ATTENTION, READERS:
Job seekers willing to pay big bucks to learn to code
Due to a production problem, a story from Sunday's A-1 was not published in its entirety. “Job seekers willing to pay big bucks” is on
In late 2015, Thomas Dailey, a 29-year-old steelworker from McKees Rocks, visited his dentist’s office and waited for the exam. He picked up a newspaper and read an article claiming there would be an estimated 1 million open jobs in the information technology sector by 2020.
Maybe he could fill one of them, he thought.
“I wanted to use my brain and not my back for my work. … The guys I work around are hurting their backs at 40,” Mr. Dailey said.
He is one of the masses reading the future in computer code — technical languages allowing humans to communicate with computers. Code is the basis of all software, the reason you can post puppy photos on Facebook or flick tiny red cardinals on your Angry Birds app.
The rush to learn coding has driven a do-it-yourself economy.
Coding boot camps alone produced 15,077 graduates in 2016, then another 22,949 in 2017, according to Course Report, an organization cataloging industry trends. More than 90 boot camp programs offer remote or in-person training in North America and raked in an estimated $266 million in revenue last year.
It’s well documented in the U.S. that piles of student debt are being accumulated at four-year institutions, but many coding boot camps aren’t cheap, either. A 14-week boot camp can cost $6,000 to $20,000.
Hopefuls looking to tap into tech’s opportunities must ask themselves if learning to code is worth ponying up thousands of dollars.
The nontraditional pipeline
Coders are notorious for entering the job market in unanticipated ways. Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to build social media site Facebook. Steve Jobs quit Reed College in Portland, Ore., before co-founding Apple Computer.
So can anybody code their way into a career?
“I’m not going to deny that there is bias in the employer network toward college degrees,” said Anthony Hughes, CEO of Tech Elevator, a 14-week, $14,000 coding boot camp that originated in Cleveland and set up its fourth shop in Pittsburgh on the North Side this year.
Research from the National Association of Colleges and Employers suggests the higher the level of your education, the more you’ll earn.
Salary data compiled from employers who hired computer science students in 2017 shows graduates from four-year institutions can expect an average salary of $65,540, up nearly 7 percent from $61,321 in 2016. Master’s recipients earn an average of $81,039, and Ph.D. graduates earn $110,841.
Course Report found in 2016 that boot camp graduates had an average salary of $66,887, in line with bachelor’s grads in computer science.
Bob Harper, a programming language researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, said free online resources teach students to code in a formulaic way, though he recognizes not everyone can afford a collegiate-level computer science program.
“I think in the longer run [selftaught coders] are not going to have skills worth having,” Mr. Harper said, but added, “Because programming is a lot of drudge work, there’s a market for people to do the drudge work.”
Like a puzzle
Jamaal Davis, 26, began teaching himself HTML in 2016 at the request of his former supervisor at the Carnegie Library, where he worked on community outreach. After he finished, he would lead a free, introductory course.
At Carlow University, Mr. Davis studied philosophy. Now, that degree sits alongside a web development certification he earned from FreeCodeCamp.org.
“You know how some people may go home and play video games? I’ll go home and code,” said Mr. Davis, who lives in North Oakland.
Coding is like a puzzle, he said. You think about a problem and how you want to build a solution and then you write a program that puts the idea into action.
Some days Mr. Davis didn’t emerge from behind his computer at all, and he spent most of his free time at the Hill District library learning Javascript, HTML, CSS and other languages supporting web development.
Now, he builds WordPress sites as a “side hustle.” His customers are primarily acquaintances and small businesses. He charges about $80 to build a simple blog.
Launch to the middle class
Josh Lucas, who heads the 12week Academy Pittsburgh boot camp in Allentown, isn’t worried if graduates are getting placed in roles with the “grunt work.”
The program’s graduates are rarely placed in positions where they’re being paid less than $50,000 per year.
