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Crosby B. Alfred posted:Can you expand upon this a bit? How difficult was it finding a decent job once you graduated? A year sounds extreme? Both job offers I received were from multiple round interviews over 3 months. Sometimes that poo poo just takes a long time. Also everyones in vacation during the summer. Weeks would go by without hearing from someone and I thought it was over and I was getting ghosted, only to get an email to schedule another round of interviews.
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Jan 24, 2022 05:19
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Oh that reminds me, look into western govenor's university. I think some people look poorly on it as a diploma mill (search the thread, it's come up at least once in the last year), but my buddy did it about a decade ago and felt like he got a pretty good deal out of it. You'll need to do your own research, but one big benefit is that they don't have defined semesters and (at least then) you could start and stop any class at any time which would solve the "school's already started and i missed the enrollment period". Since it's accredited it would qualify you for federal student loans.
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Jan 24, 2022 05:26
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drat, that is something that I didn't expect because part of me is thinking about saving up a bunch of cash to do a coding boot camp along with living expenses. It looks like I'm going to need to save up more than just a few months.
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Jan 24, 2022 05:26
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I can chime in extensively about this, too. I had a lot of money saved up and was getting a lot of unemployment from California for a while, and that enabled me to do a six-month intensive Full-Stack bootcamp. I did research and ultimately landed on UConn/Trilogy because it seemed really thorough and, best of all, seemed like all the reviews mentioned the amazing support system and career services. Here is a bullet point list of things to consider. -- Assume you will be looking for work after the bootcamp for 3 or 4 months. That might not be true, it might be less (advice on making it less below), it might be more, but it is prudent to give yourself a realistic runway for how long you can survive based on what you have in the bank. -- Like everyone else has said, be prepared to have this take over your life fully. The bootcamp I did is made for people who work during the day, meaning the two classes a week fall on weekday evenings, and they advertise that cohorts need to put in 20 hours a week at least. It's more like 50 if you want to stand a chance of getting a solid grasp of what you're learning and also stand out in other ways to get a job when you're done. The handful of people in my cohort who were serious, passionate, and put a ton of time were able to stay well ahead of the curriculum and I expect them to find work in a reasonable time frame. Most of the others either fell way behind and dropped out or graduated JUST BARELY and their materials are not good and they're probably not going to find work anytime soon. -- Do freeCodeCamp/some sort of free learning of HTML/CSS/JavaScript basics BEFORE you go in. Even though there's pre-work, it's not much. You should take 2 months outside of your current job and learn those basics so you can hit the ground running. You don't want to go in completely useless. If you know what arrays and loops are and know how to make a skeleton website with HTML and CSS, you will feel much more comfortable at the outset expanding on those skills. -- Try to find a bootcamp that uses version control or at the very least does group projects. So many people go through tutorials and bootcamps and have websites but have no idea how to collaborate on a repo. It's going to be much harder to accommodate to an industry job or even get hired for one if you don't know what a feature branch or a pull request is. Coding is highly collaborative and you will need to show that you can work with people on a codebase. If they don't touch on Git, definitely make a point to make it part of what you learn before the bootcamp starts, even just the basics. -- Be engaged! From what I can gather (and from my experience with my bootcamp), remote learning means everyone is awkward and nobody asks questions. Ask questions! Be funny and to lighten the mood. Take it upon yourself to lead discussions, especially if nobody else is saying anything. You will really stand out doing this and you will learn more. -- NETWORK. This is the #1 most important thing, in my opinion. Get on Slack and Discord communities and GET ON LINKEDIN and start posting or responding to posts here and there about coding. Make friends. Reach out to people. Help others behind you. So many people I know who have done bootcamps got jobs because of a connection. I myself am in the hiring pipeline process of working on the team of my bootcamp instructor at a big company because he wants to work with me. My tutor has also told me if his company has an opening he would essentially hand me a job. Network!!! Go to events, go to career fairs, go to office hours. If you are willing to put in a ton of time and have the means to survive for an extended period of time on the money you've got, it's a great idea to do a bootcamp as long as it's thorough and has really good career services and you are willing to do what you need to do to stand out, because most bootcampers do the minimum and don't graduate or are not employable after they're done -- their portfolios look like an absolute mess, they have no online presence, they didn't say a single word in the entire class curriculum, and their projects are obviously just beginner projects instead of unique and personal ones. If anyone wants more advice about this I would love to help. Shoot me a DM! I think I am pretty astute in terms of what I see people doing and not doing which allow them to get the most out of a bootcamp or not.
