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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

#381

Post by lpappone »

merpnderp wrote: post #367
pmiller2 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but $280K in SF pays off the student loans a hell of a lot faster than $83K in the middle of nowhere.

$83K in the middle of nowhere is for entry level positions. $280K in San Fran are rock stars well into the 99% of salaries. You're comparing a starting first year fresh out of school who can easily afford a McMansion on a large acreage with a seasoned developer who's in the top 1% of their colleagues who can now just afford a nice condo.

Most new grads don't want to live in a McMansion in the middle of nowhere, even if the salary is great. They want to live in a city with fun things to do and tons of people their own age.

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

#382

Post by danieltillett »

fapjacks wrote: post #375
danieltillett wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how people can sleep at night not having an emergency fund. I have a couple of time got close to running this out when I was a poor student and I found it incredibly stressful.

Try starting out with zero, and having zero income, and zero rich uncles. People talk about these things like they're a given. I'm not saying anything about you personally, but there are different kinds of poor for every "poor student".

That is exactly how I started out. If I had been born in the USA I would never have been able to go to university.

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

#383

Post by xiaoma »

throwawaysbdif wrote: post #380
xiaoma wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, there. I also went to Hack Reactor. It's not a joke.My first job out of the program was Groupon and the algorithm-heavy style of the interview wasn't a problem. The hardest thing for me while there was CSS (because they supported some old versions of IE). I'm not saying that I was stronger on the data structures and algorithm side than top students who spent four years staying up coding during their nights and w…

Comparing a bootcamp to random schools in developing countries is laughable. It's well known that CS degrees from most of these schools are worthless. Having been to school and coded for most of my life, there is no possible way you know as much after bootcamp as someone from a decent 4 year school. It was probably over 1000 hours of just studying alone. Code camps are comparable to an associate's degree or certifica…

>"Comparing a bootcamp to random schools in developing countries is laughable."

First of all, your characterization of Taiwan is both laughable and offensive. It's a developed democracy of 23 million, a stronger economy than many EU countries and a better transit/medical/internet infrastructure than I've seen in any western country. In terms of educational attainment, Taiwan is world-class.

Secondly, it looks like you misread my comment. I wasn't even comparing a boot camp to "random schools in developing countries". I was comparing one of the very best programming immersion schools, Hack Reactor, with one of the very best language immersion schools for Mandarin, ICLP (which was started by Stanford FWIW).

>"Code camps are comparable to an associate's degree or certificate."

No. It's not about credentialing. It's about what you can do. I got no credential whatsoever and I wouldn't have respected it if I had. Nobody had ever graduated when I started and when I finished, my prospective employers had never heard of the school. It's about the education, not some stamp of approval.

At least in my own opinion, there is no evidence whatsoever that our centuries-old model of higher education (or our k-12 educational system based on Prussia's model) are the pinnacle of efficiency. There are many ways to learn more quickly, ranging from working through OCW on one's own to getting help from experts while studying in an immersive school.

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

#384

Post by Jemmeh »

iamatworknow wrote: post #373
sedachv wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I went to a four-year private liberal arts undergraduate university and majored in math and physics, which may seem foolish to many on HN. I myself thought early on that it was probably a mistake because of all of the "extracurriculars". But in retrospect, I actually think those extracurriculars were more valuable than the classes I majored in and made me a more well-rounded, empathetic, and socially tolerable indivi…

I feel like I got those things from K-12 education. I took French in high school. I took USA and World History. I had an economics class. When I first moved out, I still had to have room mates regardless of school. We had to do presentations in front of the class all throughout school. And I was in public school.

I'm not saying college is bad. It can be a good experience despite it having some cons(like price and time). I'm just saying you can learn to code (and well) in less time if that is the only thing you are focusing on....and there's nothing wrong with that. Education is not just limited to school, and some people have that attitude about it.

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

#385

Post by JakePace »

thrownblown wrote: post #336
user5994461 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tip: You need a bootcamp in negotiations and selling yourself. Not in programming ;)

Good thing that's half (~6 weeks) of the curriculum at Hack Reactor!

(citation needed)

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

#386

Post by blister »

kazga wrote: post #358
blister wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems a little bit extreme, in my opinion. I'm writing the curriculum for a full-stack web developer bootcamp that we're launching in the early part of next year. We're all "kind of" in it for the money. I have to support a full-time teacher salary for three months, administrative overhead, software/hardware licensing, curriculum development, and have enough left over to make it worthwhile to continue teaching t…

Which university doesn't teach version control, requirement solicitation and design document writing in a Software Engineering class or similar?

Shit, dang near all of them. Lol. Admittedly, most of my hiring experience with recent grads came out of smaller regional universities (Augusta University, Augusta Tech, Georgia Tech) and a few for-profit schools (Kaplan, Phoenix, Full Sail).

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

#387

Post by anonymoushn »

enraged_camel wrote: post #191
willhslade wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>>Confidence is a proxy for competence I take it you've never heard of Dunning-Kruger effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect Or its opposite, Imposter Syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

In the Dunning-Kruger paper, estimated ability is positively correlated with ability.

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

#388

Post by morgante »

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…

I know companies which hire junior developers for $120k+, so that by itself is not the problem so much as the notion that a bootcamp graduate is not a junior developer.

On the other hand, I do advise the bootcamp graduates I know to drop it from their resume after their first dev job. Programmer with 1 dev job is a much better profile than bootcamp graduate with 1 dev job.

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

#389

Post by morgante »

brutus1213 wrote: post #246
hash-set wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you leave your publications off the list as well? Curious how long your resume is. I currently have a 4 pager full of pubs, conference service, etc. Thinking I should cull a lot of stuff.

Unless you are a known name in your field, your resume should be a single page.

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

#390

Post by fredophile »

cableshaft wrote: post #226
scarface74 wrote: post #58

For some strange reason people hate recruiters, but during my most recent job search - a month ago - I worked with seven recruiting companies. I was submitted to 15 jobs after filtering for commuting distance, technology, salary requirements. First noticed that I filtered based on salary. Most companies don't divulge salary ranges but recruiters know that up front. Out of the 17: 2 - positions already filled before I…

How did you get one recruiter to submit you to 17 different positions? Any time I deal with a recruiter they seem to stop (or at least really slow down) trying to find you something until they hear a firm 'no' from whoever they submitted you to. I think the most phone screens a single recruiter ever got me is two in a single week....maaaaybe three. And only one in-person interview at a time. It took a lot longer than…

That sounds like a bad recruiter. A good recruiter will know roughly how long the process takes at each company and try to time things so you have multiple applications ending around the same time. This way you get multiple offers. Multiple offers means they can get you a higher salary. Getting you a higher salary increases their commission.
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