Bootcamps vs. College
I&#x27;m in the process of hiring a junior position and have no bias towards college grads or bootcamp grads. The only negatives towards boot camp grads I&#x27;ve seen so far is:<p>1) One candidate had no idea what the terms &quot;Class&quot; or &quot;OOP&quot; even meant. I&#x27;m FINE with them not understanding stuff like sorts&#x2F;advanced data structures, but he ACTUALLY had 0 idea what an int was. No lie!<p>2) I wish there wasn&#x27;t such a heavy reliance on MongoDB in most of these programs. Some do have SQL as well, but I feel like 80% of workplaces will be dealing with SQL, so I&#x27;m not sure what the focus on Mongo is all about if the purpose of these programs is to make you hireable. I think it&#x27;s that it&#x27;s an easier concept to relay since you&#x27;re working with JSON everywhere already, but I&#x27;ve seen a bunch of people have a very strong bias towards Mongo to the point where they seem to not understand why you even would use SQL.<p>3) This part might get me in trouble here, but we are a small company in NJ and budgeting 50k for the junior 0 experience position. Most of these bootcamps in Brooklyn or Manhattan instill that you minimum should be making 60k and not to even look for anything else. I disagree with that personally, but I realize it is possible for grads to make this (especially in NYC). I&#x27;ve just come across a few that scoff at us for the pay we have, and I do understand it, but some of my higher ups who don&#x27;t really feel comfortable with the bootcamp concept don&#x27;t think they are worth it.<p>Obviously there are a lot of pros with hiring them as well. I think typically they are the more qualified candidates skill wise. None of the ones we&#x27;ve come across have been a great fit so far though, but I think it&#x27;s because of how close to NYC we are. These programs are based there, and we have trouble competing with the salaries there. That&#x27;s why we have been having more luck finding college grads from the NJ area though, they don&#x27;t have these kind of higher expectations.