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.
u/its-happenin-already wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Your last statement makes no sense for anyone remotely familiar with the industry. The bootcamp route was never reliable. It’s always been as “collapsed” as it appears now. The entry into tech 95% of the time was always a 4 year degree or years of relevant experience.
Companies
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I know what I'm talking about yeah. I worked at FB for 8 years from 2009 to 2017, grew from 200 engineers to 10,000 engineers. Interviewed 400+ people, did dozen campus recruiting trips all over the place. Afterwards, I worked with early career, experienced, engineers to level and have seen hundreds of various levels, mostly with 1-3 YOE, but also from self taught, and bootcamp grads, navigate the market and place at companies big and small.
For FAANG-level companies - so the entry level headcount is being reserved for fall 2023 new grad hiring season. Because of recruiter layoffs, companies are being efficient by using the recruiters they have for tried and true new grad and intern pipelines at the top schools (Stanford, MIT, CMU, Berkeley, UT Austin, UW, some ivy leagues) to fill their headcount. So I agree right now, trying to be a bootcamp grad and getting new grad jobs is almost impossible. I've said this in other posts, but for diverse candidates, apprenticeships/"emerging talent" programs are the way to go! They are extremely competitive and most bootcamp grads are not prepared to compete with their bootcamp program alone, but it's at least a predictable pathway that works.
u/Parky-Park wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Do you have any perspective on what makes UT Austin and UW so valuable, compared to even some of the Ivy Leagues? Also, would Georgia Tech be included in that group, too?
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Georgia Tech undergrad yeah.
I can't speak to all companies but at Facebook once the first 100 engineers were hired through networking and people who self selected into wanting to be there, there ended up going to the schools that most top employees came from lol and I remember seeing a histogram of schools and it was like Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Harvard (because of Zuck)
The U.S. News CS undergrad list is a good start for the top 10..
A pattern though pre COVID is proximity to the company mattered so much! UW is the primary school in Seattle that feeds to MSFT, AMZN. Stanford and Berkeley for all of SV. Ivy Leagues for NYC. Austin for the Texas hardware companies. I was flown out to FB in Palo Alto from Canada for two intern interviews!