u/michaelnovati replied · · edited
It depends on you. The bootcamp isn't going to get you a job in 2025, but being very "creative" about your experience will so that you can appear like you have years of SWE experience and get interviews.
I've seen a handful of mechanical engineers. If you search on LinkedIn for "oslabs mechanical engineer" you'll find a bunch of bootcamp grads who got jobs in 2020 to 2022.
I don't see that many getting jobs anymore though, so even these strategies don't seem to work anymore.
You can look through the examples and see some patterns:
1. Call the work "Engineer", "Project Engineer", "Automation Engineer", "Engineering Lead", "Engineering Manager", "Solutions Engineer". And even if that was your real title as a Mech, change the description to focus on all ambiguous work that sounds like it was software-related.
2. List your 3-4 week bootcamp capstone project as Software Engineer work for 1 year that bridges the gap from your previous experience.
All of the 4 to 12 month stints you see at things like ReacTime, VNO, Arrow, Trydent, KafkaPeak, DenoGres, OverVue are not actual jobs but 3 week long projects that are framed as a bridge job.
These jobs WERE listed as "- Present" when the people got their current job, which also helped a lot!
3. List prior web stuff you did a job. Like if you had a WiX or SquareSpace website in 2020, put yourself down as a Software Engineering freelancer from 2020 to Present.
**I don't support this whatsoever but it works** and it's the dirty secret behind the flashy marketing for how bootcamp grads got placed in 2021-2023.
Right now though you can see that there are hardly anyone starting a job in 2025 in these.