I think we need more good developers. 100% you can get a great developer from this education channel, but that person would be good whether they came to you via a code school or a more traditional route.

I also think people should be encouraged to better themselves and work towards higher paying careers. That said, as someone who hires engineers the signal to noise ratio continues to go up. It makes it that much harder to find good developers in the forest of bad. I make it a point of seeing almost anyone who is close to fitting the bill so I kiss a lot of frogs, and I could be more harsh weeding out people at earlier stages but I've had absolutely spectacular hires being a bit more flexible (I do tend to fire fast though, no reason for everyone to pretend its not a good fit) Flooding the market with folks though just makes it more challenging for those hiring.

Hard to argue that we need more good developers. In my experience, some component of 'good' is experience, some is aptitude, some is knowledge, and some is willingness to grind. The code schools can take care of the latter two (depending on the quality of the school).

Sorry to hear that the signal to noise ratio is going up. That is probably due to more people being pulled into the profession (just as it was 15 years ago).

> Flooding the market with folks though just makes it more challenging for those hiring.

All other things being equal, wouldn't you want a larger candidate pool? I have done some hiring and while it was a grind to screen applicants, that beat the pants off of not having any applicants.

Well if you're letting me order it the way I want it, I wan the candidate pool to be infinite and to all be extremely qualified :)

What I'm actually finding is the candidate pool is getting larger but the quality hires are about the same. Ostensibly this is a function of the pay rate pressuring people to join the hiring pool.

>All other things being equal, wouldn't you want a larger candidate pool? I >have done some hiring and while it was a grind to screen applicants, that >beat the pants off of not having any applicants.

No argument, I have played that game and its not fun.

For the sake of argument though if we look at the total number of candidates you want to hire (1) then any pool size over one does create more work as it grows (I'd like to avoid that if at all possible :) ). Assuming the individual that matches your criteria is in your pool at all (again an oversimplification).

I also can't stress enough aptitude as a component of a good dev, which you alluded to. I've never seen a dev who was great (whether self taught/code school/cs degree who had no aptitude for the work.

I've also seen people with tons of aptitude and no credentials absolutely own people with phd's and masters degrees in a tough problem.

Before we had colleges/code schools there were always engineers, how do you think we got the wheel?

I'd like to hear your thoughts on how to be a good developer. I fall into this group and I'm entirely self-taught. I've been following the Free Code Camp curriculum while also working through some Linux books and Shaw's "Learn C the Hard Way." It's difficult for me to know what things I might be missing--the classic "unknown unknowns"--and I'd like to close whayever gaps there might be.

I'll throw my .02 in. For me a good developer is someone who has a natural aptitude, great problem solving skills, persistence, and willingness to learn new things. Every one I've ever managed who was great had those traits. That didn't mean everything they did was perfect - we are still dealing with people,but they were more versatile than most and were able to not only get things done, but the quality was there. Formal education is great, but I don't consider it an element. Reason being that technology is changing at such a pace most of what you learned is in school is now out of date, and anything foundational you learned at school (ie algorithms) is something that you can p/u from a book or online course.