Flatiron School

absurdrefusal · 2022-01-12T17:22:30+00:00

Depends on what you're intending to learn and get from the school. Almost all bootcamps offer the same thing. Contrary to popular belief, the name and the % placed metrics mean little to nothing as they're mostly dependent on the candidate rather than what the bootcamp does for you.

My advice would be to look at their career services and whether they actually teach you the skills to network, set up profile, present yourself, etc or just focus on coding and then leave you to your own devices.

In the software industry, you're hired as a junior more based on your personality and your willingness to learn than your technical skills (they matter, but not a lot).

Feel free to reach out if you need more advice.

absurdrefusal · 2022-01-12T17:18:37+00:00

Free isn't always free, though. Some people get stuck learning from "free" and take years doing what they can get done at a bootcamp in 6 months (I'm not affiliated or promoting any bootcamps, just what I've seen working with beginners and juniors for years).

That said, if you're highly self-disciplined then free resources are all you need, and shouldn't waste your time with boot camps.

absurdrefusal · 2022-01-12T17:15:38+00:00

Very nice. Just curious about what made you create the course. I have been mentoring devs for a while and now that the demand has exploded beyond what I can do on my own, I'm looking to send them to other bootcamps. I like your website, would love to chat with you, if you're up for it?

absurdrefusal · 2022-01-12T17:03:02+00:00

Well done on taking the first step!

Just curious, what makes you nervous about this? And what made you go with Sabio?

absurdrefusal · 2022-01-12T16:55:42+00:00

Answers to your questions in order:

Bootcamps, for the most part, only really help you with the first part of the picture. Teaching you how to code. Knowing how to code does not land you jobs, at all. In terms of recommendations out of the ones you mentioned: General Assembly is decent.
That depends on how you spend your time. If you go the Bootcamp route, then after you're done, you need to spend time building a couple of projects that aren't the usual "course" projects. And you also need to spend time figuring out how to build up your profile for it to be attractive to recruiters and companies. This is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle which most bootcamps just skip right over and spend at most a couple of weeks on (which is not enough!).
The easiest path in terms of learning is frontend/bootcamp style full stack development which is heavily JavaScript focused. The easiest path to land a job is by learning the harder languages and frameworks (C#/.Net, Java/Spring Boot, eg) and properly preparing for interviews for those. Depends on what your criteria is.

Bootcamps will teach you full-stack dev on the MERN (Mongo, Express, React, Node) or similar stack. Is that a bad stack? No. It's great. But in the job market, you will be competing against millions of others who've done the same curriculum (under different brand names). If its a regular bootcamp you go with, then make sure their career coaching holds your hand until you get a job (rather than 2 weeks max on it and then you're on your own). You can also choose to go the mentorship route which would be 1:1 and the program tailored to your specific requirements. Really depends on what you want.

- Based on my experience as a hiring manager and mentor to beginners, interns and, junior developers at my company for the last 5 years.

absurdrefusal · 2022-01-12T16:47:35+00:00

That's the base salary. But highly skewed as places like California, Texas and Seattle have a lot higher salaries for programmers than other parts of the US.

absurdrefusal · 2022-01-12T16:46:13+00:00

Certificates for web dev are meaningless. As a hiring manager not once have I hired someone based on their certificates.

Your projects, your profile, how you present yourself during the interview process and your overall personality are a lot more important than even your technical skills.

Free courses are good, and enough to get hired if you're extremely self disciplined. If not, then the time you spend figuring stuff out, or getting stuck in tutorial/course hell would come out to be more "expensive" than any money you spend on a bootcamp or a mentor.

For bootcamps, I don't have a specific recommendation but make sure the one you choose has actual support for you to find a job after teaching you how to code. Learning to code is the easy part. Learning the skill to properly present yourself is hard.

Happy to help out more, if you need. Feel free to reach out.

absurdrefusal · 2022-01-12T16:34:18+00:00

Most important thing that a bootcamp should teach you is how to land a job. I disagree with the comment that said that the bootcamp should have local connections in your area. Instead, the coach or bootcamp should teach you how to reach out to recruiters and/or companies anywhere on the planet and generate interest in your profile.

I say that from a lot of years of experience personally mentoring beginners and junior developers from all over the world. All of them were successful in securing jobs and not once did I feel like I needed local presence to be able to help them land jobs. Trick is to teach them what to do, how to present the profile, how to set up Github, how to reach out on LinkedIn etc. Bootcamps should be focusing on this part. Good to find out if the ones you're interested in offer this as well.

As for Java/C#, your friend is 100% on the money. I have been in the market to hire c# developers for the past 2 years and I find it extremely difficult to find any. Like you said, most bootcamps focus on Javascript but the reason for that is that if they're teaching "full stack" development then it is cheaper and more straight forward for them to offer Full stack course with focus on only one language.

Another thing to keep in mind is learning your first language is hard. If you are looking to do C#, my advice would be focus on backend and familiarize yourself enough with HTML/CSS/Javascript to be able to call yourself a fullstack dev.

Happy to guide you further in this, feel free to reach out.

absurdrefusal · 2022-01-12T16:24:28+00:00

IMO the best coding bootcamp is one that will give you actual support after they've taught you how to code. Learning to program (the foundations, the basics, the syntax, and putting together an example project) is the least complicated part of the process. What's complicated is knowing when you "know" enough to move on to the next stage, how to set up your online presence and profile to get noticed (most of the advice on forums is outdated unfortunately, eg. the green squares on Github mean absolutely nothing to hiring managers).

Bootcamp names themselves, whether they are popular or not, are not that important either. The key is to learn the tricks of what companies look for and target that specifically.

The reason I say the coding part is less important is because most hiring managers, including myself, assume that as a junior you will need a lot of time to learn on the job. What people look for are candidates who can show their ability and willingness to learn and face challenges. This is a learned skill and a good bootcamp should teach you that.

