From Secretary to Software Developer: The Hard Way
TL;DR there are a lot of incompetent developers out there.<p>This isn&#x27;t a comment about the author, as much as it&#x27;s about something she said.<p>&quot;Today you can take a lot of programming and Computer Sciences courses online. Everyone can be developer! There are also a lot of developer bootcamps: within 8–12 weeks you can become a developer.&quot;<p>This is a very dangerous line of thinking. Some people have convinced themselves that they are competent developers <i>because</i> they went to a bootcamp. And they might have just enough domain knowledge to convince a company with poor hiring practices that they&#x27;re worth hiring.<p>I inherited a situation like that (this dev was hired a few weeks before me). After a few weeks it was painfully obvious that this guy was a detriment to the company because of his lack of coding ability. For reasons above my paygrade, we couldn&#x27;t fire him immediately, and eventually we took all responsibilities away from him. We paid someone to come in and not do work for us.<p>I&#x27;ve interviewed dozens of developers since then. The one&#x27;s coming from a bootcamp (or similar situation) have no computer science skills. They also have no problem solving skills; they&#x27;re unable to break through the box that they were taught in. Most companies can&#x27;t afford to hire a developer who knows one thing, and one thing only.<p>Now, we&#x27;ve had 4 year university graduates with experience in the field come in from top schools with degrees in CS. A (scarily) large percentage of them are incompetent as well, though not to the degree of the bootcampers. They&#x27;re typically serviceable though.