I’m trying to figure you out AntRocka. You claim to be someone “in a hiring position” (which I take to mean that you are doing the hiring) but you don’t sound like any hirer I’ve encountered. You seem obsessed with the timeline and certificates. In my job search, I applied for hundreds of jobs, had dozens of phone interviews, a few in person interviews, and about half a dozen “down to the last few” interviews. Living around Silicon Valley, I also spoke to dozens of other hirers and founders and at meetups spoke with many other devs looking for work. Not once, I repeat “not once” has any hirer shown the least interest in my FCC timeline (I had one comment on my Stack Overflow timeline but didn’t seem to care too much about it) and no one has shown the slightest interest in any certificates.
Too me, the FCC timeline is there to “gameify” the learning experience. I can’t imagine why any competent hirer would show the slightest interest in the FCC timeline. FCC is not a comprehensive program so a lot of the learning takes place outside of FCC or while working on larger projects. The timeline just makes it fun for learners. I don’t know if I’d even want to work for someone that was basing their hiring on that - it would show a level of ignorance that would make me worry.
As to certificates - they are just a fun way for the camper to keep track. No one (unless they are an idiot) is going to hire you because of your FCC certificates. Sure, I say, put them on your resume, but that is not going to land you a job. At best, it is going to get you 5 more seconds of their attention and get some more keywords on your resume.
This is a rudimentary beginners course. No new students are going to come away from this particular course with any of the things you’ve listed here [… a website for a local business with e-commerce …a wordpress site for a blogger … a React SPA that lets people access synopses of all the Star Trek shows based on which characters are in them … contribute to open-source projects?]. And they will have no experience with git hub either…
I find that perhaps the most stunning paragraph you’ve written. “Rudimentary”? By the end of the program I was doing much of this stuff. Specifically:
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… a website for a local business with e-commerce … - No, I didn’t do that. It wasn’t local. It was an international site for a Chinese e-commerce company working with an international team of devs. This is the most difficult thing on his list. Yes, I did it. I couldn’t have done it without FCC. 95% of what I did on that job was stuff I learned at FCC. Period.
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… a wordpress site for a blogger … - Nope, didn’t do a WP site. I despise WP and it’s “paint by numbers” approach. I am, though, currently working on a blog app based on the MERN stack that I learned at FCC. Building one from scratch is much more difficult. Really, you think building a WP blogger site is difficult? Someone without any coding knowledge can do this. If I took a 16 year old with no coding knowledge and showed them a few youtube videos, they could figure this out. Are you sure you work in the coding world?
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… a React SPA that lets people access synopses of all the Star Trek shows based on which characters are in them … - This would be quite easy with the skills learned at FCC. Really, this would be easy. It troubles me, AntRocka, that you think that these are advanced things.
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… contribute to open-source projects … - Check. Did that too.
I’m not sure where your opinion about what FCC is teaching is coming from. Yes, the beginning lessons are at a beginner level. But FCC easily get’s into an intermediate level. And many of us (including me) have used that as a springboard into learning more advanced things. I eventually landed a great job out if it. True, FCC didn’t coddle me into a new job (I had to work hard for it) but FCC never claimed to do that. FCC gets you on the path and gives you some strong tools. This is not an immersive bootcamp where you spend three months doing coding for 12 hours a day and then at the end you get a hookup for a job. This is a free, work at your own pace, learn at your own pace, “here’s some basic to intermediate level skills to get you started”.
And they will have no experience with git hub either…
Actually, github is encouraged in the course and forum. Since later projects require you to make your code accessible online and that (nowadays) means some kind of git, I would almost call it all but mandatory once you get to the backend section.
I’m trying to figure you out AntRocka. Having been doing the forum for almost two years now and having been a moderator for most of that, I’ve noticed a strange category of people that sometimes show up. They appear on the forum all of a sudden and start telling people what is wrong with FCC. They’re knowledge is often spotty, and they seem to talk a big game but their words don’t seem to back up the knowledge/position they claim.
I notice that you have been on the forum for three days. You have spent a few hours reading, looking at eight topics. Two of those are the ones that you’ve created to profess what you think FCC should do differently. Those are the only topics to which you’ve replied. I haven’t seen anything in any of your posts that would allow me to gauge your background or knowledge on the subject.
So, AntRocka, you sure have some very strong opinions. May I ask what your background is? Mine is easy to find - besides having spent years here helping campers as a (I’d like to think) respected contributor, I have many posts talking about my background and career and links to my linkedin, portfolio, resume, and github account. So far, all I know about you is that you really, really think timelines and certificates are important, don’t seem to know much about the FCC, curriculum, and the most technical thing I’ve heard you say is that you know the word “github”.
A weird thing about the internet is that some people get very confident about very little knowledge, the Dunning-Kruger Effect on steroids. It’s so easy to create an account and start spewing nonsense. Some people are even so childish that they seem to get off on it. If you were to confront them in real life, they’d just explain it away as “telling it like it is” or “lying to make a point”. I hope that is not you. I hope (with all the in depth knowledge you seem to think that you have) that you find a way to contribute to the campers here in ways other than complaining. There are a lot of people here that need technical help with learning complex things. Surely, if you feel that FCC is just “a rudimentary beginners course”. There are a lot of more advanced questions that don’t get enough answers, like things with Express, Passport, Mongoose, D3, etc. Surely your vast knowledge of these subjects would be of great help.
So, with all due respect, may I ask who you are and what your experience is that have led you to these conclusions? What is your education experience? Work experience in the dev world? How far into FCC have you gotten?