Hi dev community - I have not yet posted a #discuss type question here, so apologies in advance if this is too common of a question/too long. I know the market is saturated with coding bootcamp grads, and the 'blog market' is saturated with posts about bootcamp grads. I know it's very hard to get one of the most coveted, competitive, and high-paying jobs after taking only a 3 month course. And of course I know this is an unprecedented and horrible global pandemic economy.
All of that being said - I'm really struggling, and these problems have been around for bootcamps grads for years now. I've read a lot of blogs. I've done a ton of networking. Gotten good advice. And I generally feel like I just have to do something else major now - like get some kind of further online degree/certificate? I'm not sure, but it seems like employers see '3 month bootcamp' grad and throw the resume in the trash before it even gets to their inbox. I'm not trying to be lazy and say I'm owed anything after an objectively short time - I just don't know what else to do to show that I'm serious and that I love coding and I want to learn as much as possible. And it seems like everything I could do now to try and get more experience/demonstrate my skills - personal projects, hackathons, contributing to open source, freelancing, unpaid internships - might just be further exhausting myself with nothing tangible to show for it.
Again I am really not trying to hustle or cheat my way into something I am not qualified for. I am willing to put in the work. I also am interested in doing something like an online master's degree in computer science, truly genuinely for my own personal interest, but it seems like a risky further move into debt that may or may not even help me get a real job.
A lot of the advice for struggling junior dev job seekers right now is 'just keep pushing along!' i.e. applying, networking, etc. I am not knocking that advice - and I will certainly keep applying, working on my personal projects, doing whatever self-taught learning that I can. But I am starting to wonder if I can/should do something that is more of a major change. Thank you!
Latest comments (34)
Hi Sylvia. I am reading this in July of 2020, is this something you are still struggling with?
These are some great suggestions from all. One important suggestion is that whether it is consulting work on contract or short term gig do not hesitate to take it. The fundamental rule is not to have more gap after completion of bootcamp. As Ben mentioned you can always leave a current role and proceed to next one when you find a new one. If there are a group of friends you can form your own LLC and start with small freelance assignments as well.
As a fellow coding bootcamp grad searching for my first developer job for over 3 years now with no luck, I feel your pain.
If I had words of encouragement or advice to give, I would give it. I've pretty much lost all hope at this point.
Good luck, though. I sure as hell hope your search lasts nowhere near as long as mine has.
Unfortunately many companies today require a Bachelor's Degree. But the expense and 4 year commitment seem so far away sometimes. However there are ways to get a degree.
Here's what I did...
So even though I received the degree it took me 8 years to get it. I look back now and feel it was the best thing I ever did in my life (earning wise).
Good luck to you Silvia!
I wrote a post about this that may be of help. It wasn't written specifically with bootcamp graduates in mind but software developers in general (whether they were fresh grads, or still studying or in the first few months of their first job).
dev.to/samkhan27/advice-to-junior-...
It's unfortunate that you are having to job hunt in this pandemic economy. However things might not be as bad as you think, it is possible that a lot of developers who have a stable job right now wont be willing to jump ship and as a result the industry will look to graduates more. Right now it's still too early to tell how things are going to turn out.
My overall advice (outside of what I talk about in that article) is that be patient and continue to focus on your learning, without exhausting yourself of course. Things take time to build. that applies to software, your career and your expertise.
You will start getting called for interviews once things settle down a little and if you have spent that time learning coding topics focusing in depth rather than breadth, you will do just fine in those interviews. Good luck!
When I first started out I didn't have any bootcamp experience or a 4-year college degree, I self-taught myself Java and PHP and I only had a hand full of freelance work under my belt. But by the grace of God lol I was able to land a state job as a Junior Java Developer, it didn't pay much but I knew this was my foot in the door. Lucky for me it worked out, there was only one other Java Developer on the team, so I was able to learn a lot and get some good experience. After over a year of working at the State, I was able to land another job as a Full Stack Developer just based off my experience. The pay was better but still not where I really wanted it to be. After this, I was able to land a few more gigs but at companies that sucked.
From my experience when going after a good job that's is also offering great benefits and great pay they are going to want to see a degree no question. I have been turned down so many times and every time it was because of my education. I knew I had to change this, so I eventually went back to school to finish my 4-year degree. After 10 years, I feel great where I am now. I have my own team and a ton of responsibilities.
My advice is to start small, dont expect companies to roll out the red carpet for you. But keep applying someone will eventually bite. Never say Never, apply to jobs that you would not usually think about applying to. Get some experience in learning about application servers and server-side languages like C# or Java, these arent the COOL languages but these are languages that are mostly still in demand.
