Coding/developer bootcamps

[Indio]

Took about 2-3months from finishing and my first day at work at a company where I salaried at less than 100k. For the second company and beyond, sky's the limit depending on you as an individual, my offers second job and beyond ranged from 95-135k not counting equity and since (I'm currently interviewing) 120-160k is not uncommon. If I wanted to dedicate time to interviewing at tier 1 companies (facebook/google/etc.) it's not unheard of to swing at 150-200k with insane performance incentives as well.

Quality of staff, like students, are individuals as well. Out of three instructors, I had one good, one acceptable and one awful. The good one prepared us well by not answering questions and challenging us to figure it out as we would on the job. The acceptable one similarly gave us practical skills but a lot less time due to his non-teaching obligations. The awful one wasn't inherently awful as a teacher, he was just unfair with particular students. He had an affinity to attractive looking female students, and gave all of his time and attention to them. Despite the entire class struggling with a concept, only the females received help (good for him though, he banged one of them in the end and she was very attractive).

Lastly, the note that I will make is that I have classmates who still have not found gainful employment (it's been 3 years) and I meet struggling post-codingschool unemployed people all the time. They crowd meetups and technical talks and it seems like there are more unemployed coding school graduates than when I attended. It's more competitive to be entry level now than ever before. Tell your friend don't do it because you heard some guy on a forum somewhere is getting 160k after attending the bootcamp, do it because you wanted to learn code, wanted to be a geek, wanted to level up data skills, etc. because I can promise you that if money is the only thing driving you, you'll get smoked by the people who do it for fun. If nothing else from reading this, have your friend (or go with your friend!) attend a meetup and say hi to ten strangers.

this one is always crawling with unemployed coding school people:
https://www.meetup.com/ReactJS-San-Francisco/

TL;DR A coding school doesn't guarantee you a job, you really need grit and bootstraps, yo (and also about 1.5 years of experience).

Thank you for your detailed response. If you don't mind asking which one did you attend?

 

[Indio]

If your friend is already 30+, he's better off sticking with the bizdev or product marketing side of things, especially since that's what his experience aligns with.

Good point, he is in his early 40s.

 

[Yakoo752]

If your friend is already 30+, he's better off sticking with the bizdev or product marketing side of things, especially since that's what his experience aligns with.

Good point, he is in his early 40s.

there is a ton of value in a bizdev/prod marketing/marketing manager having a basic understanding of how to develop

 

[gnahc79]

Good point, he is in his early 40s.

Unfortunately that changes the outlook a bit . Grinding out code at the entry level at that age...you will need to be better than every young person there IMO. Some 40-somethings can do that, it is possible. It's a big hurdle though. We had someone older transfer into my dept years ago (in his 50s). He was previously in hardware for many years and had basic coding skills. He had 0 knowledge of the area, RDBMS query optimizer. He struggled a lot and I helped him the best I could. He never really got good performance review ratings and was let go several years ago.
I would advise becoming technically proficient with areas of interest. Be able to use an enterprise product as an end user. Be able to understand all the tech-speak and catchphrases thrown around, i.e. machine learning, AI, data scientist etc. Then look into how to be a project manager or product manager in company X. Technically proficient managers with good people skills do well. And devs like them too .

 

[Reli]

there is a ton of value in a bizdev/prod marketing/marketing manager having a basic understanding of how to develop

Agreed, any marketer would make himself more marketable by attending. Not sure I'd pony up the tuition myself though.

 

[dagle]

Thank you for your detailed response. If you don't mind asking which one did you attend?

I purposely left that out so when you tell your friend, he can't have the notion of "x bootcamp means y" because I assure you, they're all the same.

 

[gnahc79]

this one is always crawling with unemployed coding school people:
https://www.meetup.com/ReactJS-San-Francisco/

I'm not current with front end stuff at all. To me front end work is for the most part very entry level. I did this kind of stuff as an intern. ReactJS looks like a much easier method for JS front end work right? Something that could be offshored/contracted out in a split second IMO.

