As a career-changer, I can wholeheartedly say that I wouldn't have learned to code without going to General Assembly. They planned the curriculum, ...
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I've just finished a marathon of interviewing 8 bootcampers in 2 days. The ones that received offers stood out as extremely motivated self starters. More importantly, they stood out because they continued their education post boot-camp in interesting ways like working on Project Euler problems, meaningfully contributing to open source projects, and reading relevant, challenging books. I think that it's important for a bootcamper to augment their whirlwind 'education' in CS with some actual CS education. That education doesn't need to be formal. Reading a book on data structures, or a basic book on OO programming goes a long way in a technical interview of a junior candidate.
Absolutely!
I went to a college instead of a boot camp. I was fortunate that my first job was with a capable team which mentored me but initially I did get the "my education didn't prepare me for real work" feeling as well. Almost everyone I know feels the same way. I don't think you can single out boot camps on this one.
You're probably right! I'm just speaking from my own experience — especially since many bootcamps include career coaching and job placement assistance as part of the package.
It's great that you're sharing your experience with the community and bringing attention to such an important topic. Kudos!
I didn't go to a bootcamp but I experienced the same. The cards are very much stacked against junior devs. I've consistently gotten the, "we went with a more experienced candidate" response. It sucks.
There needs to be more outreach to junior devs because it's an investment not only in the person, but in the company. The better you train a developer, the better asset they become to the company.
Some companies will say they went with the more experienced candidate because it's easier than "we don't like you; you won't fit in our team".
It's stacked against juniors because there are more applying for each job and juniors cost more to the company than someone with experience.
Great realization for anyone starting their journey into the tech world.. You will have good jobs, and bad jobs.. good managers and bad managers. It's important to keep growing. If you look around and your the smartest person in the room, time to move on.
Very well said, Kim. Thanks for sharing your experience. :)
Exactly. "this trial-and-error process will cause a heaping sense of imposter syndrome. Every time I failed or a more experienced engineer outperformed me, I got a sinking feeling that I'd never be good enough. Even though I wrote code every day, listened to dev podcasts, went to networking events/meetups/conferences, read programming books, learned a few new libraries & frameworks, and built a handful of side projects, I still couldn't hack these interviews (pun intended). "
Thanks for this!
It's really depressing how so many companies nowadays think they're so cool when they ask people to do the dumbest things in "job interviews".
If anyone tries to make me solve a riddle at a job interview I will tell them I'm not interested in the job as they're obviously not serious and lack the skill to hire competent people.
Also you're wrong, they ARE a joke if they're trying to quiz you on useless things like that, and e.g. the correct answer to "What does 45 + '17' evaluate to?" is "depends on the language, and in real world situations you shouldn't bump into the situation as you shouldn't be writing code where that can happen, but if you want to find out run the code instead of asking me".
I don't go to interviews to play games and jump through hoops, if they want to learn what I know about things, riddles, writing code on paper, or trying to pick out syntax errors is not the way. At least most of the time my job does not involve me being able to pick out every error in the code manually, that's what parsers, IDEs, linters, and unit tests are for.
I think, serious companies give you a task, which you have to solve within several days and which is related to their product, because this is how dev is actually working. Not monkying around with riddles and stuff. Of course, there is a need of a technical interview, where they can have a feeling of how good you are as a dev. But it should contain serious questions which are solvable. If they want to know how you work as a dev, they have to let you code. Freely. Not with a projector. There is just no need for "Live-Coders"
When I say they're "no joke", I mean that juniors have to be prepared for a crazy-wide range of technical tests—some meaningful and some arbitrary—and GA simply didn't shed light on that. No matter how stupid or dissimilar the tests are to actual dev work, these situations are daunting and unfortunately very common, and new devs should be aware that they'll probably come across a few of them.
I can relate to this. I had this recent technical interview where they told me that my solution is wrong. Hours after the interview, I tested their solution only to figure out it was wrong while mine was actually correct. They tricked me a bit just to test how well I know what I did. My fault I didn't even bother to ask more time to internalize the solution they showed to me. Great read!
Ugh that's rough. Personally, I think that's a cruel interview tactic — especially for juniors who actually produce the correct answer. As a new dev you tend to assume that the person interviewing you is more experienced than you are (at least I did), and you don't necessarily expect trick questions. I would've done the same thing!
