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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?

#221
You're absolutely insane and you need help. Seek professional advise from your school counsellor, if required. Below I wrote some paragraphs to help you. If you do this, someone should go, figure out who you are in real life and revoke your MBA. Or you should just request a refund of your $150k tuition.

If you really work in top 3 tech firm, your colleagues are Stanford/Berkeley/MIT/CMU grads, who ate rice and ketchup writing operating systems and compilers. This will be the level you have to get to to contribute to any technical project in a meaningful way. But basically: when you were doing business case studies and traveling around the world to meet world leaders and learn from the best CEOs how they handled corporate crisis, they kept hacking algorithms in a black window with grey letters. I know--I did that too.

I have 15+ years of UNIX experience, 10+ years of programming experience and 5 years of real-world software engineering experience. I'm thinking how to get your job all day long :-) This requires reading tons of books: http://www.koszek.com/reading/ which I do and I sacrifice time with my gf because of that. If you look at this list it's business, management, investments, people stuff. You'll have to do the same, but read about software and hack code in front of the computer, etc.

Most of HN experienced crowd are smart technical people with worse credentials, who are attempting to move from coding job to architecture/design/management job, which you now have. You are our target :) You can see it in many threads. It'd be like moving from a coffee shop manager to a waiter. Ask some senior buddies from a random technical team whether they'd like your job. It's good to see people appreciating each other professions, and we appreciate that too, but don't do this job switch yet or we will crucify you :)

My advice is this: take a break from work (just because you can -- you have a shitload of money anyway, or maybe just "enough" due to loans; go on leave, but for god's sake, don't quit your job), join the bootcamp if you really like, and don't tell anyone you did it. You see from this thread bootcamp, unlike your MBA, don't have established value in the industry yet. It won't harm you, for sure, but you won't be a software engineer. Bootcamp sounds good for you--you're a smart person and wants to learn more, since I think you haven't hacked much code before.

Better idea is what other guys say: just get yourself all online programs there are. All of them. They are $30/month at most, and Udacity is $200. Get them all for a month. You'll spend maybe $200 + 5*$30 = $350, but maybe $0, since first 2-4 weeks are free. You'll pick one that you like, because it'll fit your learning style. Stick to it and just do exercises. On top of that get books. Books are dirt cheap compared to value they bring to your portfolio. Whichever books you need; all of them. I think you'll have to end up doing bs I do for business/management books: google "top 10 programming books" and get them. Even if you don't read it, get it. It'll be maybe $350, since you may end up getting 10 books. So it's $350-$700 investment at most -- you'll get a grasp on what's going on. Then maybe $30/mo for 6 months to teach you one thing well and 2 in a sloppy way you'll kinda understand. And repeat it maybe 2 times. Basically: watch classes, do exercises and immediately after that write your toy programs on the side or (better) real products.

So you'll spend at most $1k to learn something you want. It's also spending $1k to save your $150k investment you've made by doing MBA in top 3 school. It's 0.7% cost of what you've spent on school, and still much, much cheaper than a bootcamp.

If you're a good MBA you're a cheap, stingy bastard that can get people to pay for your stuff. And top 3 high-tech companies have educational grants. Some up to $9/yr. They pay you for your education. So have the company pay for this bootcamp, if you come up with good enough reason, it'll be all free.

Now:

If you absolutely truly love hacking code and are obsessed with it and you think that yes -- this is your 2nd calling and you basically don't see yourself talking to people anymore - congratulations. You are eligible for leaving your job, retraining yourself and entering coding workforce. Trade your suit for dirty sweater and you're all set to apply for a junior dev role.

But I think it won't happen.

What will happen thanks to my advise instead is this: you'll make yourself be in like 0.1% top category of MBA people who truly understand what software is all about AND have a PM job. People who you work with will see that, so you'll be getting good reviews etc. You'll come back to this thread, see how wrong about PMing you were, and you'll apologise. You'll then keep studying and getting better at being a PM and being technical manager. You'll learn how to manage technical people, how to partition tasks, build features, build products and build tech companies. And no, it's not very easy and it's not fading away. I see you posted some stuff about machine learning in the past. If that's your field of interest: go and get TensorFlow original publication from Google. It's a paper where you see an abstract is shorter than a list of authors. Do you think these guys would have built Tensorflow without any PM of some sort?

Anyway, story goes: then you will quit your top 3 high-tech firm, and start a high-tech startup, get $20M in funding. And then you'll come back here, DM me personally and offer me 1% in your new enterprise for having a profound impact on your life and you'll offer me a PM role in your new startup. I'll gladly accept it for this 1+ hr free of charge advising.

