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Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

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Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#241
i find the reactions so intersting. a financial analyst no less who does a three month course to become a programmer. product managers who do the same. senior developer in a year.

in my country these people make so much more than programmers that they would never consider such steps. and senior generally means 5-10 years of experience.

maybe i need to find my way to the us after all. it sounds like 'opposite town'. not really because i need the money, but if i could to tell these suits 'i'm a software engineer, maybe if you do some course you could get as much as i do'. maybe i could die sniggering...

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#245
Attended a bootcamp (General Assembly) in 2014. Very positive outcome for me I got a job offer the week I graduated, but like others have mentioned, a significant number of others had a harder time getting their first gig. Some gave up and I don't blame them. I'm in San Francisco where competition and opportunity are very high.

Bootcamps have their flaws, but are definitely filling a need in the tech sector. There's too many dev jobs and not enough devs so while there's some saturation leaking from bootcamps, it's not because there aren't enough jobs; it's just very competitive and companies generally do poorly at recruiting. Bootcamps are trying to fill a void, but they're not all equal.

For anyone thinking of attending a camp: look for camps that offer scholarships to attend. They're hungry for students for a lot of reasons but also it's indicative of a camp that really wants to offer you something and they've managed to get the big companies to pay the way for you. Yes that's how many of those scholarships work. The bootcamp networks with big companies like Google who offer sponsorship for a set amount of students (usually minority students). Whatever you think of the camp, that's a good sign they're trying to expand their offerings and those camps will usually do a great job of helping you succeed.

Second, look at the more established camps. If you're a woman, Hack Bright and Grace Hopper and the like are premiere camps. Their programs are amazing. If you can get to one, consider those your best options for getting a quality education. For others, App Academy has a well earned reputation; Hack Reactor is competitive; General Assembly is well established and has vast resources for students. I'd say Dev Bootcamp but as someone else mentioned, they've changed somewhat over the years and I'm not sure where the quality lies there. I work with a lot of bootcamp grads from different camps for the past few years and I continue to mentor at these camps so this is my firsthand experience with them.

Finally, be ready to study ...not necessarily all day everyday (people have families to attend to) but definitely for a solid 8-10 hours to get the most of it (and try to take 1 or 2 days off; the brain needs a break to absorb all the things you learn and it will be tempting to keep going without breaks).

In all cases, you're going to be surrounded by other students and developers of varying experience daily ...this is the greatest benefit you reap from bootcamps. You have people you can go to hourly! Ask anyone who is self taught how valuable it is to have this sort of access to getting your questions answered all day every day. You're also going to be at a place that constantly networks with companies on your behalf. Regardless of how good the camp is at placing grads, the fact is they're already in the door and it's a leg up for you to have them do a lot of foot work to connect you. That brings me to networking: bootcamps are a great place to do it. There will be guest speakers and events to attend every week and professionals on site whose daily job is to talk to companies so that you know what they want to hear.

Whatever you think of bootcamps, they're always a hotbed for networking and learning. If you go into it with goals, a learning mindset and dedicate your mental resources for the 12 - 24 weeks you're there, you'll do well.

I must emphasize to make sure you set your goals before hand and chase them tenaciously. I think one of the best I things I did was have a mental timeline and SEVERAL acceptable outcomes that I'd be satisfied with. For example, my endgame was to get a job as a developer within 3 months of graduating. During that time I'd attend weekly workshops and network; and I set a schedule to study algorithms and build an app everyday in any language (the idea was repetition, make hacking second nature while studying algorithms was more about digging deep). I would have accepted working as a contractor, creating my own business or being employed as a junior dev and my study schedule made all of those equally likely outcomes. I focused on improving myself, establishing my own network and at the end of 3 months I'd be prepared to either strike out on my own or have a job. Two of those were in my control, and that was important. Nothing can be promised in a bootcamp no matter where you go so it's important to set realistic expectations and to hold yourself accountable for the outcome.

