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…
What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp
151–160 of 398 posts
Re: What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp
#152Are 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…
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
#1533 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.
Re: What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp
#154On 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…
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
#155Are 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…
Re: What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp
#156Are 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…
Re: What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp
#157Are 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…
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
#158Are 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…
Re: What I learned from spending 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp
#159First: 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…
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
#160On 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…
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.