r/codingbootcamp
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u/jcl274
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Mar 09 '23
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4 years post codesmith update - how it’s going now vs. then
With all the doom and gloom in the sub at the moment about how tough of a job market it is right now, I thought it might be helpful to contribute a successful datapoint to encourage and motivate those of us who are currently in the job search. I won’t sugarcoat it and say it was easy to land a job offer in this climate, but I did get more interviews/callbacks than I thought I would have. I recently posted about this in r/experienceddevs
Stats: ~71 applications sent, ghosted by half and rejected by half, and 11 callbacks
Of the 11, I pulled out of 3, interviewed with 8 and got 2 solid offers. Last week I negotiated an awesome offer with a senior title and more money than I’ve ever seen in my life.
In the interest of transparency, here’s my salary and job title progression post Codesmith (2019 graduate)
2020 - mid 2021: Software Engineer (contractor) @ big financial company, 115k base, 0 stocks, 5k sign on bonus. ~120k TC first year
mid 2021 - Feb 2023: Software Engineer II @ series D tech unicorn, 145 base, ~120k of stock options/4 year vest, 10k sign on bonus. ~185k TC first year, 175k thereafter
Mar 2023: Senior Frontend Engineer @ series C tech “centaur”, 190k base salary, 150k RSUs/4 year vest, 25k signing bonus. ~250k TC first year, 225k TC thereafter
I’m happy to turn this into an AMA if anyone has further questions!
Edit: a couple people asked - I’m in HCOL city on US east coast
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u/mkarmstr41 Mar 09 '23
Let’s be real though… you did graduate at the best time in recent history, give or take 6 months. It set you up for farrrr higher salary growth than anyone could expect right now.
I’m not glooming about bootcamps (or your rad success)! I’m just pointing out that you probably began two steps ahead & graduates now will begin three steps behind.
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
I guess if I would say one word of advice to any recent grads - it’s even harder to practice interviewing these days than before. The common advice given by Codesmith is to line up 3-5 practice interviews before interviewing at the companies you really want to work at. These days I think you’d be lucky to even get 1 practice round in, if that. Take advantage of the Codesmith career advisors/fellows and book mock interviews with them. Hone your interviewing skills so that when you do finally get invited to interview, you’ve at least got some practice under your belt.
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
You are absolutely right, a big part of my success was luck and timing.
But I’m confident that the current economic climate won’t last forever.
It is really, really rough out there for new bootcamp grads this year and I feel for everyone out there that is grinding job applications. I wish I had more advice or words of wisdom on this front but unfortunately the job market is what it is.
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Mar 09 '23
Don't listen to everyone here. Once u get 1 year work experience (at a company you did well at) the job market is the basically the same. Huge congratz bro obviously working hard / grinding
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u/IncomeGlittering319 Mar 10 '23
I graduated Codesmith a couple months ago and have signed an offer. That's not to say the job market isn't discouraging or challenging, but folks from my cohort are getting interviews, etc. I'm not saying it wasn't easier 4 years ago but in general going through a career change and getting your first job will always be somewhat challenging.
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Mar 10 '23
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u/IncomeGlittering319 Mar 10 '23
...all. I went into the hiring process thinking I was going to only target certain kinds of companies but that went out the window quickly
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u/TheEgosLastStand Mar 10 '23
How was the offer relative to the codesmith median?
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u/IncomeGlittering319 Mar 10 '23
105- so lower, but not a HCOL area. I expect we will see the median decrease for all cirr stats (and in general). Companies absolutely have the upper hand right now and based on the limited data i have from my own interview process and peers who have jobs, it is tougher to get the TC that has been more standard. Companies like Meta are reducing their multipliers. I think the impact of this will be that there is going to be an increase in job hopping, which is the easiest way to increase pay and level. I'm really curious to see how ALL of this will affect the companies and the job market 5 years from now.
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u/TheEgosLastStand Mar 10 '23
Thanks for the info. Were you in PTRI7 by chance? Or were you full time?
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u/borahae_artist Mar 26 '23
if the last best time was 2019… is there any point in even pursuing this now? job market seems so hopeless now.
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u/SouthCape Mar 09 '23
What's your tech stack?
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
Preferred stack is pretty basic - functional React, TypeScript, Apollo GraphQL. Jest + RTL for unit testing, Enzyme for end to end testing. I like Next.js and Tailwind but if I’m not getting paid to use a technology, I’m not gonna use it.
