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.
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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.
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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.