The Joys and Challenges of Hiring Developer Bootcamp Grads
sfviapgh.comI've worked with two bootstrap grads, the ones that come from the 8-week program. One of them I hired directly onto my team.
It's been a great experience! The developer I hired is moving on because he found a better paying position (as a coder). I view this as a success and I'm happy for him. It took him 8 months to get to this point and I'm sad to see him go.
Things I learned:
- They come in excited but they have so much self-doubt that needs to be tamped down.
- Pair programming with everyone on the team is a must. Even the neckbeard in the corner that hates chit-chat needs to help out. Why? The BG needs to learn it's okay to talk to anyone about problems.
- I had to be on the prowl for condescending talk when the BG asked questions. It needs to feel like a safe environment to ask questions without being ridiculed.
- I noticed a huge jump in productivity when I had the BG design an onboarding presentation for new employees. Basically a "this is how our applications work here" Powerpoint. He loved working on it and it forced him to learn more about all the moving parts.
TL;DR In my experience BGs are great. They need plenty of room to fail and grow, but it's equally important that the whole team plays a role in their growth.
I just want to say you also need to consider business fit. If your business can't afford to train a bootstrap grad properly(whether is time deadlines or money), don't hire them. I've seen two great guys just completely burnout because not only was our app complex, they just weren't familiar enough with some of fundamentals you get in a cs undergrad for our timelines. They tried their hardest though.
FWIW we've had great experiences hiring bootcamp grads. A few aspects of our software engineering process have helped smooth this transition: * We're disciplined about code reviewing everything that goes to production. * We're very careful about having a smooth ramp-up period - managers are expected to carefully curate the first few weeks / months of a new hire's projects to make sure that it follows a smooth learning curve, and we adjust the params as necessary. * We're gun-shy about hiring. * Our tech stack happens to share many frameworks / languages with the technologies that are in vogue among bootcamps today (due to random chance).
My experience has actually differed slightly from this post, in that many of the bootcamp grads whom we've hired have actually had excellent project management skills, especially coming from IT or PM roles in tech or tech-related industries. The main challenges that I see are around depth of experience - most bootcamps optimize very heavily for building CRUD apps with a bit of frontend sugar on top, so you need to select really carefully along whatever metrics for potential you find valuable. YMWV though.
Specific plug: despite interviewing candidates from many different bootcamps, one bootcamp in particular, App Academy, has consistently stood out. As of when I last checked, App Academy was the only bootcamp to use a conditional payment system, where tuition is contingent upon finding a fulltime software development job. This aligns incentives well - App Academy is encouraged to maximize training and applicant quality - and we've found their alumni to be very solid. I don't have a horse in this race but they turn out very professional and talented graduates.
Excellent post!
I am a bootcamp student and from my perspective, you really nailed the points on the Challenges of Hiring Bootcamp Graduates. I worry, however, that many companies will not have the resources or the patience to provide the kind of fostering environment described here. There is perception that the junior developer talent pool is being watered down by sheer number of bootcamp grads and many of them just do not measure up to classically trained CS students often competing for the same jobs. I recently attended a career track hosted by my own bootcamp and the coaches specifically instructed the students to omit the word "bootcamp" from their resume.
I personally believe that bootcamps can be a tremendous opportunity for motivated (and disciplined) students seeking a condensed and immersive learning environment; it's possibly one of the fastest way to learn a new trade. My experience so far is that meeting the boot camp requirements alone is probably not enough to make me competitive and I need to supplement the learning with additional readings, meet-ups (as suggested by my mentor), and further coding practices. Bootcamp curriculum should be the bare minimum.
Tried the boot camp route, went to demo day and chose our 6 favorite, out of those 6 interviews we hired 3, one turned out to be pretty good but honestly needed so much hand holding it wasn't worth it in the long run. Plus all of the boot camps have been putting 6 figure dreams in their head which is truly unjustifiable for their experience. If I want entry level, I'll go with college grads, just way less headache.
There are zillions of factors that could make hiring a bootcamp grad a good or bad idea, from the type of bootcamp, to the type of individual, to the type of company, to even the interview process.
I did several online "bootcamps" (free code camp, Udacity, and some Udemy/Coursera courses), since I felt like no single curriculum really satisfied what I felt to be necessary.
I just like learning, so I made sure that I practiced every day.
And now I have a job working at a small start-up (4 employees including me). The last dev they hired was from Free Code Camp as well, and he's doing very well. The CEO of the company mentored him, and now the dev is mentoring me.
The interview process is something I think a lot of other companies could learn from--no brainteasers, no tricks, just coding. They asked me to open up a project I worked on during the bootcamp, describe it, then add a new feature. They stepped out while I was working so that I wouldn't be nervous about making a mistake. The CEO himself applauded my use of Google when I ran into road blocks.
It took about an hour total, and during that time, they were able to determine if I was fit for the position.
So I think the viability of hiring bootcamp grads stems from how good the interview process is--if it's terrible, you may be disappointed in your new hire.
