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I did a 9 week bootcamp and I've been a productive developer for 5 years now (I was an unproductive developer for the first year). I was incredibly lucky to fin

I did a 9 week bootcamp and I've been a productive developer for 5 years now (I was an unproductive developer for the first year). I was incredibly lucky to find a company willing to take a chance on me, because I was completely useless at first. This is not an advisable strategy for changing careers, especially for someone with dependents.

troupe 6y ago
Did you have much tech experience before the bootcamp?
- i_haz_rabies 6y ago
  Zero! I was a newspaper reporter.
  - mreome 6y ago
    The argument could be made that you had a lot of valuable experience though. If I were looking to hire a new programmer, and had someone with experience as a reporter, I’d be thinking about all the places that experience would be useful. It would suggest to me that you’re a good writer, communicator, you can deal with the general public, and function reasonably well in a high-paced, short-deadline, office environment. A decent programmer who is an excellent communicator is hard to find and can be incredibly valuable, and if I couldn’t get you up to speed as a programmer, you could still make an great technical documentation specialist, marketer, etc. If I was looking at someone with the same amount of programming training who had previously flipped burgers or been the proverbial “ditch digger” I’m not going to see many parallels for those skills.
chrk33 6y ago
That is the kind of outcome I would expect from a bootcamp like that: it gives the impression whether the person has the interest and the aptitude for software engineering and then a long way to get good at it. The article does not get into details about the course which is mentioned and I do not want to make presumptions but if they advertise their course as an entry ticket into the IT job market - especially in the current circumstances - then to me it is a borderline malevolent type of business model.
- i_haz_rabies 6y ago
  I agree. Most of my cohort dropped out in the first week and only one or two of my classmates, out of the original 30, actually ended up with tech jobs.

troupe 6y ago

Did you have much tech experience before the bootcamp?

i_haz_rabies 6y ago
Zero! I was a newspaper reporter.
- mreome 6y ago
  The argument could be made that you had a lot of valuable experience though. If I were looking to hire a new programmer, and had someone with experience as a reporter, I’d be thinking about all the places that experience would be useful. It would suggest to me that you’re a good writer, communicator, you can deal with the general public, and function reasonably well in a high-paced, short-deadline, office environment. A decent programmer who is an excellent communicator is hard to find and can be incredibly valuable, and if I couldn’t get you up to speed as a programmer, you could still make an great technical documentation specialist, marketer, etc. If I was looking at someone with the same amount of programming training who had previously flipped burgers or been the proverbial “ditch digger” I’m not going to see many parallels for those skills.

chrk33 6y ago

That is the kind of outcome I would expect from a bootcamp like that: it gives the impression whether the person has the interest and the aptitude for software engineering and then a long way to get good at it. The article does not get into details about the course which is mentioned and I do not want to make presumptions but if they advertise their course as an entry ticket into the IT job market - especially in the current circumstances - then to me it is a borderline malevolent type of business model.

i_haz_rabies 6y ago
I agree. Most of my cohort dropped out in the first week and only one or two of my classmates, out of the original 30, actually ended up with tech jobs.