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Comment by plasticbugs | Hacker News Reader

This was very similar to my experience. I had been writing code as a hobby for nearly a decade while working in TV production. In 2017, I attended Hack Reactor, an in-person bootcamp here in SF. I applied for engineering roles while practicing coding interview questions with probably close to 1000 applications netting about 40 follow-up interviews with around 10 or so on-site interviews. After eight months, I was offered a temporary role at a healthcare startup. Five months later that role ended, it was another couple of months before landing a role at O’Reilly Media where I now am a full stack software engineer working primarily in JavaScript and Python. I was elected “class president” by my bootcamp cohort. I was also the last person in my cohort of 30 people to be hired.

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What would you blame/credit this problem too?

On the flip-side. Since I've had 3 or 4 years of experience on my resume, I've gotten interviews for about 1 in 10 applications I sent out. And been made offers for about 1 in 4 companies that I've started an interviewing process with. With me ending the interview process about half of the time with those due to the company being a bad cultural fit for me (excessive overtime, unorganized group, or low pay).

I have also specifically targeted companies that used the tech stack I had a lot of experience with. And I would say that I typically interview well

When I owned a consulting firm, I was also shocked at how low resume quality was. If you just spend a bit of time making your resume look good or stand out a little bit, it will go a really long way. There is a such thing as “too much information” or “too detailed.” I never had a problem of “too little information” because, as a human, I was able to fill in the blanks and if something didn’t make sense, I’d often interview them just to hear the story (and in a couple of cases, actually hire).

When I lived on a sailboat, it was often mentioned in my cover letter just to hopefully stand out. I’d get interviews just because I sounded like an interesting person (what these coworkers said later at company parties) and it would get my foot in the door.

On the flip side, when I was on the interview for a small startup a while back, I started learning to distrust resumes that were too good. I eventually figured out that it's because they used a resume preparation service. They weren't lying about anything, but it's amazing how different the same experience can sound. (Ok, quite a few were telling some white lies, but the strength of the resumes did not depend on lying.)

I'd say that the bottom 20% and the top 20% of resumes (that made it past the HR screen) were disappointing during the interview. The best people usually had decent but somewhat awkward or unclear resumes.

I think this is really down to the few companies that have "taken a chance" on a bootcamp grad in the past and are able to see past the lack of experience after one or more good experiences - which feels like something large companies can do more (and more often) than smaller ones.

It's also a product of my inability to really and truly master interview coding challenges and the pressure of whiteboarding. It's absolutely nerve-wracking and I've choked every single time regardless of how well-prepped I was. At a Google on-site, I was asked to traverse a binary search tree on a whiteboard and then, after doing it successfully, I was challenged to do it without recursion and I was unable to reason about how to do it and I choked completely and utterly. The rest of the interview went pretty well, so I would guess that my whiteboarding fail was the main thing that prevented me from getting hired there.

O'Reilly's interview process did not involve whiteboarding or things like trick questions, toy problems or algorithm stuff. It was a straightforward coding challenge and then a fairly low-pressure conversation about my code, the decisions I made and how I might modify what I implemented if I had more time, or was confronted with a specific challenge.

I think if I now were to enter the job market with the experience I have, I hope that I wouldn't be immediately confronted with things in an interview like traversing binary search trees, or implementing a Fisher Yates shuffle on a whiteboard.

I think I've been pretty lucky with the jobs that I've had so far in my career where none of them have required extensive whiteboarding for their interview processes. I completely empathize with you though, as I feel like every time I've encountered whiteboarding in an interview, I must've seemed so incompetent to the interviewer.

It's definitely possible to find jobs that don't require whiteboarding for their interview process - best of luck when you look again!

The person in the article also attended Hack Reactor. I myself am currently on track to start the SEI at hack reactor in January. You aren’t the first person to mention similar results from HR. This is certainly concerning to me. Is HR really not as good as it’s reputation implies?

Hack Reactor was excellent and most of my cohort was hired within three months.

The amount I learned in the compressed time frame was everything I needed to do the job as a jr. front end dev.

Unfortunately, the coding interview is a whole other beast and HR spends the last week of the session focusing on the job search and interview skills. They do offer job search support for up to six months post graduation. The job market was competitive in 2018 and I also believe I, a 40-something white man, was demographically challenged in the marketplace. I was also looking for work in the Bay Area, the most competitive location possible - where others of my cohort could be more flexible with regards to location. That, plus my interview skills are weak and I was counting on getting lucky or a fair interview.

Now that everything is remote, I think you can widen your search net to companies outside of SF, leading to hopefully better odds.

I would still highly recommend Hack Reactor but expect your job search may take up to six months (in my case eight!)

Person in linked article also went to Hack Reactor. Do they not provide placement help? I'd be interested to know their reaction to the story.

They did not really offer ‘placement’ per se, or anything like a job fair with companies lined up to hire new grads.

They do focus on interviewing skills and the job search in the last week of the program. After that, they offer job search support/counseling for up to six months after graduation.

We had daily check ins with a job search counselor to keep on task and could use the HR support network of instructors and alums for feedback on take home coding challenges and general interview prep. It’s as good as it could have been.

After three months, I would guess about 80% of my cohort had been offered positions. But don’t count on being in that 80%. You’ll need to budget for six months of job searching.

I understand they now have a whole other course just for dealing with the coding interview, but that was not available to me at the time.

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