Single Mom Sues Coding Boot Camp Over Job Placement Rates

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• • Re: nothing

    Its a very loose term. When I first left the Navy in 1995, I worked for a brief time at a claims processing center for an insurance company. They had 'coders' but in reality it is just data entry. They would identify procedures and their CPT codes and input them into the processing software. Lots of data entry jobs are labeled with better sounding titles.

    • by BeerFartMoron ( 624900 ) on Saturday April 16, 2022 @09:40AM (#62451826)

      That's pretty much what traditional "coders" do, transform written information into data codes and enter them into software. For example,

      What is Medical Coding? [aapc.com]

      Medical coding is the transformation of healthcare diagnosis, procedures, medical services, and equipment into universal medical alphanumeric codes. The diagnoses and procedure codes are taken from medical record documentation, such as transcription of physician's notes, laboratory and radiologic results, etc. Medical coding professionals help ensure the codes are applied correctly during the medical billing process, which includes abstracting the information from documentation, assigning the appropriate codes, and creating a claim to be paid by insurance carriers.

      Medical coding happens every time you see a healthcare provider. The healthcare provider reviews your complaint and medical history, makes an expert assessment of what’s wrong and how to treat you, and documents your visit. That documentation is not only the patient’s ongoing record, it’s how the healthcare provider gets paid.

      And even they try to make it sound more glamorous that it is:

      Like a musician who interprets the written music and uses their instrument to produce what's intended, Medical Coding requires the ability to understand anatomy, physiology, and details of the services, and the rules and regulations of the payers to succeed.

      • Re:

        Yup, medical coders is a thing, and for a time was a good paying job. For the computer "coding", it has a similar background - programmers wrote up a program from their desk, then handed it to "coders" to transcribe it into machine language, or an early programming language. "Programming" was the higher paying job, and "coding" was lower paying and considered clerical (and thus a lot of women got jobs in computing this way). This continued even up through the 70s; things like RPG-II you did all your prog

    • Re:

      TFW you get employed as a nearest neighbor search algorithm...

    • Re:

      I was a $3.13/hour "Junior Coder, Step 1" in the University of California grant funded research casual labor titles. I wrote PL/I, but the job title most likely was originally intended for psych department experiment (upon rats or psych undergrads, according to current market price) data collation and entry. About half of what I did was writing batch editors, and the other half was writing data set corrections to be processed by the batch editors.

    • Re: nothing

      Wait.

      They encode unstructured data into a format a computer can read the codes and do stuff? How could anyone refer to that as coding?!

      • Re:

        Because they don't using the word "coding" to refer to software programming. Medical billing and coding is a field with many roles such as coding specialist and insurance coder. They simply translate procedures and treatments given by medical providers (doctors / hospitals) into insurance codes to be given to payers (insurance companies). It is another very valid use of the word "coder" which has nothing to do with software development.

        • Re:

          Exactly, I believe medical coders are currently using the ICD-10-CM code set.
          For you amusement check out codes V97.33XA and V97.33XD.
          Yes this happens, sometimes more than once to the same person.
          BTW: Proper coding is critical to a Hospitals financial health, government and insurance payments use those codes for reimbursements.

      • Re:

        The terms "coding" and "coder" existed before the advent of computers; it was often used to describe various kinds of transcription jobs or repetitive data-entry work (such as entering columns of dates, sales figures temperatures, etc).

      • Re:

        Maybe it was short for "encoding".

  • Re:

    However for generations now there has always been a debate if a coder is coding in a real language or some fluffed up software.

    Binary vs Assembly: as those macros can get any dolt off the street to get a computer to work.
    Assembly vs FORTRAN, COBOL, C. As you are separated by all the steps that really happen on the computer.
    Compiled language vs interpreted.
    Functional vs Procedural vs Object Oriented.

    Knowing HTML with JavaScript and CSS you actually have a rather powerful set of coding at your fingertips, whe

• My heart goes out to everyone who must face the horror known as "Angular."

• Re:

  That's right. And if a person is trying to become a proficient one in 6 months or even a year, well - there's your problem!

  Despite the modern narrative, there is nothing like experience. Years of experience. You don't get experience in a classroom other than how to be in a classroom.

  The story behind this though is kind of obfuscated, being framed in a student debt crisis, women in STEM, and single mom outlook.

  So trying to flesh out the relevant details, we're left with questions. Is this a breach of co

  • Re: nothing

    Bingo. There are Ivy League graduates who can't get job placement... the degree is just a starting point. You need to develop skills beyond what is taught in any classroom. It's too bad she got suckered by grifters, but it also sounds like she simply doesn't have what it takes to be a Dev.

