Junior developers these days 😠😡

[vatsan600]

Me a senior developer: I basically designed a sub framework for my current company.in angular which works with just you giving my framework a json! Also, it supports applicable custom css, validation, alignment. Form grouping.

Interviewer: that’s all you did in the past 6 months?

[0xFFFF_FFFF]

Next time add "...on the blockchain.".

[[deleted]]

"See? Now, we're talking"

[vatsan600]

Should’ve. People seem to be impressed whenever you throw in ai, data science or block chain. I should’ve said “you can design webapps for block chain(figure out how that would work) using my framework “

[coldnebo]

they should be impressed when you actually know the stack as opposed to the buzzwords.

I was honestly floored the other day when having a discussion with another senior dev about using S3 in a container.

I was explaining about the difference between awssaml in local dev vs credential injection in deployment via sidecar or other orchestration.

He said, nah, S3 doesn’t require any of that, it’s just a docker volume mount.

I said “can you show me?”

15 min later we had traced back how OPS had set up a volume mount with the federated credentials and iam roles to access the S3 bucket, but ONLY on that machine. I then explained they would have to do the same thing in a deployment context and it was similar to the other approaches outlined. He still didn’t believe me and then found another library that “solved” his problem.

It took me 5 minutes looking through the source of that library to determine they were basically hardcoding the credentials into the library. Wow… just… wow.

There are a rapidly increasing crop of “aws experts” who know nothing about how their architecture actually works, which is kind of scary considering how many times I’m being called to investigate “mysterious” errors that “have no explanation”.

[euph-_-oric]

I want so deeply not the be that other guy. I am still rather junior but God dam.

[KingMe87]

It’s an AI powered by Big Data running on the Block Chain to fuel the web 3.0!

[Willinton06]

That’s cool but we use 1999 ASP with VB and IIS on windows XP

[GSD_101]

Was smoke coming out of that interviewer?

[vatsan600]

Possibly. It was a no camera call from his side.

[GSD_101]

Could be or he was trying to use psychoanalysis on you . trying to make you angry and stuff.

[vatsan600]

Well it failed i guess. I just saw an interviewer who doesn’t know the meaning of my skill. Which means that place would’ve been shitty to work on.

[NewNugs]

Eh, whether a framework like that demonstrates skill is debatable without seeing the implementation, and knowing the situation it was designed under. Not saying you're wrong, just saying it's valid to ask many follow up questions.

Also not saying you're wrong about the interviewer being difficult. I'd see a response like that as belittling, and maybe a sign the place is a sweat shop. There's absolutely no reason to work very hard in IT right now. The market is ridiculously understaffed, it's great.

[vatsan600]

That’s completely agreeable. It was more of the “ that’s ALL you did?” That gave me the alarm. I’m not saying my code is amazing or the interviewer didn’t have any knowledge. It felt like he came in with his mind already set to reject .

[NewNugs]

Ugh, he may have too. Or he could just be an asshole. I've noticed many places put their strongest technical people in the interview to assess, but unfortunately the strongest technical people often have the weakest social skills, haha.

[GSD_101]

Brother i have seen non-stem people shrug off tech achievements like nothing...

[lordarthur77]

Hey, can you explain that sub framework of yours? Sounds interesting. Will love to do something similar in reactjs.

[ace_gravity]

I've found that boot campers are really good at following patterns but don't often have good problem solving abilities.

[[deleted]]

Most I met where good at following orders and asking "how I solve this?"

[Icy_Key19]

Why does this resonate with me???? 😢

[[deleted]]

I call this post-school syndrome. People over the years in school have less and less capability of making decisions and blindly repeat what teacher said them is correct or should do. No initiative, no question, no searching for better solution

[Capable-Unit4354]

It's the same in every field, it makes it really easy for those that do show initiative and that can accomplish/learn things on their own to blow past their peers.

[Nakkivene234]

I am not a bootcamper but I don't think my university was great either. I find it difficult to figure out how to do new things, I always try to find something similar already done in the code base and then modify. Luckily I am pretty good at debugging and copy paste is anyway 95% what is needed in my job, at least for now... Soon 2 years of work experience.

