Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 357 posts

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#21

Post by postnihilism »

I went to Hack Reactor in 2014 and have kept in touch with many members of my cohort. Just about everyone has been and continues to be employed as a developer. A few have started companies. Three members of our 30 person cohort joined Google, including me.

I was a philosophy major who took some CS courses in college, programmed as a hobby and was working as a product manager. The bootcamp was a great way to build an understanding of the production software development process. It also allowed me to build a strong skillset within one tech stack (MEAN).

The bootcamp was absolutely not an end to my cs/engineering education. When I started at Google the learning curve was steep and I have been constantly taking at least one coursera/udacity/edx course for years as well as company internal classes. Hack Reactor wasn't an end all solution but it gave me a great lay of the land and was instrumental to landing a job of the quality that I did.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#22

Post by huntermeyer »

lukedavis wrote: post #5

I did Hack Reactor in 2014 and work at Google now as a software engineer (it's currently 2017).

That's awesome! "Where" in Google are you working? I'm naive to their team structure, but curious if it's in site-reliability, embedded systems, ads, search, etc.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#23

Post by aiyodev »

handbanana wrote: post #14

Finished bootcamp mid 2014, currently a Software Developer (full stack) making 105k base (110k total package) with some great benefits (and no state income tax). I had zero background before the bootcamp, and the bootcamp itself was pretty shocking. The biggest part of the bootcamp was having it on my resume - giving my limited knowledge "legitimacy". EDIT: My starting salary was mid 40s after I finished bootcamp. An…

Would you put freecodecamp on a resume or just the projects they work on?

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#24

Post by swyx »

huntermeyer wrote: post #18

In 2013 I attended Epicodus in Portland, OR. At the time, it was a 17-week Ruby on Rails bootcamp. I moved back to my home state of Florida following graduation. Within two months I landed a Junior Rails Developer position at Listen360 - a badass company in Georgia. I relocated and have been with the company for over three years now. In that time I've developed JrDevJobs.com, a job board for junior devs. Built severa…

this is a fantastic answer. Have you blogged about developing and launching JrDevJobs? (presumably this is a side project that brings in a small amount of income? how do you market something like this?)

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#25

Post by kmitnick »

huntermeyer wrote: post #18

In 2013 I attended Epicodus in Portland, OR. At the time, it was a 17-week Ruby on Rails bootcamp. I moved back to my home state of Florida following graduation. Within two months I landed a Junior Rails Developer position at Listen360 - a badass company in Georgia. I relocated and have been with the company for over three years now. In that time I've developed JrDevJobs.com, a job board for junior devs. Built severa…

College for me was a bunch of theory, yes is good to have it but once I landed a job I realized I didn't know anything about developing a software from bottom up, therefore in the past 3 years I've learned considerable more that in my five years of college.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#26

Post by bacontacos »

Graduated from Hack Reactor in 2014. I'm a Senior Software Engineer at a large company now.

I was prepared enough to not totally screw things up at my first job. I was an expert in Javascript and reasonably knowledgeable at data structures and how to implement basic web stuff.

I'm now more focused on back end things...AWS, infrastructure, services, etc.

As far as I know, most of my cohort is still working at good jobs.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#27

Post by jacques_chester »

Where I work we have a fair contingent of bootcamp alumni who joined in the past 3 years, some of whom have now moved into engineering and product management.

They tend to have started with strong backgrounds in something else. People who would excel in a lot of fields, in no small part because they continue to learn.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#28

Post by kemiller2002 »

huntermeyer wrote: post #18

In 2013 I attended Epicodus in Portland, OR. At the time, it was a 17-week Ruby on Rails bootcamp. I moved back to my home state of Florida following graduation. Within two months I landed a Junior Rails Developer position at Listen360 - a badass company in Georgia. I relocated and have been with the company for over three years now. In that time I've developed JrDevJobs.com, a job board for junior devs. Built severa…

Good for you!

I ask all the interns that I interview to hire, "why do you want this job?" I can pretty much tell by the answer alone whether or not they are going to work out. Those that say, "I didn't know what to study" or "I heard there was a good career in this" I can pretty much write off. They almost never want to learn anything except what they learned for a grade. Often its over for them after school, they'll never have the drive to learn what they really need to advance. I always tell them that dollar for dollar, we are one of the poorest paid fields. The amount of time we spend learning vs how much we are paid is way out of proportion even with our technical salaries. They never believe me.

It's those that get kind of that geekish giggle about some theoretical concept (state machines, some language concept they discovered they think is cool, compilers, etc.) I know are going to be great. These are the ones that I really go after. With these people it doesn't matter how much they know at that moment, because when they're done, they'll know more. They'll keep doing it too.

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#29

Post by swyx »

postnihilism wrote: post #21

I went to Hack Reactor in 2014 and have kept in touch with many members of my cohort. Just about everyone has been and continues to be employed as a developer. A few have started companies. Three members of our 30 person cohort joined Google, including me. I was a philosophy major who took some CS courses in college, programmed as a hobby and was working as a product manager. The bootcamp was a great way to build an…

the Google interview process is notoriously tough especially for bootcamp grads. how did you navigate the process (apart from the usual CTCI stuff)?

Re: Ask HN: People who completed a bootcamp 3+ years ago: what are you doing now?

#30

Post by swyx »

bacontacos wrote: post #26

Graduated from Hack Reactor in 2014. I'm a Senior Software Engineer at a large company now. I was prepared enough to not totally screw things up at my first job. I was an expert in Javascript and reasonably knowledgeable at data structures and how to implement basic web stuff. I'm now more focused on back end things...AWS, infrastructure, services, etc. As far as I know, most of my cohort is still working at good job…

bootcamps are pretty light on backend/devops type knowledge which turns out pretty critical for "real" jobs. Do you think this can generally be picked up later or should people in bootcamps do something like an AWS certification (just to pick an arbitrary skill proof point) to be sufficiently well-rounded?
Post reply on HN