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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

#311

Post by jimmywanger »

sfaf wrote: post #59
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…

Well the revenue of US based businesses is at a significantly higher scale than most European technology companies. Specifically companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Intel all make over $500K per employee (Apple is at $2m!). With such a high revenue to employee ratio, these companies can afford to pay developers at rates immensely above what we see anywhere else. And they should, since smart engineers who…

Totally and completely agree.

Let's take a case study here. Rackspace, a company that was just taken private, and Google.

They have almost identical P/E ratios, and the market cap for Google is 125 times that of Rackspace.

From what I can search around for, Rackspace has 6200 employees. Google has 53,600. Google makes roughly 15 times per employee in profit (not revenue) than Rackspace does. If Google's headcount to profits were the same as Rackspace's, the market cap of Google would be about 35 billion.

That being the case, heck yeah Google will kick down an extra 40k a year to an engineer. Makes perfect sense for them.

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

#312

Post by curiouscat321 »

Xyik wrote: post #231
lloyd-christmas wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average age in my class was 28. People weren't ex-baristas. They were people from various backgrounds, often technical-related. I was a Math and Econ double major with a minor in applied statistics, then spent 6 years in finance doing equities trading. I was drastically more qualified than the average 22 year old with a CS degree.

Many 22 year olds with a CS degree have been coding since they were 12.

Uh, have something to back this up? That's a very false stereotype.

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

#313

Post by dvcrn »

voycey wrote: post #306
mkurz wrote: post #285

Holy shit. Is this some kind of a joke? > Otherwise, companies automatically categorize us into junior developer roles or tag us as “not enough experience.” ??? What do you think you are after a TWELVE WEEK coding seminar (no matter how intense it was)? It looks frightening to me that he doesn't even know what "junior developer" really means. How ignorant can someone be to NOT think to be a junior dev right after "gr…

100% this! The tech world is due an implosion if this continues, you cant have people with ZERO programming experience beyond a guided 12 week bootcamp being offered anything more than a Junior role?? This single sentence terrifies me: "At Hack Reactor, we’re trained to mask our inexperience. In our personal narratives, we purposely omit our bootcamp education." $120k+ offer for 12 weeks experience - ridiculous, I ho…

This is why you need good screening processes.

I on the other hand got taught to be able humble and make compromises especially when still being a junior. Looking back at my early days, when I wanted a position that I knew would change my career, I purposely asked for a lower salary in the beginning to compensate for my junior level or other skills (language for example when I moved into a country where I wasn't fluent yet), with a clause to bump it up to the level of other people when I can prove that I am on par with them and my lacking skills aren't a problem. It also showed the company that I was serious about wanting to work with them.

But man, 120k for 12 weeks of experience is insane. Sign me up for whatever bootcamp that was

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

#314

Post by butreallytho777 »

mkurz wrote: post #285

Holy shit. Is this some kind of a joke? > Otherwise, companies automatically categorize us into junior developer roles or tag us as “not enough experience.” ??? What do you think you are after a TWELVE WEEK coding seminar (no matter how intense it was)? It looks frightening to me that he doesn't even know what "junior developer" really means. How ignorant can someone be to NOT think to be a junior dev right after "gr…

Such angry rhetoric toward statements that are supposedly so "obvious".

The article is about hacking the system for networking purposes. He's not saying HR is "wrong" to apply those labels. Just that code camp graduates should watch out for that.

Given that this site has used up many cycles discussing how HR filtering sucks, these hacks are interesting to consider.

As for your specific concerns, calm down. You're giving off a superior tone. There is a lot of shit software out there. A lot of it coming from big companies. This notion that it's only for experts of a given status is elitist.

By your admission you're a smart coder so you have little to be upset about. Everyone works with people that aren't as good. My managers an idiot. Yadda yadda.

I'd work on my propensity for flying off the handle at trivial snippets taken out of context from larger stories. I'd rather work to help bring up a green coder with promise than alongside an elitist asshole

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

#315

Post by butreallytho777 »

voycey wrote: post #306
mkurz wrote: post #285

Holy shit. Is this some kind of a joke? > Otherwise, companies automatically categorize us into junior developer roles or tag us as “not enough experience.” ??? What do you think you are after a TWELVE WEEK coding seminar (no matter how intense it was)? It looks frightening to me that he doesn't even know what "junior developer" really means. How ignorant can someone be to NOT think to be a junior dev right after "gr…

100% this! The tech world is due an implosion if this continues, you cant have people with ZERO programming experience beyond a guided 12 week bootcamp being offered anything more than a Junior role?? This single sentence terrifies me: "At Hack Reactor, we’re trained to mask our inexperience. In our personal narratives, we purposely omit our bootcamp education." $120k+ offer for 12 weeks experience - ridiculous, I ho…

They never said they should get anything more than a junior role. There was no disagreeing with the label.

It's a hack to get around HR auto-filters. The hiring people can then make further assessment.

What world do you live in where you'd not have more than one filter on hiring?

The alarms here are astounding given the other hoops that are likely to exist passed the first marker.

Pretty shocking the response to some advice that is really only "step 1" to getting the job anyway

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

#317

Post by sedachv »

huehehue wrote: post #247
sedachv wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our current education system isn't always the most efficient way to learn. Skip the unrelated to programming classes, the extra curricular things, make people basically sleep, eat, and code for a few months and it's doable. This attitude is the reason why I am strongly in favor of expanding vocational schools and training in the United States and Canada. People who do not actually care about learning or thinking sh…

I get what you're saying, but don't agree with the way you're generalizing. You make it sound like vocational schools are only good for getting rid of the undesirables, while the real scholars attend proper universities. Discourse in topics irrelevant to my career doesn't put food on my table (usually). I'd rather graduate from and pay for a shorter, more focused program than spend $50k/year to have topics I once enj…

> You make it sound like vocational schools are only good for getting rid of the undesirables, while the real scholars attend proper universities.

What do you think a university is supposed to be? Of course it is a place for real scholars doing real scholarship. Your attitude is exactly the problem. Stop treating universities as trade schools.

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

#318

Post by user5994461 »

mkurz wrote: post #285

Holy shit. Is this some kind of a joke? > Otherwise, companies automatically categorize us into junior developer roles or tag us as “not enough experience.” ??? What do you think you are after a TWELVE WEEK coding seminar (no matter how intense it was)? It looks frightening to me that he doesn't even know what "junior developer" really means. How ignorant can someone be to NOT think to be a junior dev right after "gr…

I'd argue that he's not Junior.

He needs an entry-level position.

By that, I mean that I make a distinction between a Junior dev (who may have a degree and professional experiences through a work and/or internships) and an entry-level/breaking-into-programming dev who's got nothing (no theory, no practise, zero real world experience).

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

#319

Post by stuartcw »

> At Hack Reactor, we’re trained to mask our inexperience [...] > [...] Ultimately, you need to convince companies that you can do the job. > [...]At the same time, you need to convince yourself that you can do the job.

Err.. Ultimately you need to be able to DO the job...

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

#320

Post by dlitz »

AlexC04 wrote: post #218
sushid wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like your refactor could use a test or two :p

OMG - you're 100% right and I've already passed the "you're still allowed to edit or delete this post" time limit imposed by HN. This is going to be a black mark on my OCD coder's soul for the rest of time. A code typo immortalised next to my name. /sigh. There's a lesson for me... Never. Ever. Attempt to be clever on hackernews. Thanks for pointing it out. ... I wonder if HN mods would be willing to spare me this su…

Just fix it in the parser. ;)
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