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Thank you! Some really valuable advice there. How was the bootcamp for you? Was securing a job afterwords part of the problem? How did you afford room + board i

Thank you! Some really valuable advice there. How was the bootcamp for you? Was securing a job afterwords part of the problem? How did you afford room + board in SF? I've considered going through one of the programs that promise a job after the fact but historically I've been hesitant for a number of reasons.

cipheredStones 5y ago
I look back at my bootcamp time very fondly. It was very intensive (six days a week, ~12 hours a day, Sundays off for "laundry and staring at the wall", as it was memorably described to me before I started), but the emotional reward of growing rapidly by facing tough but achievable challenges + the camaraderie of everybody going through the same intense experience at once made it really fun for me. That said, I found that I had a pretty strong aptitude for programming, so it was easier for me than for most of my cohort-mates. > Was securing a job afterwords part of the problem? Assuming that's a typo for "program", yes, it was. There was some job search training throughout the three months - doing a toy problem at the start of every day, being tested on your ability to talk about the projects you'd done there as you would in an interview - but the week or two focused on job search strategy and preparation. After you graduated, there were career coaches you could talk to and mock interviews you could sign up for. The network was the most valuable thing of all, IME: recent graduates who stayed close with their cohortmates (to swap advice, support, mock interviews) were markedly more successful than those that didn't, and having alumni at many companies was a big networking benefit, and the alumni Slack groups have been amazingly helpful to me to this day. Until I got my job, I paid $750 a month for a shared bunk bed in a shitty SRO just outside the Tenderloin district. Not great, but I was never there because I was so busy. I also got one of the three-month TA positions offered to recent graduates, so that let me spare my savings while job searching. Going to a bootcamp was the best decision I ever made, but that doesn't definitely mean it's the right one for you. You already know how to program and have a job, so it may not be necessary for you - and they're expensive, and risky, and many of them are not that great. (I can't even attest to how good the program I went to is nowadays, since it's been acquired twice since I left.) But for me, it was enormously helpful for getting my foot in the door of the lucrative tech industry, and once you have even a couple years of experience you're a very hot commodity. (Also, if you do decide to go to a bootcamp, don't go to Lambda School/"Bloom Institute of Technology". They have both a lot of hype and a pretty bad reputation.)

cipheredStones 5y ago

I look back at my bootcamp time very fondly. It was very intensive (six days a week, ~12 hours a day, Sundays off for "laundry and staring at the wall", as it was memorably described to me before I started), but the emotional reward of growing rapidly by facing tough but achievable challenges + the camaraderie of everybody going through the same intense experience at once made it really fun for me. That said, I found that I had a pretty strong aptitude for programming, so it was easier for me than for most of my cohort-mates. > Was securing a job afterwords part of the problem? Assuming that's a typo for "program", yes, it was. There was some job search training throughout the three months - doing a toy problem at the start of every day, being tested on your ability to talk about the projects you'd done there as you would in an interview - but the week or two focused on job search strategy and preparation. After you graduated, there were career coaches you could talk to and mock interviews you could sign up for. The network was the most valuable thing of all, IME: recent graduates who stayed close with their cohortmates (to swap advice, support, mock interviews) were markedly more successful than those that didn't, and having alumni at many companies was a big networking benefit, and the alumni Slack groups have been amazingly helpful to me to this day. Until I got my job, I paid $750 a month for a shared bunk bed in a shitty SRO just outside the Tenderloin district. Not great, but I was never there because I was so busy. I also got one of the three-month TA positions offered to recent graduates, so that let me spare my savings while job searching. Going to a bootcamp was the best decision I ever made, but that doesn't definitely mean it's the right one for you. You already know how to program and have a job, so it may not be necessary for you - and they're expensive, and risky, and many of them are not that great. (I can't even attest to how good the program I went to is nowadays, since it's been acquired twice since I left.) But for me, it was enormously helpful for getting my foot in the door of the lucrative tech industry, and once you have even a couple years of experience you're a very hot commodity. (Also, if you do decide to go to a bootcamp, don't go to Lambda School/"Bloom Institute of Technology". They have both a lot of hype and a pretty bad reputation.)