Should I attend a software developer bootcamp? It's all online and only costs $1000, but seems to give a lot for such a low cost. Daily 1 hour lectures, 2 hour labs on weekend, and Interview Prep on Sundays. I'm just really worried I won't find a job, though they offer complete tuition reimbursement if you can't find a job within 6 months of graduating.
I won't be completely new to tech. I have a BSc in Mathematics and I had a gig on a research team as a research assistant and somewhat of a data analyst, where I had to program mathematical models and make graphs of results. I took CS courses that used Java in university, taught myself Python, and generally find it easy to learn new things in programming. The reason I'm considering a bootcamp is because I never found a real job after graduating in 2016, then gave up after being demoralized from years of rejection. I have also taught myself machine learning / deep learning in my spare time, which is what I hope to go into eventually.
that's the type of background that a software bootcamp would help, but it's all dependent on the quality of the bootcamp and if people who actually attend get hired.
Have you considered just going on the job market: ie pinging random new grad recruiters on linked in? recruiters are frothing at the mouth right now and if you can pass interviews, all you need is one to put you through.
that's if you can pass interviews. if not, leetcode.
Eli Morales
this, try first. Also work with some startups or smaller local companies and then try bigger things. usually small\local will be less autistic about muh credentials if you know your shit.
someone who knows what the actual fuck is going on with math and analysis is a rare treat in development and honestly depending on your research could help you get in to cooler computer related work where maybe you're paired with some C++ autist on some algorithm you helped with
Xavier Howard
I don't think I could pass interviews right now. I did a data scientist interview years ago and got creamed in the technical interview. I'm not technically a 'new grad' anymore either and haven't done much since graduating other than taking coursera courses in deep learning and tensorflow. I tend to get severe test anxiety and really fuck up in technical interviews.
The bootcamp I'm looking at right now seems to be focused on web development and trains you to be a 'full-stack developer'. I'm not really sure what the difference is between full stack, front end, and back end. My plan would be to do that course and use free resources on the side to practice and come up with projects, though the bootcamp also advertises that it is 'project based' so you can add to portfolio.
I honestly just want a decent career and not to do wageslave shit anymore. I'd be happy with even just $60k a year at this point.
Austin Anderson
How do I even find start ups in my area or even ones that I can work remotely? Any start up I looked up when I was job hunting seemed to have a full team already and way more qualified people than I am on it. I mostly did pure math in my course work, so I'm probably not great at writing algorithms though algorithms always seemed similar to proofs. My favourite algorithm to program was Buchberger's algorithm. My research job was mostly programming dynamical systems models in MATLAB, and doing various things with them. It's also been awhile since I graduated in 2015 and I'm rusty as all hell.
Jordan Lopez
what have you been doing since that research gig? where do you live? given your background i think location is going to strongly matter. if your in an area with a lot of bio tech, you might have some luck, but youll definitely have to live with shit wages for a couple years. alternate route could be you go through bootcamp and then get a job with an indian staffing company like revature. again youll have to deal with shitty everything for a couple years. also like other user said hit up recruiters on linked in. just dont expect anything glamorous
Alexander Morris
there are shitty startups, fake startups, and good startups. unless youre bringing something super niche and relevant or highly sought after talent/expertise, youll have a hard time getting into a good startup
Juan Reyes
Since the research gig ended in 2017, I've been mostly working in kitchens or labour jobs. I had maybe 10-15 HR interviews and a few technical interviews that didn't go well. Stopped applying for jobs after sending out like 1000+ applications and got demoralized after all the rejection. I tend to have bursts of creativity and do some kaggle competition or coursera course.
Matthew Barnes
If you get test anxiety, you need to prep like twice as hard as everyone else.
freecodecamp.org is your friend. I honestly wouldn't start a bootcamp unless I felt ready to start interviewing before joining the bootcamp. A lot of the time these bootcamps have content that is easily found elsewhere and isn't super helpful to you.
If you don't really understand full-stack vs front-end vs back-end, I think you really need to build the fundamentals to be a competent developer. And, honestly, I think that means grinding at least 3-4 of the freecodecamp courses, which will probably take you half a year if you grind it full time. That's if you truly want to be a developer.
