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

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

#291

Post by lgas » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

dmalvarado wrote: post #288

mabbo wrote: post #35

Note some selection bias may exist in the answers. If you did a tech bootcamp three years ago and it went fantastically, you're probably reading HN today and will see and reply to this. The more success you had, the more likely you're a developer today! If it went terribly, you might still be working at Starbucks and don't read HN very often.

>>"What are you doing now? Do you feel that the bootcamp prepared you for the jobs you got? Do you think most of your cohort are still working as developers?" I don't think selection bias is a problem for the questions the OP asked.

If (let's say) only 10% of boot camp developers went on to get a development job, and that's roughly the 10% that still reads HN, then they're all going to answer "Yes, I feel that the bootcamp prepared me for the job I got." the other 90% of bootcamp students will answer no, but if they aren't here on HN they won't answer at all. That's selection bias and it's a huge problem for the exact questions the OP asked.

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

#292

Post by MaxwellM » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #35

Note some selection bias may exist in the answers. If you did a tech bootcamp three years ago and it went fantastically, you're probably reading HN today and will see and reply to this. The more success you had, the more likely you're a developer today! If it went terribly, you might still be working at Starbucks and don't read HN very often.

Perhaps, if you did a bootcamp and are gainfully employed, you are busy and have less time to read HN.

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

#293

Post by geccan » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 5:37 PM UTC

Teknoman117 wrote: post #276

jimbokun wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

The problem is that people misunderstand the point of getting a Computer Science degree. At the school I attended, the head of the department was upfront that what the degree would be teaching had nothing to do with any specific stack any specific company was using, learning those things would be up to us individually. Personally, I ended up dual majoring in computer science and computer engineering. The idea was tha…

A professor in college told us that we'd likely never use 90% of what we learned in our curriculum. He said engineering is largely an exercise in vocabulary: the core structures in CS are like "function" words (articles, prepositions, pronouns) in human language; they tie the other "meaty" words (nouns, adjectives) together. The nouns and adjectives are the specific technologies you use.

A CS degree teaches you the function words. A bootcamp teaches you a small set of meaty words with a sprinkling of function words. However, the meaty words are the most useful day-to-day. But you have to be able to discern and use new meaty words all the time, or you'll "sound" dated eventually. "Radical, dude! I'm stoked about these parachute pants!"

I've met many CS-degree-holding engineers who don't understand this vocabulary exercise. They choose a particular programming language they're most familiar with and proceed to reinvent the meaty words. They're doing it wrong, and will almost always be less productive and useful. Bogus!

If I'm going to build a machine learning system, I'm not going to open my editor and start writing parsing libraries and convex optimization algos in my favorite language. I'll find a well-supported framework and learn how to use it. If I need to learn the framework's language better, then I will.

Go for the meat first, and you'll be a great engineer.

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

#294

Post by inputcoffee » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 5:47 PM UTC

rubicon33 wrote: post #284

abeyer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't work at Starbucks and read HN? Seriously, though, after some early career burnout I did a stint at a restaurant job to pay the bills while I decided what I wanted to do with my life...and that was by far my most productive period of time as far as keeping up on general tech news, personal projects, academic research/reading/conferences, etc... A non-code day job can be a great way to have the mental energy…

There is a YouTuber I like to watch sometimes because he occasionally uploads videos demonstrating really unique and high level programming skills. His day job? A bus driver. I saw that in the comment section of YouTube, people always ask him "why don't you go code for a job and make tons of money!". His response is that coding is something loves to do, and he wouldn't want to risk losing that love for it, by making…

No link? Give us a link, please.

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

#295

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 5:51 PM UTC

rubicon33 wrote: post #290

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

living on a bus driver salary would be very difficult As is often mentioned, that depends on where you choose to live. Around here, I know someone who was a bus driver and a homeowner. She was quite happy with it.

I suppose that's true, and I should keep that in mind more often. I live in California, and though some rural areas do reach that kind of affordability, they're also so remote and disconnected from society that I don't consider them an option.

remote and disconnected from society that I don't consider them an option

One person's bug is another person's feature :-)

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

#296

Post by morgtheborg » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 5:52 PM UTC

I took on a position as the sole web dev as my first position, with promises that a senior dev would be onboarded within 3 months.

Instead, the company paid for me to pair program with experts in different areas (security, devops, general full stack) whenever I felt out of my depth; the first 6 months it meant I spent eight hours pair programming a week with the focus being on my learning rather than feature pushing. I found the people I wanted to learn from either from my past instructors at my bootcamp who really impressed me or from AirPair.

3.5 years later I'm .5 years from vesting 4% at a company that's closing its A rounds now. I work with people I love, I learn new things routinely, I regularly get technical level ups through pair programming or classes paid for by the company, and it's pretty awesome.

I renegotiated my compensation probably every 6 months. I'm quick to give pushback if I'm out of my depth or feel like I'm being treated poorly. It's a startup so it's been a learning experience for everyone.

I'm pretty damn happy how it all ended up.