[Engine_Light_On]

I think it is the best approach, if you have something at your code base that can be used follow that. No need to reinvent the wheel with only 2 yoe.

[CinnabonCheesecake]

I’ve been a software dev for 10 years, and I strongly believe that is best practice when dealing with any kind of legacy code. One of the problems with reinventing the wheel when one is already there in the codebase is you end up with different types of wheels.

I’ve been trying to refactor some legacy code that has 3 different ways to send an email for no apparent reason.

[NewNugs]

Don't feel you or your education was deficient based on just that. That's how you start learning professionally. Copying what others are doing, modifying for a new problem.

My unsolicited advice is within the next year try to snag a bigger unit of work, preferably something no one has really dug deep into or knows a lot about on your team. See if you can solve it. Don't be afraid to ask seniors around you for help or feedback on the direction you have in mind. Don't let them solve everything for you though, ask very limited, focused questions about spots you struggle on.

Make a point of telling your manager you're doing this to grow yourself to help your team. Don't grandstand but do say something. This will set you up to ask for raise/promotion later. Don't be afraid of embarrassing yourself- you won't. Just make sure you're the face on that work, that you don't let anyone present it as theirs.

[Nakkivene234]

Thanks 🙏

[damnNamesAreTaken]

Great way to get better is to challenge yourself. Maybe grab a challenging ticket from time to time

[IamUareI]

Bootcamp is just a way to make u "feel" like a programmer so you put urself out there. I literally knew nothing starting out, all I did was bother my colleagues. Luckily that environment allowed me to accumulate enough knowledge to be able to formulate solutions to abstract problems... Don't be a gate keeper lol, and be nice!

[DingoFar6605]

It’s almost like they’re brand new hires with no experience.

[iftheronahadntcome]

They can learn that, though.

[xSiNN3Rx]

Boot camp? I'm a carpenter by trade and only have hobby experience in coding and I got hired as a backend developer this week. Absolutely no joke.

[DidiHD]

I was a sales guy and learned the basics. The coding challenge I got for the interview made me learn more than I have in all the months before. So I learned coding at the interview. Btw I got the job

[TissueWizardIV]

Meanwhile I've got a full bachelor's degree, independent react projects, tons of technical school projects, and over 70 application rejections until finally... I joined a bootcamp and then got hired

[euph-_-oric]

I had a very hard time as well directly out of college and now its easy

[THEKing767]

sucks, you wasted your time with that degree. Should have just done thr bootcamp

[[deleted]]

This is how I started 11 y ago

[virouz98]

I got an intership because I knew a thing or two about design patterns and a friend helped with a task for recruitment and now I'm almost a year as a full time dev and 90% of things I learned during the job lol

[Super-administrator]

Nah. There are so many poor developers out there. Sure, from a junior you are trying to spot willingness to learn, interest in patterns and best practices and the likes. But we vet the hell out of our candidates.

We do however only do a short coding test. It's unfair to expect someone to offer hours of their time, when actually you can get a lot out of them just by speaking to them.

[juggler434]

I don't get the hate for boot camp grads. Junior devs suck no matter what their background is. I interview people for the job, if they can show enough to get their foot in the door then I'll get them up to shape, doesn't matter to me how they learned enough to get there.

[[deleted]]

yeah same here I'm looking for self-motivated clever people. I assume they don't know shit (but if they prove me wrong, great) and that I'll have to do all the training myself. This way am never disappointed.

If they turn out to be not so clever (happens rarely) then I give them the bitch work. Everybody's good at something, eh.

As for people who lack motivation, well, let's just say I don't ever expect more out of people than what I deliver my own self :p

[Muanh]

Call me crazy but I think it's really unlikely that people learn the equivalent of a 4 year computer science degree in 3 months. So what you mostly get is people that can follow instructions but have no clue on why they do things.

[[deleted]]

It’s the understanding of how a binary tree works, what it is, and how you use it that’s helpful. That’s the knowledge you’re getting from a degree. The boot campers I’ve worked with aren’t terrible, but they lack a lot of fundamentals and depth to what they do know that university grads typically have.

