Job Market and bootcamp

Hi! I'm combining my take on things into a top level comment. I started working at Facebook in 2009, right during the end of the great recession. I started interviewing and doing university recruiting in 2010, shortly after the great recession. I know some some people might have also lived through that time, but I can share my view working in tech during that time. I also have hundreds of colleagues and former colleagues who worked through both that recession and the dot-com crash of 2000. I also work with a lot of experienced engineers now, helping them get jobs at top tier companies and am very familiar with the market, and know people at almost all the top companies. I know a lot of people have opinions in the other comments, I'm just presenting my perspective for a different point of view for anyone reading. 1. Tech is not going away. The efficiency improvements to all aspects of life brought from engineering work, and software specifically, are moving humanity forward and there is tremendous value in these skills. Now some companies have already proven that value, and some are valued based on their "projected growth". The latter will be hit harder in a recession for now, but in the future when we return to strong growth, surviving companies will bounce back. 2. For interviewing, recessions increase "variance". Job recs might suddenly disappear and popup again. Interviews might get cancelled. Recruiters might reply slower as they are waiting on headcount. Offers might get rescinded. I know for bootcamp grads, the process is a little emotionally rough already, and in a full blown recession, it's going to get a lot rougher. Similar to the start of COVID, I would also expect companies to focus on hiring candidates with several years of industry experience already, rather than bootcamps grads and new grads (w/o internships). 3. Past performance does not indicate future performance during a recession. Choosing one of the top bootcamps might help you do better than at other bootcamp, but not a single bootcamp existed before the Great Recession, and almost all bootcamp leaders started working in the industry well after the dust settled from the last one (Ludo at NuCamp is one person that was around). All things equal, choosing a top bootcamp like Codesmith, HackReactor, Rithm, etc... would be my advice, recession, or not, but in a recession don't expect the same results. 4. If you lose your non-tech job, and have a personal runway financially, it's a great time to invest in a new skill. 5. When companies do layoffs, as people said, they try to keep engineers over other roles. But when engineers are laid off, it's the lowest performers at the companies, and the most expensive ones. This doesn't mean "bad engineers", but just people who are performer lowest AT THE SPECIFIC COMPANY (for a wide variety of reasons not related to raw skill). For job security, if you are a bootcamp grad with ZERO real experience, you actually want to come in at the appropriate entry level bucket and outperform the most possible. I would give this advice for Codesmith grads, where their LinkedIn page says 25% of people get senior or higher jobs, and 70% get mid level jobs - for people with zero experience who want job security in these times, I would suggest setting the bar lower and crushing it (I'm speaking about setting the job responsibility level and its expectations, not about salary, always try to negotiate the best salary)

With my FAANG-hat on, If you don't have any experience you should be aiming for entry level roles for truly top tier companies. The Facebook/Google/Dropbox/Apple/Netflix/Microsoft/etc.... bar has multiple levels of cross-company calibration going on to make sure your level is based on your work experience and scope of responsibility and not on your raw skill level. If you are very skilled you will get very good performance reviews and bonuses at your level and take on more responsibility quickly to get promoted faster. But levels at FAANG are based on scope of responsibility. To answer the question, at Codesmith there are are combination of different things going in the "non-entry level" statement: 1. Somewhere between 10% and "a third" (different people have said different things) have some experience before Codesmith. Those people might be able to get "FAANG-level" mid-level roles depending on their experience and the scope of responsibility in their previous work. There are indeed 20% of people making over $140K but there are also 20% of people making under $110K. 2. "Non-FAANG Level Company" mid level jobs. This label is debatable what is included, but I'll just say the non-FAANG companies that don't have the same normalized bar and calibrated cross-org responsibility setting per level. When a local hiring manager has discretion over the level, then raw performance on an interview could sway them to do anything and Codesmith alumni are very strong compared to the vast majority of bootcamps. However, an entry level FAANG job is probably better than a non-entry level "non-FAANG-tier" job. 3. Many people list their open source contributions as Software Engineer roles at "companies" that are on LinkedIn labelled as "software companies". This is well done to maximize the benefit but I know 3 ex-FAANG recruiters (and heard from several more online) that have thought Codesmith alumni's resumes were for industry experienced candidates after the first normal "10 second pass" until they talked to them and learned they were not. If you apply somewhere non-FAANG that makes the same misunderstanding and doesn't realize this in conversation, you might get flagged as a mid level candidate. \*\*If you perform well on the job, as Codesmith alumni have done, this might not matter at all, but I'm answering the question for how people get mid-level roles\*\* I love all the Codesmith alumni I've worked with personally and they are all amazing and hard working people but just answering the question!

Yeah there are a small number of people who get FAANG jobs out of Codesmith and I would strive for that over a higher title, or even higher base salary. We're splitting hairs because both paths are better than a lot of other paths haha. The benefits of FAANG-level over other companies: 1. Generally higher talent bar and experience level of coworkers, so you learn from stronger engineers. 2. More structured ramp-up. A lot of FAANG level companies have bootcamps/onboarding/very structured rampup, so you learn more faster. 3. Exposure to some leading edge infrastructure and industry leading ways of solving and scaling that you might not see at smaller companies. 4. Generally more users and larger scale products. You can't learn how to build product for a billion people without having a billion people using something. 5. Engineers have more influence over decisions. It's just more fun when you can to meaningfully contribute to decisions, rather than be told what to do from a different business unit. 6. RE: compensation. FAANG companies compensate in stock and your compensation accelerates quickly if you perform well, much faster than anywhere else. I was an E7 at FB after 4 years from school: https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Facebook&track=Software%20Engineer Not all of these are the case all of the time, but in the ideal cases these are the benefits.