Hiring a good software engineer in Silicon¹ Valley these days can seem almost as daunting² as creating the next big thing. Just ask the companies.

如今，在硅谷招聘一名优秀的软件工程师就跟创造一件新事物一样困难。硅谷的公司对此都有切身体会。

"I think this might be the worst engineering market ever," Jess Lee, CEO of the style community Polyvore, told Fortune recently. A former Google (GOOG) product manager, Lee now finds her profitable startup vying³ for talent alongside Facebook (FB) and Twitter. Added Lee: "The kinds of offers they're giving out are astronomical⁴."

时尚网站Polyvore的CEO杰斯?李最近对《财富》杂志（Fortune）表示：“我认为现在的工程市场是史上最糟糕的。” 杰斯?李曾在谷歌（Google）担任产品经理，她发现自己已经实现盈利的初创公司要跟Facebook和Twitter这样的大公司抢人才。杰斯?李补充说：“他们给出的薪酬对我而言简直是天文数字。”

Indeed, the average annual salary for Google software engineers now hovers⁵ around $143,000 and skyrockets to as much as $550,000, according to job site Glassdoor, and that's beforefactoring in generous signing bonuses and company perks⁶. (Larger companies like Facebook and Apple (AAPL) aren't far behind.) While the talent vacuum remains⁷ problematic for Bay Area companies, it presents a huge opportunity for candidates. And filling that void may be easier now more than ever.

确实如此。据求职网站Glassdoor统计，谷歌软件工程师的平均年薪目前约为143,000美元，最高可达到550,000美元，还不包括丰厚的签约奖金和公司福利。【Facebook和苹果（Apple）等大公司也毫不逊色。】人才真空对于旧金山湾区的公司而言依然令人头疼，但却给求职者创造了巨大的机会。填补人才真空要比以往更容易。

Enter the Silicon Valley "boot camp," a nouveau vocational school for the coding-inclined. Such nine- to 12-week accelerated programs, including Dev Bootcamp, Hackbright Academy, and Hack⁸ Reactor⁹, arm students with the fundamental skills needed to compete as engineers -- no previous coding experience required. That, coupled with pent-up demand is why program applicants¹⁰ come from all walks of life, from thirtysomething nannies to fortysomething attorneys and bankers.

欢迎来到硅谷“新兵训练营”。这些新兴的职业学校以编程为主要学习内容，课程包括Dev Bootcamp、Hackbright Academy和Hack Reactor等加速课程。它们为期9至12周，可以让学员们掌握与工程师们竞争所需要的基本技能。学习这些课程并不要求编程经验，再加上被抑制的人才需求，因此，课程的申请者们来自各行各业，既有三十多岁的保姆，也有四十多岁的律师和银行从业人员。

"We've had plenty of students who are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s and realized that whatever they were doing wasn't working for them," explains Jesse Farmer, co-founder of the nine-week Dev Bootcamp, which taught its first class in early 2012. Another boot camp co-founder puts it more bluntly: "The promise is the promise of livelihood¹¹."

杰西?法莫尔是Dev Bootcamp的联合创始人，她解释说：“我们的许多学生都是30岁、40岁甚至50岁的人，他们意识到自己目前从事的工作不适合自己。”Dev Bootcamp为期9周，2012年初开课。另外一家新兵训练营的联合创始人解释得更加直白：“人们希望过上更好的生活。”

Getting into a program can prove a challenge. The average acceptance rate averages below 20% and can go as low as 5%, as is currently the case for Hackbright Academy. The $12,000 10-week engineering fellowship for women is full-time¹², with classes taught Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., in San Francisco's Financial District. Hackbright's current class includes 26 students winnowed¹³ down from 400-plus applicants. And while previous coding experience isn't required, CEO and co-founder David Phillips explains that Hackbright looks for people who have some sort of demonstrated interest in becoming software engineers. That includes applicants who have attempted teaching themselves the basics, whether via free or paid online resources or college courses in computer science.

