Bit of context: I used to live in Denver, and I would hang out at Galvanize a lot. I was friends with a number of the instructors and students.
I worked at a company in Denver that hired at least 5 people straight out of gSchool, and I was one of the employees on the team who was given the task of onboarding and mentoring the gSchool graduates and helping them when they got stuck (which was pretty much constantly).
Each one of the graduates had at least a basic, fundamental understanding of programming with Ruby on Rails and Javascript, but they were all very much junior-level. They were all deeply brainwashed in TDD and Agile dogma, but would often become paralyzed when encountering real world problems.
Most of them had sub-par developer instincts (as was expected), and all of them required about a year-long ramp-up and a lot of on-the-job mentoring and training before they were really pulling their weight.
When you look at the quality of the code that was being created and the sheer amount of manpower and money being thrown at mentoring all of the junior level code school graduates, I would rather have had a single senior level developer than 4 juniors combined.
But that's not how the pay worked out. A senior dev doing the same amount of work as 4 juniors was only making like $120K, and I happen to know that every one of the code school students was hired on for at least $65K a year (if not more).
The worst part? After about a year, half of them had leveraged their new year's worth of real, on-the-job experience into job offers from other companies, where they were presumably hired for even more.
My personal opinion is that the company I worked for kind of got shafted a little bit by their enthusiasm and optimism with the idea of bringing on so many junior level developers straight out of code camp. Especially after we spent so much time and money mentoring them, only to have them leave for better jobs elsewhere.
I have a strong suspicion that many other companies have suffered from similar experiences with code school graduates and were left with bitter taste in their mouths.
If so, that would certainly explain why so many code schools are starting to encounter difficulties and are having to downsize or close. Companies are starting to catch on to the fact that they are still going to have to dump a good year of mentoring and training into each one of these "graduates" before they are earning their keep.
TL;DR: The gSchool graduates that I had personal experience with seemed to make out like bandits. That was before the market cooled down, though.
I know someone who interviewed there as a teacher. They put them through 7 weeks of hour-long interviews and teaching demos and applauded them at every step, telling them they would come back with an offer, and then just didn't hire them. Their faculty and staff are not as diverse as one might hope for a tech company that teaches those who will become junior pros in these times.
Curious as well. I went to Makersquare / Hack Reactor and it seems the experience depends hugely on which bootcamp you actually went to, based on my conversations at meetups.
Got to go to DevMtn for free in 2016. Got kicked out for smoking weed and they gave me a full refund out of pity. Learned enough to work 2 dev jobs in Utah, enough to realize what I really wanted out of life vs. what I thought I wanted.
Buying a Jeep soon and will be working remotely while roaming North America in 2018. Hobbies include: photography, writing, painting, hiking, design, animal rescue.
I follow 44 accounts, a mixture of Eastern philosophy, interesting entrepreneurs/economists, Quanta/Nautilus, Patagonia, one design showcase, a few people in tech industry.
Twitter is mostly noise, little signal. Social media in general is to be honest. I get a little value from each of the major platforms. Reddit and Instagram are my two favorites.
I've grappled with this for the last 7 years. I wanted to build a platform to address this problem but I eventually realized self-interest is the strongest force in the world and that most people are not ready to consider that they may be part of the problem AND own up to it enough to change their day-to-day lifestyle. It's much easier to point a finger at world leaders, corporations, or the developing world's use of coal.
I've finally let go of eating meat. I don't buy things unless I need them and I use them until they are no longer usable. My hobbies are exploring the outdoors, improving my fitness/meditation routine each day, and creating brands, experiences, and campaigns.
I am saving money for a cabin in the Rockies and a camper van to explore all of North America. I am building an agency to work remotely and accept clients that I feel I can help in a substantial way. I've given my ambitions of 'saving the world' or being a part of the world of SV or NYC.
This really hits home because if you look at my post history, a little over a 100 days ago I was wanting to create something to compete with Facebook because I saw it as Big Brother. Since getting rejected by YC, I've been forced to reexamine myself and let a lot of delusions and habits go. I quit drinking, smoking, meat, sugar. I have $0 debt (credit card or student loan or car or home or medical). I've gotten rid of as many of my possessions as possible. I've cleaned out much of my social media feeds and the amount of news I read as well.
I'm really passionate about exploring the outdoors, photography (landscape and wildlife), writing about self-actualization, learning about history (reading '1491' right now).
I've been helping two people I know with building a business online, one is a dog clothing company and the other is a film composer from NYU. I hope to scale this into an agency where I can work remotely while helping interesting people becoming financially independent doing what they love. It adds fulfillment to my life knowing I have skills to help them.
This thread has helped me so much, I don't even know how to thank the community. :)
I'd like to second this, as its under appreciated by the public at large. So many failed New Years resolutions for improving oneself can be pinned to this point.
Anecdotally:
I've been trying to lose some weight, and one of the first things I moved to do was drop drinking (as most resources on weight loss will tell you to do). It was very tough to do because I love my beer. I found the process was making me miserable.
Sure if I leave the beer out of the equation my calorie deficit would grow, but including some beer still keeps me at a deficit regardless so that I still am losing 2-3 lbs a week, and very much happier all the while then if I was losing more and more quickly.
edit: except for the smoking. That's a slippery slope.
It's all a personal choice. I'm clearing my life of things that distract, delude, lead to disease, premature death. I'm very much into Buddhism and wildlife conservation, this is the right way of life for me.
Every now and then, I indulge in some ice cream or some sushi. Slow progress is better than no progress. I know I am better off without alcohol, weed, or tobacco though.
