u/smk284 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
With respect, I disagree about the not listing bootcamps on resume or LinkedIn. I understand the majority of codesmith students are either told not to put that on their LinkedIn or whatever. We’re past the 2014-16 time where bootcamps were looked down upon and it’s now to the poi
u/michaelnovati replied · · edited ★ FEATURED
As usual I am somewhere on the middle haha but two VERY STRONG stances
1) My entire mission is about helping fix systemic inequalities in tech and the way to do that is by fixing inequalities in SKILLS primarily and not leveling the playing field through deception. There are systematic biases that need to be addressed for sure, but the biggest problem is that a 12 week stint at the best bootcamp in the world is no where near the skill level of a top 4 engineering school undergrad. Don't call yourself the equivalent of an elite masters program if you are not. I think the gap can be filled much faster than 3.75 years but you are being delusional if you think you get close. I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT POTENTIAL, just raw skills. In my undergrad (which as only half CS and half other eng), I studied operating systems, built a computer processor, human computer interaction, distributed systems, gaming, graphics, databases, software engineering theory, ethics, algorithms, 8 math courses, a logic course, statistics for engineers, business for engineers, and that's just what I remember and excluding civil engineering, electrical circuits, chemical engineering, aerospace engineering, and more). I had 3 notable capstone projects including building a robotic system from scratch, all the wiring, hardware and code, building a product from scratch following a scientific research based approach involving 50 hours of user research alone, building a tool for processing online reviews that won a best paper award at the top conference for HCI.
It's actually offensive to me that these OSPs take more space and credit than a few intense projects I did in school. I had a 4 month project where I had to run several user studies around Toronto, including designing studies, prototypes, doing real research, and then building a final product and shipping it. Hundreds of pages of write-ups and careful research. When I see Codesmith students exaggerating their 3 weeks of PRs and copy pasting Single Sprout talks it's all just missing the point of what real engineering is about. I work with a lot of bootcamps grads... I see the passion, I see the curiosity, I see the potential, and having a program use that to make embellished resumes and fake tech talks is throwing away some of that potential imo.
You don't need nearly all this to be a successful engineer, but if you distill what you do need, it's the core fundamentals so that you can learn only the "extras" you do need next and do so efficient and rigorously. Jumping straight to the "extras" is lipstick on a pig. And no, a week of DS&A is not the core fundamentals.
If you want to learn the needed hands on skills quickly and get a starting job, then I would do things differently than I suggest. But if you want to be an elite engineer with a robust tool belt, then no. Maybe Codesmith's marketing is just completely overblown and they are just trying to do the former, but then don't make your students think you are turning them into elite engineers at the ivy league of bootcamps.
This is a pretty academic argument. Individual performance varies, and there's a whole spectrum of practical matters in between, but I am trying to argue where the anti-deception camp comes from and am very open to further discussion.
2) Regarding the resumes specifically (and usually LinkedIn but specifically resumes) have two sections: "Experience" "Open Source Projects"
The Open Source Projects are always the personal small projects that should be just called Projects. Putting a project on your personal GitHub does not make it "Open Source" as these projects were not designed to create something the world will help build... they are practice to learn different topics personally.
Then the "Experience" section actually SHOULD BE "Open Source Projects". These projects ARE intended to be things the world works on and improves. The fact that 95% of them have no one at all from the outside world working on them is already a stretch but I think that's more good intentioned.
By placing an Open Source section beside a Work Experience section it's intentionally trying to deceive the reader into thinking that work experience is more legit.