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

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

#151

Post by jxub »

seesomesense wrote: post #88
mabbo wrote: post #35

Note some selection bias may exist in the answers. If you did a tech bootcamp three years ago and it went fantastically, you're probably reading HN today and will see and reply to this. The more success you had, the more likely you're a developer today! If it went terribly, you might still be working at Starbucks and don't read HN very often.

I am a physician and read HN regularly. Lambda the Ultimate is better but requires effort to read, while this is fairly mindless entertainment.

Lambda the Ultimate? Some FP forum where it's all about Haskell and OCaml? :)

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

#152

Post by def8cefe »

lawless123 wrote: post #148
def8cefe wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're only interested in tech to make money that's probably what set this hypothetical Starbucks employee up for failure.

Quite a lot of people are only into tech to make money.. and it's working well for them.

Perhaps, but it's much more difficult to learn what you're not interested in. If your only motive is money... do sales.

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

#153

Post by chrisan »

k__ wrote: post #136
lucaspiller wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, what were you doing before the code camp? Being CTO needs people and management skills which a lot of developers don't have.

I guess being CTO at a startup can be like being lead dev at a bigger corp.

Depends on the size of the startup. A startup CTO can be the equivalent of

The only developer, the senior developer out of 1 or 2 juniors, lead dev in charge of many, an actual CTO

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

#154

Post by obstinate »

abeyer wrote: post #81
smallnamespace wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, but presumably your situation is rare? GP is specifically making an argument about selection bias, where frequency matters.

I'm sure my specific case isn't that common, but I'm fairly confident that there are a non-trivial number of people out there who can code but choose not to as a career path. I'm not questioning the argument about frequency, I'm questioning the underlying assumption that "success" in a bootcamp is only measured by employment as a developer.

You are missing the point. It's not whether there are a trivial number or not. It's about the relative sizes of the groups in the population versus the sample.

The fact that there is not a single negative response is basically proof positive that people who don't succeed at coding boot camps do not read HN. Unless you happen to believe that almost everyone does succeed after coding boot camps. I find that notion incredible, personally.

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

#155

Post by soVeryTired »

roel_v wrote: post #127
lando2319 wrote: post #117

Bootcamps have a lot of haters who want to nitpick the details, it makes me glad I didn't think about it too much when I signed up, I just thought, "hey I want to code, they teach coding... I'm in" first bootcamp (web dev) 5 years ago, second one (mobile dev) 3 years ago. Unlike most in my CoHort, I had no interest in a dev job, I wanted to provide contract work and perhaps join a startup for equity. > What are you d…

"CoHort" Sorry for OT, but this caught my eye - did you capitalize like this on purpose? If so, why? Just curious about language oddities like this :)

He's referring to the compliment of his Hort

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

#156

Post by mrborgen »

Hey,

I did a bootcamp 2.5 years ago (Founders and Coders on London). Today I'm a co-founder of Scrimba (https://scrimba.com/), which is a new interactive video format for communicating code.

I'm mostly doing non-technical work at the moment, though some technical as well.

After I graduated I worked a little over a year as a front-end developer at Xeneta (a Norwegian-based startup).

I could not have gotten a job as a professional developer if I didn't do the bootcamp. Or it would have taken me MUCH MUCH more time. So I'm super happy with my experience. Also, most people in my cohort who graduated also work as developers now.

I've been writing a lot about how my process from non-technical to technical was. Feel free to check it out here:

https://medium.com/founders-coders/from-non-technical-to-hir...

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

#157

Post by yomly »

gothrowaway wrote: post #115
13of40 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And you do not need any college or bootcamp to work at Amazon, Microsoft, or Google. Until you can throw some patents and published works in that blank section on the resume where the school goes, it's an uphill battle, though.

More like: A couple of years at startups where the hiring bar is lower. A couple of github projects. A couple of presentations at local meetup groups. And having a really really good interview when you get to the whiteboard.

What level are people entering Goog/Amzn on this path? Presumably not the same as a college graduate...?

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

#158

Post by likelynew »

mabbo wrote: post #35

Note some selection bias may exist in the answers. If you did a tech bootcamp three years ago and it went fantastically, you're probably reading HN today and will see and reply to this. The more success you had, the more likely you're a developer today! If it went terribly, you might still be working at Starbucks and don't read HN very often.

Apart from selection bias of readers, there is completely different kind of selection bias, by which the person posting here has some very positive or negative views for bootcamps. It is well known in surveys and reviews. If the person reading this post has gone to bootcamp 3 years ago, they are much more likely to write their experience if he/she have failed 100 interviews, or if they became CEO of the startup, rather than say work as an average programmer which is the most common outcome.

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

#159

Post by xiaoma »

gothrowaway wrote: post #107

I got paid to learn to program. 45k a yr to start off with. Then 70k a few months later. You don't need to pay a school to learn to code. The sad truth is, there are recruiters who will throw out your resume if you associate with bootcamps. Why? Because the quality of the programmers they generate is low. Code camps run like mills. From stories I've heard, they pay instructors as contractors below market rate (20-50k…

>"The sad truth is, there are recruiters who will throw out your resume if you associate with bootcamps.Why? Because the quality of the programmers they generate is low.

>Code camps run like mills. From stories I've heard, they pay instructors as contractors below market rate (20-50k, long long hours) and throw them away with no severance."

Bootcamp grad here who mentioned it prominently in my resume and blogged my experience and put up a YouTube video once a week while I was going through. I'm not sure who filters out bootcamp grads, but I can say Google, FB, Apple, Netflix, and many many YC companies reached out to me repeatedly and I ended up working at a YC startup.

Maybe the companies tossing out non-traditional candidates are actually the same companies that wouldn't be that great to work for to begin with.

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

#160

Post by alkjdf »

App Academy 2013 (SF)

What are you doing now? SWE at Google

Do you feel that the bootcamp prepared you for the jobs you got? Yes! I had some background coming in and I learned a ton about the web, how to break down problems, and how to be productive.

Do you think most of your cohort are still working as developers?

I think so, but I haven't stayed in touch with all of them. I definitely think the market for juniors has gotten more saturated and I was very lucky to get in when I did.

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