I am sorry this was kinda long but keep your spirits up I wish you good luck.
I'm also a Flatiron bootcamp grad, and before then, a self-taught coder, so I get how you feel. A few times a week, I consider quitting tech entirely because it feels so, so bleak, and the pandemic doesn't help either. If you can, take a breather, it's a lot and it seems like you are doing all the right things and may be experiencing burnout.
Have you given any thought to not advertising that you are a bootcamp grad? I haven't dug into it too much, but it's possible that the bootcamp label is off-putting for some companies. Some advice I've seen is that you are a software engineer, not a beginner software engineer or junior software engineer. You are a software engineer. Period. Again, not to say this is a magic bullet, but it may help both with how you sell and perceive yourself, approach the job search, and (hopefully in a good way) how companies perceive you.
Please don't hesitate to reach out via DM if you want to chat. Happy to offer advice, feedback, etc if I can. 🤗
I feel your pain!
I think the pandemic has made finding a JR Dev entry level position even harder.
All I can say is don't give up. I don't have experience looking for work in a pandemic, and I'm also on the east coast so I don't have experience with the job market on the west coast.
I wish I could be more relatable and encouraging. But I will tell you my experience because misery loves company and I don't want you to think something is wrong with you, or that you chose the wrong line of work.
I got my first job because I knew a graduate from the same bootcamp who worked at the company I interviewed for. Was that the only reason I was hired? no. But it sure helped to have someone working there for the past 3 years who did excellent work, and I came from the same bootcamp.
That company, however, was bought out and my whole dev team was laid off. This was 6 months into my career. I was unemployed for 3 months and worked my butt off to find another job. Which I got, and was thankful for. But wow, my second job was rough. Our team was mismanaged, our dev teams paychecks were all over the place and I was given Senior Dev roles on a JR paycheck, and I got burnt out after 9 months, asked to have my position changed and was fired for doing so. I was on unemployment again, for another 3 months and got a job back in January with a marketing agent then the pandemic hit. Thankfully I have work and no one has gotten laid off yet.
All that to say, you are learning a trade. If you love coding, you are going to get paid for what you love to do. Then on top of that you will have flexibility and you are going to be EXTREMELY valuable to the Dev community. Your struggles and pain will only make you a stronger developer. I can't wait to see you make an impact in our community!
Want to talk to a human about it? calendly.com/perpetual-education/f... We have free career advice and portfolio critique. Ben's notes are all A+ but it's hard to really tell - when it's only text. Flatiron gets you ready for a very specific role. Maybe you just need to lean in a particular direction.
I've been there too. It took me around half a year before I got a development job after doing a Bootcamp. I got rejected once, I was asked absurd coding tests, I spent time working for free in a pretty lousy company. Then eventually I decided to only accept jobs that were worth my time (I was lucky to live with my parents at the time). I wouldn't even go on interviews unless I knew in advance they were serious.
But what I have been doing non-stop in the time between my bootcamp and my first real job, was working on my own project. I was annoyed by the lack of transparency in the job market, so I was determined to build my own job board. Which I did, well sort of.
It never got finished, but most of it was working, I had invested quite a lot of time in it, and put real thought in every part of it. Sure it lacked some, now obvious abstractions, but it worked, was tested and showed my interest in building stuff and solving the problems myself.
It turned out my first job was around the corner, and they invited me for an interview, and it was especially my project that made them interested in me. Not because my project was of any noteworthy quality (I'd be horrified if I'd read the code now). I had an interview, they asked me questions about my project, I could answer them, and eventually I ended up learning a whole lot there.
Now I am helping new trainees coming from a bootcamp at my current job.
Long story short, I think it takes a bit of luck and in my case some effort invested in a side project (imho). But eventually you'll get there.
Employers want to see two things, education and professional experience. If you have less of one they want to see more of the other. You did a bootcamp, which is great to kickstart your learning, but it's not really considered "real" education in the context of job applications. So you need to compensate with professional experience.
I was pretty much in a similar situation when I first started, excluding the bootcamp. I scraped every resource I could find for any level of freelance work to put on my resume. After enough ten hour projects at $10/hr fixing people's broken websites it began to get easier. Now I'm ten years in and managing a team of software engineers.
There's tons of work out there that most people believe is beneath them. Stuff like building/fixing newsletters, customizing wordpress themes, maintaining "legacy" frameworks. Start expanding your knowledge into older frameworks/software/tools. Do you know how many web applications were built using the first version of Angular? Thousands. All those apps needs to be maintained and most people don't want to do it.
