Google says coding school graduates 'not quite prepared' to work at Google

One route for people who want to work in technology as a programmer is to go to a coding bootcamp.

These are short programs which take people with minimal coding knowledge, and presumably, a few months later, they emerge from the school as employable software engineers.

But it turns out at least one big company synonymous with Silicon Valley doesn't see a coding school background as a positive.

"Our experience has found that most graduates from these programs are not quite prepared for software engineering roles at Google without additional training or previous programming roles in the industry," Maggie Johnson, Google's director of education and university relations, told Bloomberg in a longer feature about coding schools in Silicon Valley.

To be fair, even college graduates who majored in computer science require hand-holding early in their careers. But graduates from four-year colleges generally have a better grasp of coding concepts, Bloomberg reports.

Notably, coding schools can be expensive.

Bloomberg highlights a now-defunct school that charged $14,400 for a 14-week program. They can be worth it if you get a high-paying technology job at the end of the process, and many coding schools highlight the companies that their graduates work at on their websites. Some people certainly have success with coding schools.

The problem is that there isn't very much regulation to tell prospective students which coding schools are worth the time and expense. California requires for-profit schools to register with the government, but there is a lack of oversight over programs in other states.

And that, in turn, could lead big companies like Google to find it's not worthwhile to narrow down which coding bootcamps are producing students with quality skills - at least when there are waves of recent Stanford and Berkeley graduates who want to work at Google as well.

The entire Bloomberg article is a worthwhile read.