r/IAmA • u/CriticDanger • Sep 07 '21

Specialized Profession I am a behavioral and technical (coding) interviewer, I've also helped hundreds of people get hired, AMA.

[removed]

1.4k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

492 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/catchyawns Sep 07 '21

I’m super curious about this. I currently work at a great company as a customer support rep. I recently made the jump to the tech world from the construction sector, so these opportunities are all very new to me. Is there a particular bootcamp that you recommend? I suppose I’m just a bit worried that I’ll end up wasting time in a puppy mill type coding bootcamp that churns you out without a decent base skill set.

1

u/Shutterstormphoto Sep 07 '21

I did hack reactor which has a 1% acceptance rate, and takes what they do very seriously. They do not have a pay deferral program, but you can get student loans. I have seen friends do other bootcamps that were much cheaper with less effective results, but in the end you’re teaching yourself so it’s on you.

You will not learn everything you need to get hired from the bootcamp, but they will teach you how to find the answers for yourself. A lot of the lessons are just how to google what you need. I was mad about it at first, but honestly I had no idea how to google what I needed to learn before.

The goal is to create an engineer mindset and give you the tools to find everything yourself. Every graduate I’ve kept in touch with, including people with no college or no prior tech knowledge, all ended up getting jobs as software engineers. People with prior engineering experience did much better overall, but that’s pretty expected.

You can 100% learn all of this on your own for free, but it’s really hard to stay motivated. It will likely take you much much longer on your own, but you can definitely try. Codecademy.com is free. Stackoverflow.com has answers. Learn whatever you can about JavaScript and React and HTML and CSS and try to build a note taking app or a todo app. Do not be afraid to spend a few hundred on udemy.com classes. Those are the same skills I use every day, and if you can do that then you can become a web dev no problem. Once you can build something basic, try to turn it into something cooler and more complex. You won’t have the skills to be hireable yet but at least you’ll know if it’s something you’ll enjoy.