Live data from Hacker News

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

medium.freecodecamp.com

151–160 of 398 posts

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

#151

3 months of applying? Wow. Seems like whatever he got was well-earned to me. I really stick to projects too, but this is massive. I just don't have the time/patience for 3-months of searching while I am currently working. Kind of makes me think that the market is selecting people who have someone else supporting them so they can do all this interview research. Seems backward in my opinion. I keep hearing "interviewin…

Confidence is a proxy for competence, which, through the interview process, we are imperfectly testing.

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

#152
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…

Part of it is folks in the UK, and even London in particular, get paid quite a bit less than Americans. My wife is from the UK and has worked in London and NYC and she makes quite a bit more money in NYC. She has told me there's no way she'd make her salary in London and it would probably be quite a bit less. She doesn't work in software either; she works in finance. I think part of it is it simply costs a whole lot…

If you're saying that the UK transfers some of the wealth that might've gone to employees and instead diverted it to social programs, that means we need a better analysis to account for the value transfer that's going on.

It's possible to see a smaller paycheck and in fact receive a larger value transfer.

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

#153
post #61

3 months of boot camp and we call ourselves "engineers" (not this guy. I'm generalizing). I can't even begin to imagine what licensed engineers feel like when they read stuff like this.

It's a common thing in the field. My title was changed from Web Developer to User Experience Engineer, despite my groaning otherwise. Most junior developers enjoy the title inflation for a few months then start to realize it may have been conferred a loosely.

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

#154

On a related tangent, this is why it is so important to have a so called "Emergency fund"! An emergency fund is a little bit of money (often 1-6x average monthly expenses) such that if you get canned you can survive for 1-6 months without having to work so you can focus on applying for jobs and getting a new job without having to stress when your next bill is due. I agree that 6 months living expenses is on the high…

Depending on how often you expect to need an emergency fund and what the relevant interest rates are for illiquid saving (eg: paying down student loan debt) and unsecured borrowing, it may make more sense to have your emergency fund in an unsecured line of credit or credit cards.

Example with made-up numbers: Suppose you spend $2000/mo, you have an unused line of credit of $10000 @ 10%, your student loans are at 5%, and you are taking home $4000/mo. If you have an emergency that costs $2000 that hits your line of credit, that ends up roughly being an extra month servicing $2000 of debt at 10% instead of 5%. If you keep $2000 in cash instead of paying down student loan debt, that ends up meaning you service $2000 of debt at 5% instead of paying it down. These are roughly the same thing, so you wind up ahead if the LoC is sitting empty ~50% of the time.

Granted, these are much more favorable numbers than typical use of credit card debt, but the point remains - if you have access to credit on good terms, and you won't need it often, and you have good illiquid returns on excess cash, you ought to take a look at using credit to handle emergencies instead of cash.

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

#155
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…

Well, if you read Quora, everyone makes millions of dollars writing code. In the real world (e.g. not Silicon Valley), yeah, it's hard to crack six figures--took me about 10 years to do that with a BS in CS, MS in Computer Engineering, and an unused doctorate (Info. Sci. with specialization in human factors). I became successful when I left the PhD the hell off my resume.

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

#156
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…

[deleted]

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

#157
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 would argue that there is a considerable amount of loose change floating around in the bay area tech scene that makes it possible for even young companies to pay large salaries to developers. $100k is pretty common for L1 developers, $120k is roughly average for anyone that can show they've built something before. I can't speak to a lot of programs, but HR is roughly 800 hours of cultivating people with "enough exp…

Totally real question, could you please ballpark estimate from a simple glance at my github how much I could be making in the US? I'm curious to know what's there to offer: http://github.com/franciscop/

If you want to adjust it with some extra notes: winner of worldwide NASA competition; degree in Industrial Engineering in Spain with final year project on Neural Networks in Tokyo University; organizer of one of the biggest Maker community in Spain (Makers UPV); 2 years work experience (besides non-profit)

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

#158
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…

What's funny is that those figures were the pay back in the mid-1990s as well.

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

#159

First: Good job on the author! I don't think I could make 300 application in a three months, and I am fortunate that I have never needed to. This is impressive determination and focus, and it paid off. Second: Wow, programming is becoming a commodity. This is literally 1) Learn the latest trendy framework and nothing else, 2) Study to the test, 3) Interview well. Either the market will be flooded and salaries for gen…

I'd argue that if strong programmers can't find a way to differentiate themselves from weak programmers in 2 months then yes, programming (from a hiring perspective) has become commoditized.

That being said, we're currently in a time where most of the "development talent" that we have actively employed are working on little more than glorified CRUD applications. The few that are working on more specialized tasks tend to be safer from such commoditization.

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

#160

On a related tangent, this is why it is so important to have a so called "Emergency fund"! An emergency fund is a little bit of money (often 1-6x average monthly expenses) such that if you get canned you can survive for 1-6 months without having to work so you can focus on applying for jobs and getting a new job without having to stress when your next bill is due. I agree that 6 months living expenses is on the high…

>6 months living expenses is on the high side

Not at all. Whatever causes the emergency is likely to come with unexpected costs of its own, so 6 months salary is more of a minimum in my opinion.

Post reply on HN