要想真正获得录取也是一项挑战。这些课程的平均录取率低于20%，而Hackbright Academy目前的录取率甚至只有5%。女性工程类课程为期10周，学费12,000美元，授课时间从周一至周五上午10点至下午6点。授课地点在旧金山的金融区。Hackbright目前的班级由从400多名申请人当中选拔出来的26名学生组成。虽然不要求之前有编程经验，但CEO兼联合创始人戴维?菲利普斯解释道，Hackbright录取学生的条件是，学生必须证明自己有兴趣成为一名软件工程师。其中包括通过免费或收费在线资源或大学课程，尝试自学计算机科学基础知识的申请人。

At Hackbright, students spend the first five weeks working in pairs, learning basics like HTML, JavaScript, and Python. The last five weeks are focused on a final project. On career day, graduates set up individual stations, and partner companies such as Twitter, Pinterest, and Square spend seven minutes with each, learning about their projects -- the software engineering equivalent of speed dating. Almost 90% of Hackbright and Dev Bootcamp graduates receive offers within three months and now work as engineers at companies like Facebook and Eventbrite. In the case of one-year-old Hack Reactor, around 68 out of the course's 70 total alumni are now software engineers at places like Salesforce (CRM), earning an average salary in the low six digits¹⁴.

在Hackbright，学生前五周两人一组学习HTML、JavaScript和Python等基础知识。后五周的重点则是最终项目。在招聘日，毕业生们会搭建自己的展位，Twitter、照片分享网站Pinterest和移动支付公司Square等合作公司会在每一个展位拿出七分钟时间，了解他们的项目——软件工程相当于速配交友。Hackbright和Dev Bootcamp的毕业生约有90%在三个月内都收到了工作邀请，目前都在Facebook和在线活动策划平台Eventbrite等公司担任工程师。成立仅一年的Hack Reactor目前总共培养了70名毕业生，其中有68人在客户关系管理公司Salesforce等公司担任软件工程师，平均收入六位数出头。

Still, many companies remain skeptical¹⁵ that students educated in three months or less will meet their demands. And there may also be some engineering situations where the traditional four-year training from a top computer science school like MIT remains superior. "The more you get into breaking new technical ground -- moving more data than has ever been moved, faster than it's ever been moved, for example -- the more relevant I believe a classical academic training may be," says Roy Bahat, head of the $75 million venture capital tech fund Bloomberg Beta. "You don't need a Ph.D. in materials science to be an artist, but if you have one, I bet you can do some cool stuff."

当然，有许多公司仍然会质疑仅仅接受过三个月培训的学生能否满足他们的需求。某些情况下，在麻省理工学院（MIT）等顶尖计算机科学学院传统的四年制教育可能更占优势。罗伊?巴哈特认为：“新技术突破越深入——比如，移动数据量更大，移动速度超过以往任何时候——传统学院教育便越重要。要成为一名艺术家并不需要有材料学的博士学位，但如果你拥有这样一个博士学位，我敢肯定你一定能创造出更酷的作品。”巴哈特是价值7,500万美元的风险投资科技基金Bloomberg Beta的负责人。

Lisa Lee, Facebook's Diversity Program Manager, concedes students with four-plus years of computer science fundamentals may fare differently from those exposed to them for just 10 weeks or so. But she also points out that intensive bootcamps have produced excellent candidates and that Facebook continues to screen them for technical and analytical¹⁶ roles. To wit, the company hired one Hackbright Academy alum for an engineering role working on internationalization. Says Lee: "Having a solid foundation is important, but it is also something that can be built on the job in real-life situations and work experiences."

Facebook多元化项目经理丽莎?李承认， 接受过四年以上计算机科学基础教育的学生与仅仅接受过10周左右速成培训的学生确实存在差异。但她也指出，高强度的速成班培养出了优秀的候选人，Facebook可以继续从中筛选出技术和分析人才。事实上，这家公司已经从Hackbright Academy招聘一名毕业生从事工程职位，负责国际化。丽莎?李说：“拥有扎实的基硅谷础知识当然很有必要，但这些东西也可以在实际生活和工作经验中获取。”