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Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

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Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#91

Post by throwthisawayt »

tigertheory wrote: post #84
throwthisawayt wrote: post #80

Sounds like we are of similar backgrounds. I was a well paid PM, I've worked at a top tech company, and I had strategy consulting experience before that. I quit my job went into a bootcamp and have been a software developer for a year plus. I've been pretty happy with the decision. My reasons were completely different though and were more about understanding what I was good at and passionate about. I think I can help…

Thanks super helpful. Had a couple of followups: (1) Which boot camp did you attend if you don't mind me asking and in what city? (2) How you find the job interview process? (3) What kind of work are you doing now? (4) Do you feel that today you could learn anything you wanted to learn for example deep learning if you put in time or do you feel webdev is extent of what you can do? (5) What do you enjoy most about it?…

1) app academy San Francisco 2) it was challenging you get rejected a lot, you get tons of homework projects, and you end up having to practice skills that are useless for your job. I am dreading when I have to do the next job hunt (a lot of engineers hate the process). On the plus side most companies will want to interview you because of your background. 3) I am doing full stack web dev. Started mostly on the front end moving more towards the back. I just got moved to a search team. 4) Mostly not. I feel capable of doing web dev, mobile, and possibly embedded stuff. I do see myself able to get into machine learning within 4 years but that's because of my stem and math background. It is true though that by being a web dev many large companies will let you work on a team with machine learning guys so you can hustle your way in. Just don't think a bootcamp will give you the knowledge. 5) I like building things. I don't care that most of the things I build are crud apps, I have so much pride in being able to see something I built in the real world. 6) I feel lost and dumb a lot of the times. I realize now this feeling will never go away as an engineer - it's a part of the job. 7) I don't enjoy programming as much over the weekends. Before being an engineer I used to work on small coding projects on the weekend and loved it. Now that's it's my job I look forward to doing other stuff. It's kinda like how some NBA players probably don't want to play basketball in the offseason even if they love basketball. 8) I plan to move past web dev and go into something like computer vision or embedded systems. This will take several years but I think I can do it because I have a strong math background.

FYI I agree with many of the commenters that your reasons for doing a bootcamp seem a bit misguided. I did one because I'm genuinely excited by building things. I feel like I could be building boring crud apps for the next 5 years and I'd still be happy. If you don't feel that I would reconsider.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#92

Post by tschwimmer »

Yes you are. I'm a PM and researched this decision myself a few months back. Most of the "well regarded" bootcamps teach basic front skills (HTML/CSS/JS). You're going to struggle to get a job in any of the the exciting technologies you've listed with this skillset. It's also not widely talked about, but I get the sense that there's a bit of negative signal associated with these boot camps a la ITT/University of Phoenix. I'm not saying this is justified, but I do believe the association is there.

I think your general premise (that management is becoming less relevant) is true, but you're approaching the problem incorrectly.

If I had your goalset, I would cram hard on EdX, OpenCourseware, etc. You need a good first principles education starting with Algorithms, Data structures, etc. I'd also start to learn how to do SWE interviews, which are a whole other skill set.

One last note: even if you do all of the above, the best way to ensure you're working with cool technologies is to start your own company. I work for a major SF tech company, and our ML team is two orders of magnitude smaller than our monetization team. At the end of the day, companies exist to make money and a lot of the stuff you've highlighted is currently speculative/nascent. There's just not going to be many jobs until these technologies prove their financial value.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#94

Post by pbhjpbhj »

rebelidealist wrote: post #81

NOT crazy at all. Actually this is a very good idea. Being able to code makes you a much better PM and help you gain respect of engineers. It will also will help you become a better tech entrepreneur or exec if you ever choose to be. Having some kind of hard technical skill very important. It help you tackle harder problems that arises in the future. For example let say AI becomes increasingly important. Since you kn…

>Being able to code makes you a much better PM //

People aren't saying he's crazy to learn coding (though he's going to need some solid actual CS for deep learning / blockchain stuff I'd imagine); they're saying he's crazy to ditch his job and switch to a boot camp.

I took a >50% pay cut and switched to a field I had no experience in. It was absolutely crazy and high risk; it was a lifestyle move though rather than a career move as such.

