Boom Or Bust: The Lowdown On Code Academies

snydeq writes "Programming boot camps are on the rise, but can a crash course in coding truly pay off for students and employers alike? InfoWorld's Dan Tynan discusses the relative (and perceived) value of code academies with founders, alumni, recruiters, and hiring managers. Early impressions and experiences are mixed, but the hacker school trend seems certain to stick. 'Many businesses that are looking at a shortfall of more than a million programmers by the year 2020 are more than willing to give inexperienced grads a chance, even if some are destined to fail. The zero-to-hero success stories may be relatively rare, but they happen often enough to ensure that the boom in quick-and-dirty coding schools is only likely to accelerate.'"

Comments

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[The Cat]

They'll work only if they aren't a sloppy, slapped together gimmick designed to rubber stamp "programmers" and install them in cubicles like spare parts.

In 2014, it is shameful that we still don't have an adequate statewide computer curriculum in the state that gave birth to Apple, Google and Blizzard.

And no, buying iPads for everyone and teaching them how to use Word is not a computer curriculum. When a 2.0 high school graduate can explain in 50 words or less what a computer is then we will have success.

The fact that someone hasn't already taken all the throwaway PCs, installed Linux on them and equipped every school in the state with a 50-desktop computer lab (at zero cost) is only further proof of our failure in technology.

Public education problem

[bluefoxlucid]

This is the same public education problem. If you provide universal education--that is, provide for a way for everyone to buy into education on their own--then what you get is market speculation by students, which often fails. For example: now again we have a need for programmers because things like Roku are becoming popular and we want to build more Android and iOS apps for phones and smart TVs; everyone in the world will want to be a programmer for those $90k, $110k, $150k salaries, and then in 5 years there will be so many programmers that none of them can get a job because some 10% of them filled all the slots and got $60k salaries out of it to boot.

The summary directly acknowledges that, short on a crop of self-made resources, businesses are buying into low-experience, low-training wannabe poor kids who can't afford college degrees and then supplying career development. Which is something I've said again and again: universal access to education doesn't provide greater upward mobility for the poor; it forces them to speculate, which gives them a hit-or-miss chance of success if they bother putting in the hard work to become career-worthy, which only the rich can manage to absorb in the case of landing in the "not useful because saturated market" bin. Government-backed loans and government-provided vocational education is bad for the poor.

I mean christ, I'm looking right at it. Right here. Do you see this? This is what happens when not enough people can get an education: the businesses need these educated kids to succeed, and not enough rich kids have those degrees and those skills, so the businesses grab anyone who can absorb those skills and makes sure they get it. Because hell if I'm going to lose market share to that goat fucker Cogswell when he publishes an iOS app selling his cogs to a huge market I can't reach.

Re:Public education problem

[lexman098]

I think you're way off base.

universal access to education doesn't provide greater upward mobility for the poor; it forces them to speculate, which gives them a hit-or-miss chance of success

Even if it's as bad as you make it seem, that's still a chance of success as opposed to not being educated and having 0% chance.

the businesses need these educated kids to succeed, and not enough rich kids have those degrees and those skills, so the businesses grab anyone who can absorb those skills and makes sure they get it.

The problem is they don't need to make sure of anything because there's plenty of investment from other countries to take advantage of. We live in a global economy, and we should be investing in our competitiveness.

Not anyone can be a coder

[Anonymous Coward]

Not anyone can be a coder, just not not anyone can be a doctor, lawyer or executive.

Businesses decided they didn't like the leverage coders had on them, so they tried all kinds of nasty tricks, including outsourcing, no-poaching agreements, removing stock options, and even Agile methodologies attempt to commoditize a position. Instead of fostering R&D, they RIF'd a ton of people in the early 2000s after the dot bomb. The result? The number of CS/MIS applicants were cut in 1/2 for half a decade.

You reap what you sew, assholes. Time to pay up, bitches.

Re:Not anyone can be a coder

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally don't think a code monkey should even exist. It's another aberration invented in an attempt to commoditize software development. The logic goes like this:

1. Hire 1 smart guy instead of 5.
2. Smart guy lays out the architecture/skeleton of the application
3. Hire cheap labor to "fill in the blanks."

It works about as well as it sounds.

Every "architect" should play a major role in the implementation of his ideas. Otherwise, it could be a complete failure and no one would know until it's too late. It's easy to make an architectural mistake from 10,000 feet up. Architects need to be able to land and see what's going on.

Yeah right

[CODiNE]

Where are all the no experience needed programming jobs then? Everywhere I look 3 years of X 5 years of Y extensive knowledge of Z.

Wrong Operator

[CanHasDIY]

It's Boom and Bust.

There's no OR about it, one precedes the other.