I do agree with you that CS degrees are very valuable, though it seems like you are saying that they are important because they teach problem solving and abstract thinking - but aren't there many ways to obtain those types of skills?
The amount of bias in this thread is very strange.
I think what's going on is that the people with CS degrees invested a significant chunk of their life and a significant amount of money into getting a CS degree. Therefore they're invested in denying the possibility that the qualities they achieved through their program can be achieved without.
The article presents some evidence in support of this possibility:
Over the last year, we’ve worked with about 100 bootcamp grads, and many have gone on to get jobs at great companies. We do our interviews blind, without knowing a candidate's background, and we regularly get through an interview and give a candidate very positive scores, only to be surprised at the end when we learn that the candidate has only been programming for 6 months.
We’ve found bootcamp grads as a group to be better than college grads at web programming and writing clean, modular code, and worse at algorithms and understanding how computers work. All in all, we’ve had roughly equivalent success working with the two groups.
That's pretty persuasive. So why respond to data with anecdata?
A few people have made a similar claim in this thread. I think that's a pretty lazy argument for which no real evidence exists. A big clue is that you could say that about literally anything.
Oh, sure, of course you'd think cooking classes were a big help in learning to cook. You paid all that money for them and spent all that time attending, so you feel the need to justify the expense.
It explains everything and nothing.
The thing you quote is entirely saying that bootcamps are good for employers who just want cheap coders who know the language of the week that they can replace in two years with a new batch. Of course they are. But that doesn't mean they are great for you or that they in any way are a replacement for a real CS degree.
Consider that at any major accredited university or college with programs in computer science and software engineering usually these two degrees are separate. Some study computer science and some study software engineering. Computer science as a discipline entails many fields that are unrelated to web development in any way, just as there are fields of math that are completely abstract and have no relation to reality. So, given that a web development role would technically be a form of engineering, you need to strictly compare interviewees with software engineering undergraduate degrees with those coming out of bootcamps without the same degrees, and also compare in-industry experience, age, and every other factor in a controlled way.
In any case, the data from a study like that would be inarguable and it would also be uninteresting. It might hurt some people's pride to see that a 6-month program can outdo a 4-year program, but it is true in some cases. Look at places like Digipen and Full Sail University which also teach programming. It was not at all uncommon a few decades ago for programmers to drop out of high school and be successful. What you will find, from responsible adults, is that no one would advocate this path. So it shouldn't be surprising that almost everyone will advocate the benefits of education.
It would be easier to compare a specific bootcamp with a narrow set of courses from a CSSE program, and it would be more of an apples-to-apples comparison.
I'm still deeply skeptical of the average bootcamp graduate though. They're mostly people following a gold rush without any passion for programming. Moreover, bootcamps do their absolute best to distort hiring signals (ie. specifically targeting interview skills and portfolio projects). I've interviewed dozens of bootcamp graduates and haven't found a single one who I'd hire (that being said, I also think the average college graduate is terrible).
I could probably muddle along with out them but it changed my entire reference frame for how I thought about computers.
I am certain a motivated person supplement most of the useful parts of a CS B.S. degree but that can be hard when you are too cocky or foolish to even know what you are missing out on (which was my case).
Can an amatuer guitarist play as well as a classically-trained guitarist? Sure.
Is it the exception to the rule? Yes.
Can an amatuer guitarist learn to play a few songs really well, but have no grasp of composition? Sure.
Will the guitarist be as skilled in composition as the classical guitarist? No.
The time spent learning {x} is the great difference. A plain old guitarist can pull out some composition manuals and teach himself how to craft music better than the lazy classically-trained musician.
My 2 cents -- don't underestimate 4 years. Clean code is quickly whipped into you at your first job, but typically the CS student is thinking in their head "wow this is so easy" because they were trained in building shit like compilers for the last 4 years. The bootcamper does not have the same experience because it's not prudent to train an employment-seeking individual in the subtleties of compiler design. So, 9 times outta 10, the CS graduate is the stronger programmer at least until the bootcamper has had some years to catch up.
I would also expect this gap to widen significantly if you paired top schools to top boot camps.
I've been to a terrible state school and I've been to a top 10 school. At the state school I frequently thought I'd be better served by a boot camp. At the top 10 I never had a week where I wasn't challenged.
Also the level of internships was vastly different. I think a grad who did a coop at a good school would pull ahead in every metric.
Is it? Their sample is only people who can pass their initial screening.
> We do background-blind screening via an online programming test, and only interview engineers who pass this test. Thus we have no way to know what percentage of bootcamp grads and college grads fail early in our process, and the graph above reflects only people who pass our test.
Even ignoring that,
> worse at algorithms and understanding how computers work
would support the point.
Seems pretty clear to me. Im not sure how this disagrees with
> CS degree was four years of heavy abstract thinking
I too mainly care about how someone thinks, since the wrong implementation can be very costly, and strong thought processes can help pre-empt that greatly.
The thing that gets in his way though is that his soft-skills are the absolute worst and he still can't get through an interview to get hired anywhere.
It's not something you first learn on university it's something you develop way before that.
I can pin-point some places where I did learn various aspects of abstract thinking. I learned it by reading. Books like "Gödel, Escher, Bach", books like "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs", or the Sequences by HN's 'Eliezer. I learned it by thinking about what I read, and also by starting hobby projects and thinking hard when doing them.
The universities, and maybe even bootcamps, may help a bit - but there's no learning of abstract thinking unless you yourself care.
I regret not taking more CS courses, or majoring in it in addition to philosophy and psychology, but I don't think it's been too detrimental because I'm aware of what I missed and am able to correct it on my own.
Anyhow, self-taught, bootcamp, or CS degree, there are going to be tradeoffs in terms of what's learned and what's missed. No matter what path you take, it's on you to work on balancing that out and improving yourself. Just knowing that they exist, and that you have work to do, is a huge part of the battle. If you're able to do that, I don't think your background will matter much in the end.