Also, does he want to be "a better PM", or does he [think he] want[s] to be a software engineer (or similar), it seems like the latter to me?

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#95

Post by dwaltrip »

You can do it, but it will most likely be very difficult. Learning how to write software well is quite hard. On a fundamental level, we still don't know exactly how some people write much better software than others -- there are no perfectly objective measuring sticks to compare two pieces of code.

Boot camps are like dipping your toe in the water. Most people are not qualified after only a few months of learning. It might take a year or longer to become skilled enough to get hired . A small number of very talented and lucky folks can get there in 6 months with no prior experience.

Before quitting, it seems important to validate the assumption that you will actually like programming and have some success in it. Try building a few toy/example applications on the nights and weekend for a month or two.

That being said, after much consideration, if you want to do it and feel strongly it is the right path for you, go for it. I personally love writing software. It feels like magic sometimes -- you type some words into a file, and very cool things happen :)

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#96

Post by kleigenfreude »

noname123 wrote: post #29

Yes very crazy. I have a anecdotal survey of all coders I know: most of whom all graduated from only median Tier-2 US & News Report Ranked Nat'l Universities (>15) and whom have on average, earn only median Fortune Magazine's Best Jobs annual ranked salaries as Application Developer, and only very few employed by Forbes' Most Admired Companies list or who are on the Mattermark's Top 100 Startup Index. Most don't feel…

> Yes very crazy.

I conditionally disagree.

If the OP chose to do this, they should fully commit to it as if there is no other way if they want to succeed.

But, if the OP thinks they are crazy (and they definitely have doubts if they posted this here), they should indeed immediately take responsibility to hire a replacement and start interviewing elsewhere, hopefully in such a way that it will limit CV damage.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#97

Post by pbhjpbhj »

fullshark wrote: post #34

This is like a construction foreman deciding to take a step down and become a construction worker because he's insecure about not getting his hands dirty building. It's a bad career move.

>It's a bad career move. //

But might be a good life move!?

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#99

Post by aetherson »

CarpetBench wrote: post #71
soneca wrote: post #63

I am on a similar path, if with a much lower opportunity cost. I am 37 years old, one failed startup as a founder, a few marketing roles on other modest startups and some years as social project manager on the resume. I decided to quit my last job and study full time to become a developer. Not through a bootcamp, but through cheap or free resources online. I chose freecodecamp.com to go for now. I did an Ask HN too a…

> I did not receive much support either from the HN crowd I think there's a reason for that, and you touched on some of them. There's undoubtedly an ageism to the tech industry, and being an older junior developer is likely to be a huge uphill climb. There's also skepticism around the coding bootcamp industry for the same reason that there's skepticism around University of Phoenix: The certification isn't really usef…

I don't know if it makes sense for the OP, but I'll stick up for coding bootcamps as a general concept. I don't agree that most people can just self-study in the same time period and get as effective an education, and I do think that the credential is important.

A friend of mine just did a bootcamp -- from a stalled career as a lab technician in which she was making something around $60k/year (in the Bay Area) -- and sure enough, three months later she got a job at $110k coding the consumer website for a bank.

Now. Is that the quintessential job that everyone on HN longs for? CLEARLY NOT. But is it pretty impressive to jump your salary up two really solid tiers in three months and at least be in a place where you might see another $50k/year over the next 5-10 years? From where she was? Hell yes.

Some people who are amazing autodidacts don't need a bootcamp for the skills, and lots of people who aren't amazing autodidacts could get the skills in other ways (but slower, and almost certainly cheaper). The credentialism is going to be a problem, though -- Google isn't going to hire a bootcamp grad, but they also almost certainly won't hire an autodidact. A big boring enterprisey place apparently will hire a bootcamp grad, and almost certainly wouldn't hire an autodidact. Startups, well, who knows, but they're a crap-shoot.

Re: Ask HN: I will quit my job as a PM to join a coding bootcamp. Am I crazy?

#100

Post by CalChris »

Yes, this is pretty insane. No one of merit will hire you on the basis of a coding boot camp. It's a good idea on the basis of skill set enhancement (you'll know more about how your charges think+work) but as a career change, utterly completely insane.

Most technical careers are competitive and short.

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