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Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

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Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#181

Post by shoefly »

drawnwren wrote: post #128
tschwimmer wrote: post #92

Yes you are. I'm a PM and researched this decision myself a few months back. Most of the "well regarded" bootcamps teach basic front skills (HTML/CSS/JS). You're going to struggle to get a job in any of the the exciting technologies you've listed with this skillset. It's also not widely talked about, but I get the sense that there's a bit of negative signal associated with these boot camps a la ITT/University of Phoe…

Former high salaried person who jumped ship for a coding bootcamp here with some quick thoughts. 1) The negative image of coding bootcamps on HN is worse than in industry, not the other way. There are plenty of coders who came from bootcamps now working in industry. I agree that you aren't as well regarded a CS major, but it is definitely better than self taught. 2) The things you listed he should do are pretty much…

The best software engineers at my company are self-taught.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#182

Post by aetherson »

CarpetBench wrote: post #107
aetherson wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if it makes sense for the OP, but I'll stick up for coding bootcamps as a general concept. I don't agree that most people can just self-study in the same time period and get as effective an education, and I do think that the credential is important. A friend of mine just did a bootcamp -- from a stalled career as a lab technician in which she was making something around $60k/year (in the Bay Area) -- and…

> I'll stick up for coding bootcamps as a general concept Sure, and similarly there isn't anything inherently wrong with for-profit universities: You can certainly find people who excelled in an environment like DeVry and don't regret their decision to attend. Over time one can expect that the "cream will rise to the top" and good bootcamps will have a certain reputation associated with them. Similar to for-profit un…

I think that there are a number of relatively more rosy scenarios for current bootcamp grads' salary outlooks:

* Maybe pent up demand will keep salaries high for quite a few years.

* Maybe salaries will fall off the cliff for people who graduate a bootcamp in a few years (3-5), but by that time current or near-future grads will have gotten far enough away from the glut of very junior people to have some salary stability.

* Or maybe the wages of all software devs (or a large majority of them) will fall off a cliff and that will lower cost of living in the Bay Area and it won't be such a big deal all told.

As to Google: It's a big company, it's hired a lot of people. But I guarantee you that all else being equal, a person who got a traditional university CS education has several big legs up over that person's identical twin who was self-taught or who did a bootcamp, for a junior dev position, without extensive industry experience in any of their cases.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#183

Post by shoefly »

If you've ever done a job search in tech, there are always 10x more software engineering jobs than PM jobs. There is that.

A thought... I have worked at monoliths, a mid-sized corp, a hatchery, and my own. At a monolith, your job is very narrow. I was bored out of my mind and left. At a smaller company, the role of a PM is much more interesting.

I was a PM but I had a coder's heart. I took the route you are thinking about. I would never go back to being a PM.

Two words: software architect

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#184

Post by mahyarm »

FullMtlAlcoholc wrote: post #125

PURE INSANITY, even if you are TRULY passionate about it You work at a top 3 tech company. You are in the best place in the world to learn exciting new tech. I'd kill to get a peek at the codebase of a top 3 tech company. Leverage your job as your coding bootcamp. Maybe you can negotiate 1 day/wk for learning CS. If you can, take a sabbatical. If you can't and live in an ethical gray zone, go to a psychologist and ge…

Top 3 code isn't that amazing, a lot of if it's boring stuff. Guy who wrote the events view controller for example. You can also see most of the good stuff in their open source projects like another commenter said. Go look at android or chrome or many others. The API you deal with as a 3rd party developer is usually code that gets a lot of thought put into it, since it's used by everyone at the company and outside the company.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#185

Post by drawnwren »

shoefly wrote: post #181
drawnwren wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Former high salaried person who jumped ship for a coding bootcamp here with some quick thoughts. 1) The negative image of coding bootcamps on HN is worse than in industry, not the other way. There are plenty of coders who came from bootcamps now working in industry. I agree that you aren't as well regarded a CS major, but it is definitely better than self taught. 2) The things you listed he should do are pretty much…

The best software engineers at my company are self-taught.

That is entirely reasonable. I wasn't commenting on how good the programmers are, just how well those specific things are perceived on resumes with no prior coding-as-a-professional experience.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#187

Post by vitoc »

DelaneyM wrote: post #148

I'm a CTO and active developer with a Harvard MBA, and I think you're nuts. Not because the opportunities you see aren't there; they are. Not because management isn't losing its lustre in tech companies; it is. But because coding is hard . I have a great software education (top school, top program), I've had tremendous opportunities to learn from the best and build amazing things from scratch, and I've been coding pr…

I agree, great advice.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#188

Post by ajmurmann »

toothbrush wrote: post #143
ajmurmann wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan of complicated git flows, but are there really people who force push to resolve conflicts? I mean professional developers who do this on real projects?

Nothing wrong with doing that on a feature branch after rebasing, as long as you are sure no-one else has pushed any changes to that branch in the meantime. Although personally i prefer --force-with-lease, which will warn you if that's happened.

If anybody pulled in the meantime and they don't know you are forced pushing they also might get in trouble because of your force push.

If you have conflicts on a feature branch I guess you aren't the only one working on it and as soon as that's the case force pushing is generally a bad idea unless you coordinate carefully with the test of the team.

The only time I ever force push is on a feature branch that only I work on and I want to amend the commit I just pushed a second ago.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#189

Post by mathgenius »

I don't mean to sound elitist here, but if you were really a dev then it probably would have bitten you in the ass already. What you are saying here sounds completely backwards to me. So here is my advice: spend some time testing the waters, if it doesn't completely intoxicate you then go back to PM. Real dev's go through so much pain and agony in their work, if it isn't also pure joy then it just doesn't work. Getting "excited about technology" is very much not the same thing as actually doing it.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#190

Post by mathgenius »

drawnwren wrote: post #128
tschwimmer wrote: post #92

Yes you are. I'm a PM and researched this decision myself a few months back. Most of the "well regarded" bootcamps teach basic front skills (HTML/CSS/JS). You're going to struggle to get a job in any of the the exciting technologies you've listed with this skillset. It's also not widely talked about, but I get the sense that there's a bit of negative signal associated with these boot camps a la ITT/University of Phoe…

Former high salaried person who jumped ship for a coding bootcamp here with some quick thoughts. 1) The negative image of coding bootcamps on HN is worse than in industry, not the other way. There are plenty of coders who came from bootcamps now working in industry. I agree that you aren't as well regarded a CS major, but it is definitely better than self taught. 2) The things you listed he should do are pretty much…

> you don't get a job after the bootcamp. I'd expect 30-60 days of applying and interviewing before you get the job, just FYI.

It completely boggles my mind that someone can just go and do a "bootcamp" and then land a job two or three months later. Is there really that much demand for coders out there? Such a person could easily do more harm than good.

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