 

[insyder]

Sucks even more when it takes weeks of diagnosis, cursing, etc and the fix is barely one line of code

Or just one...
;

 

[dagle]

I'm not current with front end stuff at all. To me front end work is for the most part very entry level. I did this kind of stuff as an intern. ReactJS looks like a much easier method for JS front end work right? Something that could be offshored/contracted out in a split second IMO.

Not exactly, the frameworks available today are all extremely powerful. React in particular employs a paradiggum that is basically MV* on the front end. It has its own url router, its own "model", its own data store, and event listener (messaging system) all on the front end in addition to its templating.

 

[Climber]

Good point, he is in his early 40s.

He's going to have a tough go at it, hiring managers will always go for younger workers for a variety of reasons, including willingness to work long hours subsisting on caffeine soda's and pizza for weeks on end.

Also, if he has kids, that's another deal killer, especially young ones, they can't work as many hours for weeks on end.

 

[Reli]

He's going to have a tough go at it, hiring managers will always go for younger workers for a variety of reasons, including willingness to work long hours subsisting on caffeine soda's and pizza for weeks on end.

Also, if he has kids, that's another deal killer, especially young ones, they can't work as many hours for weeks on end.

Especially with smaller companies. I've always suspected they get fucked by health insurers since they don't have the leverage a larger employer does. So if even just one employee "uses" their insurance a lot, the costs for the whole company go up. True?

 

[Climber]

Especially with smaller companies. I've always suspected they get fucked by health insurers since they don't have the leverage a larger employer does. So if even just one employee "uses" their insurance a lot, the costs for the whole company go up. True?

I've heard of cases where the insurance company forced a company to fire a high risk employee or face significant increases in their premiums.

 

[gnahc79]

I've heard of cases where the insurance company forced a company to fire a high risk employee or face significant increases in their premiums.

I would think this action would violate all sorts of HIPAA rules. Really?

 

[Climber]

I would think this action would violate all sorts of HIPAA rules. Really?

The rules may have been different back then, this was mid to late 90's.

 

[AbsolutEnduser]

I'm not current with front end stuff at all. To me front end work is for the most part very entry level. I did this kind of stuff as an intern. ReactJS looks like a much easier method for JS front end work right? Something that could be offshored/contracted out in a split second IMO.

I guess that's what I did wrong, I've been an intern with C/C++.

Or just one...
;

try {
var f = _ck._set("Javascript");
} catch(err) { console.log("err") };-)

 

[stangmx13]

Ive interviewed a few guys that took assorted bootcamps. I hated most of them and am working with none of them. I don't rem which camps they took.

I learned to be a proficient programmer for iOS/OSX in about 4 months. So its def possible. But I had an internship and was getting paid the entire time.

 

[mercurial]

My sister did hackbright, the female one. She got hired right away as a SWE and is making close to 140k after just a couple years. Of course she was fresh off her PhD in Linguistics, and had spent a few years at a software startup in content creation, before that.

 

[gnahc79]

My sister did hackbright, the female one. She got hired right away as a SWE and is making close to 140k after just a couple years. Of course she was fresh off her PhD in Linguistics, and had spent a few years at a software startup in content creation, before that.

Cool, does her background with linguistics play a role in her work, i.e. NLP?

 

[dagle]

hackbright is exceptional from my experience. I haven't met a bad dev from hackbright, whereas I've met bad devs from each of the other programs.

 

[ScarySpikes]

My good friend did a 6 month "bootcamp" and landed a job as a programmer with a startup. He's not getting paid big bux but I'm sure once he gets his 2nd and 3rd year of experience he can get a big jump at his next job

I am in that same exact position. making ok money right now, looking for another job after less then 2 years post boot camp, most of what I'm seeing is 100k at the bottom up to around 160k in the bay area. I'll probably end up with a bit less though, because I'm trying to find something outside of the bay area now.