On one hand I am glad that graduates are getting education and opportunities without subjecting themselves to mainstream educational institutions.
On the other hand, it does concern me that this is one step closer in the race to the bottom for developers.
It won't be long before being a developer is just another poorly paying job.
This sort of thing has happened before, with the "fog a mirror" interviews of 1999 and all the offshoring that happened a few years later. In the first case people all thought there was plenty of room in the "new economy" but our jobs would all be dumbed down permanently, in the latter there was a lot of doom and gloom about how software development was no sort of future for first-world children.
But in both cases, the results were brutal to the companies that jumped in thoughtlessly. I've no doubt the same is true here again. Over the long term I expect we'll see some big changes in career education but I don't think established professionals are going to be overrun with high school dropouts anytime soon.
Probably not, but as you mention, for some the implications can be dire.
That kind of attitude can only mean one thing: you doubt your own skills and the usefulness of what you do.
Far from it. I am a decade in to my career and will likely not be impacted by these trends. I am more concerned with the next generation of developers entering the workforce. They could be first generation of developers to be worse off than we are now (compensation, job stability, etc.)
Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ... this is awfully close to a personal attack.
Pretty much everything listed as "challenges" also applies to "recent grads from CS programs -- even top tier ones".
"Bootcamp Grads" is a pretty broad phrase; we might want to start using more precise language. An grad from an 8-week bootcamp will have a different skill set than someone who spent 18, 48, 72 weeks in a bootcamp program.
Also, Thoughtbot has a somewhat good guide to running an apprenticeship: https://github.com/thoughtbot/apprenticeship
It could be adapted without much work to hiring bootcamp grads.
Just counting the number of weeks is pretty misleading too. Some schools are only 9am to 4pm or even just evenings five days a week. Others, such as Hack Reactor are 11+ hours per day, six days a week.
Hmmm.... If you're doing 48 or 72(!) weeks, I wouldn't call it a bootcamp so much as an unaccredited master's program...
As the guy monitoring the end of a dev hiring email let me broach another challenge.
I have no way to wade through the high volume of identical resumes coming out of these programs. Every Hack Reactor grad has the exact same thing as every other grad. Its very difficult to weed out anyone in this scenario without setting up a call with every grad that applies which isn't a scalable model for hiring junior engineers. The single biggest reason I've not given enough BG's a shot is the level of effort needed of finding a good one or one who's the right fit.
Note some programs have started setting up mechanisms to interact with a bunch of grads in a group (we've done this) and this has been a decent way of doing this.
Reading the post and this thread makes me feel very lucky. I didn't attend either a bootcamp or college, simply got to know people who coded a lot and did lots and lots of tutorials and made a few demos to get in as an intern (on the recommendation from one of those people). I'm now a pretty senior developer at a startup. I'm not sure how to recommend people get into the industry - nobody seems able to or willing to take the time to hire greenhorns anymore unless they come with a degree.
I have a bachelor's in CS and math and I'm currently attending a boot camp. Do you think having both would be beneficial once I graduate from the boot camp?
Actually, this seems like an ideal combination. I am mentoring a CS student (in his senior year) and honestly he won't have the skills when he graduates that will satisfy anything but an apprenticeship. The bootcamp should provide you with practical skills. My advice - keep building interesting things on your own and be prepared to present and talk about them at your interviews.
Let's not paint this subject with a broad brush.
Depends on the choice and depth of curriculum, length of time, the student and the instructor.
Having said that no bootcamp or hacker school can give you 20 years of experience writing and maintaining software. That's really the disavdantage. But natural talent in rare individuals can replace that with intuition, although I'm not sure how people like that do over the long range. I don't know ... But it's wise not to judge people in superficial manner without seeing what they can do.
Having said that no bootcamp or hacker school can give you 20 years of experience writing and maintaining software.
Neither does a Masters from M.I.T. or Stanford. I only say this because I'm not exactly sure what your point is. What I hear you saying is, "it takes about two decades to code like you've been doing it for 20 years."
Comparing a bootcamp graduate to an industry veteran with 20 years dev experience is ridiculous. No one expects them to have that skillset. They're junior level developers who compare with university graduates, often very favorably.
Your mind is playing tricks on you. You are angry and are seeing things in my comment that don't really exist. I understand you maybe an old developer who is threatened by young talent but where do I compare someone with 20 years of experience to a bootcamp grad? I simply said let's not stereotype and judge a whole segment of people and that talent is not age based. Only experience is.
> Having said that no bootcamp or hacker school can give you 20 years of experience writing and maintaining software. That's really the disavdantage.
I can't see how that makes it a disadvantage. The only thing that gives 20 years of experience writing and maintaining software is... well, 20 years doing just that. No one is claiming that a university, bootcamp, or hacker school can give you that.
TLDR; Bootcamp graduates are ineresting and motivated individuals, but don't know project management basics. They are good for testing your organization's internal documentation, but require a lot of guidance.