[Perihelion]

I think this is especially true in the Bay Area as lots of companies are looking for unicorns in a herd of cattle. There's nothing wrong with cattle, but places will spend 6 figures trying to recruit that 10x unicorn instead of training people.

Speaking as someone who's hired in the past, most of the CodeAcademy/bootcamp grads we turned away were turned away because they didn't have anything to show us except things they did in the program. Doing CA/completing a bootcamp tells us they know stuff, but the portfolio was an important piece because it told us they could apply what they learned. Just wanted to pass that on to anyone who is doing/considering one of these things. (Bonus points for creating unique apps that interviewers can talk to you about -- I can't even tell you how many Twitter clones I've seen.)