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Jan 24, 2022 14:35
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^^ This is all good stuff, especially the collaborative stuff. I will ask you point blank about contributing to a repo with other people and it is a very important topic.aperfectcirclefan posted:Thank you for posting this and it's nice to read this perspective also. I'm also happy for your great success There are financial aid packages available. U of MN has a very good bootcamp that you can qualify for, I've hired a couple people out of that. There are others in my area that can be financed, so I've hired people who were able to save up for a while and go through it with a reasonable debt load. Also keep in mind, this board is self-selecting. There are people who go through a bootcamp and bomb out/can't get a job. They don't post on newbie developer boards. So it's not just financial, but being in a mental place to do it. All the post-bootcamp work is also important. My bootcamp hires have comfortably fit into one of two buckets: People who actively pursued technical learning after the bootcamp or people who were just really goddamn smart and just needed the kind of structure and direction that a bootcamp provides. Lockback fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Jan 24, 2022 |
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Jan 24, 2022 16:58
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Ooo never heard of the UMN one, I'll check it out thank you. Wondering if you goons could help me out and take a quick look at my portfolio site and give me some feedback! I know I need to add links to my GitHub in the footer and on the home page and finish the footer also but it's about 90% there unless you goons destroy it lol. https://thomaslane.dev/ My main questions are: 1. It's really ugly, should I consider hiring a graphic designer to make it decent looking? Programmer art :V 2. My portfolio involves a large amount of WordPress sites, should I pare those down to only a few? 3. I didn't list any of my small projects made in JavaScript and such because they're not a website; should I include those? I'm talking things like python parsers for addresses etc. 4. I didn't really include any of the marketing stuff on there even though that's my main gig. This involves running ad campaigns etc. Do you think it would hurt to have that in there? 5. I don't have a photo of me or anything on there since I'm not a huge fan of that anyways and it seems kinda selfish imho. Should I just put one up? 6. The lighthouse header...I wasn't sure what to put there and didn't want the site to just start with text. Is this okay or should I change it? Thanks so much!! Hoping to start putting this in with applications and maybe it'll give me that final push. Hopefully lol.
