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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

#131

Post by seangrogg »

Bartweiss wrote: post #114
bertjk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His profile indicates that he graduated from UC Berkeley and previously pursued I-banking, so I wouldn't exactly call that "no degree, no experience." Also, a good coding bootcamp, properly applied, can easily be worth more than a typical random "side project", IMO.

That's a huge point. "Code bootcamp" can mean a huge variety of things. At its best, it often means "technical, business experienced, just transitioned into intensive software study", which is an enticing candidate. At its worst, it means something like "paid $50k to learn basic Javascript". Lumping those two together makes it really hard to draw any conclusions about experience.

I think this is one of the largest problems facing the bootcamp industry in general:

* Other players in the space will likely make the industry look bad

* If you graduate the wrong people they can paint your company in a negative light

By and large, companies that get a bad university applicant who can't build a web app don't let it paint their experience of universities as a whole. But if the same applicant was from a bootcamp suddenly all bootcamps are terrible sources of any serious talent and they'll never be considered if they're in the applicant pool.

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

#132

Post by fecak »

savanaly wrote: post #30
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 went to one of these programs in America and my starting salary was "only" 85k, mainly because I took a job that wasn't in New York or SF. Most of my classmates who took one in one of those high cost of living cities did 90-110k I believe. I would call 120k+ an outlier on the high side, but not inconceivable. This was years ago and I don't know if the bar has slipped as coding bootcamps have gotten more popular, bu…

Tech recruiter here. 85K even seems like an outlier to me for a bootcamp graduate unless you had lots of other credibility that came along with the bootcamp experience. I don't think I could get 85K for a new bootcamp grad in Philly, which is a couple tiers below NY/SF in terms of salary. More like 60-70K I'd expect.

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

#133

Post by jonasvp »

cianmm wrote: post #93
ubersoldat2k7 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know about Ireland but that's definitely not true for Germany. While the amount usually talked about in negotiations is pre-tax (since people have differing tax rates due to children, marriage, etc.), there's a significant difference from there to the actual cost to the company.

In my company we pay about 25% on top for social security, worker's benefits, health insurance, etc. This is without any company-provided benefits such as trainings, conference allowances, holidays, etc.

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

#134

Post by mordocai »

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 ,…

To be fair, for 99% of web development being able to select elements based on their CSS class is seriously way more useful than being able to explain and apply "engineering crap". Pretty much until you get to the point where you need to scale infrastructure you won't use any of your CS degree when working on most web applications.

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

#135

Post by iamatworknow »

chrisbennet wrote: post #106
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?

I think the boot camp grad is still going to be a junior developer but I can kinda see where someone with a "vocational" (code camp) educated applicant might actually be more productive than a college educated applicant for certain jobs. To use an imperfect analogy, who would be better at actually building houses; a vocational school grad (who built houses all day as part of his education) or a college educated archi…

True, but when I think of "junior" or "entry-level" anything I think of someone with no real world, on the job experience, and that applies to boot camp and college grads.

Boot camps might very well be better than college programs in terms of preparing someone to use development tools and methods as opposed to focusing on the theory behind them, but at the end of the day, you're still not doing "real" work where your choices have consequences in a boot camp as you would on the job.

Working constructively with other people in the field (including answering to and being able to discuss and defend projects with colleagues and superiors), completing projects within time or budget constraints, and being able to make your own informed decisions with regard to things like project scope, methods, and direction, with a proven history of success -- those are the skills that separate "junior" from whatever comes after that, at least in my opinion.

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

#136

Post by jankedout »

bluedino wrote: post #120

>> I applied to 291 companies, did 32 phone screens, 16 technical screens, 13 coding challenges, 11 on-sites, and received 8 offers. How much time would that take? Figure 15 minutes per company - 4,365 minutes, or 72 hours. And that's time just spent finding the company, changing around a cover letter, and then emailing it and responding etc. 32 phone screens? Let's say 30 minutes each, that's 960 minutes, or 16 hour…

I can't believe he sent out that many solicitations. With an air of smugness, I'm glad I busted my ass in high school to go to a top CS school. I've probably sent about 30 resumes in my life and gotten phone interviews for all but one, offers from 15.

Regardless, I'm glad to see that developers who go to bootcamp can get phenomenal salaries. I have a few friends going through them now.

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

#137

Post by mordocai »

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…

I call myself full stack and mean what you mean. I typically have to explain that when I say full stack I mean "literally full stack" as in I have a working level of knowledge with every piece of the system from hardware/kernel to networking to databases to application.

I do agree that when people use the term though they just mean "I can code in a backend and a frontend language".

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

#138

Post by Bartweiss »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #92
TorKlingberg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Almost immediately when you started work" is precisely too late, though. If you hire purely off GitHub and get someone who lifted their code (instead of forking it), that's a huge price.

Bad hires inflict huge costs up front, in wasted interview opportunities and startup costs and lost training time and morale hits and a dozen other things. "Fire fast" is popular advice because it's better than firing slow, not because unsuccessful hires are a sustainable event.

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

#139

Post by votr »

goldenbeet wrote: post #98
votr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Good tips, thank you. I started in algorithmic trading with Java and Entprise-y stuff. Got bored and moved to front-end. Now looking to move to ML. Like you, no degree, but I apply anyway as long as I feel I have the right signaling.

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

#140

Post by abeyer »

leecarraher wrote: post #5

not sure how much trust to put into data from freecodecamp.com a company that despite it's name, seems to sell codingcamp products.

Source? I thought that they were all open curriculum and didn't even have a paid program.

It's been a while since I looked at it, but I've recommended it to people as one of the better sources of actually free content, and not just upsells, and would like to know if that's not the case anymore.

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