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How To Become An Apprentice Developer
21–30 of 57 posts
Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer
#22Gotta say, as a sophomore who's been debating dropping out college, that these junior positions exist at all is encouraging. I always thought my trajectory would be to go to my current school, transfer to a better one, get some good internships, and graduate with a CS degree. But my grades aren't where they need to be, so I probably won't be able to transfer to a good school. Honestly I've been concerned whether or n…
You have no grasp on theory, your grades are bad and you want to drop out? Don't drink the Kool-Aid, stay in school. Use Coursera and other available resources to augment your university education.
I agree that in a lot of cases it can be good to just persevere, but I'm really tired of seeing this back-and-forth. It's not all or nothing. If you're doubting yourself, if you're not 'all-in', take a break. You can go back and you will if it's the right thing for you.
Experiment.
Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most important piece of advice I can give you is to go directly to the decision maker. Call them if you have to. Make up some excuse to talk to them on the phone. Tell them your e-mail bounced but you really like what they are doing and give them a short summary of who you are.
No, this is terrible advice. Companies have hr and recruiters for a reason, if you jump over them it just shows you're pushy and impatient. If someone calls me and tells me their email bounced I'd immediately think they were lame. Seriously? "Did you get my message?" Is circa 2001. These days if an email bounces you go back and read sent it properly with th right address. Emails don't bounce on their own. When I lost…
Don't listen to this guy. Building relationships is a huge part of how you go grom one of the massive pile of mostly crap resumes to someone who can skip that and get a warm interview. If you have spoken to someone and they remember who you are, you have a relationship. If you develop relationships with people who might hire you later, maybe they don't hire you, but maybe they can introduce you to someone who will.
The EV of contacting people like this is high. You should do it.
Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer
#24It took years before I was hireable material. All I had in 1999 was irc rooms and mailing lists filled with egotistic programmers that had 120 different ways to call you dumb if you wanted to learn.
Learning to be a hireable programmer is a multi-year journey. You can do it on your own. Freelance small jobs until they become big jobs.
Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer
#25[Instructor at App Academy here] I'm really proud of Hugo; he came in to App Academy as an 18 year old kid with no coding experience, and through sheer force of will, learned enough to land a junior dev job in nine weeks. If you're interested in the course that Hugo took, check us out (appacademy.io). Students only pay us when they find a dev job after the program. Hugo's fellow students are doing great. 11/15 of our…
> Students only pay us when they find a dev job after the program.
Either that statement is incorrect, or you are only charging some students. What would you refer to the $3,000 upfront payment as?
Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer
#26There are two primary reasons this story is possible. One, we have a highly motivated student; and two, tremendous demand unfilled via traditional channels.
And nothing against a 9-week code bootcamp, but even if the student invested 12 hours a day with no days off, we're talking about 756 hours of experience. Compare this to a university education at four years times 12 hours of class a week for 30 weeks and two hours of study for each hour of class, we have 4320 hours of experience.
Granted, not all of that experience is coding!, but nor are we counting four years of personal projects, internships, summer jobs etc. And along with that, neither are we counting the relationships with professors and peers, not only within our chosen profession - but perhaps more importantly, without.
Not to take anything away from this kid and his story, but it's difficult to reconcile the comments from people who think university is a waste of time. It really just sounds like they are from people who are/were asleep at the wheel. Which makes me wonder why anyone would want to hire them (well, I mean, other than the tremendous demand thing)?
Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer
#27[Instructor at App Academy here] I'm really proud of Hugo; he came in to App Academy as an 18 year old kid with no coding experience, and through sheer force of will, learned enough to land a junior dev job in nine weeks. If you're interested in the course that Hugo took, check us out (appacademy.io). Students only pay us when they find a dev job after the program. Hugo's fellow students are doing great. 11/15 of our…
> Students only pay us when they find a dev job after the program. Either that statement is incorrect, or you are only charging some students. What would you refer to the $3,000 upfront payment as?
We ask all students to put down a $3,000 fully refundable deposit.
There are clearly defined rules for deducting from the deposit (e.g., arrive late for class: $10, etc.). The money deducted does not go to us, but is distributed evenly among the other students.
The reason for the deposit is that students are working in pairs throughout the class, and if a student doesn’t show up, he/she disrupts the classroom experience for everybody. The system was successful for our summer course; it both helps ensure that students have a pair programming partner everyday and that even though the class is free upfront, everyone feels invested.
As long as students show up everyday and stay focused, they get their deposits back at the end, as all of the summer students have.
Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer
#28[Hugo's Hacker House roommate here] Hugo went from zero coding experience to holding his own with seasoned Javascript & Ruby devs in 9 weeks. I'm not sure if he's just an exception, but it sure paints app academy in a positive light for me. I hope more of these "Learn to Code for Free" camps pop up around here.
That depends on what is meant by "holding his own with seasoned Javascript & Ruby devs". In my experience, the only thing that makes you a good programmer is building things. What has this guy built? A handful of project euler solutions? That doesn't make you a valuable programmer. There is no free lunch. There is no magic bullet.
Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
We are really fortunate that CS skills are in such high demand. That this is even an option is pretty amazing. However, the day may come when the market turns down and the thing that makes an employer hire the next guy and not you is a piece of paper that says he stuck it out in college. Good luck whatever you do!
If you are a good programmer and get turned away for that reason, thank yourself for that bit of luck. I went through college, learned dittily squat when it comes to cs, and now I'm playing catch-up hardcore with js/functional programming/kernel hacking/everything. Autodidacts rule the world today, and they will only continue to become more influential. Nobody can push you harder than you can push yourself.
While I agree with your points, rejecting a company because it makes that demand isn't quite right. If (hypothetically) you have 2 equally good programmers, and the only difference between them is one has a degree and the other one doesn't, then its natural to choose the former
Re: How To Become An Apprentice Developer
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, this is terrible advice. Companies have hr and recruiters for a reason, if you jump over them it just shows you're pushy and impatient. If someone calls me and tells me their email bounced I'd immediately think they were lame. Seriously? "Did you get my message?" Is circa 2001. These days if an email bounces you go back and read sent it properly with th right address. Emails don't bounce on their own. When I lost…
Don't listen to this guy. Building relationships is a huge part of how you go grom one of the massive pile of mostly crap resumes to someone who can skip that and get a warm interview. If you have spoken to someone and they remember who you are, you have a relationship. If you develop relationships with people who might hire you later, maybe they don't hire you, but maybe they can introduce you to someone who will. T…
I agree with what you're saying, but does this approach scale? What I mean is: (say) Google gets millions of applicants a day. If all of them start calling up Google devs wouldn't that waste a lot of their time? (I guess a reason why this works is that not many people are doing it)
On a related note, I've found that I get a lot of benefit just by calling and speaking to a real person. For instance, an airline representative once saved me nearly $800 on an offer that was not mentioned anywhere else