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发帖数: 1648 | 1 有个engineering degree 拿个一两万学费 几个月的时间 coding school 就让老o 找
到工作了
Coding Schools Tone Down Rosy Job Script
Robust Hiring Market for People Fluent in Programming Has Boosted Student
Enrollment
By MELISSA KORN and LAUREN WEBER
May 20, 2014
Dev Bootcamp requires participants to complete nine weeks of preparatory
material on coding basics before classes start. Shown, graduates mingled
with potential employers in Chicago in April. Taylor Glascock for The Wall
Street Journal
Learn to code. Get a job. Then what?
Dozens of coding "boot camps" have popped up from New York and San Francisco
to Omaha and Albuquerque in the past two years. Driven by a robust hiring
market for people fluent in programming languages such as Python and Ruby on
Rails, these programs have fueled hopes—and demand—among underemployed 20
-somethings and others looking for a sure-thing career.
But as the programs, which charge anywhere from $6,000 to nearly $18,000 for
a three-month course, have proliferated, so has concern about their ability
to graduate career-ready coders in less than one college semester.
To maintain their reputations and manage expectations among students and
employers, some schools are extending their curricula and cutting class
sizes. They're also adding a dose of caution to their sales pitches,
advising that even superstar students will need to go beyond the entry-level
instruction to keep up in a fast-changing industry.
Related
At Work: Do Coding Schools Deliver?
Why One Company Started Its Own Boot Camp
"I don't think you can be a career-ready programmer in nine or 10 weeks"
without prior experience with other aspects of engineering or computer
science, said Jeff Casimir, founder of Denver-based Turing School, a seven-
month program that costs $17,500.
Jeff Atwood, who has been a software engineer for 20 years and now runs
Discourse, a provider of online discussion-forum software, says he worries
about a "gold rush mentality" among students and instructors. Wrestling with
thousands of lines of code on long-term projects with shifting requirements
can be a frustrating endeavor, he says, so the industry isn't a good fit
for those seeking quick success.
In their marketing materials, many code schools promise just that: "Novice
to Hireable in 12 (Intense) Weeks" from Omaha Code School, and "From amateur
to professional in 13 weeks" from New York's Fullstack Academy. But in
interviews, founders strike a more cautious tone.
"Our students are accepting risk, and they're putting a lot of trust in us,"
said Sumeet Jain, founder of Omaha Code School, which graduated its first
students this month. He asks applicants to calculate what kinds of jobs they
'd need to earn a return on the $6,000 class.
The failure of a few programs could tarnish the whole industry, said Jake
Schwartz, chief executive and co-founder of three-year-old General Assembly,
one of the first code schools. With programs in New York, Hong Kong and
other cities, General Assembly charges $11,500 for a full-time, 12-week Web
development class in the U.S., and says its alums have landed at McKinsey &
Co., Google Inc. and Spotify Ltd.
Founders stress that they are generally preparing students for entry-level,
junior-developer jobs. Web-development jobs, which paid a median salary of $
62,500 in 2012, are projected to increase about 20% between 2012 and 2022,
according to the Labor Department.
"We're not promising you're going to make $120,000 after three months," said
Peter Barth, CEO of the Iron Yard, a school in Greenville, S.C., that is
expanding into more than a dozen cities. The Iron Yard guarantees graduates
a job within six months of finishing its three-month course, and it reports
a 100% success rate so far, thanks in part to having a director at each
campus who matches students with employers.
Schools that release outcomes data show impressive figures—many schools
tout job-placement rates topping 90% within three months—and graduates say
they're pleased with the training. But absent industry standards, such as
whether internships and temp jobs should count in placement rates, schools'
numbers can be difficult to compare, say some students and school operators.
And among those who do land jobs, the education doesn't end at coding school
. Tech employers say that code-school grads often need mentoring on the job
—such as being paired with a more senior developer—as well as more formal
course work and self-teaching. That's true for more experienced
professionals as well because the requisite skills evolve so rapidly.
Nathan Hanna, an engineering manager at Charleston, S.C.-based software firm
Benefitfocus Inc., says he's impressed with the skills Iron Yard grads pick
up in three months. Still, he notes that "you need a good onboarding and
mentoring process to bring them along." He hired one Iron Yard coder as a
user-interface engineer and is now coaching her to troubleshoot more complex
software issues.
After completing a three-month, $8,000 Starter League coding course in
Chicago last spring, Jem Hilton earned $1,500 a month during a four-month
apprenticeship at Chicago-based health-care startup Purple Binder Inc. But
that stint helped the former philosophy Ph.D. student land a full-time
developer position at Northwestern University that pays enough for him to
quit his side job tending bar.
Not everyone starts on the bottom rung. Mark Wilbur was hired at deals
website Groupon Inc. after completing a 12-week, $17,780 stint at Hack
Reactor in San Francisco last year. He says he contributed usable code
within three days of arriving, and his signing bonus was more than his 2012
income as a freelance front-end developer. Mr. Wilbur quit the job recently
to pursue a startup with two Hack Reactor classmates.
Employers and even code-school partisans aren't certain that short courses
for novices can solve their talent problems.
Dev Bootcamp, with campuses in Chicago, San Francisco and New York, now
requires participants to complete nine weeks of preparatory material on
coding basics before classes start. And MakerSquare, in Austin, has shrunk
its class size, added two weeks of course work and limited enrollment to
students with some prior programming experience.
Mark Rickmeier, chief operating officer of Web and mobile design firm Table
XI Partners LLC in Chicago, hired an entry-level developer last year from a
six-month-long program. The woman's commitment to months, not weeks, of
instruction proved she wasn't just pursuing a career in coding on a whim, he
said.
The employee is still with the company, he added, and he considers her a
successful hire.
Indiegogo Inc., a crowd-funding company in San Francisco, has been "cherry-
picking" novice coders from schools like Dev Bootcamp and Hackbright, but it
has mostly hired individuals with engineering degrees, said Will Haines,
director of engineering. The startup is considering creating an
apprenticeship program for code-school grads who are "promising but
technically raw," he said.
Such apprenticeships, which are gaining traction as a transitional model for
many code schools and their partner employers, attempt to balance companies
' need for developers with recognition that graduates need more formal
learning.
"There's clearly a concern in the industry: 'What do we do with all of these
people that clearly need more help and don't have the opportunity to get it
?'" Mr. Rickmeier said.
Write to Melissa Korn at m**********[email protected] and Lauren Weber at lauren.
w***[email protected]
Corrections & Amplifications
Mark Wilbur paid $17,780 to attend a 12-week coding bootcamp at Hack Reactor
. A Marketplace article on Wednesday about coding schools incorrectly said
he paid $11,500. (May 20, 2014)
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contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit
www.djreprints.com | i******x
发帖数: 25 | 2 chenchuan，你这贴现在有620+的点击率。标题够吸睛不说，内容也算给广大wsn开了一
扇（后）门。
别人回不回我不知道。我个人顶你，感谢你！ | c*******n
发帖数: 1648 | 3 哪里哪里，这个是老ｏ的葵花宝典。：）
【在 i******x 的大作中提到】
: chenchuan，你这贴现在有620+的点击率。标题够吸睛不说，内容也算给广大wsn开了一
: 扇（后）门。
: 别人回不回我不知道。我个人顶你，感谢你！
| i******x
发帖数: 25 | 4 话说老O好久不来了。
现在我每每想一睹老O风采想聆听老O教诲，还要移步它版。不容易啊。 |
|
