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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?

#321

Post by sologoub »

goorley wrote: post #313
gothrowaway wrote: post #312

See the above? This is what codecamps do to innocent people. They prey on the weak, act authoritative, and take advantage of their hopes of getting jobs. You should demand your money back, every penny. > I can only look to my choice of bootcamp Bootcamps are not gatekeepers. They portray themselves as such to take your money. There's no such thing as an elite bootcamp. It's a lie to pray on your naïveté of the indust…

I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not of the opinion that I do not have the ability or the skill set. I have been a finalist for various positions (full-stack developer, web developer, project manager, product manager, front-end dev) for 16 companies over the last year - all have which have rejected me on my inexperience in technology. That's not to mention the many many more that I interviewed with that I did not…

> I have been a finalist for various positions (full-stack developer, web developer, project manager, product manager, front-end dev) for 16 companies over the last year

That might part of the problem - project manager and product manager are not nearly the same skill set, and I would argue that they might even be incompatible skill sets in one given individual.

You might better served by focusing on one area, say front end (if that's your thing) or data processing, etc.

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

#322

Post by xiaoma »

gothrowaway wrote: post #318
xiaoma wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Mind telling us who you are so we can take a look at your code and background? YouTube channel and GitHub would be helpful for us in assessing what you learned when you went to the bootcamp." I don't really need validation from you and you've clearly got an ax to grind. I have linked to both previously if you care to go digging in my account history. Heck, this site is where I first met the cofounder of the school…

It'd be helpful for the people in this thread to see your YouTube and Github to support your claims. We'd like to understand your motives and the veracity of the veracity of the testimonial you're providing. > No. The major rift in all threads like this is a difference in opinion about the primacy of credentials. I You responded to a thread about the age of your HN account as a bona fide. ( https://news.ycombinator.c…

The age of my account is evidence that it's not a sock puppet as you suggested commenters on this story were here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14519547) and in your flagged comment here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14519515).

Anyone in this thread who is sufficiently curious can look at my comment history and find my social media. What would be far more instructive would be simply going to LinkedIn and searching "school name" + "Google/Facebook/whatever company you're interested in". That will turn up profiles of alum currently working there.

Your comments have been relentlessly hostile and negative on this thread. Implying that I'm lying or have underhanded motives unless I post my account handles is essentially the opposite of the guidelines here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

This is my final comment on this thread.

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

#323

Post by good_vibes »

maddcastles wrote: post #130
good_vibes wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They let you teach with only that much experience?

I had 1 full year of dev experience and I had direct bootcamp experience. Also, I'm technically a TA, not the lead teacher. Bootcamps, such as GA, hire teachers and TAs who are fresh out out of their own bootcamps, with a lot less professional experience than I had. Also, like a lot of bootcamp grads in this thread, I did a lot of programming on my own, getting better and more confident. So I personally believe I was…

Gotchya. I guess I'm in better shape than I thought. I'd like to teach at a bootcamp in some foreign country and travel in my spare time too.

How did you apply? How hard was the interview process?

It's just demoralizing sometimes when every job listing around where I live says 3-5 years of experience required for something that isn't beyond what I can do right now.

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

#324

Post by Mz »

good_vibes wrote: post #323
maddcastles wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had 1 full year of dev experience and I had direct bootcamp experience. Also, I'm technically a TA, not the lead teacher. Bootcamps, such as GA, hire teachers and TAs who are fresh out out of their own bootcamps, with a lot less professional experience than I had. Also, like a lot of bootcamp grads in this thread, I did a lot of programming on my own, getting better and more confident. So I personally believe I was…

Gotchya. I guess I'm in better shape than I thought. I'd like to teach at a bootcamp in some foreign country and travel in my spare time too. How did you apply? How hard was the interview process? It's just demoralizing sometimes when every job listing around where I live says 3-5 years of experience required for something that isn't beyond what I can do right now.

FWIW, when I was in GIS school, they talked about the fact that many GIS jobs would say crap like "requires 5 years experience in X software" when the software in question was not even 5 years old.

So, you might want to take that requirement with a grain of salt.

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

#325

Post by hello_newman »

rexpop wrote: post #73
hello_newman wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My cohort was a little weird, people went on to do other stuff, like start their own bootcamps I think that's really funny about the first ~3 DBC cohorts. A few grads of those first cohorts went on to start App Academy, Hack Reactor, and Hackbright Academy (I think) and others like it.

