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back to article Second one this month: Another code bootcamp decamps to graveyard

The Iron Yard, a four-year-old coding bootcamp based in South Carolina, USA, said on Thursday that it is shutting its doors. "In considering the current environment, the board of The Iron Yard has made the difficult decision to cease operations at all campuses after teaching out remaining summer cohorts," the company said on …

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  1. Erik4872

    Checking to see if it's 1999...

    I'm an IT guy, not a developer, so my experience lies with the "MCSE Bootcamps" that sprung up towards the top of the First Dotcom Bubble. I went after doing the MCSE myself because a consultancy I was working for at the time paid for it. If you were there for an upgrade like I was and knew what you were doing, it was a good way to cram for the stupid tests in a very short time. However, these bootcamps also enrolled a lot of complete newbies ("career changers") who were truck drivers and similar in a previous life. This is where we got the term "paper MCSE" from - the bootcamp taught exactly what you needed to know for the exam, and very little else.

    I can only assume that these coder schools are very similar. What do you know when you come out? Maybe one or two JavaScript frameworks and a couple of back-end tricks? It makes sense now, when you have web startups grabbing for all the starry-eyed "talent" they can get and working them 100 hours a week. But once the bubble pops, or even just slowly deflates, there's just not going to be a need for millions of AngularJS junior developers.

    9 0 Reply
    1. Stevie
      Reply Icon

      Re: Checking to see if it's 1999...

      When the MSCE program was introduced, the first people who gained the paper were those who had pertty much built the technology the "Core Four" were based on. This produced an unsustainable benchmark from which late graduates of the program were assessed.

      That said, I had a colleague who sat the exams, won his spurs and could talk you under the table on the subject of SIDs and tokens and gosh knows what else. He had years in the business too.

      But he couldn't grant permissions so that a computer user was a local admin to save his life.

      Me and my uneducated, uncertified poor grasp of the networking infrastructure had to do with a rock-concert jobsworth stage doorman metaphor that got me through the same job in under ten minutes and left no dimwit holes at the browsemaster/server end.

      Guess who got richly rewarded and promoted? Hint: >8o(

      2 1 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Checking to see if it's 1999...

        The moral of that story is that management and (especially) pimps like to see those nice initializations on your CV. Given the choice between someone that can do the job and someone that has passed exams to show they can do the job, they always go for the easy second option. Given the choice between a techie with 5 years experience, and a techie with 5 years experience and an MCSE, most employers will go for the second option. That does not mean that the MCSE is better, but the perception of it is.

        Do your time, know how to do the stuff properly then learn the "official answers" and get your management to pay for the exams, or if they won't then pay for them yourself. If you work for a larger company get it on your appraisal and then they can't get out of paying for it. It is your career, and if you are not willing to invest the time to push yourself along then you only have yourself to blame.

        I would think twice about paying for those certifications that require an expensive course (VCP) for myself, but 1-2x £100 exams per year is probably a worthwhile investment if you are serious about a long-term career in IT.

        2 0 Reply
    2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Checking to see if it's 1999...

      Ah - MCSE. Round here commonly known as "Must Call Somebody Experienced"..

      2 1 Reply
  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who didn't see this coming?

    Programmers are paid to write code that makes the programmers eventually obsolete. This is a job field that is, by design, guaranteed to shrink.

    Also you can learn code for free online, so it's unclear what advantages these boot camps provide over self instruction.

    2 2 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Who didn't see this coming?

      "This is a job field that is, by design, guaranteed to shrink."

      In this area there is a shortage of good programmers, and the wages reflect that.

      I don't see that changing any time soon, and Code Boot Camps don't generally admit or graduate the type of applicants that will address the situation.

      3 0 Reply
    2. a_yank_lurker
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      Re: Who didn't see this coming?

      I suspect the real problem is competition from better established continuing education programs run by local colleges. Also, many of these courses are marketed to 'truck drivers', etc. as noted earlier not to someone with a STEM or business degree. The problem is many non-technical people are not used to the rigorous, mathematical logic required to be a competent programmer. Another part of the problem is that many do not understand that to be good as a programmer one has to have a certain knack for it. And like many other areas, if one does not have 'it' one will not be terribly successful.

      4 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Her current job, karma for taking my Solaris fleeces ...

        So significant other takes a retraining course on how to find a job to continue unemployment benefits.

        So looking at the white board I notice there are two career paths as examples.

        On the way home, we see a billboard, so I set her up and then delivered the punch.

        What did you learn today?

        Well you could consider being a 'truck driver'; took 30 seconds until full impact of connection.

        Her first day on the new job in a far away place, asked how to quit Linux session. Based on the response, whole flight system was powered down.

        Spent the next morning convincing her to go back to work.

        0 1 Reply
      2. Jay 2
        Reply Icon

        Re: Who didn't see this coming?

        Agreed. The best IT bods I've worked with are people who like messing around with that sort of thing. On the other hand there are people who have drifted into IT for one reason or another and have no real passion for such things and it shows.

        2 0 Reply
    3. Adam 1
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      Re: Who didn't see this coming?

      > This is a job field that is, by design, guaranteed to shrink.

      We are a long way from that point. In fact at the moment the problem is the inverse of what you are describing. Uncle Bob in one of his lectures points out how the number of software developers has doubled every 5 years since the 60s. Another way of looking at that statistic is that at any point in time, literally half of the people writing the software you interact with every day have less than 5 years experience. And they make the poor design* choices that everyone did before wising up (usually after someone else's bovine excrement excuse for functioning code lands on their lap)**. Hence you will see headlines like "it's 2017 and [insert really stupid thing programmers in the 70s knew not to do]

      * word used with the most generous interpretation

      ** other alternatives exist, such as seeking a management route in their career direction

      4 0 Reply
      1. Orv Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Who didn't see this coming?

        Another way of looking at that statistic is that at any point in time, literally half of the people writing the software you interact with every day have less than 5 years experience.

        In programming, isn't 5-10 years kind of the sweet spot in between "too inexperienced for entry level" and "too old to hire"?

        0 0 Reply
        1. John McCallum
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          Re: Who didn't see this coming?

          No that is called being over qualified, and it applies to a lot of jobs .

          0 0 Reply
  3. Brian Miller

    Too many schools, etc

    Same old thing, too many schools and not enough suckers, er, students. Impress employers with code, not paper degrees. There was some study recently claiming to link pay to Github contributions.

    2 0 Reply

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