rather than offering direct social signaling.)

That's a bad example.

When trying to get a job an interviewer could possibly see a bad review that a student left of your school and assume that means the student may not have the skills necessary for the job. Also, presumably at your school as students and instructors are interacting personal relationships are being developed (ie. networking) which could be beneficial in finding a job. If the student then gives a bad review of the school it could burn the bridges that they built while in the class.

On the other hand, when someone is grading a standardized test, they grade based on how you answered the test questions. They don't do an internet search to see what kind of preparation you had for the test. It's different than a job interview because a test is judging what skills and knowledge you are demonstrating at that point in time, whereas a job interview is judging both where you are at now and what you will be able to do in the future. Also, hopefully in a test prep class there is no direct advantage to be gained by networking as that would defeat the purpose of the test.

Yeah, good point -- my response was pretty vapid. trololo

Is this pithy URL meant as a rebuttal to your parent's point? I assure you, it isn't.

Kaplan and devbootcamps might share some similarities, but they are qualitatively different when it comes to their value propositions for students and how that value is derived.

Kaplan is meant to boost scores on an objective test and that is where the value is. They either succeed or they fail for each student. There is no consideration of Kaplan by the institutions proctoring these tests or the institutions accepting these scores as a metric. The boost to test scores is not tied to the social reputation of Kaplan and so they are free to speak out against Kaplan if they are dissatisfied and that dissatisfaction, rather than some sort of conception of social good-doing in warning others, may even be the incentive that spurs them to do so.

Devbootcamps are meant for students to be a quick way to gain entry into a field suffering for want of code monkeys. The value here is in the job placement, not in the education or boosting of knowledge. The ability for students to be placed in jobs is actually largely a function of the social standing and reputation of the devbootcamp and not in the merits of the individual's education attained there. So all parties involved: founders, instructors, and students as well as the "in" at the companies that hire these newly-minted code monkeys have the same incentive at keeping up the reputation of the school.

The "in" at the hiring companies may quietly pivot away from using devbootcamps as a source for employment if dissatisfied with the code monkeys attained, but will never speak publicly about their missteps in sourcing code monkeys from them. They have no incentive to and every incentive (personal reputation in career, nothing to gain by burning bridges with the school and students, etc.)

Students, even if they feel they didn't learn much or were not truly prepared for employment, won't voice this because the ongoing value of the sunk cost of their time and money relies upon a favorable impression of the devbootcamp and its students.

The founders and the instructors reasons for not speaking out against what they are doing is clear and I won't elaborate on it.

Your argument on Quora seems to be "if I make up largely-irrelevant categories, and then make up numbers, our program looks good". I'm not sure how that's supposed to be convincing.

"self-instruction period" - this seems significantly less important than total time-sink, which I'd guess doesn't run in your favor at all.

"the percentage that end up writing code for a living" - I honestly don't think I've ever seen a selection bias this big. You mean people who shell out 5 figures for education are more interested than people who dabble for a couple of hours at no cost?

"average starting salary" - These are much more strongly tied to negotiating ability, etc. than programming ability, although I suppose it could be considered relevant (assuming that there's still a disparity after accounting for things like other experience, other skills, etc.).

I'd honestly be interested in some actual measure of programming ability. These are very hard to come by, but it seems to me that you're in a pretty good position to find a reasonable method.

I'd like to see Bootcamps with transparency over graduates and contrasted against college or tradeskill schools:

1. How many students land jobs in the tech industry or go onto other things (personal projects, adding skillsets to their employ, etc). What's the breakdown of success?

2. How much they were offered? How much in a year?

3. Follows up to the length and stability of their employment. Did you keep working for longer then 3 months, 6 months?

4. Did you have pre-experience in tech?

---

I'd like to see these things, because while the programs generally provide some eye opening experience. They miss the mark at getting people a job. Business are reluctant to hire these unexperienced students (not to confuse experience with training here, I mean work experience).

They fail in providing a big picture to potential students, it all feels partly snake oil without some necessary objectivity.

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