The difference is that I'm not claiming bootcampers are broadly exceptional, either; I'm saying I don't have enough data to tell you whether or not someone will be a good engineer based on whether or not they went to a bootcamp. I know my anecdotes are limited, and I'm not trying to make broad statements based on them.
I'm speaking less about the individual and more about the method of education. I don't think someone should go from zero experience, to 6 or 12 month bootcamp, to lead engineer at their first job. Something very wrong with "the industry" as this is becoming more typical in recent years from what I've experienced.
And to that I would argue: that's a hiring problem, not a learning problem.
Based on my anecdotes (I guess I am getting into drawing broad conclusions now), good bootcamps are a good way to turn someone into an entry-level engineer who's equipped to start contributing value and then learn more as they go. If they got hired immediately as a lead engineer and weren't ready for it (which they wouldn't be, if the bootcamp was their only experience), that's the company's problem.
I would add too that there's a huge gap in quality between the best and the worst bootcamps; there are some that consistently crank out totally capable junior engineers, but I've read horror stories about others that are outright scams. It's possible we need an accreditation process of some sort.
But now I feel like we've got to review my original statement. I don't believe I ever said people who went to bootcamp shouldn't be hired or anything to that effect... I think that small teams (often made of bootcampers with relatively no experience) are disastrous.
One Jr Dev won't take down the ship but a whole crew of Jr's with senior titles and authority will at least slow you down to a crawl. In recent years I've worked with teams who are largely made of bootcampers and Jr devs. As I've said from the start, I've been in startup land for a long time now and it's usually all about getting by on a shoestring. I fully understand the financial reasoning behind it, but I dont think the people running these companies have thought far enough ahead and I strongly doubt that any of the places I've worked in recent years will be around even 4 years from now.
Additionally, that Jr dev could have learned to code in their basement from some books for all I care... or could have graduated bootcamp sure. It doesn't matter where they got their info as long as they know what they're doing... but from what I've seen, bootcamp alone does a really poor job producing people who know what they're doing... worse so than college because it's meant to be lightening fast education and job placement.
> but I dont think the people running these companies have thought far enough ahead
Ah hah! Now we're getting to what could be the heart of the issue: short-term business practices, the incentives that drive them, and the market conditions that make it hard to find or afford the necessary technical leadership. This is a complex topic and out of scope, but it feels like a truer source of the problems you've witnessed.
> but from what I've seen, bootcamp alone does a really poor job producing people who know what they're doing... worse so than college because it's meant to be lightening fast education and job placement
It's fair to report that as your experience (even though my experience differs). The issue I took at the top of the thread was with broad, incendiary statements like this:
> small teams trying to support the whole stack with their javascript bootcamp training are the biggest reason so much tech is absolute garbage these days
This is a pile of tropes, capped off with a bold assertion. Bootcamps aren't even especially focused on JavaScript; the ones I'm familiar with also let students pick Python or Ruby for their projects, and also teach the basics of how to use a database and other technologies (of course they don't make you an expert at any of these things). But it was used here because "JavaScript" has become a stand-in in the context of Hacker News comment sections where people are complaining about perceived poor engineering practices. Like "bootcamps", it's come to paint a particular picture in people's heads of a particular kind of dev, whether or not the thing itself is directly relevant to the discussion at hand. Leaning on (and entrenching) these stereotypes is what I'm pushing back against. They aren't accurate, and they encourage certain devs to be disparaged for no good reason.