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

#297

Post by handbanana » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 5:54 PM UTC

JohnDotAwesome wrote: post #217

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…

A lot of the other comments mention valid reasons for this.

In my experience many of these folks are rails, js, or purely frontend devs. These circles seem to have a lower entry to those titles, for whatever reason.

I feel comfortable in saying, if I spent 2-3 years just on js or rails - I would have a higher title than if I stuck with what I am doing currently.

However, I'm not convinced on the whole that I'd be as competent in general engineering terms compared to if I just stuck with what I'm doing now. This is not to say some js or rails devs aren't quite brilliant - it's just a trend I have noticed.

This is from my experience interviewing rails and js devs, and also keeping in contact with fellow bootcamp grads that are currently js or rails devs. I am not suggesting this is a universal truth, it's just an observation

And to your point about fresh bootcamp grads being very green/not impressive. Unless you're interviewing the cream of the crop from the top camps (which usually have prior exposure to the field in some way) - you'll likely not run into any rockstars, or even anyone that impressive.

I'd be interested to know what your experience interviewing fresh college graduates is in comparison.

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

#298

Post by suddensleep » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 5:54 PM UTC

I'll speak up from the (seemingly underrepresented) data science side here, despite not making the 3+ years ago cutoff.

I attended a data science bootcamp almost two years ago now. It was 12 weeks long and ran 9-5 each day with a mixture of lectures and pair programming exercises in the morning, and time set aside in the afternoon for working on projects. My cohort was very diverse; there were kids just out of grad school, teachers, actuaries, data/business analysts, and even practicing software developers all taking the same course. I came into the bootcamp with a fair amount of background knowledge (Bachelors/Masters degrees in Math as well as a ~10 year history of teaching myself various computer science concepts and languages), and I have to say that this served me quite well. I didn't struggle to learn Python (the language of choice for this program) or grapple with what gradient descent was really doing, because these were already parts of the way that I understood the field. Instead, I used my 12 weeks to learn about Git/Github, get really good at actually working from the command line, learn about different "big data" techniques and database structures, and pursue a passion project.

That being said, throughout the bootcamp I was keenly aware of the fact that no one was going to "fail out". There were students that needed more direct guidance than others when difficult topics were broached, and there were students whose presentations revealed that their project hadn't worked as well as they'd hoped (this includes some of my own projects). On the one hand, it was good to have a community of people (students and instructors alike) who embraced these failures and helped you learn from them. On the other hand, it instilled some level of self-doubt: "Maybe I am wasting a solid amount of my life savings on an experience that will only teach me how bad I am at this." Or even, "I feel like I did well with this project, and I have some validation from my peers and mentors, but what would a future boss think of this work?"

As a practicing data scientist now, I feel like the bootcamp prepared me to both know how to ask the types of questions data scientists ask, and to know where to look for the answers I need. As far as I know, everyone in my cohort is employed as a data scientist now, save a couple individuals with visa issues (and these few are still actively working on personal projects). Those with prior exposure to the field were certainly able to get better jobs, and quicker.

Ninja edit: italics

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

#299

Post by yomly » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 5:57 PM UTC

geccan wrote: post #293

Teknoman117 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that people misunderstand the point of getting a Computer Science degree. At the school I attended, the head of the department was upfront that what the degree would be teaching had nothing to do with any specific stack any specific company was using, learning those things would be up to us individually. Personally, I ended up dual majoring in computer science and computer engineering. The idea was tha…

A professor in college told us that we'd likely never use 90% of what we learned in our curriculum. He said engineering is largely an exercise in vocabulary: the core structures in CS are like "function" words (articles, prepositions, pronouns) in human language; they tie the other "meaty" words (nouns, adjectives) together. The nouns and adjectives are the specific technologies you use. A CS degree teaches you the f…

While you'd be a very brave or silly individual to try to reimplement BLAS yourself, there is definitely value in knowing how to implement any library for yourself.

If programming is behaviour and data, then the deeper and broader your appreciation for data and behaviour in its many forms, the more tools you'll have in your toolkit.

Learning by doing is mainly the defacto way of learning for programming, and so while you may never use your own language to ship in production, there is still value in learning to build your own compiler.

When you use someone else's framework, you are using their abstractions and their mental model of the world. Lucky for you if it happens to be spot on with your own or aligns with your way of thinking. If the abstraction is too tight though, and the fundamental knowledge is not your own, then when "new-and-shiny" framework is outdated for "newer-and-shinier" framework, your framework-specific knowledge is completely redundant.

That's not even starting on confidence that comes with being able to roll up your sleeves and read anyone's code when you've earned enough chops by building various projects.

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

#300

Post by draw_down » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 5:59 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #35

Note some selection bias may exist in the answers. If you did a tech bootcamp three years ago and it went fantastically, you're probably reading HN today and will see and reply to this. The more success you had, the more likely you're a developer today! If it went terribly, you might still be working at Starbucks and don't read HN very often.

For heaven's sake, it's a question on a message board, not a statistics thesis.