Hey there! I'm a Software Engineer with a passion for helping others, which I do via YouTube usually. Feel free to reach out with business inquiries or if you'd just like to talk shop. Happy coding!
I'm a current boot camp grad myself and I'm still on the job hunt. A past company I worked for (small and a little disorganized) contacted me today about doing some development work for them. Thing is, they have no technical department whatsoever. It would just be me and I completely realize the sense in what you said regarding not taking a job if you will be the only developer there.
As much as I want to secure a job, I'm learning I need to have patience and find a place of employment that'll benefit me longer term. Then on the flip side, should I take the position just to have that on the resume so that I'll have better luck in my job search? I'm conflicted haha.
It's not always a bad choice to take a job as the only dev if they'll give you some solid projects with reasonable deadlines and expectations. These roles can act as filler work, or maybe even freelance projects, until you can land a fulltime engineering role. You'd just have to be totally confident that you can produce these projects alone, and that they'll pay you adequately. That being said, the engineering scope of these projects will likely be simple (since they're a non-technical company) and those types of projects don't always stand out on a resume.
Generally, my advice is to build some side projects of your own to add to your portfolio and keep looking for a company with an established product/engineering department that will foster your growth. If I was looking to hire a new dev for my team and I had to choose between a resume with Bootcamp + scattered projects at a non-technical company vs. Bootcamp + a handful of creative, technical side projects, I'd choose the latter.
Hey there! I'm a Software Engineer with a passion for helping others, which I do via YouTube usually. Feel free to reach out with business inquiries or if you'd just like to talk shop. Happy coding!
Really good advice. I was just offered to opportunity to work for a previous employer, but I would be the sole developer on the team of a non technical company and this would be my first role. I'm tempted to take it for financial reasons but I'm really leaning towards holding out for a better position, one that would foster my growth as you said.
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I'm really glad I came across this post.
I'm a current boot camp grad myself and I'm still on the job hunt. A past company I worked for (small and a little disorganized) contacted me today about doing some development work for them. Thing is, they have no technical department whatsoever. It would just be me and I completely realize the sense in what you said regarding not taking a job if you will be the only developer there.
As much as I want to secure a job, I'm learning I need to have patience and find a place of employment that'll benefit me longer term. Then on the flip side, should I take the position just to have that on the resume so that I'll have better luck in my job search? I'm conflicted haha.
It's not always a bad choice to take a job as the only dev if they'll give you some solid projects with reasonable deadlines and expectations. These roles can act as filler work, or maybe even freelance projects, until you can land a fulltime engineering role. You'd just have to be totally confident that you can produce these projects alone, and that they'll pay you adequately. That being said, the engineering scope of these projects will likely be simple (since they're a non-technical company) and those types of projects don't always stand out on a resume.
Generally, my advice is to build some side projects of your own to add to your portfolio and keep looking for a company with an established product/engineering department that will foster your growth. If I was looking to hire a new dev for my team and I had to choose between a resume with Bootcamp + scattered projects at a non-technical company vs. Bootcamp + a handful of creative, technical side projects, I'd choose the latter.
Really good advice. I was just offered to opportunity to work for a previous employer, but I would be the sole developer on the team of a non technical company and this would be my first role. I'm tempted to take it for financial reasons but I'm really leaning towards holding out for a better position, one that would foster my growth as you said.