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

#222
post #118

As a programmer, you'll encounter much more ageism than you would as a PM, to the point of being unemployable from 40 or so.

Ageism is definitely a thing, but I'd challenge your assumptions about 40. I turn 40 in April, and make more money, and work on more interesting problems with new tech than ever in my career.. most of the developers I know my age are well employed. Then again, I'm in Texas - it may be a much different story in SV/SF or in "big tech". That said, a 40 year old still using the same stack they used at 30 is probably in t…

When was the last time you went looking for a new job?

A /lot/ of companies insist on "culture fit", which unfortunately does include a lot of sexism, ageism and racism. There's been plenty of good discussions about this on HN, and the fact that you've been lucky enough to avoid the problem, doesn't necessarily mean that the problem doesn't exist - or that people who are discriminated against are just stuck using ten year old stacks.

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

#223
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ageism is definitely a thing, but I'd challenge your assumptions about 40. I turn 40 in April, and make more money, and work on more interesting problems with new tech than ever in my career.. most of the developers I know my age are well employed. Then again, I'm in Texas - it may be a much different story in SV/SF or in "big tech". That said, a 40 year old still using the same stack they used at 30 is probably in t…

When was the last time you went looking for a new job? A /lot/ of companies insist on "culture fit", which unfortunately does include a lot of sexism, ageism and racism. There's been plenty of good discussions about this on HN, and the fact that you've been lucky enough to avoid the problem, doesn't necessarily mean that the problem doesn't exist - or that people who are discriminated against are just stuck using ten…

Honestly, a long time. For a long time I've done either remote work or relied on my personal network.

I also can cheat the system a bit - even though I'm 39 I look super young and wear the typical tshirt and hoodie you'd associate with someone much younger. (I look in the mirror and see a 23 year old, so I think that shapes my personality)

Additionally, I'm in Houston, where many developers are in healthcare or energy, and they do tend to use older stacks (usually .NET or ColdFusion)

That said, I think it's just a series of data points, and what you think a career should look like.

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

#224

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…

> 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.

A company I know of (in a not-so-hot city in the U.S.) was so desperate for coders that they hired a Physics student with basically no coding experience.

He was a disaster, they'd have been much better off with a bootcamp graduate.

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

#225
Please do not jump blindly into becoming a programmer/developer/software engineer. You should try out a few classes to see if it is something you are interested in and want to do for a long time. Don't forget that after 35 most programmers are moved to management roles since programming is a young persons game. Good luck!

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

#226

Thanks for the responses guys. A few more points of clarification. PM means product manager. Top 3 tech think Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple. In terms of my motivation I think today we are where the internet was in 1994-95, at the cusp of the next big technology wave. I think technologies like deep learning and AI more broadly will fundamentally change every single industry and the next big tech companies will be cr…

No, you're not crazy. Source: I quit a six-figure job as a PM to do a bootcamp and am now working as a software developer at ThoughtWorks. If you're viewing the decision purely in terms of $$$ (as many other commenters here seem to be doing), it's true that in 10 years you will have earned less money on this path than you would have earned while remaining a PM. But will you be happier day-to-day? I certainly am. Both…

I suspect the salary difference will be a LOT more than 15 to 20%. More like 50% at first, and tough to close that gap (he might get on a fast track, but he'd also have gotten raises as a PM).

According to Glassdoor, Product Manager at Google is something like 200K/year (an MBA should be making more), Facebook is similar, and Apple a little less.

A bootcamp graduate shouldn't be making more than 100K/year from what I know of the U.S. (might be wrong).

Maybe his credentials make him hired at a higher salary, but nowhere near his former one.

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

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're interested in working with cool tech like blockchain and AI, but are tired of startup culture, a good option might be one of the "Digital Innovation Lab" organizations that more traditional companies are putting together. I just started working for one, and it's pretty great - I have stability, sane hours, solid compensation, and a healthy culture, but I also get to work with a bunch of really smart people…

Interesting, I am currently in the process of setting one up here in Singapore. Could you give me more information about staffing (FTE devs, PM's, Mentor's, etc). How long is the process from Ideation to Innovation Lab?

I joined the lab after it had been up and running for about 6 months, so I'm not sure what setting one up looks like.

However, I can tell you that probably the most important thing we had going for us in terms of getting of the ground is my boss, our VP of Innovation. He's been with the company for a many years, and is generally very well regarded. He also works tirelessly to promote the lab and get the rest of the company involved.

We also have an HR manager, herself a long time company woman, and that's been essential for recruiting talented engineers and inters, as well as helping guys like me with the transition from startup land to an old school corporation.

Other than that, we're all full time engineers, plus interns from the local university, especially in the summer.

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