    • Re:

      I'll probably get modded to Slashdot hell for this, but we have attempted to make Developer or programming a career path for everyone.

      It surely isn't. I have worked with quite a few ladies who are fine engineers and programmers. One who was a web developer - so I can't judge very well on that.

      But the thought process required is not the same as the thought process that many women have who choose to go into different fields.

      The ladies I've worked with that thrive think like a developer. They think like

      • Re:

        Of all the women I've met in IT they're either so good they don't need your help or so bad that they want you to do their job for them. Nothing in between.

        The women who are good at IT are great to work with. The ones that aren't are like any other person who can't hack and think that once they've finished the course they don't have anything else to learn.

    • Re:

      College teaches you how to learn, and introduced concepts that may not come to you to allow you to dig in and research further.

      I learned how to code when I was a kid,. While in highschool I got a job writing software (FoxPro). I was able to take the requirements and make a program that worked.

      However after college, a lot of the "magic" went away, taking dull classes in Data structures, and Formal Languages. I was able to get back into the market at the next level.

      School isn't job training, but it does help

  • by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Saturday April 16, 2022 @11:20AM (#62452016)

    I disagree, Kids at school pick up a raspberry pi (back when you could buy one !) and talk to their friends, crack a book and get a simple web page running - the "hello world example" is a pretty low bar. From there you can hoist yourself up to entry level web developer over six months just by trying things out, reading books from a good library, joining forums etc. so long as you put the time in. What could you learn given good reference material if you dedicated 3 hours a day to it for 6 months ? Something substantial I imagine

    Of course anyone coming from outside the field couldn't know that, and some are taken for a ride. But it's a field where the cost of failure is low if you practice on your own time (hardly like dentistry say) and a prospective jobseeker could easily go from zero to an example portfolio to show a prospective employer in 6 months with no formal training and about the same amount of time input as attending a course

    For sure there will be some employers who want to see a degree, but there are others who will hire based on seeing a good example of prior work

    So to anyone attempting to get a foot in the field I suggest buy a laptop, buy a book, join some tech forums and start developing a relationship with someone offering entry level programming jobs

    once you get a position you have a salary you can use to get credentials

    • Re:

      dedicated 3 hours a day to it for 6 months

      I think the main difference between your posts is whether students can or should rely solely on their school experience after graduation or whether they're willing to spend extra time on their own. In a lot of IT that willingness is an implicit job requirement in part because of rapid technical evolution and the proliferation of specializations.

      • by clawsoon ( 748629 ) on Saturday April 16, 2022 @04:57PM (#62452742)

        whether they're willing to spend extra time on their own.

        I'm lucky I became a developer before I became a single parent, because "willing to spend extra time" and "able to spend extra time" - especially the kind of extra time needed to actually get decent at software development - can be two very different things.

        In particular, it's helpful to have long stretches of uninterrupted time to focus on programming problems, and one thing that kids are very good at is interrupting you. Learning/doing software development and taking care of children are not compatible activities.

    • Re:

      Prior work is a tough one, because it's hard to prove originality.

      • Re:

        That's true, but it makes a good basis to ask revealing questions - what problems did you encounter, how did you overcome them, what part of the code do you feel is especially elegant or novel, what tools did you find useful, how did you cope with browser compatibility challenges, how did you test it etc.

        • Re:

          You start at the bottom, and work your way up. That's anathema these days, I know. But it actually works.

    • Re:

      But that many youthful years of activity is experience. That's how I picked up most of my early experience. But the big thing is that I was really interested. Thing number one.

      If you are really interested, yes. I've taken some crash courses in a very short time period, but that take interest and motivation. Web development is probably one place where you need to be pretty motivated. I do Dreamweaver, and while it's second nature now, there was a learning curve that my interest had to sustain.

      If highly mot

  • Re:

    You are quite right about experience vs. classroom. The fraud is that the school claimed that you could actually become proficient and hireable just by completing the course. A specific claim that is clearly false (clear to someone who is proficient, that is).

    • Re:

      Especially in that timeframe. If she is motivated, an entry level position might be the ticket. Although now, she is going to have a reputation as someone who uses the legal system. It looks like it might be justified, but a prospective employee who bypasses litigation will get a prospective employers attention.

      Odd thing is if the place doesn't have any license, a simple phone call would have allowed her to wreak havoc on them. Hard to give money to a place that doesn't exist any more.

• Re:

  Imagine being a web developer and coming to a 24 year old website that doesn't support unicode input on forum posts. But HTML entities worked fine... “£©®”