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

> There's another aspect to this though. Programmers have to be smart and get things done. In my experience of interviewing and hiring these qualities can entirely orthogonal. I've hired people who program enthusiastically on side projects and study advanced topics at the weekend but are pain in the workplace; overcomplicating tasks and working slowly while others deliver faster and with better quality. At the same time I've worked with people who express no interest in any realm of computing outside their direct area of expertise. They work hard from 9-5 being extremely productive and I know that they don't think about so much as a bit or a byte until they come into work the next day.

Speaking of teams, I'm usually the least productive member of any team I've been a part of because I often fall into the role of project servant: someone who bounces across team members as they get stuck with something or another. The best compliment I've gotten is that the role is that of the guy who gets ammo from person to person at the end of saving private Ryan: not the sexiest job but someone is doing it.

What do you make of it?

I went through a boootcamp several years ago. Before joining I had done a small amount of dev work (mostly trying to debug simple js errors) for an existing employer and researched bootcamps all over the country before deciding on one. Since then I've worked at several companies and have been in charge of hiring a couple people, both jr and sr to myself, and in the process have interviewed a number of other bootcamp grads. My general thoughts:

-Bootcamps are insanely overpriced for what you are getting. Most seem to have a decent student to instructor ratio but almost always the instructors are recent graduates and lack the technical skills in a lot of areas. They could help out on general syntax errors but lacked debugging skills that most devs outside of extreme entry level posses. In the past two years the cost has continued to rise almost exponentially and the trend of hiring former students seems to have continued.

-I'm sure this varies by bootcamp but they seem to paint too wide of a brush. In ten weeks they will touch on both front and back end and give the attendee the illusion that they are "fullstack devs". This is great because you have a nice shinny Quara clone to show off at the end but in reality most people will walk away with little understanding of either. I would rather bootcamps focused on one area (probably client side) and briefly touch on the other end. For my bootcamp I specifically said up front I was interested in the backend and was assured that they tailor the curriculum to the student. In reality it's more a one size fits all.

-Students can't problem solve for themselves. A lot of students (and I include myself in this) couldn't handle issues that could be solved with a basic google search. Some people figure this out fairly early, others carry it on into their careers, but it seems to be especially prevalent with bootcamp grads.

-Students walk away with unreal expectations. Having friends and family that have gone through bootcamps in both large and small markets the salary and employment numbers don't seem grounded in reality. I'm sure this depends on the market but it seems like a lot of people end up taking short term low paying jobs straight out of bootcamp and while some of them find other dev jobs a not insignificant amount don't. Also a lot of people end up being pressured into taking tech but not dev related jobs by their bootcamp, presumably so they can collect a placement fee. The bootcamp I went to is fairly well regarded (you have probably heard of it) and I've never been contacted by them about my employment status, and I know a fair number of people either went back to their old careers or are marginally employed in the tech field (yet they still claim a high placement rate).

-I'm SURE this depends on the bootcamp but mine seemed to openly play favorites. At first it was great because of extra attention but after a number of staff openly ridiculed a guy on the spectrum I became extremely disheartened. A bootcamp should be about education, not a popularity contest.

After my bootcamp I didn't feel ready to be employed and opted out of the opportunity to meet perspective employers. This was met by numerous "talks" by the staff trying to convince me to attend, presumably so the bootcamp would get a cut of any offer I took. In the end I spent a fair bit of time consulting in my previous industry before finally feeling ready and taking a job as a developer (although the job search in a new market was brutal). Since then things have been great and I'm extremely happy with where I ended up, but I'm still disillusioned with the bootcamp model. Part of that is at due to my experience and partially due to interacting with bootcamp devs both in interviews and with employees at my current company.

We are starting to look at hiring two new people at the company, one is for a non dev role who might have to deal with some basic html and css, I'll probably hire out of a bootcamp for this position. The other will be for a full dev position. I'm hoping to poach within the company on this one (from somebody with no experience but who has the interest) but if not I'm going to give self taught or CS grads priority.

If you are looking to change careers and just want to work in tech. A bootcamp is probably a way to get your foot in the door. If you really love programming go back to school (I wish I had, cs masters are pretty cheap) or really work on your own, network like crazy (buy as many beers or coffee for as many devs as possible) and build something really cool. Most people won't notice it on your resume but one or two out of a hundred will and that is all that matters.

I attended Code Fellows in October-December of 2013. I had held a handful of tech-heavy positions prior to that time, but had never worked as a software engineer/developer.

I originally saw three primary benefits to attending bootcamp, and I think they're still relevant:

1. It gave me some credibility. Before bootcamp, I had worked with children overseas for a couple of years, and as a care provider the year before that. I had considerable tech experience further back, but nothing related to software development. My resume would have been easy to discard without some way to get connected with employers.

2. It enhanced my motivation. I was paying a lot of money out of pocket, so it placed pressure on me to follow through. I also enjoy working with people, and the classroom setting exceeded self-study in a number of ways.

3. It provided people I could go to when I was stuck. This only happened a half dozen times over the course of the program, but any one of these times might've derailed my interest or motivation.

Overall, my experience was very positive and I was offered a position at Formidable Labs (now just Formidable) before graduating.

It has gone rather well since then. I started as a junior engineer on their Walmart project and progressed to a senior position on my team within the year. A few months in, I received a ~30% raise.

From there, I joined the Walmart Core Web team. That involved building foundational libraries, components, and patterns for the rest of the web teams, as well as a lot of broad architectural work. After a couple of months on that team and some significant successes, I took on additional responsibility, which coincided with another ~35% raise.

Since then, I've worked on Formidable projects for Microsoft and Starbucks, in senior and lead roles. Starting Monday, I'm joining the Edge browser team at Microsoft as a program manager.

Its hard to know what I should attribute my success to - I definitely went into bootcamp with the intention to make the most of every opportunity that came my way, and I continued in that mindset afterwards. I jumped at every chance to learn something new, and spent considerable amounts of time outside of work learning and doing OSS. A few of my projects [0][1][2] got relatively popular (others, not so much [3][4]). All of these were side projects that I pursued independantly, and I think that increased my desireability as a team member. A lot of it was probably timing and luck too!

It's worth noting, however, that my experience was atypical and not in line with the rest of my cohort. I know at least a handful that struggled to find positions.

[0] github.com/divmain/GitSavvy [1] github.com/FormidableLabs/rapscallion [2] github.com/FormidableLabs/freactal [3] interlockjs.com [4] github.com/divmain/recollect