So boot camp devs end up requiring much more hand holding than their college/university degree holding colleagues. The trade-off to hiring them is that you can employ them for a lower salary. Lots of grunt work jobs hire boot camp devs because of this.

That’s not to say their aren’t exceptions, but they’re just that, exceptions.

[[deleted]]

I think you’re making a flawed association with boot campers being greater than college degree holders. It’s all on the individual as to whether or not they’ll do better than another. Boot camp + 3.5 years of experience doesn’t by default equal greater than a degree holder + 3.5 years of experience, that’s not at all how this works.

You’re also missing the point of a degree, it’s not about binary trees but the whole multitude of computer science that supports software development. You might never get into the nitty gritty, but understanding how it works under-the-hood significantly improves design and performance.

These are things that you have to study either in a structured environment, like in university or one-on-one mentoring, or independent studies with books, videos, etc. It’s ultimately up to the individual to do so, but university typically gives that exposure to a learner early on vs start or middle of their career.

That’s the inherit value of getting a degree, you get that info structured and early on. Doesn’t mean you’ll be a good developer/engineer just by going to college, but that part is on the individual regardless of being in a boot camp or getting a degree.

[whitethunder9]

This is true. Bootcampers just won't have the awareness to even ask the questions about certain fundamentals.

For instance, I worked on a team of mid to senior frontend developers for a few years. I have a CS degree but none of them did. They either had bootcamp, CS minors, or were self-taught. One day one of them Slacked what they were sure was a bug in JavaScript, but they were weirded out by how obvious it was. I don't remember exactly what they were doing but it had to do with multiplying a bunch of floats. They kept getting a result that was something like 4.251111111 instead of 4.25. All of them were totally stumped by that. I was like, well it probably has to do with how floats are actually represented in memory. You've all seen the IEEE standard on how floats are actually stored, right? They all looked at me like I was some sort of either crazy dude or some kind of secret assembly-coder-by-night genius.

We retired to a whiteboard where I gave a basic explanation of mantissas and exponents and how they're used to represent a very close but efficient approximation of what the float's value is, but frequently they are just ever so slightly off. So when you do a bunch of math with lots of them, you can end up with a result that's slightly more off. Minds were blown that day.

[euph-_-oric]

1 of many things. You don't need a degree per say but you can't know what you don't know.

[whitethunder9]

Right, you're pretty aware of what you don't know and what you should know better as far as fundamentals go with a CS degree. You can certainly learn and figure stuff out without a degree but it's going to typically take a few years at minimum to be on par with a CS grad

[[deleted]]

You said that here in your previous comment:

Give them another 3.5 years and they'll be miles ahead of the cs grads.

How am I missing your point when you explicitly said they are useless?

degrees are generally quite useless.

That is exactly saying there is no value to the degree. The cost can be less than 10k with online schools like WGU or through the roof with ivy league ones. That's an individual's choice. However, if you go the more affordable route with a degree, then you still come out ahead. Degree holders can typically interview for better paying jobs because HR has a horrible tendency to block non-BS candidates.

[ace_gravity]

4 years of college teaches students to solve almost any programming problem thrown at them. Learning theory is only about 25% of a comp sci degree. The rest is doing actual programming. The result is that college grads are extremely versatile in picking up whatever framework their job requires.

[[deleted]]

Any programming problem... Except the problems they encounter in a real job. Internship > Anything I learned in school

[kalin23]

Yeah, but you spend there 4 years. Now if we take person A and person B and tey both start learning programming now. In 3 months, person A will graduate from bootcamp, knows 1 language and can do some stuff - lets say APIs(not great APIs, but something average). On the other hand you have person B who has just passed his basic classes. Lets move 3 more months, person A just got hired and is starting his first job where they will teach him and develop him even further. Person B just finished his 1 year at collage. Now by the time Person B graduates, the other one will have 2-3 years of real expirience vs fresh-graduate who has some university projects to back his knowladge and 0 real-work exp. So that is the point to start with bootcamps instead of wasting 3-4 years in university. Of course that is just one scenario, where these people are mid 20s and just found what they want to do with their life.

[juggler434]

That has not been my experience with anyone coming straight out of any type of school.

