| The stigma around bootcamps definitely sucks, and I am sorry that you are falling victim to this. I hired someone out of a bootcamp who turned out to be the best hire I have ever made in my entire 10 year career. Initially I wasn't even aware that this person had been in a bootcamp. I proceeded to interview purely on abilities and grilled 'em on some questions about DOM, JS, CSS etc... (the candidate was applying to be on our frontend team). First, do not let this weigh you down. 50% of anything you get in life is not whether or not you have the qualifications for it -- but if you believe you're gonna get it. It applies to asking someone out on a date, telling a risky joke, or trying to find a job. It's great you're aware of the stigma associated with bootcamps, but don't let it define who you are. Second, and this is primarily for the other people in this thread: don't judge a book by it's cover. The aforementioned best hire I've ever made in my life was an individual fresh out of a bootcamp who, prior to that, was essentially a jarhead in the Marine corps. If I was starting something new today and needed someone technical on my team they'd be the first person I would go to. This individual started as a frontend engineer and - almost overnight - was sharing 50% of the workload with myself at every level of the stack, all the way down to configuring kafka/cassandra clusters and building internal microservices. Finally -- sell your narrative. Ignoring the obvious baseline qualifications a technical person needs, most people are not looking for a technical genius who went to Carnegie Mellon and aced every single class. They're looking for pragmatic engineers who are quick on their feet and can dive deep to the root of an issue to engineer a straightforward solution to the actual problem. Demonstrate this ability and it will go a long way. You say that you're making it pretty far down the path so your cover letters are working. You might just need to change your narrative to flip the minds of those who keep considering you a junior engineer. People want you to help them solve problems -- they want to work with people they can trust -- show them that. Keep doing what you are doing -- also please send me your resume to mwhalen@farmlogs.com because you sound like a rad person. |