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Jan 25, 2022 00:25
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fawning deference posted:-- NETWORK. This is the #1 most important thing, in my opinion. Get on Slack and Discord communities and GET ON LINKEDIN and start posting or responding to posts here and there about coding. Make friends. Reach out to people. Help others behind you. So many people I know who have done bootcamps got jobs because of a connection Oh yeah, if you're posting in this thread and don't have a LinkedIn, AND it's not set to "open to opportunities" stop reading this post and go do that right now And yeah flip through the MIT python series on YouTube and maybe go like do the goadesign/goa hello world on GitHub. If you can get that to compile you're doing ok and will be able to absorb what you need to be successful in bootcamp. Walking into bootcamp not knowing how to use a build tool chair, GitHub and restful apis is going to seriously kneecap you But yeah networking is 80% of the success path to making big money in any field
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Jan 25, 2022 00:40
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Hadlock posted:Oh that reminds me, look into western govenor's university. I think some people look poorly on it as a diploma mill (search the thread, it's come up at least once in the last year), but my buddy did it about a decade ago and felt like he got a pretty good deal out of it. You'll need to do your own research, but one big benefit is that they don't have defined semesters and (at least then) you could start and stop any class at any time which would solve the "school's already started and i missed the enrollment period". Since it's accredited it would qualify you for federal student loans. Going back to this with a late reply, This is my "other" traditional option which I've heard good things about personally this college personally but it just takes way more time. My end goal is to move to California (while maintaining a decent income) and my supervisor is even okay with it but the overwhelming majority of projects are based out of low cost-of-living areas like Texas and I'm simply not interested waking up at 6AM or earlier. There's also been a ton of outsourcing for the tech stack I specialize in, more development skills needed for IT and developing software to solve a problem or provide a service is way cooler than just building out infrastructure to support whatever fancy application. I'll give a look at the freeCodeCamp, that looks really cool. Gucci Loafers fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Jan 25, 2022 |
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Jan 25, 2022 03:48
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Lockback posted:Front end usually has a shorter path from where you are to a job. A quick search is showing me - and correct me if I'm wrong - is that front end is making websites look pretty and perform well while backend is everything else. If I'm not an artist and could care less if something was merely plain HTML it sounds like focusing on backend stuff for me is better? Gucci Loafers fucked around with this message at 04:04 on Jan 25, 2022 |
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Jan 25, 2022 03:57
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:A quick search is showing me - and correct me if I'm wrong - is that front end is making websites look pretty and perform well while backend is everything else. If I'm not an artist and could care less if something was merely plain HTML it sounds like focusing on backend stuff for me is better? So "make it look pretty" is usually UX, which is sometimes combined with front-end, sometimes separated and done by people who are more artist-oriented than technical (ie, they do the designs using tools and then hand them to programmers). (super simplifying) Front-End is building all of that client-facing stuff. It's not just "what font, where to put it" though, it's actually building the interfaces and logic that goes into it, how you collect that information and interface with the backend. So it's way more than just colors and boxes. That said, your first FE job will probably be going through and fixing UI elements that break when you update the Angular version or w/e. Not exciting, but that's where you start. Backend is building the logic and parts that you don't see. In Microservice/API architecture you're building the endpoints that return the stuff that the front-end needs, and usually does all the database interactions. So your app sends out invites to users to join a forum, the front-end collects the email address, user type, message, etc, hits the endpoint for the backend which creates the user accounts, generates the links, then sends the emails with everything. (You probably have multiple services doing this, and some kind of messaging service but lets not get ahead of ourselves). If a place is good a new backend person might be working through a bug queue or maybe tied to a senior person in standing up a new service, if it's not they tell a new person to stand up a new service and then fire that person when they inevitably fail. I honestly say most beginners should just aim full-stack. Front-end is usually easier to jump into first and you can usually give junior FE people more to do without having to spend a ton of time coaching them, so you're more likely to be ok hiring junior FE. Backend usually has a better career arc (not universally true) and there's more demand for more senior BE devs. But honestly I think over focusing early leads FE engineers to hit a quick ceiling because they don't know how to do anything cool without understanding backend stuff, and BE engineers can get into a cocoon where they have no insight into an app beyond just endpoints happily responding. Starting full-stack and then kinda organically growing in one direction or the other is probably best.