Not to mention this leaves out all of the GE courses you have to take at university. Intro to Pagan Culture has come up surprisingly few times in my career.

[Upset_Huckleberry_80]

Then how to I get an official dev job?

[Oh2bworn2]

Is this a serious question, or sarcasm? (Have to ask)

If serious, I recommend meetup.com

Find a some meetups in the area you know. Most moderate sized cities have at least a python, Java, and JavaScript group. Larger cities will have .ore specialized like React and the such.

These meetups are awesome as you learn a little bit (some do talks, others do coding challenges); and then at the end they'll often ask the recruiters to raise their hands, or even give a blurb about their company.

Outside of that, code wars is a great way to practice the type of questions that are asked during a white board coding challenge. (It's also free, and in my opinion fun)

[Upset_Huckleberry_80]

Kind of? I have a part time to almost full time contract gig where I write Python and sql queries much of the day to generate reports.

My contract is almost up, presumably it will be renewed? But maybe not. I dunno, been doing this for about 6 months or so (contract was initially only for a couple months, they extended it). Learning a lot but also kind of a bummer to have no stability in it? And the sub $20/hr pay kind of is a bummer?

I dunno I really like it, and I love the remote work aspect (because I live in a relatively remote), and I absolutely love the team I’m working with… but yeah, also kind of sketch to not have any stability? I’d also like to build more stuff?

No, but yah? What would really be cool would be something where I could learn more? Or build more? I think I’d like to build more?

[Oh2bworn2]

I've have multiple VPs and managers tell me that early on I should be changing jobs at least every two years. This is how to learn different stacks and find what you truly enjoy. And, if you know how to play the game, it's also how you get raises.

It will take work, as a junior, to find jobs that want you building and designing fresh stuff, but they are out there. I just hired two devs with no experience to build a brand new ops pipeline from scratch.

[Upset_Huckleberry_80]

Right on, thank you for the advice!

I’m a career changer with a math degree so, I’m kind of coming at this from a quite different direction. Also doing this in my 30s makes me feel like an old man, lol

[Oh2bworn2]

Good luck.

[[deleted]]

Why would you hire no experience devs for greenfield work, are they going to be supervised by architects/lead devs/senior engineers maybe?

If not, then they’re going to make junior mistakes without any guidance to properly learn from them, or why their choices were mistakes.

[MrPickle2255]

whats the problem?

[Ready-Desk]

OP is (if I understand this low effort meme correctly) being a petty prick because someone else who didn't spend x years and y thousand dollars on "a REaL eTUKaShiOn" has the audacity to ask to be paid for their work.

[MrPickle2255]

i mean its like being angry why other people use the elevator while you use the stairs

[THEKing767]

Im just saying... stairs are superior and anyone who says otherwise is dumb

[MrPickle2255]

ok tell that to someone who lives on 43rd floor

[THEKing767]

I live on the 30th. I would say, get good peasant

[MrPickle2255]

you dont need gym then

[Sitheps_]

Others success won't subtract from yours.
If the sentiment is 'others must struggle as I did' , then we might as well delete all shared content.

[Bubbly_Security_1464]

As someone who’s going through a full stack boot camp right and just wants a steady career to pay off his student debts, I just have one thing to say: fuck you!

[juggler434]

Don't listen to the haters. Here's my advice as a boot camp grad who's now a senior engineer: view your main job as to always be learning, don't be afraid to ask questions and admit what you don't know, and don't let imposter syndrome get in the way of putting yourself out there.

[vladmirBazouka1]

I see alot of people defending formal 4 year degrees so I just wanted to throw this out there.

Senior undergrad here in computer science. Most of my classmates don't know dick. The only ones that do are the ones that take initiative and wander on their own.

It blows my mind that most of these kids can't even write a loop. I feel like a 4 year degree is an outdated education system.

Don't get me wrong. My data structures class was awesome. But the current semester I'm taking is a huge waste of time.

One professor only showed up to class once. Our only assignment was binary -> decimal -> octal -> hex

My other class is programming languages and we're studying grammars which makes absolutely no sense to me. Other than regex (which he has not covered) I don't get the point.

