Comment by throwthisawayt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwthisawayt | Hacker News Reader

I did a coding bootcamp and it was a very positive experience. I transitioned from a PM to a software engineer and have been working full stack for 2 years.

Here's some advice:

* don't start the bootcamp without any practice on your own. Everyone successful at my Bootcamp had spent months / years practicing and learning to code beforehand. You won't be successful if this is your first attempt * you don't get really any job support. That will be your job * your "graduation" means nothing as an employer; it has no brand (or maybe negative) unlike a cs degree. The bootcamp gives you minimum skills to be competitive in an interview but it gives you no brand.

* My program had a strong curriculum. specifically our JavaScript curriculum was awesome and actually was a lot better than online resources. I actually understand key concepts like hoisting, this, and prototypical inheritance that a lot of people don't understand about JS. However quality of curriculum varies widely by program

* the job hunt will be brutal. You will rejected a lot and the hunt can last a long time. One of my colleagues took 9 months. if you don't have any pedigree on your resume (good school, good company, etc) many employers won't even interview you. You need a way to stand out of the crowd of bootcamp grads

I wonder how much "side projects" would help in the job hunt. Build things, put them on github, write 500 words about it, add to resume, repeat.

Maybe I succeeded despite working like this, but I tend to think I succeeded because I worked like this.

I made some small projects on github when I was first learning how to program. I am 100% convinced that's how I "got in"

I may just be another bootcamp grad, but the people who hired me said having multiple side-projects in Github was a factor, and it's certainly a factor when I'm interviewing and hiring similarly.

That also gives you a lot more to talk about in an interview :)

I've found that, for people without a pedigree, having 6 or more live projects or one large live project tends to be enough to substitute for that and get many candidates through to initial interviews at many startups in SV.

I think those are the best possible thing you can do to get employed. I recommend to everyone I meet - teach yourself to code, build a few things of increasing complexity as you go, and put em online. Preferably things a potential employer could look at.

There's a night and day difference between asking a newbie engineer about their ideas in an interview vs talking about something they've built before.

I made a bad chess game in JS before applying for jobs after college, and ended up talking about it in half my interviews - either describing it, or, in a few cases, finding that the interviewer had played it before I showed up (in one case he found some bugs! I brushed it off, saying that I had quit the project after getting basic functionality down and hadn't thoroughly tested pawn promotion...).

" Everyone successful at my Bootcamp had spent months / years practicing and learning to code beforehand. "

If you can do this why do you need a bootcamp? Genuine question. For help with the job hunt?

Other than the help with a job hunt, it has so much to do with having professionals/teachers with years of real-life experiences around, IMHO.

It's like, for instance, learning how to swim. Many people can learn some basics of swimming on their own, simply by spending time in water. They can learn how to use their arms and legs efficiently or how to stay on the surface of water with a minimum effort. But, there are quite a few details which are almost impossible to learn on your own before many years pass or without having a professional teacher - such as the importance of exhaling under water, body roll etc.

I don't know programming counterparts of this instances, but I guess there are so much more important details than there are in swimming.

Intrigued by the quality of your JS curriculum. Could you share the bootcamp you attended?

App academy. I assume hack reactor also has a strong js curriculum.

> I actually understand key concepts like hoisting, this, and prototypical inheritance that a lot of people don't understand about JS.

While I won't dispute that most people don't understand these, there are actually very good online resources covering them, e.g. Javascript Allonge and the blog posts that raganwald links to within the book.

The problem is that finding those resources takes skill. Curated lists are useful.

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