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Jan 25, 2022 05:05
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Does anyone have recommendations on a game dev programming bootcamp? My buddy is looking to get into game development and I've only heard of more general development bootcamps. Thanks in advance 
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Jan 25, 2022 05:44
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:Can you expand upon this a bit? How difficult was it finding a decent job once you graduated? A year sounds extreme? The Year Estimate is a lot of things and the significance of that largely depends on how you are approaching it(i.e. do you have kids? are you working? Anything else important eating up your free time? etc). Before I went to the bootcamp to learn to code, I had to learn how to code, as dumb as that sounds. Hack Reactor, and I'm sure many other bootcamps, will not take you from 0-60. It's more like 20-60. If you know how to write a function that can take other functions as arguments, and understand how that works and why it's important, in addition to being able to make a very basic website, you're ready. If not, you probably needed to learn more. For reference, I failed my first interview and Hack Reactor asked me to do a personal project to show what I knew. I made a side-scrolling spaceship shooter game that primarily used HTMLCanvas that, to this day, I'm honestly pretty proud of. I then failed my interview two more times(for reasons I highlighted earlier; I turn into a moron when people watch me code), and got in on the fourth attempt. I admit I am an extreme example, few others struggled as hard as I did. With only a couple of exceptions, almost everyone botched their first interview. A botched first interview was a hard 2-week waiting period before you could attempt another. Most of those got in on their second attempt. Those that didn't, most made it in on their third. Only a few of us took a total of four, but by that point I imagine most people had just given up entirely. At this point we're probably looking at 4 months invested. Between learning to code while working, then interviewing, failing the interview, then having to build a project to prove I know what I'm doing, then failing an interview again, it chewed up a lot of time. Excluding failures, assuming you just get everything there is to do with code and get in on your first attempt, you can expect this to take 2.5 months instead of 4 months. If you're not working full time, this goes down to about a month if you're willing to dedicate a 40-hour workweek to learning and interviewing. Seriously! This part is really bad and is vastly underestimated by people! Then comes planning and preparation. I live in Los Angeles, and at the time I was looking, LA based bootcamps were outright bad or worse. This meant I had to figure out how I was going to facilitate a 3-month move to San Francisco. It took about a month to find an airbnb willing to let me buy out the room for 3 straight months. Keep in mind I mentioned that my in-laws bankrolled the entire thing and it still took a month to find a place. Side note: there are "Bunkhouses", or places where they stuff ten or twenty bootcamp students in a room for cheap for the entire 3 months. Under no circumstances should you do this. They are awful. Don't do it. We're at 5 months. 3.5 months for "working full-time while prepping and passed on my first try" . 2 months for "unemployed and used my 40-hour workweek to learn code and passed on my first try." I then had another, more frustrating problem. I had to wait 6 weeks for classes to begin. It took so drat long to find an airbnb that by the time I found one, the class cutoff had occurred and I got rolled over to the next one. Admittedly, I can't believe how unlucky I had gotten(I missed getting into the cohort I should have been in by about three days), and this likely won't happen to you, but understand that you're going to have to wait anywhere from 1 to 6 weeks from when you're accepted to when it actually starts. This puts us at 6. 4.5 for "working full time while prepping" 3 months for "unemployed" Now i'm in SF, I'm going to classes. It's a nightmare! Bootcamps are hard! You've heard this. We're at 9 months. 7.5 for "worked full time prior to going to school" and 6 months for "unemployed" Here's where it gets dicey. Unless you are a golden child, that 3 month window they expect it to take you to find a job? It's gonna take the entire 3 months. With only two exceptions, my entire 40-member cohort took drat near the entire three month window to find their jobs. Most got their job between the 2.5 and 3 month mark. This means for most people, you're at a year. For the sake of full disclosure, the two exceptions were already software engineers, they just didn't have a web dev focus. One was a roboticist from Japan, the other was an electrical engineer from India who built software with Java to power light shows for concerts. I wasn't most people. Like I mentioned, I was the only person in my cohort to not have a college degree which was a huge detriment to me. My only job experience before learning to code was "Bartender". My resume looked like total poo poo because there was nothing of value on it. Literally the only lines that mattered were my name, contact information and github link, five total lines. I sent out a hundred resumes a month, got 3 callbacks, 2 interviews, and one offer. It took me about 4 months all told. Aside from people who do not get a job at all, I am definitely worst case scenario, but keep in mind "best case scenario" isn't a significant amount better. Bootcamp was significantly harder than my actual dev job, and from what I heard from my cohortmates, I was not alone in this. For me personally? The entire situation took 13 months starting from "I'm gonna do a code bootcamp!" to "I have a job". I think on average, my cohort was around 10 months. Either way, the process of going to a bootcamp is a deceptively huge time and money sink. You can't look at the "three-month course with three months to find a job!" as an accurate representation of the time it will take you. And just for the record, I was very successful after. Within 2 years I was leading a team, and 5 years after graduating I was leading the entire front-end engineering department. I certainly can't argue with the results. Vincent Valentine fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Jan 25, 2022 |
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Jan 25, 2022 13:35
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Did you feel like what you learned in the boot camp directly helped you professionally or was it more just getting a understanding of code and concepts?