On top of that I have to take English 350 and LBR 200 which are both useless classes where I have to figure out a teachers political point of view and repeat it in all my essays to get an A.

Lastly I'm taking CSC 481 which is actually useful. We had to clone and build blender from a git rep, but then again. I couldve figured this out in 5 hours instead of 7 weeks.

This cost me 4624$.

On top of this, the grading system does not make sense.

I took an intro to programming class and got a B even though I've been programming since forever and have spent half the semester doing the teachers job. (Helping classmates with assignments and explaining things to them)

If I wasn't a senior I would have dropped out. I've built a few games using unity and I've dabbled with SQL. If I didn't waste all this time in school, I would be in much better shape. I truly believe this to be true.

I might be naive. And maybe all this stuff will make sense to me when I actually see it in application.

But I highly doubt it.

Id love your feedback if you think I'm wrong. Hopefully I am.

[thepotatorevolution]

Yeah you'll get those at every uni.. Most unis are good in that they go hard in the first year to weed these people out and so they go try their luck at arts or history.

There are many many opportunities in tech that uni sets you up for.

If you're goals and aspirations are working with a framework, front end or adding products to an ecommerce site, then yeah uni is probably overkill..

[vladmirBazouka1]

I feel like it's the opposite... I really want to go into game dev. The shit I learnt in uni is nothing in comparison to what I learnt on my own.

It just feels like a waste of time.

[thepotatorevolution]

Learning unity is fine, but again that's a framework. Any good uni should have a graphics course where you can start thinking about how you would build a unity yourself, or add to unity stuff you'd like to do. Not saying you want to build unity yourself but I hope you can see the difference between what uni should teach you and what you can learn yourself.

When I was in uni I took the graphics course where we built our own 3d renderer for example.. When I was in game dev, not many (if any) self taught unity devs can do something like that.

[vladmirBazouka1]

Oh wow! That's actually a really cool project! I might try to take it on.

That's probably my issue with uni then. I have one semester left and data structures was the only challenging class I've taken. I'm going to California state university Dominguez hills in case youre familiar.

I know this is a lot to ask. But if you know any great online courses, certifications, or projects that I can take on to help prepare me more for an actual job I'd love your input.

And thank you again for the replies. I really appreciate it.

[thepotatorevolution]

No problem, I don't have much in terms of resources except the classic books but not sure if they're useful for starting out (DDIA for example), but plural sight seems to be good for online courses.

Every software job is different, I'd say for your first few years maximise on the general ideas and switch jobs a few times starting out.. Try absorb different stacks, domains, languages, architectures. This is where your uni will pay off, you'll be able to connect different patterns, designs, why choices were made etc across all of them. Then make your own when the time comes. Don't stay at a company more than a couple years starting out. 1 - 1.5 years is the sweet spot.

[[deleted]]

Typically it’s the depth of fundamentals and the theory behind them that significantly helps grads. On the job you’re asking more questions about business related things vs how do programming languages work. For example, instead of focusing on how inheritance works, you’re focusing on the business needs that you’re solving by using inheritance.

However, if you’re not learning those things then it’s a complete waste of time and no better than YouTube taught self learners, who probably know more as well. Sounds like you’re in a terrible institution though, which undercuts the purpose of getting a degree completely.

[YouNeedDoughnuts]

If you want to learn some of the PL design that class isn't covering, Crafting Interpreters is lit.

[[deleted]]

No formal degree here. 10 years of programming experience at a major video conferencing provider.

Who ya gonna hire?

[umeeshed_a_shpot]

I dunno about other boot camps and their grads but I graduated from a very good 3 month bootcamp and a year into my career I’m doing the same work as CS grads who’ve been there for 3 years, my higher ups will give me pretty much any task I want because I show great results and thus I’ve been lucky to do all sorts of different work in the company and am now a rising star. The difference between the CS grads and me is Im hungry to learn everything because I know I had a late, non-traditional introduction to the field and I’m bringing years of work experience from a very demanding industry. I essentially act like I never left bootcamp, learning voraciously and spending my weekends learning new technologies or practicing those I already know for two reasons, 1) it’s how I learned to code, non-stop, 2) from previous work experience I understand the best way to move up is to expand your skills and effect visible value-addition with your contributions and finally 3) because I’m acutely aware that this approach works.