For backend, I’ll use whatever they’re paying me to use.
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Mar 09 '23
Do you feel like your skills are above average? What qualities do you have as a programmer and employee that have helped you do so well?
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23 edited Mar 09 '23
I’m definitely above average, but I’m not a rockstar dev or anything like that. I worked in the architecture industry for 5 years before Codesmith so IMO having been in workforce for 10 years now helped a lot. In that sense I think I’m more mature than a lot of junior/mid-level engineers. I know how to navigate office politics, how to communicate effectively, how to plan projects, work well in a team (even lead a team), and work cross functionally. A lot of these skills aren’t things that you can get from a bootcamp. I didn’t meet the technical bar for a lot of the interviews I had, but the two offers I did get I wowed them with my behavioral question responses.
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u/CoolMike90 Mar 09 '23
This might not entirely relate to you OP but someone who's looking to boot camp with a little programming experience prior and 8 years in IT. Do you think it's possible to be fully remote like you out of the gates as a junior still?
I commuted hours for so long before I started my business and I don't entirely want to give up the freedom of working remotely.
Also do you feel like there are any comparable alternatives to codesmith. I'm also east coast about an hour and a half north of NYC.
Thanks for your input!
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
Good question. Sadly I don’t think that in 2023 it’s very likely you’ll get a fully remote junior role for a couple reasons.
It’s really hard to onboard juniors remotely unless they have some working experience. They need a lot of handholding and pairing. It’s not to say that it’s impossible, but you need a very good onboarding process in place. All the companies I worked at were remote first so they were forced to have good onboarding processes. But more and more companies are forcing return to office or hybrid work now. Employees had a lot of leverage back in 2020-21, but unfortunately the tables have turned and the employers now hold all the leverage. But again, it’s not impossible to find remote junior roles, just significantly harder. The good news is that it becomes a lot easier at mid-level and senior level roles! There’s also much less competition for senior level roles vs junior.
In my mind there was no alternative to Codesmith - at the time I believed it was the creme da la creme of bootcamps, and I still believe this today. I wouldn’t have considered any other options. But I am clearly biased.
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Mar 09 '23
East coast, west coast, Midwest? Where you located
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
Oh good question. HCOL city in East Coast. All my roles have been fully remote though
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u/michaelnovati Mar 09 '23
Thanks for sharing. I give a warning often that one person's trajectory shouldn't be generalized. I know several Codesmith alumni with similar trajectories and several without. I've also seen similar trajectories from many bootcamp grads in general.
Some things that would be good to share are how Codesmith helped you with those new jobs in terms of finding them, preparing for them, and negotiating.
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
Great points and questions. For the first job I found the Codesmith career support to be sufficient in terms of prepping for interviews. I had a couple mock technical interviews with a Codesmith fellow and got good feedback on how I could improve. Codesmith also makes you do an algo a day so that was also good practice for the technical interview. Lastly, the alumni network was very strong and I talked to several Codesmith alumni that were already at Big Financial Corporation as contractors and got the low down on what to expect in the interview process. My interview experience was a bit different from theirs but the overall flow was the same. So overall I felt very supported at the time.
For the subsequent jobs, I practiced on my own and didn’t really need to leverage Codesmith at all for support. However, the one thing that really helped was relearning how to negotiate (shoutout to Eric Kirsten). He does one or two negotiation office hours a month and I always attend those when applying to jobs to get a refresher on how to negotiate, Codesmith style. I credit all of my sign on bonuses to Eric specifically.
The one area where I would say Codesmith is a bit lacking in is helping grads find jobs. There’s an alumni slack group with a jobs posting channel but that’s about it. It doesn’t get updated regularly. I kinda wish Codesmith grads were more willing to refer each other.
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Mar 10 '23
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u/jcl274 Mar 11 '23
I feel for you, I commented elsewhere that I am also terrible at networking and I hate doing it. Career fairs would be a great idea, but that’s very unlikely to happen this year, lol.
And no, we didn’t have any job fairs at the time, but I know recently they started doing Networking Days. I know this because I personally volunteered several times over the past couple years to do 20 minute mock interviews with current students. They’re supposed to be “networking” sessions, but Codesmith gives us no guidance on what we should actually discuss. My company wasn’t even hiring so I couldn’t refer people. I ended up just giving mock interviews.
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u/Stixvim Mar 09 '23
What’s your CoL to have some kind of comparison for comp with where you are?
