[blank_fan_pill]

I graduated my bootcamp in 2015 and had a jr developer job with a 50% pay bump within 6 weeks. I had a college degree but in a non-technical field and 0 experience coding before I started the program. In my cohort of ~20 people all but 1 had found gainful employment as software developers within a year, most within 3-6 months.

I completely agree that the value of a bootcamp is having a community to encourage you through the process, everything they teach you can be found online. I also went to a bootcamp that had a good reputation around my city so I think it was legitimizing for someone with no experience and no stories of coding for fun as a teenager.

Even back then hackernews was full of people saying how flooded the market was with bootcampers.

4 years later I grinded leetcode and got a job at a FANG and essentially 6x'd my income from 4 years earlier before I could code. I eventually left that job because I was miserable but thats a whole other story.

Now with 7 years of experience I leave the bootcamp off my resume because of the stigma. I took the specific degree program off my linkedIn and just put "bachelors of science" and let people assume what they want. If anyone asks I just say I'm self taught.

Point is, it's 100% possible.

[epolanski]

> Point is, it's 100% possible.

It's possible even without a bootcamp.

I self-taught myself development by coding 8 hours a day for 9 months. I ended up being much better than majority of people I worked with, including, or I'd rather say especially, engineering grads. I found out that just because you have a degree, doesn't mean you're good at something.

That being said, I still have to vouch for networking being important. In my case it wasn't bootcamp people, but the italian JS community and the one from Rome, where I attended the local JavaScript meetup that got me my first job easier than I would've expected. I still think I would've landed a job without it, but still, it was a good help.

Also, last but not least, I was a chemistry major with 3 published articles on high-impact journals. While nothing about my chemistry curriculum was relevant to software engineering, it definitely helped me into knowing how to study and learn.

I don't think it made any difference on my CV, but it is still making me a much better professional and engineer than majority of my peers who do not learn basics properly to move on in their careers from a techincal point of view.

[ricardonunez]

It is in the article that the hardest part is liking your job.

[IMSAI8080]

That's the most important point in this article. That clichéd "everyone should code" line you hear isn't true. Or the standard "you should code" response on Reddit every time someone asks what job they should do. If you can't focus for long periods, coding is not for you. If you can't handle banging your head against a bug for several days straight, it's not for you. If you don't like solitary work, it's not for you.

[blank_fan_pill]

Yeah and I agree with that sentiment. But to be clear I just hated that specific company's culture. I'm still a dev and I still mostly like the work.

[uuyi]

This. 20 years in, I hate it. But the money is good so it enables me to do things I really love.

[devwastaken]

Bootcamps supposedly used to be good, nowadays even the "best" have largely cashed out and don't care much for education. This is an expected result when the top employers put almost 0 funding into education, no feedback, complain, and outsource their work anyways.

[0des]

I've met 0 skilled workers who came from bootcamps and plopped down at a job, and I think it is disingenuous to assume this would be the case. Part of me thinks that immediate job skills isn't the goal, and I think pro bootcamp operators know this.

I wouldn't say they are without value or purpose though, a bootcamp is like take-your-friend-to-work-day where people who recognize they might have an interest can have a taste of what we actually do besides wearing hoodies and cashing checks. Sure every day life isn't all laptop stickers and free pizza, but a bootcamp puts your hands in the middle of our work skills, and you get at least some idea of what this trade entails.

When you reframe the 'bootcamp' and remove the expectation that someone is immediately employable after, what you're left with is a classifier to discern who'd warrant further effort, and who's better off checking out a different trade for their mid-life-change.

In my opinion, bootcamps are best for two types of people: new/young folks who may be interested in this field of work, and suits who want to understand more about what their cofounder counterparts are up to when the "please dont knock" sign is on the door.

[PartiallyTyped]

I have a degree, heck I have a master's from a top Uni in EU, and I can't find a job.

I have been told I am "too academic", and that my cv may be "too technical".

So many regrets.

[travisjungroth]

Is this feedback from people rejecting you? Always be very skeptical of feedback with rejections. People often have reasons to not be exactly honest. I think it’s a YC phrase for fundraising to “listen to the no but not the why”.

[PartiallyTyped]

The feedback I refer to above was given by other people who saw my cv.

I have been told by people who rejected me without an interview that they were looking for people with "more experience", and "experience with particular technologies". I have also been told that my master's degree didn't matter in the decision. I had a 1 year long contract where I built a custom AutoML system during BSc, a 3 month FT internship after BSc, a 6 month PT internship during BSc.

I have been frequently asked during interviews whether I feel any attachment or have any issues working with a different stack/language, and I don't understand why that question is asked since a language or some tech are just tools that can easily be learned.

[heelix]

I've seen our shop do this. It is not uncommon to run the same set of questions for someone who has been developing on a stack to someone who spent similar time with a masters.. and the person with the masters lacks the deep skills in those specific programing areas. It is reasonable to wonder if that is short sighted, but it definitely happens. Some folks are just intimated. Just keep hunting and hone the tech you want to work with.

You would be surprised on the attachment question.... you have the right attitude. Some don't. It often revels more about a person than one would expect.

[Loughla]

I know it's trash advice when you can't find work - but, do you really want to work for some place that thinks you're too academic and too technical? I was always told my resume made me seem like I was too academic, until I found a job working with academics. Non-technical, but the experience is still relevant, I think.

[PartiallyTyped]

At this point in time I am looking for anything that will pay the bills and give me experience without exploiting me.

[pnutjam]

US based? ping me.

[lazyant]

> I took the specific degree program off my linkedIn and just put "bachelors of science" and let people assume what they want.

We had an offer rescinded for something like this when it showed up in their background check (person mislead about a university title). We didn't care about the education or title and we valued self-taught people but not being honest about something in the resume was cause for disqualification (what else should we trust?). Personally, I'd just leave it out, no need to embellish or anything.

[matheusmoreira]

> I had a college degree but in a non-technical field and 0 experience coding before I started the program.

I'm in a somewhat similar situation. Been a programmer since I was 14 but ended up pursuing another field. I'm making good money but the USD exchange rate in my country is seriously making me reconsider. If I end up doing this, I'll learn whatever I need to be competitive in the market. I suppose bootcamps are a nice way to streamline this process.

May I ask what made you switch fields? Did you have reasons other than salary?

[blank_fan_pill]

I was 24 and couldn't find any work in my desired field. I was working stupid office jobs and looking for a better options. I started taking some coding night classes and really enjoyed it, I believed the hype about the market need for developers, so I decided to do the full time bootcamp.

[brailsafe]

Were you doing anything but React in that job or bootcamp? What did they teach you?

[blank_fan_pill]

It was setting up schemas in posgress and learning the basics of using a sql database; setting up a web api to auth users and connect to that database and serve json with Node, then building a JS frontend to login users and fetch and display that data with backbone. It was done in the format of building a couple applications in teams of 2-3.

My first job didn't use those specific languages or technologies but everything was close enough to what I had done in the bootcamp that I wasn't completely lost. I knew enough to be a good jr developer and learned 20x in my first 2 years on the job than in the bootcamp.

I've since built/done lots of services, data pipelines, database migrations, devops pager rotations, large/complex frontend applications. The bootcamp was really just a jumping off point. The real learning starts when you get to the job.

[brailsafe]

Ya that actually sounds like a pretty decent course. I asked because the impression I've got from bootcampers over the last few years has basically been some React based thing and not much else outside that, except probably some basic node stuff

[ajvs]

Which bootcamp? Looking for one to join.