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Jan 25, 2022 13:53
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Congrats on going from bartender to software developer, that's just about the perfect modern interpretation of the american dream and economic mobility
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Jan 25, 2022 13:57
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aperfectcirclefan posted:Did you feel like what you learned in the boot camp directly helped you professionally or was it more just getting a understanding of code and concepts? What I learned in the bootcamp was "What do I not know?". When I was first learning on my own before I went there, I thought web dev was just HTML, CSS and JavaScript. To an beginner, that seems reasonable. But then there's react, angular, vue, webpack, git, terminal, sql, nosql, docker, jira, jenkins, ci, mocha, testing, and a bunch of other poo poo. That was the "What do I not know?". It was essentially a curated roadmap of information of what was MOST relevant that particular year. And if I'm being totally honest, that was where 90% of the value was. If I could have just gotten that roadmap of information, I think even now I would have preferred to just get that roadmap and figured it out on my own rather than attending. Hadlock posted:Congrats on going from bartender to software developer, that's just about the perfect modern interpretation of the american dream and economic mobility Keep in mind this is only because my in-laws gave me a shitload of money. If someone hadn't floated me the $30,000 necessary to both pay tuition and completely cover my living expenses and bills during the schooling and looking for a job portion, I'd still be a bartender. I simply wouldn't have had the time or energy to do any of that while also working. Which is, honestly, a much more accurate interpretation of economic mobility. If you have a lot of money, making even more is suddenly very viable. If you don't, it's not. Vincent Valentine fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Jan 25, 2022 |
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Jan 25, 2022 14:16
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Vincent Valentine posted:What I learned in the bootcamp was "What do I not know?". When I was first learning on my own before I went there, I thought web dev was just HTML, CSS and JavaScript. To an beginner, that seems reasonable. But then there's react, angular, vue, webpack, git, terminal, sql, nosql, docker, jira, jenkins, ci, mocha, testing, and a bunch of other poo poo. That was the "What do I not know?". It was essentially a curated roadmap of information of what was MOST relevant that particular year. And if I'm being totally honest, that was where 90% of the value was. If I could have just gotten that roadmap of information, I think even now I would have preferred to just get that roadmap and figured it out on my own rather than attending. Thanks for answering. Yeah it seems like something like that roadmap would be invaluable to learner's and even I'm not familiar with some of those words so I guess back to the learning pipeline for me :V
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Jan 25, 2022 14:41
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This is a great story, and honestly the "bad luck" is what you need to plan on. No plan goes to plan. Vincent Valentine posted:And if I'm being totally honest, that was where 90% of the value was. If I could have just gotten that roadmap of information, I think even now I would have preferred to just get that roadmap and figured it out on my own rather than attending. This is it, what it gives you is a structure that helps prevent blind spots. It also gives an employer context on what you should know so we can see if you picked up what you should have or not. You can do this all on your own, but its a lot harder and you need to do a lot more to prove to an employer you are legit.
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Jan 25, 2022 15:17
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Good stuff. To follow up why did all the LA Bootcamps suck and what do you mean you failed the Hack Reactor interview? That's nice to hear some of the coding boot camps test you to make sure you're up to the whole semester and don't just take all your money and run. Vincent Valentine posted:Side note: there are "Bunkhouses", or places where they stuff ten or twenty bootcamp students in a room for cheap for the entire 3 months. Under no circumstances should you do this. They are awful. Don't do it. I'm partially guilty of at least thinking about this because it's cheap. So cheap but thanks for the warning.
