[pfeffer]

Hey fellas,

I got accepted to a pretty prestigious coding bootcamp recently. Already paid my deposit, and got my dates set up.

I got inspired by a few friends who also did the bootcamp, and are now enjoying lots of free time, with a sizable salary to boot. As in, they do whatever they want and occasionally the company will call them to work on a project.

I saw a few friends living in the bay area, with a huge population of developers, and told them that the lifestyle perks was my main reason for doing the bootcamp, and they told me that my friends' situations was far away from the norm, and that most people in the industry are working more like 60-80 hour weeks..

I'm getting a bit worried now. If jobs like the ones that my friends have are out there, I'm confident that I'll be able to find one after the bootcamp, but I'm beginning to think it'll be much harder than I think.

Anyone have some input?

[Dr. Howard]

whats a bootcamp? As in training? You are up against some serious international competition as a developer these days...and I'm not talking some lunatic in india more like eastern european and south americans with excellent english skills who work remotely.

[simondice]

You could do it, then start a business, have your lifestyle designed in anyway you want since you get a valuable skill. Consultant with location independent, your own company etc

[coolmike]

Dev Bootcamp?

[pfeffer]

(07-14-2014 07:08 PM)coolmike Wrote:  

Dev Bootcamp?

yup..

[worldwidetraveler]

I think you got sold a bill of goods. Better to pick something else.

[roid]

I never paid anything to learn programming. Won national programming algorithm competition. Totally self study. I am not saying this to boast. If you have to pay to learn, you have lost the war.

[WestIndianArchie]

Congratulations!

DevCamp sends a lot of guys into the startup world from what I gather. Startup life is not cushy.

Google Michael Church, he has a lot to say about the world for new/young developers

WIA

[cpred]

Like any profession, it takes skill and hard work with a bit of good social skills to find a good job. Don't have the mindset that once you complete the bootcamp, a great job should be waiting for you. The bootcamp is the primer or starting ground to learning a skill as a software dev. As a dev myself, one should have the mindset of success instead of just knowing the programming languages needed. Think outside the box and be creative. Find out your strengths and be creative with learning the new skills.

[swishhboy25]

Is it something like App Academy? If so, I'm really interested in hearing about your experience OP. Hope you enjoy it.

[pfeffer]

Thanks for the informed feedback.

(07-15-2014 08:41 AM)swishhboy25 Wrote:  

Is it something like App Academy? If so, I'm really interested in hearing about your experience OP. Hope you enjoy it.

Pretty similar. I start in November so I'll be sure to update when the time comes.

[Essential]

I have also heard great things about dev bootcamps and am very interested to hear about your experience.

Can you tell us which one it is?

[pfeffer]

It's called dev bootcamp lol. They just got bought by Kaplan.

I can answer any questions about the application process if you guys are interested, and ask me specific q's.

[Essential]

(07-15-2014 12:43 PM)pfeffer Wrote:  

It's called dev bootcamp lol. They just got bought by Kaplan.

I can answer any questions about the application process if you guys are interested, and ask me specific q's.

Haha oh.

This isn't for the same bootcamp, but here is a link to a video series some guy did about his time at Hack Reactor. It is another bootcamp and the videos are weekly talking about each what he did during each week. Might be interesting to watch and get an idea of what to expect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw3RIZggi...S2XLni2ueD

[swishhboy25]

What level of coding knowledge did you have prior to applying? Because ice heard its quite competitive, and was wondering how youd go about preparing for it.

[pfeffer]

(07-15-2014 04:54 PM)swishhboy25 Wrote:  

What level of coding knowledge did you have prior to applying? Because ice heard its quite competitive, and was wondering how youd go about preparing for it.

I took an AP comp sci class in high school about 8 years ago, so I didnt really remember chit. Besides that, I did the ruby course on codecademy.com. Pretty simple and informative. You could finish it in a day if you wanted to. I think they focused more on the interview and the essay, and tried to see if your core principles and values align with their program.

They ask 2 coding questions during the interview that you can solve if you studied codecademy for 3 hours.

[RockHard]

(07-14-2014 01:23 PM)pfeffer Wrote:  

I got inspired by a few friends who also did the bootcamp, and are now enjoying lots of free time, with a sizable salary to boot. As in, they do whatever they want and occasionally the company will call them to work on a project.

I saw a few friends living in the bay area, with a huge population of developers, and told them that the lifestyle perks was my main reason for doing the bootcamp, and they told me that my friends' situations was far away from the norm, and that most people in the industry are working more like 60-80 hour weeks..

I want to know how they did this. I feel like I have it pretty good working only 40 hours a week (usually) and having a decent options package with a company that's doing pretty well.

I've got 20+ years in this business and worked for 3 startups and a startup is never a 40 hour week. Silicon Valley takes that to a whole new level. That's why startups get into the whole thing with hiring services to do laundry, housecleaning, offering on site chefs, all that? They want you focused on work for 60-80 hours a week. The database catches on fire at 2 AM? Someone's gotta get paged to unfuck the indexes. Your CEO promised the VCs that your new app to enable teenagers to seek attention in entirely new ways will ship Friday? The dev team works until Saturday. You catch some sleep under your desk when you can.

I'm not saying that it's not possible to have a cushy consulting gig, but the 4 hour workweek at a startup, I just don't see it happening. Even consulting in the Valley I'd expect that you'd need a deep set of contacts. Seems to me the lucrative consulting would happen at fortune 500 companies that are so internally dysfunctional that someone who comes in and doesn't give a fuck about corporate policy is the only one who gets shit done.

I honestly want to know the nature of the work they do. SAP? UI - HTML/JS/CSS/Photoshop where they can throw together UI really quickly? Database specialization?

[pfeffer]

I'm not completely sure, I'll try to find out more. One of them works for a company called Genesys, and I don't think either of them work for a start up.

[coolmike]

Well Congrats and Goodluck! Ive heard great things about the program and I will be interested in hearing your experience at the bootcamp. Please keep us posted

[HawkWrites]

I'm a software engineer. Why are using any paid service, my friend? You could be focusing on everything you need for free.

For me, I started off in HTML, CSS, PERL, and PHP. Don't give PERL a second thought since it's antiquated in modern day but definitely do keep PHP in mind. Anything like W3Schools (http://www.w3schools.com) should help you learn. I'd focus on your CSS and PHP mostly since CSS (front-end) and PHP (back-end) are quite often the most-requested languages. If they aren't the most-requested they're usually on the list of things the client wants you to know.

There are all kinds of great PHP tutorials you can find on-line for free and even the main PHP Manual has great resources. Google the hell out of "PHP tutorials", "HTML tutorials", and "CSS tutorials" and you should be good to go.

Of course, if you're not a web-based software engineer you'll want to look into "java software engineer", "c# software engineer", and maybe "c++ software engineer" depending on your programming language of choice.

Feel free to PM me with questions. I've been a dev for 18 years and I'm always happy to answer questions when I'm around.

[mbare]

Does anyone on here have any advice on finding people who code on the iOS platform, specifically Swift language?

I know it's a new programming language, but now that's it's going open source and much easier than objective C, it's seemingly the future for many things. I'm a part of a small start-up and we're looking to hire our own developer front-end and/or back-end guy for apps. We've already run into problems with outside companies having the ability to code a proper app. It seems there are many weak developers out there developing for iOS.

Any advice on this is much appreciated.