Keep applying for jobs but don't sit idle while waiting to hear back. Find someone to pay you to use your skills, no matter how small the job. Then get a reference from them, put it on your resume, rinse and repeat. Do that a few times and you're no longer a "bootcamp grad", you're an experienced developer.
Post on reddit.com/r/forhire, cragislist, kijiji, etc. Dig into posts like news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23379195 and see who's hiring for freelance work. Checkout sites like upwork and freelancer. Find local businesses that need help with their websites. Whatver it takes to get paid experience under your belt.
Lastly, good luck. It's a long and difficult journey but it's cetainly worth the effort if it's what you truly want.
look to see if your area has a developer slack. Ex: I'm in Raleigh and we have "triangle devs" slack which has a #jobs channel. Tons of work is posted there and I usually just reach out to the person who posts the job and ask for a phone call as a first interview of sorts
Sylvia -- you're probably familiar with Tori's story, I presume, because you both came out of Flatiron. She has a post on here about taking 444 days to land her offer at a seemingly amazing company.
I read a lot of these stories both here and on Reddit. That said, it's really easy to be hard on oneself -- I'm one of those people. I am constantly battling imposter syndrome, despite being a "senior software engineer" whose peers always think actually studied computer science -- I did not (at least not in school).
Reading stories help, even if it only eases one's mind in the moment, until you're right back into the thick of the hunt. But I'll share something that maybe you haven't yet come across -- both junior, new CS grads, and experienced devs are in the same boat. I mentor a lot (inner city kids) and have helped other bootcamp friends land offers in the past. I currently work with two friends doing interview prep -- one is a recent Hack Reactor grad and another who (also a Hack Reactor grad), but has a masters in electrical-engineering and computer science from UPenn with a strong math background, and former manager at Lockheed Martin. Both are facing hurdles, albeit, slightly different ones. The former (recent grad) is with pipeline, but we managed to get her to an Amazon on-site (didn't pass). The latter, non-pipeline issues, but more on the communication front while interviewing for both managerial and individual contributor roles.
It's also hard not to think about it in the context of signals -- the brand-name school and prior experience. This is a trap, especially in software engineering. I know this, because, I, too, come from a top university. I do recognize that signaling matters -- only to the extent that we get far more looks, but that's it. Beyond that, a display of technical ability is required (controlling for other inherent biases). I speak from the perspective of a person that's been an interviewee, interviewer, and having worked on an applicant tracking system (ATS) in recruiting software and seeing candid feedback from recruiters (it's not nice).
For those that have spent time in school, we always think that more school helps. It's a heavy investment that likely isn't worth the while when keeping the immediate goal in mind. I know people that have done a masters in CS after a bootcamp, as well as others that have not. If the goal is to land a software gig, my quick opinion is that it doesn't help. I have friends at all the Big N companies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google, AirBnB) with non-traditional and non-elite school backgrounds. The masters, from the few that I've spoke with, helped propel them into research in CS (one friend currently finishing up a PhD), or getting into machine learning/AI, where the degree signaling seems to still matter, despite not really needing it in practice. I care a lot about education as well, so I see graduate educations as a way to really do a deep dive into a particular subject/topic has the conviction to explore and less as a tool to signal, "hire me, I'm good enough!"
Lastly, for fear of this being too long. I don't want to suggest any advice that you're already familiar with without asking where you feel the issues are -- is it the pipeline (getting enough calls w/ recruiters), getting past the technical phone screen, or getting past the (virtual) on-sites? I have ideas for each of them that you may or may not have heard being so close to the ground. My current company (where I've been since April) is about to open up new positions (mostly senior), and I notice that you're in SF (where I am), but I can at least disclose somewhat how my interview went when I landed the role. You're doing a lot of the right things already. I've look at your GitHub -- one of the few people that do for a few signals that I care about as demonstrations of things people typically only claim.
Feel free to message me directly
One of my problems is timed algorithm test, such as by hackerrank. You have to pass it to be considered for next step for some company, of course... it's cheap. They don't need to spend a single minute on you, but you need to spend at least 2 hours. In the projects I do, I really don't see those used much... I don't mind studying some CS stuff as they can help general logical problem solving thinking, but I tend to forget them if I don't use them, such as practice I wrote here ... I also bought that huge green brick Cracking the Code Interview which I still haven't finished...I often feel the projects I built said enough about me but surprisingly not many really check that. Do I need to continue DS and ALGO until I can ace those tests?
Appreciate your response, Annie -- when I was searching for work for the first time. I used to waste endless energy thinking about the same things that you did, rationalizing them even, and selectively finding people that were "successful" to reinforce them.
