Thoughts on this article

I don't think that's what the article was talking about at all. It's not that students of coding schools are bad. What the article was talking about were these coding schools and bootcamps that pop up as a pure cash grab for students tuition money. There are some reputable code schools out there, I think treehouse is one of them, there are others. Unfortunately, nobody wants to hire a developer who can’t think for themselves, which is largely what I read out of that article.

If you’re going to drop $20,000 on a coding school, without thoroughly vetting the school first, and believe almost insane job placement statistics as whole truths, and you really haven’t thought through what you’re doing, and why, that makes me question your competence as a developer. (No you personally, you as in metaphorically).

The very first example I read, the guy didn’t get the job because he went to the coding school, he didn’t get the job cause he still didn’t know how to answer a javascript interview question. And then his next move was to request a refund? That just made him sound silly.

So the lesson of the article is do your research before you throw down so much money, and take ownest in your own skill and knowledge and a developer, and your ability to get a job. Way too many people in unhappy careers are seeing the exploding growth in availability and salary, and thinking “If I only throw $30,000 at this one company, they’ll get me a job making $90,000”, and that sounds like a good trade, right? Until they realize it’s way more difficult then just stroking a check.

So all that ranting and rambling to say, the title is click bait, which is usual for articles. They want to incite an emotion. And I still strongly think that it largely doesn’t matter where so much where you get your knowledge, just that you have it. Is a treehouse techdegree going to hold much weight at in interview, no. But if you applied yourself during the techdgree process, and now you’re able to demonstrate and advanced understanding of XYZ in an interview – now you’re showing your potential employer something worth hiring you over.

If your learning style was to read Stack Overflow all day, and that was enough to go through an interview, more power to you! I couldn’t, lol – I’d rather read the phone book, but we all learn different. Just don’t get suckered out of $20,000 for hype and false claims.

Honesty, This article seems to be written through the eyes or an MBA Grad. In my mind it doesn't reflect the current market and or the reality of the industry. The two things I didn't see talked about in the article and its the most important things where, are theses students blogging about the tech they use and creating tutorials to show mastery of an area, and where is their Github? Yes, most of theses coding schools are for profit, and then it becomes the students responsibility to know what they are paying for. No one cares where you learned how to write a function. they care that you can write one. Two most important things to landing a job are blogging and your github account. Employers want to see your code, and want to see that you understand the concepts of the code you are writing. There is a lot to learn, gone are the days of I know HTML and CSS now give me 70K. Treehouse is one of, if not the best places to start, maybe not to finish, but to start, yes. For me, in a year and a half from going from not knowing to what a div was to now ssh deployment, using npm/bower, gulp, sass, not saying anymore I write Javascript, but what I really mean is, I only write jQuery. It can happen, and it will happen, you just need to work, put the time in. This is not an industry for the 9 to 5ers, but an industry for people who need to problem solve, and love learning.

PS I didn't see Facebook mentioned in that article, why, because I know at least one lead developers there has an English Degree from Maryland. Self taught, and can show steady progression through blogging and your github account. you will be employed.