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Coding School "The Iron Yard" Announces Closure of All Campuses

posted by Fnord666 on Friday July 21 2017, @04:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the wonder-if-they-taught-rust? dept.

McGruber writes:

The Iron Yard, a South Carolina-based coding school with 15 locations, announced that it plans to close all of its campuses. The four-old company posted a message (http://blog.theironyard.com/2017/07/20/message-iron-yard/) on its website delivering the news: "In considering the current environment, the board of The Iron Yard has made the difficult decision to cease operations at all campuses after teaching out remaining summer cohorts." The note said the company will finish out its summer classes, including career support.

Main Link: http://www.ajc.com/news/local/coding-school-giant-iron-yard-announces-closure-all-campuses/AjeD1aOnb6KUmetDFH4yaJ/

[One school with fifteen locations closing — is this an isolated problem, or just one instance of a more widespread problem? What other schools have recently closed, or are in the act of closing, in your area? --martyb]

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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Friday July 21 2017, @11:34AM (2 children)

    by VLM (445) on Friday July 21 2017, @11:34AM (#542303)

    Something I don't get about how they work, is they're kinda simulating my last couple decades of employment, "Here's something new, perhaps off a PC magazine cover, perhaps some exec got season tickets to sign a contract, whatever, now make it work ASAP". And I'm pretty good at it or I wouldn't have survived.

    Anyway a bootcamp like this requires a lot of self discipline and creativity and analysis skills to be a success, such that it won't work unless you don't need the school.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 21 2017, @12:06PM (1 child)

    by c0lo (156) on Friday July 21 2017, @12:06PM (#542312) Journal

    "Here's something new,..., now make it work ASAP"

    Anyway a bootcamp like this requires a lot of self discipline and creativity and analysis skills to be a success, such that it won't work unless you don't need the school.

    They knew better [fastcompany.com] 20-something years ago ("Drop and code me 20, A letter from software bootcamp." - 1996)

    “What? You want me to tell you what to do, like some big boss?” Jim McCarthy, software management guru, Microsoft alum, and master-sergeant at the McCarthy TeamworX Software Development BootCamp, stares coolly at October’s batch of inductees.

    It’s a Sunday evening, less than an hour into the five-day course, and the class is floundering. They’ve come a considerable distance six recruits from a Minneapolis medical software firm, two from a Connecticut business software company, and one Bay Area games programmer and paid $5,000 apiece to learn to do what few in this industry can do consistently: ship quality software on time.
    ...
    It’s Tuesday, 2 p.m., and while the students exhibit no obvious mental trauma, they are still a bit wild-eyed. They’ve spent the last 40 hours in a state of fluctuating mania: organizing, arguing, deciding, and, above all, making lists: lists of optional team “visions,” lists of elements within those visions, lists of techniques for creating those elements, and, finally, a list simply entitled “How to get fucking started

    Yet coherence is emerging. The diverse outfit is functioning as a single unit. Cooperation is constant. Communication styles have assumed important new dimensions. Excuses, for instance, have dwindled. Boot-campers are expected to explain how they can get something done, not why they can’t. The instructors initially enforce the “no bullshit” policy, but the students quickly embrace it — none more aggressively than the formerly skeptical Vikoren
    ...
    And this class needs it. Tuesday afternoon, after shipping its vision, the group split into self-chosen teams and prepared for their first “deliverables.” These are specific projects that must be completed in accordance with the vision, and integrated with those of other teams by week’s end. But things got out of hand. TeamworX instructors kept piling on the assignments, quickly exceeding what a team twice the size could handle.

    The students’ puzzlement turned to alarm, then anger. The cry went up, “Bullshit!” — BootCampers rebelled. They refused additional work, tossed assigned materials on the floor — and gained, in the process, yet another critical lesson in project development: the virtue of “pushing back.”
    ...
    Instructors feel compelled to bring out the black hats, however, over the critical issue of scheduling, the bane of software development. Even well-intentioned managers are apt to create meaningless timelines — chronologies that have nothing to do with either the actual projects or the people who will do the work. Real scheduling is strictly “bottom up.” In the world according to TeamworX, says McCarthy, “no item appears on the schedule if the person who has to execute it hasn’t bought into it.”

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday July 23 2017, @02:25PM

      by VLM (445) on Sunday July 23 2017, @02:25PM (#543358)

      do what few in this industry can do consistently: ship quality software on time.

      The irony is that management in software will do anything they can to avoid the common sense stuff in the "Joel list", like having VCS, makefiles that actually work, bug tracking, unit testing, written specs...