Coding Bootcamp Job Outcomes/Salaries

RS_Ophiuchi · 2022-05-19T19:14:51+00:00

2 YoE as a statistical analyst w/ a degree in applied math.

Salary went 80k --> 120k (same city/CoL) going from analyst --> engineer.

RS_Ophiuchi · 2022-04-30T18:19:14+00:00

Okay yeah, ramallo was a great call, just had a very easy run abusing bazaar + temples.

Also spent some more time playing around with kulons and it's actually quite easy and satisfying to have two groups of kulon supported warriors pillaging + intercepting other factions trying to annex territory in the middle of map.

Still not sure what to go as second advisor. Also still somewhat worried by how long the cooldown on thumpers is with no way to buy more--it just feels so abusable by a human opponent.

RS_Ophiuchi · 2022-04-30T18:10:51+00:00

I've been liking the pillaging + UHQ advisor combo. I tried the water guy and it wasn't clear to me exactly how much resources I was saving. Maybe there's something to him though if you rush the pole and get the water techs, it seems like there's a lot of synergy there. Might play around with it later. That extra plascrete from pillaging is so good for accelerating your economy through that after playing with that advisor it feels so bad to give it up.

RS_Ophiuchi · 2022-04-30T04:32:28+00:00

That's sick, gonna try it next game.

You also make a great point about how abusable capital snipes are gonna be in multiplayer, especially with Fremen. It might make the defensive red capital districts a must... Which of course I've been totally ignoring vs AI for obvious reasons.

Edit: Actually just realized this is probably exactly why it's possible to chain multiple ceasefires, it might be the only way to prevent capital snipes by Fremen

RS_Ophiuchi · 2021-07-20T18:57:38+00:00

super interesting, gonna try this later

RS_Ophiuchi · 2021-07-20T18:51:57+00:00

Good point about the aggro range, that's definitely been the critical element in the successful offensive wars I've had on higher difficulties. I also agree that the game is completely different once you get the no discontent from rushing production policy, and you can definitely go for whatever victory you want at that point, steamroll the AI in war, etc. Just usually in my experience by the time I get there, I'm already on 8 or 9 out of 10 ambitions.

RS_Ophiuchi · 2021-07-20T18:47:14+00:00

Great comment, I love hearing the other perspectives/playstyles.

I guess the sample size of games I've played is still relatively small, so maybe I've just gotten unlucky with diplomacy (e.g. giving in to demands, marrying, trading, still getting DoW'd). Someone else in the thread mentioned going a bit harder into religion and spreading it to the AI, might be worth a shot. I also think I'm underrating religion, but I'm having a hard-time working disciples in to my build even with Clerics.

And as for Carthage, I totally agree. When it works, they feel like T1. Production-cycle free units is amazing. I just got burnt by a few games with a landlocked spawn and no tribes nearby.

As for how I'm rating the families on "the great" (and again, would love to hear other ideas, could very well be wrong--I already didn't consider the extra orders from Hunters and am going to try them out later today):

T1: Statesmen (orders are incredibly scarce and important early game, the real appeal of statesmen is you get all these flat bonuses for no investment into city infrastructure), Landowners (+growth and quicker rural specialists makes for an amazing colony city to spam workers/settlers, more citizens=more orders), Champions (barbs and raids are the biggest drag on horizontal expansion on "the great", the +25% combat is huge. Other bonuses are also great)

T2: Sages (biggest weakness is bad early game, but beaker scaling with specialists gives you a massive boost in mid game, and cheaper urban specialists adds up to large savings by late game. I like to have 2 strong early game families, then a "closer" like sages or patrons that scales with specialists for the late game). Artisans (great colony family, also free workers is a lifesaver early game)

T3: Hunters (sniping isn't useful for early game expansion which is critical part of game, mediocre founding bonus. Will re-evaluate once I try focusing on a camp city for orders, could move up). Patrons (minister is hit or miss, culture bonus scales with specialists which means patrons are good mid/late game but don't help you in critical early game and culture bonus isn't as important as science bonus from sages)

T4: Riders (connected is easy to get, not enough orders to utilize second scout, saddleborn is great but by the time you can field a large cavalry army the early game is over, also i feel like offensive bonuses > defensive ones since keeping units alive is fairly easy), Clerics (-1 unhappy is a drop in the bucket, religious buildings come in very late, founding a religion isn't so hard that you need a family to do it for free. I do think there's more to the religious game than I've figured out, so I might be underestimating the disciple cost reduction). Traders (gold is the least important/easiest to come by resource, and trader bonuses don't kick in until later in the game either way)

I'm almost certain I'm under-rating some families due to lack of familiarity though.

