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

medium.freecodecamp.com

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

#91

Post by iamatworknow »

jeremymcanally wrote: post #85
iamatworknow wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's because that's what a lot of these bootcamps sell. I've interviewed several grads, and while it's not universal, many of them literally tell their graduates they're going to be better prepared for the Real World™ than their college educated counterparts. Almost like, "You'll be better than a CS grad. All they can do is explain and apply the fundamental thinking process behind all this 'engineering' crap. You ,…

Looks like this author fell for it.

I also don't mean to typecast anyone, but the author's profile on that site reads, "Full-stack dev @Radius, ex i-banker, @HackReactor grad, @UCBerkeley," so perhaps he thought his prior experience in an unrelated field or his alma mater should've helped him get a leg up over other entry-level devs.

Again, I don't mean to judge since my path to software development was also non-standard, but my first gig paid about $30k/year and I was grateful to even be given the opportunity with my inexperience.

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

#92

Post by pbhjpbhj »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #67
throwawaysbdif wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not too surprised either, but I marvel at the amount of time wasted preparing and asking all the stupid questions when they could just look at my code for 5 minutes. Like, the main file in one of my libraries clearly uses concurrent locking, it even says so in readme.md . These were all last round on site interviews and we spent maybe 30 minutes of 2 devs time going over pointless stuff when they could just skim…

Github makes it hard to tell what code is yours and what is something you just forked from somebody else.

I thought it showed on the page if a project was forked; perhaps it makes fraud possible but wouldn't it be spotted almost immediately when you started work, if it wasn't spotted then arguably it doesn't matter.

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

#93

Post by cianmm »

ubersoldat2k7 wrote: post #82
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…

Maybe I'm wrong but the salary an American gets is the whole package and they have to figure out their income tax, social security, etc. In Europe a good part of what the company pays for an employee is "hidden" but can account to 50%-100% of the gross salary you receive. So if you're getting 50k company is really paying 75k.

This is definitely not the case in Ireland, and I would imagine the rest of Europe. While there is the odd tax that an Employeer might need to pay on having an employee (probably benefits related), if a job says it pays, say, €60k, that's €60k pre tax. Tax is then deducted from that and you get your payslip which displays both pre and post tax numbers, and you receive the post tax amount.

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

#94

Post by linkregister »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #63
walshemj wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's over £90k in our terms you can see why Google and othe reengineering companies set up in the UK as we are cheap

Two years ago $120k was just £77k (still good). Salaries are famously sticky as a number, and do not change quickly when currencies move after events like Brexit.

It makes sense they wouldn't; have costs of living in London increased since the referendum? I was under the impression rents and real estate values were down.

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

#95

Post by dood »

st3v3r wrote: post #50
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…

It sounds like it's in the Bay Area, where that level of salary is kind of a minimum, given cost of living.

London COL is very similar to SF/NY I believe.

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

#96

Post by to3m »

ubersoldat2k7 wrote: post #82
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…

Maybe I'm wrong but the salary an American gets is the whole package and they have to figure out their income tax, social security, etc. In Europe a good part of what the company pays for an employee is "hidden" but can account to 50%-100% of the gross salary you receive. So if you're getting 50k company is really paying 75k.

Same in the UK - the amount quoted is before any tax is deducted. It is usual for the employer to deduct the income taxes themselves, though... businesses in the UK bear some tax collection responsibilities, of which this is one.

On top of the quoted figure, there is an equivalent of employer's FICA contributions. The rate is around 12.5%. Anyway, this is treated separately and you don't generally hear about it; employers factor it into their calculations before deciding on a salary range.

Exception: it's somewhat common for public sector employees to have the employer's contribution quoted on their payslips, perhaps to make them feel like they're paying into the system.

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

#97

Post by findjashua »

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…

Not all bootcamps are equal. I've interviewed candidates from most of them, and the ones from Hack Reactor (the one that the author went to) were consistently of top notch quality.

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

#98

Post by goldenbeet »

votr wrote: post #54
goldenbeet wrote: post #3

TL;DR: The barchart can be misleading. Increasing # of applications can decrease the rate at which they mature into offers. I like some of your points like get through to real people. That's an incredibly important part of landing a job. However I do have an issue with the graphic at the beginning. I think it's misleading, because you shouldn't really be applying to 200+ companies. When you take that kind of approach…

What was your strategy for dealing with how most ML positions require advanced degrees?

So I was realistic about the companies I could apply to with no PhD/Masters (No Facebook AI Research for me). I also made sure I could have some sort of tangible projects completed. (Created a GAN to generate images of street signs, DL to predict steering angle for a car based on video feed, etc) Then I went around to meetups, workshops, conferences to meet people and learn. Then through talking to people in person I found some smaller companies that are implementing ML in interesting ways (self driving cars, building recommender systems) and applied to the two that I felt strongest about. The key though is that I met people from the company and talked to them about what they're working on and what I've been working on and if there's overlap, it shows that I can contribute to what they're working on. Every position has a requirement of some sort of degree, but I just ignore that and apply anyway if I've already met and talked to people at the company.

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

#99

Post by walshemj »

linkregister wrote: post #94
TorKlingberg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two years ago $120k was just £77k (still good). Salaries are famously sticky as a number, and do not change quickly when currencies move after events like Brexit.

It makes sense they wouldn't; have costs of living in London increased since the referendum? I was under the impression rents and real estate values were down.

rents are going up high end property >1 million £ has dropped a bit

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

#100

Post by nathan_f77 »

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…

It's pretty simple: British developers are willing to work for less.

Or maybe there is too much supply and not enough demand in London. Maybe it's cultural. But I've noticed that salaries in London are pretty terrible. It's even worse than New Zealand, which doesn't (didn't?) have a lot tech jobs.

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