“We’re thrusting them into the middle class in 12 weeks. … If that means they have to spend a year paying their dues … that’s better than four years for a computer science degree.”
Academy Pittsburgh has analyzed data on its first three cohorts, which each had 15 students. Of those, 73 percent were placed in a relevant job within 18 months. Those students pay back a $6,000 staffing fee after they find a job. The fee is waived if they don’t find one.
Graduates tend to first take temporary jobs to boost their resume. Health care providers rely on contract workers for their development work, he said, and Academy Pittsburgh graduates are often placed in these roles for six-, 12- or 18-week cycles.
The cost to camp
Mr. Dailey stayed up until 1 a.m. practicing coding, before waking up five hours later for an installment of his work week.
“I had a really basic knowledge of many things but nothing I could combine together into a career,” Mr. Dailey said. “I realized I needed a curriculum and had to pay someone for it.”
He joined Thinkful, a $9,000 coding bootcamp promising a job or your money back. Most code schools’ tuition costs are not eligible for traditional student loans or subsidies, though.
Tech Elevator and Thinkful both have a relationship with SkillsFund, a loan provider for “nontraditional accelerated learning programs.”
To borrow the $14,000 to cover Tech Elevator’s tuition through SkillsFund, a deferred loan with a 36-month term has an 8.99 percent interest rate. That breaks down to payments of about $480 per month.
By comparison, federal fixedinterest-rate loans disbursed on or between July 1, 2017, and July 1, 2018, had a 4.45 percent interest rate for undergraduates, according to the office of Federal Student Aid.
A bid for transparency
In 2016, Jim O’Kelly, the founder of a boot camp called Devschool, was outed as Eric James O’Kelly, a man on the Most Wanted list of the Sheriff’s Office of Clackamas County, Ore. After collecting payments from students, he disappeared for weeks.
While that situation may be unusual, other boot camps might not be able to deliver on the promise of jobs.
The Council on Integrity in Results Reporting, a nonprofit vetting code schools, created standards for rating boot camps. Member schools must submit a report on every student’s employment and salary after graduation.
Tech Elevator in Cleveland reported 90.6 percent of its students graduated on time. In 90 days, 72.4 percent of graduates found full-time positions in their intended field and 93.1 did so by the six-month mark. The median annual base salary for those students was $55,000.
Thinkful, the program Mr. Dailey completed, placed 64 percent and 80 percent of graduates into a full-time position after 90 and 180 days, respectively, with a $65,000 median base pay.
Not mere code monkeys
Learning how to code has come full circle for Mr. Davis.
In April, he took a job at Goodwill, where he is digital skills coordinator for the nonprofit’s local training hubs. He teaches digital skills at the center in Lawrenceville and is developing curriculum for other locations in southwestern Pennsylvania.
He has noticed a skills gap among native Pittsburghers: The tech revolution here has disproportionately helped outsiders.
“Growing up a black guy in Homewood, you don’t see much opportunity,” Mr. Davis said. “But I saw it as possible. You have to accumulate skills.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Dailey finished Thinkful in July 2017, determined to find a job that could pay off his debt. During the six months between finishing the program and the end of last year, he put out at least 60 applications.
“It seems to be an ongoing theme with newer developers, including myself, to have some impostor syndrome and feel like what we’re doing doesn’t amount to much or we don’t know what we’re doing,” Mr. Dailey said.
In early April, he began work for New York City-based immigration services provider Fragomen Worldwide, working on enhancements for internal applications. His salary increased 45 percent.
In this gig, Mr. Dailey updates systems that a company has already spent money on, that are critical for operation. He doesn’t feel like this is the brand of drudgery Mr. Harper warned boot camp students might be stuck laboring over.
“I am definitely working on some of the simpler functionality for our applications, but it is certainly not ‘grunt work.’”
“I wanted to use my brain and not my back for my work . ... The guys I work around are hurting their backs at 40.”
— Thomas Dailey, former steelworker who learned to code