# Bootcamps

Bootcamps sprung up everywhere starting in the early 2010's. They're absolutely what a training program is supposed to be. In terms of feeding a hungry market, their laser-like focus on producing slews of job-ready software developers has been a largely successful model. The side benefit of which is that graduates are technically able to freelance right away, or "out of the box". They can be somewhat effective from the first week, once they've got their feet on the group, but won't generally realize strong potential for the first year.

The lengths of the programs are typically measured in N + 3 months, but rarely longer than 8. The costs of the programs ensure that only people who already have money can join, so that tends to keep out those who might consider causing a ruckus to the powers that be in the industry.

# The Model

Bootcamps produce people who can write code, read documentation, and make the things do the thing they're supposed to do. Most of the time. Depending on the quality of the bootcamp, you'll end up with people who will have some knowledge of basic data structures and optimization, or not. The consistency across bootcamps is very, very low. You'll come across bootcamps specializing more and more on whatever the hot topic in the industry is as well. It's surprising that they are able to offer programs like these because the biggest question is: Who the hell is teaching them? (more on that later) Students who graduate are often asked to come back and mentor people who they have just been like, and the instructors tend to be ex-industry professionals who got tired of the production life, or just really wanted to teach.

You do the time focused on languages that are generally dynamically typed, Just-In-Time compiled, and almost always JavaScript, Ruby, and rarely Python. The typical programming languages wanted by the industry.

# The Result

Honestly, they're pretty hard to argue with. Bootcamps have provided thousands of people with relatively high paying jobs, or the ability to freelance, globally. For better, or for worse, they're being produced in droves.

One on hand, this is a good thing. It has shown shitheads from the various univerisity computer science programs that they aren't particularly special. That the bulk of the skills that are necessary for working alongside them, doing the same work, and often exceeding their capabilities, can be gained in 3 - 8 months. It's good to see them be taken down a peg, because the word "insufferable" doesn't come close to describing the attitudes from them in the past. There has, historically, been an exception for individuals who were entirely self-taught and showed themselves to be just that, exceptional. Those people are few and far between, so it's not worth discussing beyond this point. The fact of the matter is that most CS graduates aren't any more effective that a bootcamp graduate coming out of school. "No Code" solutions are making it so effective applications can be built by people with very little programming skills at all. Being able to create applications is becoming trivial.

On the other hand, the shithead CS graduates have a few things that I agree with. For one, it has completely commoditized their competitive advantage in most cases. Wage protection is one of the things I sympathize with as well. As more and more developers come on to the scene, their skills and experience continue to be devalued. Where as once the salaries and competition for talent was so high that they formed a cabal to supress their wages, now they can hire one or two competent senior developers and give them control over a handful of juniors and intermediates! Career development at its finest! They also have a strong point when it comes to the backgrounds necessary for being effective in situations where hard maths, and a deep understanding of how computers work, come in to play. Situations where optimization, low level instructions, creating completely new graphics and phsyics libraries, etc. are ones where the typical bootcamp graduate isn't going to be very effective at all without having that background already from a previous career or degree.

In the end, the graduates are generally of sufficient quality to be effective for most applications. They're the general purpose cleaner of software development, and the CS graduates are the Windex. They're interchangeable to a degree, but sometimes you really need that streak-free finish.

# Social Effects

With the bootcamp gold rush being a thing, the amount of low-quality graduates hitting the market before reputations were gained was pretty high. These grads took more work, knew less, and damaged the reputations of the bootcamps that were much better. They're not really educational institutions. They're much more akin to a technical skills program. Theory isn't really part of what they do except where absolutely necessary. This has caused a lot of hiring managers who believe their work (rightfully, sometimes) isn't suitable for BC grads, and getting interviews is harder for them. Sometimes when HR sends their own teams in to interview candidates, the interviewers will immediately reach for topics where bootcamps are either very weak, or don't teach at all. It produces a feedback cycle in to HR that the grads are unsuitable, and the companies that were looking to hire, stop. One of the things that does happen though is that many bootcampers are on their second career. They're able to leverage years, sometimes a decade or two, of expeirence. They often bring soft skills to the table that no new graduate can, and that makes a hell of a difference. Expect development management to see big leaps in effectivenes as these bootcamp grads finish their purely technical streams, and move in to management.

It has also led to the endless spilling of ink from pro and con bootcamp people in software and their associated management. Online battles wage, with bootcampers generally on the defensive, and the CS side coldly stating that the bootcampers suck. As the incumbents, they can just aggrivate the other side, and when they lose their cool (or are cool, but don't use nice words), they just say "See? This is what I mean. I'm here all collected and skilled. You're just mad bro".

# Teaching

One thing I wonder is where are these bootcamps getting their teaching staff from. I'm not particularly concerned about the critcism around "mentors" being the Teaching Assistant equivalent at these places. They're literally analogous to them. Most TAs are grad students who just graduated the year before. I know this because I was one. So were many of my colleagues. The experience made me so much better academically in my field, and I fully expect this to be the case at the bootcamps.

No, my real question is where are all these camps getting their instructors. If you're offering a data science or machine learning course, who the fuck is teaching it? Universities have barely started to offer advanced degrees in these subjects, and yet somehow all of these start up level bootcamps are able to get instructors? It's the hottest market right now with apparently massive gaps in the job market that "regular" devs can't fill. This should be making salaries for the people who have the skills to be instructors go to the moon, and give these people the pick of the projects that tickle their fancy the most. People like these would, theoretically, be out in industry making $300,000+ at least. It's unlikely that any of these jobs would require you to be in San Francisco either. Something is wrong here.

# Conclusion

I don't have a coherent conclusion except for "Bootcamps fine, CS programs fine" but I do think that there are challenges coming. Bootcamps are, overall, a force for the betterment of labour. However, if labour is complacent, it will be replaced. We have to constantly fight the future where unplanned, explosive growth in these sectors leads to severe wage depression, especially if the grads aren't being upskilled by their employers. In a post-COVID lockdown flood, I expect international markets to experience a small glut of developers who used that time inside to train. Our cups will be overfull with juniors.

All I know is that I've gotta read the air, and start looking in to AI or data science courses myself. I wish that my family's, and my own, prosperity didn't rely on this so much.

Mal

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