I was lucky enough to land two of my first roles barely knowing data structures and algorithms. I was a "front-end" developer with a strong HTML and CSS and decent JavaScript background. You're not wrong -- what you describe gets you in the door, but doing the same thing for year after year if relegated to client-side JS where things change fast and flame wars over frameworks are a staple, it gets old really really fast (at least for me it did). I ended up having to peel back the covers of several libraries, patch the issue, push it upstream to the original maintainers. This gave me a taste of what seemed "cool" and I recall how nice reading code from a well-maintained library on GitHub was compared to the code written at most companies internally and said, "Wow! I wanna do this!"
I began just poking around into other source code available on GitHub for libraries I've used and it made me realize how apparent my lack of fundamentals was. It wasn't enough to push me to study some CS like you did, though. I finally swallowed the pill when I was trying to switch roles -- I was targeting big tech companies (prestige, pay, and hopefully talented people). I read up a lot on how to prepare for them and had to come face to face with what you're feeling now with regard to HackerRank and phone screens. I ended up taking a highly recommended algorithms course (the one by Sedgewick and Wayne) on Coursera -- eye opening experience. I remember seeing words that I've seen before and going, "Oh! Oh! Oh!". I took many other courses and watched countless YouTube videos when I was practicing problems on LeetCode (~150 problems). It was downright grueling and difficult. It wasn't all bad though, because some of the problems were very realistic and they absolutely challenged the hell out of me...
Have I ever used them in everyday work? No. I can't say that I have. I have used recursion many times and here are a few examples: parsing JSON from an API and navigating its nested structure to convert them back into "domain objects" (i.e. JSON representing a person) back into an actual person object with methods and all. Instead of writing custom parsing code for every type of entity or resource that could be returned from the API, I wrote a general recursive parser, and all it needed to be fed were a list/array of fields/nested fields that needed to be parsed. Secondly, I wasn't aware while studying data structures and algorithms how useful they actually were -- more than people know. A side-effect is: I cannot NOT think about performance implications of even the smallest bit of code that I write or that anyone else writes. It is immediately obvious to me when people do repeated work and what its algorithmic complexity is in big-O notation. It is immediately obvious to me when I see nested for loops and the performance implications this could have if the data set each of those loops is going through is too large -- I experienced this first hand when a coworker had three loops across three different data sets requesting over hundreds of thousands of records in each across three different tables (M x N x K). It exceeded the storage (memory capacity) of the machine and took it down in production. Knowing advanced algorithms shouldn't be necessary. For that I'll defer to one of the best pieces that I've seen written: Data Structures & Algorithms I Actually Used Working at Tech Companies. The author worked as a principal engineer and led a team at Uber. I thought the author was going to continue pushing why they matter, but it was a refreshing piece to read and I think you'll find that it is, too.
People can certainly build a career or even design shop from avoiding anything that touches computer science related topics, but it's nearly impossible not to encounter them as a full-stack developer and most certainly as a back-end developer and most certainly beyond the web-stack (where most of my interest currently is).
CTCI is a great book. I only use it for the first four chapters as those are invaluable, especially the part covering algorithmic complexity in big-O notation and its exercises. The reason I can do big-O analysis is because of that book and its exercises. The book that I use, with some harder problems, but is not necessary, but matched more closely with problems that I've seen in the current climate is Elements of Programming Interviews.
If you're convinced now that you should study them, I do recommend a full algorithms course -- maybe not what I did, because it's much longer, but ones I really like are:
Lastly, I'll leave you with something that stuck with me when I first read it:
The above comes from a site called, "Teach Yourself CS" here. The creators of the site are people I know personally.
I know I've made this an essay, but feel free to message me if you've other questions
Wow thank you so much David! Maybe you should write this into a full post called should you learn computer science as a self-taught developer? For me, I am not against it as you can see... I've read Grokking the Algorithm book, took a crash coding interview course + did some practice exercises, bought CTCI (haven't finished), and got Colt Steele's udemy course you mentioned (to-do list)... I'm also planning to do Standford's algorithm specialization on Coursera. It's just all those take a lot of time... while CS grads have 4 years to slowly digest those before they specialize, we self-taught ones don't have that luxury. We pick a few tech stack we like and whip out projects without asking too much so we could land a job.... yes, I believe you, eventually questions will surface and we will need to dive deeper. So for me it's a matter of.... what should I prioritize? I only have limited of time to dedicate, and there are tons of stuff to learn (esp in front-end or web dev in general), some are fun and useful, which I enjoy such as Svelte, some are not so such as algorithm. Personally I like creative stuff I saw on Awwwards, when websites are ugly, even they're fast and functional, or they're beautifully written inside, I don't enjoy working on them. Maybe that's the dilemma, I am not a pure software engineer, I want too much, and need two brains or three to do all. When did you realize that you want to dive deeper in the CS? I started that after 1 year of coding, when I realize they actually tested you those for the job.... >.< But I haven't felt it helped me in my "job" yet.