Lesson learned: take your time and question everything. Hope you land somewhere great!
I just resigned from my first job after three months because it wasn't anywhere near development. And I knew that it was not going to help me in achieving what I want to be. Now begins the series of interviews and rejections. I think I am going to be more persistent after reading your post.
Congratulations on pursuing what you really want! I've been at my current company for about 8 months now and couldn't be happier — just stick with it, and something awesome will come up!
I'm really glad I came across this post.
I'm a current boot camp grad myself and I'm still on the job hunt. A past company I worked for (small and a little disorganized) contacted me today about doing some development work for them. Thing is, they have no technical department whatsoever. It would just be me and I completely realize the sense in what you said regarding not taking a job if you will be the only developer there.
As much as I want to secure a job, I'm learning I need to have patience and find a place of employment that'll benefit me longer term. Then on the flip side, should I take the position just to have that on the resume so that I'll have better luck in my job search? I'm conflicted haha.
It's not always a bad choice to take a job as the only dev if they'll give you some solid projects with reasonable deadlines and expectations. These roles can act as filler work, or maybe even freelance projects, until you can land a fulltime engineering role. You'd just have to be totally confident that you can produce these projects alone, and that they'll pay you adequately. That being said, the engineering scope of these projects will likely be simple (since they're a non-technical company) and those types of projects don't always stand out on a resume.
Generally, my advice is to build some side projects of your own to add to your portfolio and keep looking for a company with an established product/engineering department that will foster your growth. If I was looking to hire a new dev for my team and I had to choose between a resume with Bootcamp + scattered projects at a non-technical company vs. Bootcamp + a handful of creative, technical side projects, I'd choose the latter.
Really good advice. I was just offered to opportunity to work for a previous employer, but I would be the sole developer on the team of a non technical company and this would be my first role. I'm tempted to take it for financial reasons but I'm really leaning towards holding out for a better position, one that would foster my growth as you said.
I've interviewed Bootcampers and I felt that each believed they knew much more than they did. Three was a difference between knowing 'eval' was dangerous and why is as dangerous.
Also, if you've Bootcamped a front end developer role, don't apply for full stack or think that your skills apply equally to the back end. Get into a company as a front end and then reskill.
When working with Bootcampers in teams, I've found that they don't often have the same analytical ability as those that have a university degree. University teaches so much more than data structures, algorithms, etc; it changes the way your brain works and that is starkly noticeable in teams. This doesn't mean that you must go to university of but be aware that you might find some tasks more of a struggle than others.
Hi, ex-bootcamper here, at Academia de Código. I guess it varies from bootcamp to bootcamp. Portugal is more peaceful and well structured in that point. Mainly because bootcamps here have a meaning, and know they can only promise what they think a person can deliver.
From my experience, everything has been a smooth sailling for me, PMs gave me a lot of freedom (like letting me architecture a whole new frontend when it had been 2 weeks after leaving the bootcamp), even in my first boring company, and I guess I can speak for some of my collegues: Bootcampers evolve faster than college grads. I don't know if it's because we have a closer bond with teachers, or because we had rough backgrounds, or because most grads do not learn fun stuff at uni and do not see coding as a toy.
I want to remember that I only have arts high school, and I almost jumped 5 years in my tech career in a single year, thanks to a bootcamp, while my old school friends get behind and can't even build a REST API from start to finish.
Extremely extremely encouraging, you made my month, thanks for sharing, you deserved a hug :)
Great insight into the post-bootcamp experience. I'd love to see more collaboration between industry and bootcamps. The need for a steady supply of trained developers is obviously there. And I know there's hesitation to hire bootcamp devs from some employers and recruiters. So, why not get on the same page for both curriculum AND interviewing? Everybody wins!
Did your bootcamp give you any instruction on the big o notation?
Not that I can remember. If we did, it was brief. There's only so much you can cover in 3 months, and I think they did a relatively good job on the curriculum. I just wish the career prep was more realistic.
Kim and I were in the same cohort! And yes, they touched upon big o but it was super brief. Here's a good breakdown of big o if that's something you were looking for: dev.to/imjacobclark/big-o-explained
I did not do GA but another bootcamp and I can relate to your article completely. Thanks for sharing!