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Jan 25, 2022 17:54
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aperfectcirclefan posted:Did you feel like what you learned in the boot camp directly helped you professionally or was it more just getting a understanding of code and concepts? If you look at a map of knowledge, you can divide it into the categories of “stuff I know”, “stuff I know I don’t know”, and “stuff I don’t know I don’t know.” A large amount (an under-appreciated amount) of education is moving stuff from from the third category into the second. Which leads to the joke that the greatest benefit of a computer science degree is knowing what to Google.
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Jan 25, 2022 18:20
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It's interesting hearing some first-hand experiences of people going through bootcamps, when I decided to "learn programming" in order to switch careers I debated whether or not investing my time and money into one was a good idea and ultimately decided that self-studying was the way I was going to go.Vincent Valentine posted:What I learned in the bootcamp was "What do I not know?". When I was first learning on my own before I went there, I thought web dev was just HTML, CSS and JavaScript. To an beginner, that seems reasonable. But then there's react, angular, vue, webpack, git, terminal, sql, nosql, docker, jira, jenkins, ci, mocha, testing, and a bunch of other poo poo. That was the "What do I not know?". It was essentially a curated roadmap of information of what was MOST relevant that particular year. And if I'm being totally honest, that was where 90% of the value was. If I could have just gotten that roadmap of information, I think even now I would have preferred to just get that roadmap and figured it out on my own rather than attending. I think this was ultimately what was missing in the beginning of my self-study. Sure, I was learning Python but didn't know what I wanted to accomplish with it. It took a long while and some exploration to actually determine that I wanted to focus on web-dev, and then took many more months before I began to really understand the various different tech-stacks in the web-dev ecosystem.
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Jan 25, 2022 18:27
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A couple days late but thanks for the replies and advice. A few quick questions: Are there any good bootcamps in Atlanta? Does anyone have experience with online bootcamps? And one not-so-quick question: I've been opposed to self-teaching in my previous posts, but now having a better idea of direction I'm thinking more about it. What does a full-stack DIY curriculum look like? I've got a p good idea on where to learn CS basics so I'm specifically looking for how to learn the web dev stuff that would be present in a bootcamp, and learning to work with a team.
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Jan 25, 2022 19:37
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Pretty much all of the boot camps are online now due to COVID.
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Jan 25, 2022 20:56
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Need some advice re: career path. Some background: I enrolled in a local college's software engineering program specifically for co-op. They helped me land a job with a mid-size bank doing network security on an 8 month contract. Here's the thing: I'm much more interested in the software engineering/programming side of tech rather than networks. I'd love to eventually work with databases/become a database admin/engineer as I really enjoyed that portion of my schooling. Is this type of network security experience going to actually be helpful in the future of should I be trying to cozy up to our dev teams? It's really weird because the interview had a coding challenge but my actual job duties have like zero coding at all.
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Jan 25, 2022 22:26
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:Good stuff. To follow up why did all the LA Bootcamps suck and what do you mean you failed the Hack Reactor interview? That's nice to hear some of the coding boot camps test you to make sure you're up to the whole semester and don't just take all your money and run. Just for perspective, this was all 6, almost 7 years ago. But at that time the LA based bootcamps had very low placement rates and a lot of reviews from both students and employers alike saying that they didn't really learn anything valuable by the end of it. Ironically, one of these was Hack Reactor's LA branch, which I heard straight from the source was having a lot of trouble with both teachers and mentors. I imagine that after this much time has passed that this is no longer the case but it's worth pointing out strictly because, as the story states, the amount of time you can invest in this can really get away from you. And by failing the interview, I mean exactly that. When you apply to go to HR, they interview you as though it were a dev job interview. You answer a bunch of admittedly pretty simple questions, like What is a Function, What is a Variable, etc. Then they do a few relatively simple code challenges with you. Honestly, I'm still not really sure why what I did was not good enough. They never really explained specifically where I was lacking, so I don't doubt that I just got the same answers wrong multiple times while thinking they were correct. All of my code ran and all of the challenge code returned the result they wanted so  .Also the issue with the bunkhouse is that it's never quiet, and there's always a lot of ambient light. Everyone I knew who was in a bunkhouse got an airbnb within just a couple of weeks of class starting.