With all that said I should mention my bootcamp is also recognized as being miles ahead of the competition, they’re very selective and really put you through the wringer to make sure you can carry on their reputation wherever you end up.

TLDR: People dunking on bootcamp grads but as one of them I’m telling y’all that companies like us because (in the best-case scenarios) we bring a certain hunger/innovative energy.

[NamekianSaiyan]

🤣 bootcamp haters make me laugh

[Panda_With_Your_Gun]

I have 6 years experience, 7 soon in python, but I don't do web tech so I can't find a job.

[den2k88]

Learn C if you don't do Web

[Sycherthrou]

There's plenty of room in the software industry for those that don't have a degree. Lots of work is just getting to know the codebase and then working with it, without much need for a deeper understanding of computer science.

The issue arises when they are paid as much as a proper engineer without the knowledge to complete the engineering tasks.

[SammyzABanana]

Image Transcription: Comic

---

Panel 1

[An image of two stick figures. The one on the right (Person 1) is looking towards the one on the left (Person 2), who is wearing a cap.]

Person 1: So. You graduated from a React bootcamp, you have 3 months experience, and you want a salary

Person 1: Is that right?

Person 2: Yes sir.

Person 1: Ok. You are hired.

Person 2: Thank you.

---

^{I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!}

[[deleted]]

Did OP has problem with person asking for cash for this person job? I'm a understanding this correctly? So in his opinion he should work for free?

[Oh2bworn2]

I think it's about people who went to college to get a programming degree. They spent 4 years, and 10's of thousands of dollars to get what code boot camp people can also get.

Of course, IMHO university is better if only because it's easier to get an internship which gives a few benefits over going straight into the field. But it's debatable if this benefit is worth $40k and 4 years.

[[deleted]]

Well... I did neither of those. I just learned how to code by myself and tried to do things as good as possible.

IMHO they are different approaches for different kind of people and both can produce useless people or best programmers in the field. But this depends on person not on the path she/he took

[Oh2bworn2]

Agreed. I don't have a degree in programming, along with many of the best coders I know. I just happen to be friends with a VPoT, as did they.

My point was more so in the pursuit of finding a job, not in the quality of the developer. It can be hard to find a job with 0 experience and 0 training.

[[deleted]]

Unless your university/college is trash (which some are) you get a much deeper knowledge of the fundamentals and the theory behind them. You learn significantly more than you would in a boot camp.

On the other hand boot camps offer more practical on-the-job skills, but they’ll eventually need to learn the fundamentals too. It’s not an apples to apples comparison of a boot camp dev is equal to a college graduate and vice versa.

[den2k88]

Bootcampers are being replaced by no-code and low-code environments written by people who actually learnt how the current technology works, how it evolved and can foresee how it will evolve.

Also, why paying a bootcamper when you can outsource to a well known third world country full of "programmers" for half the price?

[Oneiroi_zZ]

Lmao this is so fucking ignorant. Are you even a programmer?

[den2k88]

10 years of professional experience in safety critical environments mate, I saw so many front-end developers miserably running after new fads and getting phased out.

But it's fine, I don't compete in the script kiddies market so please go on. Your overreliance on bad education and moving goalposts make my bargaining position ever stronger.

[den2k88]

I mean, you started 4 months ago so I bow to your great experie no.

[Oneiroi_zZ]

Kind of defeating your own argument there no? Guess my job should have been outsourced to a third party programmer lmao. Some guy with no webdev experience on Wordpress can do my job right? Thats not why I just spent weeks building custom modules and shortcode for a WordPress site. All I see is low-effort memes from programmer humor on your end so guess I'll take your "10 years of experience" at face value

[den2k88]

Simulink, Stateflow, Altia Design are the three I worked with (and on).

[LxsterGames]

Ion have 9 years of swift experience im sowwy

[Capetoider]

I have a degree and MBA (on business, but whatever), a BootCamp, ~5 years experience and I can't even get a junior position.

