My point isn't that non-programmers can't or don't read HN. My point is that there are more programmers reading and posting on HN than Starbucks baristas. If you hated your boot camp, the odds of you reading HN is lower. Selection bias doesn't mean absolutes, it means probabilities.

> after some early career burnout I did a stint at a restaurant job to pay the bills while I decided what I wanted to do with my life

I really respect that. I think I'd like to do the same, but the mortgage can't be paid on minimum wage.

I'm not questioning the argument about frequency, I'm questioning the underlying assumption that "success" in a bootcamp is only measured by employment as a developer.

If you don't measure the success of a coding boot camp by "employment as a developer", what would you measure it by?

It's been 4 years since my bootcamp experience and I very, very much doubt I'll ever seek "employment as a developer" again except in the case of failure as an entrepreneur.

Now they're talking about starting code camps targeting other vets, help with transitioning to civilian life, build community, mitigate PTSD, work with kids, etc.

I've been mentoring a number of our senior support folks on coding, and they've been doing something along the lines of a boot camp. My management finds that support team are able to better understand how things work, attempt to debug things they'd have been afraid of, and ask better questions of software engineers. Support engineers get to do something different and are building skills. They have seen "coders" move quickly through support to the engineering team. Another group manages our tools, but I hope they'll be able to hack on some tools for our team. Some people will stay in support, but it should be less stressful because they can understand how things work better. From a distance you can see how the online communications have changes between the two organizations.

From my past experience in Pharma I know there was similar interest from scientists to learn to code (if they didn't already). I also know that some of the designers working on electronic detailing apps for sales at the time really wanted to learn to code because they had to transition from Flash to HTML 5 and JS.

For these reasons, I think that the make up of coding boot camps may surprise some. A differentiation may be related to where someone is in their career. Someone laid off, or without a job is probably more like to jump to a boot camp than someone who has a job. Quitting to take part in a boot camp is probably a huge jump for people, if they are in the tech sector because they may have more awareness of what is involved, or other means to make the jump to coding.

The fact that there is not a single negative response is basically proof positive that people who don't succeed at coding boot camps do not read HN. Unless you happen to believe that almost everyone does succeed after coding boot camps. I find that notion incredible, personally.

That's exactly how my career started.

Which still doesn't mean it is not rare but maybe a bit less rare than you thought it was.

Hypothetical example: Say only 1% of coding bootcamp graduates find the program to be a "success" for them. All of that 1% read hacker news and zero of the 99% read hacker news. If you ask about bootcamp on hacker news you'll only get HN reader's perspective, then you'd believe bootcamps are wildly successful whereas the real number is the opposite.

If they are different, one can not make statistics out of the comments here.

His day job? A bus driver.

I saw that in the comment section of YouTube, people always ask him "why don't you go code for a job and make tons of money!". His response is that coding is something loves to do, and he wouldn't want to risk losing that love for it, by making it a job.

I love the idea but sadly in the US, living on a bus driver salary would be very difficult. He was based in Finland I believe, so I assume their bus drivers make more money.

As is often mentioned, that depends on where you choose to live. Around here, I know someone who was a bus driver and a homeowner. She was quite happy with it.

One person's bug is another person's feature :-)

That guy is awesome. I love all of his videos.

I search for next books to read by searching first on HN and also the constructive discussion that takes place here always leaves me being a bit smarter.