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Jan 26, 2022 01:32
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Vincent Valentine posted:Just for perspective, this was all 6, almost 7 years ago. But at that time the LA based bootcamps had very low placement rates and a lot of reviews from both students and employers alike saying that they didn't really learn anything valuable by the end of it. Ironically, one of these was Hack Reactor's LA branch, which I heard straight from the source was having a lot of trouble with both teachers and mentors. I imagine that after this much time has passed that this is no longer the case but it's worth pointing out strictly because, as the story states, the amount of time you can invest in this can really get away from you. That's fair and it looks like the only remaining boot camps on my list are now Hack Reactor, Flat Iron and General Assembly. With that, does anyone have opinions on the longer part time courses that are few months long or ones that are fully remote? Vincent Valentine posted:And by failing the interview, I mean exactly that. When you apply to go to HR, they interview you as though it were a dev job interview. You answer a bunch of admittedly pretty simple questions, like What is a Function, What is a Variable, etc. Then they do a few relatively simple code challenges with you. Honestly, I'm still not really sure why what I did was not good enough. They never really explained specifically where I was lacking, so I don't doubt that I just got the same answers wrong multiple times while thinking they were correct. All of my code ran and all of the challenge code returned the result they wanted so Let me get this straight, when you apply for the boot camp they do a mock interview for a development position? I guess that is fair to see how experienced you are when coming into the class.
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Jan 27, 2022 03:20
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:That's fair and it looks like the only remaining boot camps on my list are now Hack Reactor, Flat Iron and General Assembly. Flatiron also had an admissions process, but probably less intensive than what VV went through. They basically give you some material where you psuedocode the answer to some problems and a person reviews it in order to move forward. I had to redo mine once in order to pass. Then they gave you actual learning materials, in my case it was Ruby since that was the first language taught in the bootcamp (at the time, from what I understand they start with JS now and the prework is done in JS now). Took me about two weeks to do, and it consisted of basically reading and doing labs. The environment that you set up on your computer is what all the labs are tested on. Started with very simple stuff like data types and variables, and went into arrays and objects. A lot of it was introduction to coding concepts, stuff if you already have a basic understanding of coding you'll get through easily. After that was the actual start of the bootcamp and the end of my social life for 3 months. I dunno how much coding experience you have, but I went in with absolutely no knowledge of coding. One of their selling points is going in with 0 experience.
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Jan 27, 2022 04:10
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:Let me get this straight, when you apply for the boot camp they do a mock interview for a development position? I guess that is fair to see how experienced you are when coming into the class. At the time I was starting, it really did seem extreme and pointless. But in retrospect, I get it. First, not needing to teach what you can learn by going through free, effective resources like codeacademy(I'm sure there's better options now but that's what I used forever ago) allows you to skip it in the curriculum and spend that time on more difficult topics that are greatly improved by having a mentor. Second, and probably most importantly, it lets people know if they hate code. I've known multiple people who did not struggle with code at all, but found it to be incredibly frustrating or more importantly, just plain boring. Imagine spending $15k on just tuition, not including living expenses and a potential temporary move to another city, only to find out that code is just simply not for you. You were good at it, but man you just don't want to do it. It seems weird to need to know how to code to go to the school to learn to code, but it makes a lot of sense.