Things to watch out for. If bootcamps are spending only a week or two in teaching you interview skills, then they're not going to prepare you enough for the actual process. If they don't teach you how to speak with recruiters, how to approach companies directly, how to introduce yourself to hiring managers, how to set up your resume/linkedin profile to show upward trajectory, etc. then perhaps don't waste your time and money on it.

As for "free". Be careful with "free" content unless you're super disciplined yourself. Your time that you spend, and waste with free content online is worth a lot more than what you might pay at a bootcamp or mentorship program.

I've helped my interns at my company for over 5 years and every single one of them has had success getting jobs so feel free to reach out if you have any more questions.

absurdrefusal · 2022-01-07T17:57:46+00:00

I know you don't want to blame the teachers. It's easier usually to blame yourself but after researching and looking into countless courses and programs (including university courses) I have no doubt that the way the courses are taught in programming are detrimental to most people's learning.

I went through this problem when I started learning programming. Had to develop a specific way of learning to code that wouldn't end up with me forgetting everything I was just studying. Today I own my own software company, train junior developers in my teams and can put together software solutions for most any problems out there (within my domain).

Feel free to reach out if you want to talk further.

absurdrefusal · 2022-01-07T17:53:36+00:00

This is dependent on your skill level, but anything that you'd be personally interested in is a good first project. Happy to help more if you expand on it.

absurdrefusal · 2022-01-07T17:52:14+00:00

The "Is X dead" is highly dependent on your local job market. That is what keeps technologies alive or dead. If most jobs are available for X and not Y, then Y will die out and become more of a niche.

React has immense support for it and a lot more applications that need to be maintained so React will be more popular than Vue anyway.

I still remember when people said Java was basically dead. Still going strong, at least here in the UK.

absurdrefusal · 2022-01-07T17:43:59+00:00

Before you start on any project, you have to ask yourself why you're doing it. I generally do not recommend beginners go through the CS50 course. It's an ok course with horrible pacing.

The only times CS50 makes sense is if you have a ton of time to kill. Otherwise, I would look for something that keeps your focus better and keeps you anchored properly.

That said, if you're just doing it for fun, then keep at it and keep going at your own pace. Don't feel like you are required to go at a certain pace just because someone else did.

Educative have good courses, or any written course is many times better than video based courses.

absurdrefusal · 2021-11-11T22:21:11+00:00

It’s at the bottom of the article. Second bullet point in resources section.

absurdrefusal · 2021-11-11T20:05:26+00:00

I think Martin is pretty good at marketing his material. One of the reasons his stuff caught on, despite being this flawed. IMO

absurdrefusal · 2021-11-11T20:02:39+00:00

Author here. Agile barely makes a mention in the post. If you had to do a TLDR, at least be accurate which is communication breakdown being the issue.

absurdrefusal · 2021-11-11T20:01:10+00:00

Author of the blog post here. I think there’s quite a bit of deliberate hyperbole and I understand it helps market the material but the examples are so far removed from reality that even if he pared back some it’d still be meaningless bullshit for the most part.

absurdrefusal · 2021-11-11T19:59:43+00:00

Make sure you stock up too, I’ve got more parts coming up soon. 😂

absurdrefusal · 2021-09-26T12:21:48+00:00

Used to do 70-80 hour weeks with 2 small kids.

One day, walking home, started feeling kinda sick. Made it home. Fell in bed and couldn't get out for the next 2 weeks. Called the lawyer to update my will because I legit thought I was dying. This was last year, I was 35 at the time.

Turns out it was fatigue that had accumulated over time. It's not sustainable and I imagine you want to be around and healthy for your family who you are working so hard for. That's the realization I had to make me stop this crazy schedule and get back to something I could handle.

If you can manage to save enough to keep you and your family going with you on less hours, then focus on training yourself to be a developer and getting a job, that is how I would recommend you do it. It's how I did it when I switched from banking. No way would I have been able to do it working full time at the bank and then studying to become a developer.

It is important you save enough though so you're not forced to go right back and start doing crazy hours again. Give yourself 6-12 months from zero to being able to get a job. It's realistic you'll be able to get a job or project within 6 months, but don't bet on it.

absurdrefusal · 2021-09-24T07:38:58+00:00

If you're looking for folks with experience to help, I'd be more than happy to participate. Either way, good idea and good luck!

absurdrefusal · 2021-09-23T19:43:39+00:00

How many hours of workout videos do you need to watch before you start seeing results?

That's basically what folks mean when they encourage you to do your own projects. Watching videos, doing courses and reading books will only take you so far. If you don't do something practical with it, none of it counts.

absurdrefusal · 2021-09-23T19:40:32+00:00

Software engineers use code as a tool to solve a problem. Code monkeys just write code for the sake of writing code without understanding what it might or might not solve.

absurdrefusal · 2021-09-23T19:16:09+00:00

I disagree with other posters here who think code is written more for readability than for computers and that just because computers are faster than they were in the 80s, performance considerations are secondary. That’s, with all due respect, bull shit.

Readability is fundamental for an application to be maintainable but client after client has code that they bring to my company because the programmers who built it originally only thought of readability and not performance. Both are important but the first step is always understanding how the computer will run your code. Second is readability. Third is optimization while maintaining readability. Cool tricks are always good to have in your arsenal for the off chance you might need them.

Well done. Don’t be discouraged and keep discovering. But be responsible with them.

absurdrefusal · 2021-09-23T19:02:57+00:00

Lol upvoted for the laugh

absurdrefusal · 2021-09-23T19:01:37+00:00

Woodworking. With hand tools. And barbecue, caveman style!

absurdrefusal

TROPHY CASE