I am having trouble finding information about how often graduates of various “Hack Schools” get placed soon after graduation into actual jobs in the field. Any numbers I do find turn out to have come from the schools themselves, and I have no idea whether the numbers are honest or not.
Anyone here know anything about this?
(My wife’s showing interest in Hackbright Academy, to be specific. No idea how she’d live near San Francisco for 12 weeks but if she managed to snag one of the need-based scholarships we could look into it at least… if graduating would actually be likely to help her get a job in the field.)
Does your wife have the basic qualifications to develop software from an accredited institution? (aka a degree in computer science, computer engineering, mathematics…)
If so, yes. The school would help. What it’s really doing is providing an experience very similar to an internship or entry level job. Employers will know that she has at least a little experience doing the job, and presumably doing it well enough to pass. It’s that old catch-22 : you need experience from a job to get a job at all…
That place is $15k, at least for one program that I saw. They better find you a job.
I honestly think that money would be better served at a 2 or 4-year college and then look for an internship. You’ll have to find the intern or entry-level position the real way and that is networking. Or, maybe look for a place that accepts volunteers, like a non-profit, and get involved that way.
As someone in the industry, who has interviewed many people, I know that the actual interviewers care very little about how much schooling someone has, and very little about how much experience they have. Really, we just care whether the person has the base knowledge and actual ability to write code. Many people’s brains just don’t work the right way to write software, and schooling doesn’t seem to change that.
I’ll admit that HR probably does care about experience and degrees, etc. I doubt they’ll be particularly impressed by a 12 week crash course - though for all I know it’s a very good one.
I would recommend plunking down $30 for a book on Python, Ruby, or the one I bought my cousin, Phrogram (which is more visual and fun, though less useful for a resume), and verify that she has the brain for it before spending any sort of money. If she is good at and enjoys it, it’s cheaper and faster to buy a bunch of books and go through them, though not everyone is good at self-learning. But probably she would have as much street cred with a list of books she has learned or a certificate from Hackbright. Attending the Academy might be a better way for her to focus on getting through some basic material and creating some sample software than self-learning, but her best bet for getting hired is going to be to have a Github account and a functional application or two which do some nice things and are well-coded, for people to look at the source of and maybe try running.