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Jan 27, 2022 04:26
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There's also a selection effect, again survival bias will make you think anyone can go do this but that really isn't true. Lots of people are unable to grasp some of the basic stuff, and honestly if you can't get the basics yourself using self-paced guides you won't make it through.
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Jan 27, 2022 04:53
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"Hey aperfectcirclefan i'm calling about setting up a interview" "ok cool" "just to let you know that most people in your situation, ccontractors going onto full time, expect to make $50 a hour, just so you know we don't pay that. What do you expect to make?" "I would do good doing like 30-35 a hr?" "Oh, we pay $20 a hour for developers to give them their first start. Our name is great on resumes".  I told him i'd still come in for a interview but might cancel at the last moment. I need to find a real job lol.
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Jan 31, 2022 19:46
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By "great on resumes" they must mean "listed on tons of resumes because of all the people that work for us for a month while better offers settle down."
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Jan 31, 2022 20:52
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They're getting offers so it must be working Is that $20/hr as a contractor? Cause you'll have to pay for your own benefits out of that and that's not cheap at all. IMO you shouldn't take the interview unless you're desperate for cash, but it's your time to spend as you please.
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Jan 31, 2022 20:57
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ultrafilter posted:They're getting offers so it must be working No its as a full time employee. I forgot the best part, "You'd get 30 a hour on overtime, we work lots of overtime!"
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Jan 31, 2022 21:06
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If you're new, there's not really a great reason to not go to an interview. You should absolutely consider going into that interview with straight-up zero possibility of accepting an offer, but turning down an interview is rarely a great idea unless you're very short on time. Maybe if the interview comes after a 4-hour code test or some such garbage. Interviewing is a learned skill. Doing it more will make you better at it. This is particularly troublesome as it's not something you're really given too many opportunities to practice, so you gotta take them wherever you can.
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Jan 31, 2022 21:08
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Yeah I mean I think you understand what you're getting into, and sometimes you just don't have a choice. At least they're being upfront about how lovely they are, how much worse can it be 
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Jan 31, 2022 21:16
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Yeah true. I dunno it was weird, he kept iterating "I want you in here to make you a offer" so I get the feeling they're very very desperate. I dunno. I don't mind blowing them off, its a job thats about 2 hours away from where I live now so I'll see how it goes
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Jan 31, 2022 21:21
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aperfectcirclefan posted:Yeah true. I dunno it was weird, he kept iterating "I want you in here to make you a offer" so I get the feeling they're very very desperate. I dunno. I don't mind blowing them off, its a job thats about 2 hours away from where I live now so Do the interview. If they give you an offer counter at 3x base rate.
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Jan 31, 2022 21:29
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Edit: ^^^ yeah that If they're that desperate then tell them you want $40/hr and 3 weeks of PTO. Tell them a guy on the internet told you that what they are offering you is a joke bordering on offensive. What are they gonna do, tell you no before you have a chance to tell them no? But really, like I said, any opportunity to get better at interviewing is something you should consider. Just do not take a $20/hr programming job that is telling you in advance they're going to work you too hard.
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Jan 31, 2022 21:31
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^^ agreed with the interviewing practice reasons. i'm in the last round with a company i have no plans to work for because i want more experience negotiating salary. there's really no reason not to do it.
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Jan 31, 2022 22:26
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Nah thats fair and i'll do it. If they make a offer what should I say, "I need to think about this a bit more and consult with the wife"?
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Jan 31, 2022 22:35
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I posted a few pages ago about looking specifically for companies that didn't want to do a resume based recruitment. It worked out well for me, I probably sent out like 10 applications and got 3 responses. Made it pretty deep into the interview process at all 3, got 2 offers and accepted the second one. So now I'm starting my first 'real' dev job. I'm joining a well funded startup doing Python stuff. I'm getting six-figures, equity, WFH, full benefits, etc. It seems silly, but doing that first year at a crummy job really does open a lot of doors. That, and constantly coding my rear end off for the last year.
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Jan 31, 2022 22:54
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