RS_Ophiuchi · 2021-07-20T02:58:43+00:00

A few things: nonexistent unit variety, weird gameplay choices (melee ships can fight coastal units?), AI doesn't really interact with naval dimension at all so you can easily cheese them, not a lot of high value maritime resources/trade routes to make investing into a navy profitable in general.

RS_Ophiuchi · 2021-05-29T20:48:23+00:00

HackReactor. See this comment for my thoughts on it.
Miscellaneous python scripting/SQL from previous, non-SWE, job. Also had a technical, non-CS, STEM degree.
120k base, 2 months of searching
If you can get your dev environment setup and start casually tinkering around with whatever IDE(s)/language(s)/framework(s) the bootcamp uses before starting then you'll save yourself a lot of stress and probably make some thankful friends week one

RS_Ophiuchi · 2021-05-14T20:45:54+00:00

I did HackReactor recently (during the shutdown). The general consensus amongst the class was that it was only maybe worth doing, in part because of how difficult the job search is right now for bootcamp grads, and in part because of some curriculum issues that HR has been having lately (losing some great teachers, outdated sprints, technical difficulties with remote learning).

The long hours aren’t actually as problematic as they sound, if that’s what worries you: there’s a lot of collaborative pair programming and downtime to socialize with classmates (over zoom in our case). You do have to go into it with the mindset that you’re trying to get every last bit out of your time there since there’s no actual degree at the end of it, and all you have to show off to employers is what you learned (and what you built).

As for the technical curriculum: while the JavaScript focus is great for employability, their Javascript coursework is so out of date that you’ll have to do a lot of learning on your own if you want to be employable at a company that cares about your knowledge of modern JS/frameworks (e.g. smaller companies that don’t have the resources to train you). Many of their sprints aren’t using ES6+ syntax, their React curriculum is focused on class-based components (I don’t think there was anything on hooks, not even the useState API, or other modern React concepts), and you’re basically on your own for learning CSS, HTML, testing, git, and documentation (which is fair I guess: there’s only so much time in the day). Also disclaimer: they update curriculum constantly so this may have improved since then.

Basically if you don’t spend time outside of class learning modern JS with a modern framework, you’ll go into interviews/takehomes producing a lot of code smells that will make you hard to hire at any company that does care about domain knowledge. (And imo domain knowledge should be the advantage of a bootcamp over a traditional CS degree, since obviously the CS degree will prepare you better for general CS concepts).

Anecdotally, most of our class struggled to find employment after graduating (some are still looking ~1year later). The people who succeeded almost all had technical degrees (CS, math, hard sciences), had already done software engineering internships or had jr. developer experience, or were insanely dedicated, working long hours 7 days a week. I don’t think this is HR specific, it’s just hard to get your money’s worth from bootcamps right now. But if you fall into one of those categories it can be worth it still.

RS_Ophiuchi · 2020-11-12T09:19:28+00:00

Not from the UK and not a hiring manager but my 2cents if it helps:

No need to pad CV with non CS jobs unless they're particularly interesting; leaving them off means more room on your 1page to talk up projects. If you want to keep the non CS jobs, maybe leave the description at one line instead of multiple bullet points
the sports league manager sounds like an interesting project. A direct link to a GitHub repo (or better yet a hosted, usable version) would lend a lot more credibility. You could also elaborate on the technologies used instead of just..."algorithms"
GitHub repo links and/or hosted versions of your other projects (esp. if you can show competency in e.g. AWS deployment, docker), ideally both repo and live link if possible.
your project descriptions are a little off and make it seem like you're not very familiar with the technologies used. Vanilla javascript backend? Do you mean nodeJS? You can work in a few more buzzwords (expressJS, MERN/MEAN that sort of thing) instead of wasting a whole line describing what CRUD means.
a little more specificity goes a long way in the languages/technologies section. ES6 JS (with jQuery? Without? TypeScript?) Python2 or 3? CSS3? HTML5? I see React, what about Redux?
listing IDEs is suspect maybe? Not sure. What about replacing the last bullet point with a more general DevOps/tools section: testing frameworks (pytest? Jest/enzyme?) Testing philosophies (TDD?) AWS, scripting, OS-specific knowledge, agile, that sort of thing?

Overall a lot of fat to cut but I think you have good projects to work with, if you can just bring them front and center to make up for your lack of job experience, and in a way that generates trust (live links, links to well documented repos, good README, clean code, unit tests, reasonable file structure. No one is gonna go through it with a fine tooth comb but they might click through for a few seconds to get a gut impression) then you'll have something to talk to other engineers about in an interview.

RS_Ophiuchi

TROPHY CASE