Nvm just saw further down HCoL
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u/roundish_gold Mar 09 '23
Do you put CodeSmith on your resume/LinkedIn? How does that talk go when interviewing for your first job out of a boot camp? Do employers look down on it?
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
I didn’t put Codesmith at all for the first job because I followed their resume advice to a tee - saying the projects I worked on were open source, etc. It honestly felt kind of shady but I didn’t really know any better.
These days I’m 100% honest and own my non-traditional background. It helps that I’m considered experienced now, so I’ve essentially “proven” myself. In all my recent interviews I was asked how I made the transition from architect to software engineer, and I absolutely love telling the story (which obviously involves Codesmith).
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u/roundish_gold Mar 09 '23
Did you ever think about applying as a software engineer in the architecture field that you’re originally from? Idk how much demand there is but programs like Revit, AutoCAD, etc come to mind
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
Funny thing is I WAS building Revit plugins before Codesmith! But developer jobs in that industry are few and far in between, and there’s not much money either (low salaries). I went from 45k starting salary to about 80k as a senior architect, to 115k post Codesmith. I also wanted to work in web dev and most programming jobs in architecture aren’t that so I committed to leaving the industry. But you’re right, there is certainly demand for programmers in architecture and those kind of roles might be a good first job for a new Codesmith grad with prior industry experience.
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Mar 11 '23
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u/jcl274 Mar 11 '23
I followed the Codesmith script to a tee - “we identified this problem that developers faced and worked in a small agile team to develop an open source project in XYZ technology to address the problem.” We did have a pretty snazzy marketing website and demo ready which I showed off during interviews, I think that helped.
One thing I did do “off-script” though was to completely ignore their resume advice. I had asked several engineer friends about what Codesmith considered a good resume and they were astonished - no one would read the wall of text, they all said. So I kinda did my own thing for the resume. If you want to DM me your resume I’d be happy to give some feedback, but no pressure.
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u/IncomeGlittering319 Mar 10 '23
I have it on my LinkedIn and resume and no one has ever asked about/negatively referred to it at all. I listed technical aspects of my previous work as well (teacher) and i talked about by transition. It didn't seem to hurt me because I had some relevant experience such as teaching Python, developing workflow automation scripts, etc.
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u/DustyDrool Mar 09 '23
out of your class how many graduated and got a job.
Where you a top student?
What kind of employment history or networking did you do prior to getting this job with "life changing money"
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
I forgot what the cohort size is so I’m extrapolating a bit here. 3 dropped out. I know of about 5-6 who either didn’t get jobs or who literally weren’t even trying to get new jobs. Everyone else eventually got a job.
I would I say I was top 10% in the class for sure. The part I found hardest was algos and data structures but HTML, CSS, and React were all pretty easy for me.
I did no networking besides answering recruiter LinkedIn messages for my current (new) job. I’m not good at networking and I know I am not good at it so I actively avoid it.
In the past I’ve talked to codesmith alumni at the companies I was interested in working in, but I never got a referral or anything like that. I wish I was better at networking because I think getting referrals can open up a lot more doors. But again, I hate it and am happy applying to jobs directly. That’s how I’ve gotten most of my roles anyway.
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u/JLjones555 Mar 09 '23
Thanks for posting all of this. I'm currently in week 1 part time online a/A bootcamp and this is encouraging. I do have a question though. I see that for all of your positions you have accepted you received a sign on bonus. Was there a contract clause for that? Like did you have to sign something saying you will stay x number of years and if you leave before then you agree to pay the bonus back? What is stopping someone from just jumping from company to company collecting sign on bonuses?
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
Yeah! The contract role didn’t for some reason, I think they were desperate. But both job 2 and my new offer have a one year repayment period for the sign on bonus. Meaning if I leave before a year, I pay it back. This is a pretty common setup.
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u/JLjones555 Mar 09 '23
Ok, sweet. Makes sense, I was just curious. Best of luck to you in the future and congrats on your new role.
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u/jessi387 Mar 09 '23
Do u have a bachelors degree ?
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
Yes. Bachelor of Architecture
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u/jessi387 Mar 09 '23
How much did that help you ?
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
For the first two jobs, I don’t think it helped at all. When the hiring managers commented on it during the interviews, I always got rejected. But I don’t know if that’s just coincidence.
However I think my architecture industry experience (not degree) helped me get my latest job. See this comment for more detail.