What do you make of it?

well back in 2012 was literally the first time a code bootcamp had been done. I think because of that, a lot of smart people saw you could take this business model and get started really cheaply and it could be huge, which is was/is.

If you look at the early cohorts of DBC, anyone of those people could have learned to program on their own or already was. I think a lot of smart risk takers saw a huge opportunity that was wide open and ran with it.

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

#326

Post by geccan »

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #319
geccan wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I often hear "You weren't a CS major?!?!". My common response is "You were?!?!". I worked in finance as an equities trader for 6 years before taking a boot camp and switching over. I was heavily involved in hiring while in my prior role. One thing I found is that I was drastically more inclined to hire the English major over the Finance major. If they've managed to overcome the commonplace cognitive biases that work…

It seems you're guilty of the same cognitive biases. "Screw those finance guys! Rosencrantz and Guildenstern over Oskar Morgenstern!"

Edit: On my first job interview out of college I was turned down by the head of engineering because I didn't have enough experience in C++. "Silly college kid can't do shit." I was called back and offered a job because another manager was impressed by my work at the speech recognition lab at my school. Three months into my employment they filed a patent on an algorithm I devised to build databases that were searchable through speech interfaces. The engineering head ate crow.

Hiring developers is a crap shoot, but it's hard nowadays to hire a truly incompetent developer. I've really only encountered one in my lifetime who was incapable of basic development tasks.

In the 15 years I've been a working engineer (and 25 in general programming), I've noticed the level of knowledge and skill required to build usable products has been greatly reduced. Why? Because there's been 15 years of advancement by seasoned engineers, prompted by business people, to build tools and frameworks that fit large swaths of business needs.

That cycle is ever present in tech. The obscure things become clearer and more accessible to laymen through the efforts of the experts. And you can bet those experts have deeply studied CS topics, whether at a college or on their own.

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

#327

Post by good_vibes »

Mz wrote: post #324
good_vibes wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotchya. I guess I'm in better shape than I thought. I'd like to teach at a bootcamp in some foreign country and travel in my spare time too. How did you apply? How hard was the interview process? It's just demoralizing sometimes when every job listing around where I live says 3-5 years of experience required for something that isn't beyond what I can do right now.

FWIW, when I was in GIS school, they talked about the fact that many GIS jobs would say crap like "requires 5 years experience in X software" when the software in question was not even 5 years old. So, you might want to take that requirement with a grain of salt.

I just moved back home to my parent's house. I'm going to use this time to get a basic job to save money and use my free time to learn as much as possible by designing, developing, and promoting an app/platform I thought of. There is a market for it, I lose sleep over it, and worst case: it'll help me land a job like yours.

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

#328

Post by [deleted] »

good_vibes wrote: post #327
Mz wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, when I was in GIS school, they talked about the fact that many GIS jobs would say crap like "requires 5 years experience in X software" when the software in question was not even 5 years old. So, you might want to take that requirement with a grain of salt.

I just moved back home to my parent's house. I'm going to use this time to get a basic job to save money and use my free time to learn as much as possible by designing, developing, and promoting an app/platform I thought of. There is a market for it, I lose sleep over it, and worst case: it'll help me land a job like yours.

[deleted]

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

#329

Post by handbanana »

kolatts wrote: post #198

I'm in my second job as a .NET dev after boot camp. My salary has nearly tripled since when I attended the boot camp. The technical skills I learned at boot camp were a great start, but I'd say the biggest change is just how slow work gets done at an enterprise. Most of the work I've done since has not used the newer tech (Angular, ORMs) I learned at the bootcamp, but I've been a rather successful advocate for them.…

Did you go to a .NET bootcamp?

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

#330

Post by tnolet »

thisisforyou wrote: post #223
tnolet wrote: post #186

A sincere question: Do people ever NOT graduate from these types of bootcamps? I'm asking as IT Manager / Engineering Manager person. When it's on someone's CV, I never know how t value it.

The graduation rate is irrelevant, as a very selective bootcamp that works hard to make sure everyone learns and has a 100% grad rate will put out higher quality folks than a dev-mill that doesn't care what folks do and has a 75% grad rate. The base fact is bootcamps vary in quality. As a hiring manager it would be in your best interest to take a day to visit the bootcamps you see on resumes and get a sense for what…

That sounds fare, however the reality is this is a global market: I asses a CV from a Mexican guy/girl who went through a US bootcamp while I'm a hiring manager in Berlin. An actual coding chalenge still helps though.
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