u/michaelnovati replied ·
There are a ton of success stories! I love reading success stories to understand the positive impact of programming.
The problem is both success stories and doom and gloom stories could mislead people one way or the other about choosing a bootcamp. I've seen people say things like 'I got a job making $150K 2 months after X bootcamp' and then someone commenting 'OMG I'm signing up to start ASAP'. And I've seen negative posts like 'I went to X and didn't get a job after a year', and people commenting 'OMG this program has gone down hill.'
What it comes down to is this: software written by one person, anywhere in the world, with just a laptop, has the ability to impact BILLIONS of people. This means the $$$ value of a programmer can be anywhere from -$ (i.e. you cost more than you make for your company) to $$$$$$$$$$$$$ (Literally 1 MILLION TIMES another engineer). Because of this, it makes it a very POTENTIALLY appealing industry to enter, but the outcomes are literally all over the spectrum. While most people are in a narrower range, it's a VERY wide range and any individual story you here is somewhat meaningless in figuring out where you might end up in the range.
The factors I've observed that move you higher in the range (having one or more of):
1. Raw grit and ability to grind through work or problems others don't have the grit to do
2. Curiosity to dive deeper into something and understand it better than most other people do
3. Team impact, ability to make people around you better, more than most others do
4. Ownership, ability to be trusted to "own" features and products and somehow those things get better and add value without bosses and higher ups having to spend time thinking about those things.
There's no bootcamp or CS degree that teaches this stuff and it's honestly not stuff you would truly understand coming from a different industry or without a lot of experience in high performing top tier cultures.
Anyways, giant rant that's unrelated, I'm ranting a lot lately because I've been getting frustrated seeing the entry level market collapse and seeing so many people enthusiastically trying to get into the industry and being disappointed and I feel bad.