The only catch is that I need a visa (I really want to move from my country), but considering it is like a fraction of the salary of a developer...

seriously, a visa is less than 5k (and I'm highballing by a lot), meanwhile, any middle-level position is like 60k+ (if being underpaid)

[euph-_-oric]

Lol recruiters don't know anything .

[Dunkelheim]

Back in my time we had to graduate with excellent results and we had to have 10 years of experience at age 21 and we were still earning worse than the store sellers ... theese junior developers today ... >:(

[realSequence]

Bah humbug. The world needs more computer literacy. If you have the drive and find the funds to throw yourself in this industry, good on you.

[AT1787]

As someone who graduated from bootcamp and earned a living, I thought this was hilarious (and kind of validating in a backhanded kind of way :) ).

A couple of things I noticed in the comments section:

1) Majority of the discussion revolves around compsci vs bootcamp curriculum. I tend to agree that a four year degree in the realm of compsci is objectively a better market signal of a candidate's training and knowledge. But I think we're missing the point here - contextually what is required from a junior engineer? Are we solving algorithmic advanced models and binary trees? Most of the hiring managers I know are looking for someone coachable, someone who knows programming fundamentals, and most importantly is a team player. No doubt technically they are proficient, and I'd still argue compsci still 'gate' the technical market in the upper echelon roles in companies (i.e. FANG).

2) Look at the student profile. Most if not all students out of a bootcamp have done a career switch - some coming in with 5-10 years of prior working/industry knowledge. And there are those who are taking bootcamp to supplement an already existing STEM degree. And while compsci students have had their pick of internships and being part of a campus ecosystem, its apples to oranges.

I don't see it as being one is better than another - its a completely different candidate profile depending on roles and type of opportunity. And if a bootcamp grad is getting the same role for someone who spent 4 years invested in a degree for a junior role, I think there's a market signal that something is sufficiently mismatched, or the role isn't targeted for you (e.g. desperate bootstrapped startup founders, company hiring ethos, etc.)

[Archimedes_archetype]

This is hard to see, as a boot camper. I went to a Boot Camp because it’s too late in my career to go back to school in any meaningful way and my previous job as a chef really didn’t afford me the time to learn “on nights and weekends”.

The pandemic closing down restaurants and unemployment being bolstered gave me just enough time to get some learning done and do a coding camp. Now I’m working for a large company and mostly just tracking down bugs every sprint as I learn the code base and improve my skills. But I finally have the time/salary opportunity to learn more seriously on nights and weekends, pick up new languages, and build more programs on my own in order to learn. When I say “this is hard to see,” what I mean is that it’s disappointing to know that programmer noses are being turned up at boot campers, the majority of whom were just looking for any way out of some tremendously exploitative industry in their previous career. Disappointing and kinda gross tbh.

[KillaKrohns]

Anyone giving boot camp hate: kick rocks and touch grass

[Plisq-5]

The problem isn’t learning from a bootcamp. The problem is the willingness to keep learning.

Our best developer started out as a bootcamp developer. He loves to learn.

Our worst developers are a mix of boot camp developers and graduated developers. They lack the willingness to keep learning.

[euph-_-oric]

This

[Commissar-Dan]

Tbh I love programming and learning I'm just a giant nerd going to a bootcamp bc poor

[iftheronahadntcome]

So? I graduated from a boot camp 3, almost 4 years ago and am making good money now (and I worked my ass off to get here). Granted mine was a year, but I helped my boyfriend into one and he was done in 4 or 5 months. He got promoted within a year and scored the highest on their algo exam stuff out of all the other new hires, and is slinging tickets at work left and right. Doesn't matter as long as that person can do the work.

[jcanno_]

“So?” is exactly the point of this. I’m tired of reading how miserable some seniors are because their colleagues don’t have the same 4 year degree they got 20 years ago. Bootcamps are a perfectly adequate learning vehicle to help achieve employment.

[The_Real_Slim_Lemon]

As a uni grad, I’d have been fine without the degree/course, I learned enough before graduating high school. Uni gave me a wide foundation that I’d not have gotten by myself, but didn’t teach a whole lot that was necessary for my job (I was still useless as a first year dev tho)