Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp

medium.freecodecamp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 398 posts

Re: What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp

#71

Post by atemerev »

dood wrote: post #6

Are people in America seriously getting offers of $120k with no degree, no experience, and not even a side-project? That is mind-blowing. In London, probably the biggest/richest market outside of USA, that sort of salary is beyond what most experienced developers get, even some very good ones. I must be missing something here (some sort of bubble?) because I can't see how businesses can be profitable paying those sor…

I don't know how anybody would stay in London (or move to London) given local software engineer salaries for non-financial projects.

I was once offered a role of Scala software engineer with £45000 starting salary. I assumed it was a joke, but it wasn't.

Re: What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp

#72

Post by iamatworknow »

prh8 wrote: post #18
rtets wrote: post #11

"At Hack Reactor, we’re trained to mask our inexperience. In our personal narratives, we purposely omit our bootcamp education." Assuming most people who do bootcamps are changing careers, how do you explain suddenly becoming a developer after years of another career?

also: > companies automatically categorize us into junior developer roles in other words, correctly categorized

This was the part I didn't understand at all. You go through a CS program for 4 years or more and end up as a junior developer and that's fine, but if you go through a 12 week coding bootcamp you're somehow more qualified and shouldn't be "benchmarked against junior developers"?

I do realize I'm making an assumption that there was no prior CS experience before the bootcamp, but isn't that the crowd they're targeting?

Re: What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp

#73

Post by st3v3r »

steve-howard wrote: post #40
throwawaysbdif wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been interviewing the last couple months and have the same opinion. I've been coding for years and have some pretty complex stuff up on my GitHub. I quickly found out that nobody looks at your GitHub, maybe 10% max. didn't matter that I had code from two weeks ago that did complex segmented locking on a concurrent hashtable. still got asked "what is threading" level questions at every place. After botching my…

I'm not shocked that nobody looks at your GitHub. Reading other people's code takes time and energy that a lot of people aren't going to spend if they have a ton of candidates to sift through.

Yeah, but everyone says, "you need to have a GitHub. You're not serious about coding unless you have a GitHub. That's how you get jobs now."

Re: What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp

#74

Post by sfaf »

krosaen wrote: post #64
sfaf wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't rails count as a backend engineer? Would you also not count someone who works with Django as a backend engineer?

I would definitely distinguish between html / css / javascript and server side application code, be it in ruby or python, I just didn't think working on the server side application logic completed the "full stack". To me full stack means you are into the systems a bit too and would be capable of setting up the stack itself (and perhaps enhancing it, or setting up custom batch systems), not just working effectively wi…

Yes, I do feel you have the terminology wrong. I consider myself full stack and I work with Rails, Django, etc. I have interviewed with many companies with the title "Full Stack Developer" and most of them have not expected the type of experience you are talking about. I think you are talking essentially about a Systems roles.

When you are full stack there's usually an assumption that you are "better" on one side of the stack and won't be strong at everything. So a back-end focused full stack developer would be better at the things you are talking about while a front-end focused full stack developer would be much stronger in Javascript / CSS. The main thing is that you understand how an app works end to end and can contribute / fix bugs across the stack.

Re: What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp

#75

Post by jaggederest »

ubersoldat2k7 wrote: post #4

How do you even manage this amount of information? A notebook can help but once you hit the 20 applications mark, it's impossible to know to which companies you applied for.

This is what CRM tools are for. Treat it like a business.

Re: What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp

#76

Post by redwards510 »

prh8 wrote: post #18
rtets wrote: post #11

"At Hack Reactor, we’re trained to mask our inexperience. In our personal narratives, we purposely omit our bootcamp education." Assuming most people who do bootcamps are changing careers, how do you explain suddenly becoming a developer after years of another career?

also: > companies automatically categorize us into junior developer roles in other words, correctly categorized

Yeah this is galling to the point of fraud. You don't just walk into an engineering job and demand a non-junior position with no experience. You are wasting everyone's time. The company is paying that high salary because they want someone with experience; someone who won't have to "learn how the internet works" on-the-job.

Just because you were able to fool the company into hiring you doesn't mean you "passed the final" and everything will be fine from now on. If you had experience, you'd know that.

Re: What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp

#77

Post by sfaf »

Slackwise wrote: post #7

This whole hardcore quizzing and testing during interviews has to go. As far as I can see, all it does is create selection bias for people who memorize things or like to practice interview questions. Maybe that's just me being too old for that kinda' crap.

This is on the onus of mid / experienced level engineers. The community should decide collectively that we don't interview at companies like this.

Re: What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp

#78

Post by cagataygurturk »

So whoever hired the guy should feel bad. He explains the strategy to boost his payroll, he was hiding the bootcamp he was attending and he was showing himself as experienced dev. And also why would you hire someone if 300 other companies were not interested in that person?

Ironically his lack of experience shows itself even in the first fancy function he writes on the blog post. Would not this unnecessary if block be a red flag in a coding interview?

I am sorry to see this type of people in the industry and I am sure I would do the best to not to let such people getting hired in my teams.

Re: What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp

#79

Post by VLM »

steve-howard wrote: post #40
throwawaysbdif wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been interviewing the last couple months and have the same opinion. I've been coding for years and have some pretty complex stuff up on my GitHub. I quickly found out that nobody looks at your GitHub, maybe 10% max. didn't matter that I had code from two weeks ago that did complex segmented locking on a concurrent hashtable. still got asked "what is threading" level questions at every place. After botching my…

I'm not shocked that nobody looks at your GitHub. Reading other people's code takes time and energy that a lot of people aren't going to spend if they have a ton of candidates to sift through.

You'd read your friends code, right?

Get a relationship, however minimal, with an inside contact, who shows his boss your code or conference presentation or whatever, he calls you and schedules an interview, then HR is told to find two bodies off the street to interview to make the hiring decision look good.

Their code doesn't get read. I'm always kinda pissed when I'm brought in for that kind of interview and I figure out I'm just a placeholder. I've never said anything unpleasant but I have mostly politely walked out of interviews like that. Once its clear they just needed a checkbox and my showing up was the checkbox, theres no point in continuing. This is why sometimes you get callbacks for the craziest jobs you can imagine, like seriously, what in my carefully resume made you think I wanted to program FORTRAN exactly? You're hiring someone who's 90% of the time a graphics artist and all I know about photoshop is I'm familiar with the name? You need a .net programmer and what in my resume made you think that was me, let me know so I can burn it off the page with fire? Or there's a massive experience or salary mismatch, etc.

Re: What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp

#80

Post by sfaf »

VLM wrote: post #66

Honestly, isn't that an unimaginably huge investment of time and effort? Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper, more educational, and maybe faster to just create a startup and get aquihired? I'm not in the market now, but that's my plan for the next time I'm looking. Its kind of a level up from merely registering an account at github. I'd be dealing with business acquisition people instead of a role-mailbox in HR that's…

No it's definitely not easier to build a company that exits (even an acquire) than it is to get a job at a tech company that pays 100K.
Post reply on HN