Perhaps -- because this comes up a lot and I feel like not enough from self-taught engineers. I re-started my blog about two months ago, and I think I'll copy what I shared with you over in a more extensive piece that's sectioned so I can point friends and people that I'm working with and myself for future reference to it :)
Grokking Algorithms is neat! I've only done a cursory look at its contents.
Super question! I forgot to mention that resource overload was a thing. I know about almost all the books, courses, and resources for interviewing. I remember trying to find the "best one" based off others opinions rather than my own. It was a poor use of time. All the resources are helpful, but they speak to different people differently. I encourage people to not do what I did, but stick to one book and one practice site (for me it's been EPI and LeetCode), but I do reference The Algorithm Design Manual from time to time.
But for what you're optimizing for -- interviews and passing HackerRank tests, you have to put it into practice. A lot of the problems are just "tricks" like "sliding window technique" with two pointers that aren't covered in enough detail (if at all) in algo courses. A single quick run through of any algorithms course should be enough even if the ideas don't stick. Once you do problems and read discussions on LeetCode (if you're using this resource), you can come back to your original resource and revisit how the algorithm or data structure is used and then make attempts to transfer it to your problem. One thing that is also worth mentioning is rather than trying to understand the code that someone else is explaining, first and continuously ask, "How? What led this person to think of this?" It makes your mind think differently about problems and think of them in terms of tools/ideas/concepts to throw at problems rather than the specific details about how to solve ONE very specific problem -- as that becomes an issue in real interviews when you recognize that you've seen a problem and then try to remember the steps to solve it instead of, "Oh! I see this pattern! Can I try X" (e.g. I need top 5 items -- can I use a heap here?)
You're right -- we don't have the luxury of focusing on just school, but you'd be surprised to learn that most CS and software engineering students are literally subjected to only a single algorithms course and don't realize until they attempt to transfer their learning into an internship or full-time offer that they, too, are subjected to what you and I are. TripleByte has a blog post on how bootcamp grads perform versus CS grads -- slightly stronger overall in data structures and algorithms, but it's not a large of a gap as you think. Both need to revisit and do problems just to get in! CS grads just get more eyeballs and recruiters reaching out to them early on.
When I study for interviews, I struggle with focus, too until I've created a regimen and stick with it, because it's far more fun digging into other technical topics or learning new programming languages than it is for me to do practice problems again, but once I'm in the swing of things, it's not too bad, and once you've really learned them through sheer effort powering through many problems, believe me, you won't forget them -- maybe how to do them, but you'll recognize the problem and have an idea about what you can throw at it even if you can't do it. It'll stick with you forever :)
But do trust that this climate is probably worse if not more worse than the '07/'08 financial crisis. Every company is starving for senior engineers and that's where most of the budgets are allocated. Without a senior around, a newcomer doesn't know what they don't know and some of it can have dire consequences and can be extremely costly for the company (if it's a small shop or start-up). Only the big companies can really afford to hire juniors at this time and they're getting slammed!!! The best way to get into companies right now is to find open positions, find people (engineers/designers), message them personally, and ask for a referral. A lot of people I know don't want to do this, instead churning through 1000s of applications with barely a callback -- it is demoralizing. But this only also works if the person's demonstrably hire-able -- public works are presentable, somehow displays a desire to learn among other things...
Yeah you should definitely write some blog posts about all those things we talked. :) I often feel there are a lot of sources and don't know where to begin... >.< For instance I choose the standford one for algorithm over princeton one is because I heard that one is more on theory rather than a specific programming language. Some people curate a list of 250 podcasts to listen to, 100 programming books you should read etc.... it's just overwhelming.
I believe one of the most valuable things you could do as a post-grad is to get more direct experience in building things. Have you considered trying to pair up on a side project with a senior developer weekly (or even daily)? Even if it is for an hour or 2, you will gain insight and quickly level up on things that you may not have had exposure to through Flatiron.
There is an insanely large amount of things to learn and it is truly hard, so don't be hard on yourself and definitely don't give up!
It's very simple, first do a few small projects, maybe register your own llc, and freelance for about a year, put up a portfolio page and then apply. Not straight out if bootcamp.