You might have an easier time breaking back in to data analysis type work, in which case I'd grind the python data certs in the freecodecamp while applying for jobs.
but as this user says where are you? if you're in the US, there are probably some dev jobs around. don't worry about people being more experienced than you, that's good. Every startup that's growing is always hiring, and if they aren't interested, they'll just pass on you. Just be persistent and email/message on linkedin everyone in your area. Go to meetups (a lot of which are virtual now).
None of this is super easy, but it's a total grind to break into the industry and it's an uphill battle if you're waging. Best of luck user.
Dylan Bell
we hired a guy who had worked for 2 years for one of those tech contractors that hire everybody with a pulse then farm them out. Its one way to get experience for a year or two, if you cant get on with a major corp with benefits. Two years on a job before jumping to next job looks good on resume.
Wyatt Ramirez
>technical interviews that didn't go well technical interviews can have a broad range. what kind of technical interviews were they? technical knowledge? problem solving? what kinds of technical knowledge or problsms? can you give specific examples of why they didnt go so well, or why you think they didnt go so well? sorry for the probing questions but im curious about what kind of reflection youve given this, and maybe youll have an experience ive dealt with before
Carter Morgan
>You might have an easier time breaking back in to data analysis type work, in which case I'd grind the python data certs in the freecodecamp while applying for jobs. There just isn't much upward trajectory in data analysis I find. There's nothing to move up to and the salary seems to cap quite low.
>where are you? if you're in the US, there are probably some dev jobs around. I'm in Vancouver (Canada), unfortunately. The market is severely oversaturated because everyone wants to live in this shitty city for some reason.
>None of this is super easy, but it's a total grind to break into the industry and it's an uphill battle if you're waging. I have no problem with the grind on actual work. My problem is networking and socializing. I studied pure math, so you can imagine how much of an autistic sperg I am. I like to just keep my head down and solve problems. I fucking hate talking to people about bullshit, especially non-tech people which is why I've always done poorly in interviews.
Fuck maybe I'm just doomed to a shitty life because of this.
Kevin Hernandez
>If you don't really understand full-stack vs front-end vs back-end, I think you really need to build the fundamentals to be a competent developer. strongly this, OP. besides knowing "how" to program, theres also a lot you need to understand about how software works together. unfortunately it's not always clear because the pristine examples youll find online dont perfectly represent real world situations, but there core ideas still hold
Isaac Johnson
I can't even really remember now, it's been a few years since my last technical interview. I had a deep learning engineer interview where I just answered terribly and even forgot basic things. Questions like "What's splicing in python?", "What operation are CNNs based on?", "What is the bias-variance trade off?". I stuttered through all the answers and even said some terribly wrong things because I had such bad anxiety. The data scientist interview went the same way, he just asked me some basic things and I got flustered and just blurted out bullshit that didn't even make sense. "Explain stochastic neighbour embedding?", "What loss function does it use and why?", "Write a function in python that calculates the maximum distance in a tree". I didn't even do it in python, some sort of pseudo code and none of it made sense.
Charles Taylor
>There just isn't much upward trajectory in data analysis I find. There's nothing to move up to and the salary seems to cap quite low. you are missing the point i think. data analysis with heavy python usage gets you programming work experience that you can leverage to transition into a more programming role.
Ryder Cooper
i'm sorry but 90% of interviewing is 1. are you not a retard 2. do they like you
you have to just be not-sperg enough to get through a zoom interview. you can do it user, i believe in you
you're not doomed to a shitty life, you're just going to have to be extra prepared so you don't majorly fuck up.
but this analytics roles can become data scientist roles, engineering roles, more BI focused roles, really whatever. you just need to get your foot in the door in 2 years so you can say "hey I'm not a retard!!!!" to future potentially much better employers
Gavin Rodriguez
do you feel your heartbeat in your ears? i get that in all my interviews. my mind goes blank for what feels like an eternity and i start to go cross-eyed. but ive done it enough times now that im able to ground myself with a few deep breaths. i still stumble over my words but i spend a week studying and practicing reading things aloud beforehand. when i know i have interviews that test my technical knowledge, ill find top xx interview questions on subject, read the question out loud, then give an answer out loud, and then check the answer to see if i was right. for problem based interviews, i work through and example solution verbally, then write it out in a sort of pseudocode, then program the solution. doing it iteratively like that helps me gain confidence in my solution and makes it easier to spot logic issues as i work through it