It's a lot of hardwork, but I found it enjoyable, productive, efficient and just flat out fun (really enjoyed late nights with other poor students and all the creative ways we found to grow together) and I highly recommend it.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#246

Is anyone surprised by the amount bootcamp folks in this thread who are now in "Senior" roles after only a few years? I'm not trying to diminish their accomplishment; Their accomplishment is astounding. But are bootcamps really that effective? I remember interviewing a ton of bootcamp grads from a couple of schools in Austin, TX and being largely unimpressed. You know that feeling after you interview someone where yo…

I think senior titles in general are given out too easily in the software industry. Compared to many other professions and industries, the idea of anyone -- bootcamp graduate or not -- being senior within 3 years is kind of laughable. That's not to say it doesn't happen in other professions, but it's often reserved for the truly exceptional -- being considered senior within a few years of starting your career is for the best of the best and isn't the "normal" path at all.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#247
post #246

Is anyone surprised by the amount bootcamp folks in this thread who are now in "Senior" roles after only a few years? I'm not trying to diminish their accomplishment; Their accomplishment is astounding. But are bootcamps really that effective? I remember interviewing a ton of bootcamp grads from a couple of schools in Austin, TX and being largely unimpressed. You know that feeling after you interview someone where yo…

I think senior titles in general are given out too easily in the software industry. Compared to many other professions and industries, the idea of anyone -- bootcamp graduate or not -- being senior within 3 years is kind of laughable. That's not to say it doesn't happen in other professions, but it's often reserved for the truly exceptional -- being considered senior within a few years of starting your career is for…

It's where the "senior" distinction isn't very useful I think... It's very possible to be leading/running a team in three years in nearly any profession if you are good at what you are doing. Does that make you "senior"? In relation to the people below you, sure... But maybe just using "team lead" or something is more accurate.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#248

Disclaimer: My post-bootcamp experience (Chicago 2014) was probably very different from what I'm seeing today (New York 2017). Every meetup I go to seems flooded with bootcamp grads, and it appears the market is oversaturated with bootcamp grads. Overall, it seems like it's much harder to get that first engineering job I graduated from Dev Bootcamp Chicago in 2014. Before starting, I was a financial analyst for three…

"However, the the technical skills I learned from the curriculum ended up being almost completely irrelevant the second I graduated."

I hope both boot camps and CS curricula will emphasize this point very strongly. The exact technology stack you are learning right now is probably not the one you will be using in the near future, and that's OK. Learning to learn, and understanding the fundamentals of what makes a good developer regardless of technology stacks are the key skills.

Anecdata: In a recent job search, the developers who had something close to the technology stack we use were bad on algorithmic questions, and we decided to hire the person who had almost no overlap with our technology stack but aced all of the algorithm questions.

The technologies we use in our backend have changed over time as our needs have changed, so it's very important to us the person filling this position understood the underlying algorithms well enough to have a good mental model of the key algorithms determining how the system will perform and write code that plays to the strengths of those algorithms. (Or pick a different system implementing different algorithms with different characteristics, if required.)

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#249
post #159

I got paid to learn to program. 45k a yr to start off with. Then 70k a few months later. You don't need to pay a school to learn to code. The sad truth is, there are recruiters who will throw out your resume if you associate with bootcamps. Why? Because the quality of the programmers they generate is low. Code camps run like mills. From stories I've heard, they pay instructors as contractors below market rate (20-50k…

> "The sad truth is, there are recruiters who will throw out your resume if you associate with bootcamps.Why? Because the quality of the programmers they generate is low. >Code camps run like mills. From stories I've heard, they pay instructors as contractors below market rate (20-50k, long long hours) and throw them away with no severance." Bootcamp grad here who mentioned it prominently in my resume and blogged my…

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Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#250

Disclaimer: My post-bootcamp experience (Chicago 2014) was probably very different from what I'm seeing today (New York 2017). Every meetup I go to seems flooded with bootcamp grads, and it appears the market is oversaturated with bootcamp grads. Overall, it seems like it's much harder to get that first engineering job I graduated from Dev Bootcamp Chicago in 2014. Before starting, I was a financial analyst for three…

I graduated from DBC Chicago about 7 months ago, found a job as a Rails developer at a start-up here about 3 months later (I graduated right before the holidays though). Of my cohort of about 16 people I believe only about 2 or 3 haven't found jobs in tech yet, though some instructors told us we had a particularly strong group. I think it's true that you do probably have to hustle harder to stand out from other bootcamp grads for a lot of positions, but there are also now some bigger companies that have been happy with previous bootcamp grads and actively seek them out to fill new entry level positions.
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