41–50 of 50 posts
Happy to help more with advice/ideas if you want to reach out.
I did this myself a few years years ago over lockdown. I had a lot of down time and worked on teaching myself web development full time 5 days a week for about a year. I was then able to land a job at a FAANG company through an apprenticeship scheme that they offer in the UK (I'm not sure if these kinds of schemes are available in the US) where I stayed for a year and a half and I am now working for a startup in a position I found through connections I made at my previous job. At the time I did have other offers for non-apprenticeship roles at other companies so don't let the absence of apprenticeships put you off if they aren't on offer in the US. The job market was definitely better when I was applying for my first job so the process might be more drawn out now. The main resource I used for self teaching was The Odin Project (https://www.theodinproject.com/). I also did a batch at The Recurse Center (https://www.recurse.com/) which was a great experience in general, especially for getting some hands on time working on projects with other people. I would say be curious, reach out to people who are working on things you find interesting to ask them for a chat and just persevere with the applications as you will definitely get a lot of rejections.
One more thing (might be UK specific as well) but I would check to see if there are any government funded bootcamps you might be able to get a place on. I know multiple people in the UK who got the job center to pay for them to do a bootcamp while they were on universal credit and now work in the industry.
One piece of advice I would give, the certificate from a bootcamp is pretty worthless. You want to really prioritize learning as much as possible and engaging as much as possible. Don't feel bad about asking questions, "annoy" the lecturers or whatever. Make sure you understand what they are teaching and try to understand the deeper concepts and not just the surface level "this is how you make a button red".
When I went to university, my attitude was the complete opposite. I did the absolute minimum to get A's and slacked off a lot. I was there for the piece of paper (degree) and learning was secondary. Attitudes have shifted a lot and degrees aren't as highly regarded nowadays(which is good), bootcamp certificates aren't really taken into consideration at all.
Does anyone know of a coding bootcamp that guides you through more advanced projects, like how to build a NES emulator, a database, and things like that?
* layoffs.fyi -- the market is pretty rough, and that will show you just how bad
* you're already in tech (sorta) / tech adjacent, and you already have been around the engineers. you're not a waiter or truck driver starting from scratch, and have some context. a boot camp might work, but you could just as easily pick up some of this on your own.
* consider free online programs like free code camp or the odin project. shoot for just 2 hours a day, and then spend the rest of your time looking for another job.
* tech sales, esp. sales guys who are sorta technical (or very technical, e.g. sales engineers), and who can close deals, are still in demand.
* a bootcamp will eat a lot of that 6-12 months living expenses
* also, do you want to be coding, or in some sort of tech? there may be paths into DevOps or IT that might flow faster. starting from scratch it's best to go closer to the machine -- at uni the joke was "IT is for I Tried (but washed out of CS / engineering)" -- but pure coding may not be something you're into. There are happy mediums and certain IT roles might be a great fit.
- you learn better in a focused, scheduled program
- you want access to an instructor that can answer your questions 1:1
IMHO, that isn’t worth the $8k or whatever these places charge. Work on it yourself, get active in online communities, go to dev meetups, make friends with more experienced devs that are willing to help you with questions.
I enjoyed instructing and my students, but I quit because I felt like I was complicit in a scam and I didn’t agree with how they approached the curriculum.
Do you actually want to jump the chasm or is it something you're considering purely because the sales job market isn't looking great?
Does that matter?
> I’m entering unemployed with about 6-12 months of living expenses in the bank depending how deep into savings I dug. If the goal is to finish a bootcamp and land your first developer job in that timeframe, yes, it's a horrible idea with a very high probability of failure. If you don't have expectations of landing a job and you can afford the time and money and you've picked a reputable bootcamp, then it's probably…