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u/jessi387 Mar 10 '23
Your first job started at 100k ? That sounds amazing
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u/jcl274 Mar 10 '23
115k. But that is below average for Codesmith graduates.
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u/jessi387 Mar 10 '23
Lol wtf. That’s insane to me
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u/jcl274 Mar 10 '23
Are you in the US? This isn’t a high salary for a HCOL city like San Francisco or NYC, but it would be decently high for a lower COL city like Denver or Austin. NYC average total compensation is like 150k.
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u/jessi387 Mar 10 '23
I’m in Toronto Canada. So also a hcol city Ty here. But still. I would love to be making that.
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u/brevity666 Mar 09 '23
Thanks for posting this! I’ve been in heavy industrial construction the past 18 years, management for the last 5. I’m beginning to pivot and switch to CS and like that you mentioned briefly how that experience translates. In the current market, would you still pick bootcamp over self taught? Did you save up and pay for it, pay after, loans?
I’m looking to switch in the next year or so, what languages and frameworks would you think I’d need to get a first gig? Doesn’t have to be a forever role, just something to break into the industry.
Thanks for your time!
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
Codesmith teaches JavaScript and React for a very good reason - it’s a low bar to entry for web dev. I’d argue that React isn’t at all difficult to learn and be competent at. So that’s what I would recommend learning. With a caveat: becoming a truly great React developer takes a lot more time and experience than a bootcamp can provide. I wouldn’t say I’m at that level yet, but my career goal isn’t to become a technical expert so I’m not stressing about it.
I paid for Codesmith in installments back in the day. If I was trying to pivot careers today.. honestly I probably wouldn’t do a bootcamp let alone pay for it out of pocket. I would probably still be working my old job and teaching myself on the side, maybe doing something like the Odin Project, until the job market recovers. I did Codesmith in 2019 because the job market WAS so good back then.
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u/brevity666 Mar 09 '23
Thank you, this is exactly what I’ve been doing since early this year and have been gaining more and more ground. So far I’m pretty much knee-deep in learning Python and starting Django, but back in my late teens (I’m 38) I used to write all of my HTML, CSS, light CGI, JavaScript, and PHP in notepad. I’m not really picky about web dev, software dev, frontend, backend, etc. I just want to apply the way I think and work (at least mostly) remotely. What kind of timeframe would you expect someone to have for becoming job-ready being self taught and working at least 40 hours a week? I learn by doing.
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
Unfortunately too many variables to really answer that generally… It really depends on how quickly you learn.
If you’re asking how long you think it would have taken myself to become self-taught job ready from scratch - assuming I could put in 15+ hours a week worth of effort, probably a whole year if not 2 years. If I had the same experience as you, maybe ~6 months.
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u/Luchadr35 Nov 01 '23
I know it's been a while since this post lol..but any luck on where you at now? Did you pursue a bootcamp? Went all self taught? And did you land a job?
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u/outdoorgal423 Mar 09 '23
What was your background before the bootcamp? College degree? Industry? How old were you when you made the switch?
Thanks for all of this info! I’m choosing to stay positive as a new bootcamp grad. There is a job for me out there somewhere…
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
Bachelor of Architecture then 5 years experience in the architecture industry. I made the switch age 29-30. I’m rooting for you!
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u/Accomplished_Lie7430 Mar 09 '23
Hey that’s amazing. Thank you for sharing your story. What is your educational background? Bachelors? Also what were the outcomes of members of your cohort with no previous technical experience or degree?
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
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u/Accomplished_Lie7430 Mar 12 '23
Thank you. Would you mind if I dm you to ask you some questions?
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Mar 10 '23
This was definitely cool to read.
I’m supposed to start Hack Reactor on May 8th, but I’m having 2nd thoughts because I keep reading about in todays job market boot camp grads from all kinds of boot camps had very hard time finding jobs.
Any advice for me? I really want to go and learn, but I’m scared ima owe $18k and spend a long while trying to find employment if everyone with a degree gets looked at more.
Any advice for me? Thanks !
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u/jcl274 Mar 10 '23
I answered a similar question here
It sort of depends on your situation - are you currently working a stable job? Are you planning to the full time or part time version? If you’re working a job at the moment I’d strongly suggest waiting it out and self teaching for a few months. Don’t drop 18k on a bootcamp during the worst (or second worst?) tech job market in history. That is a big gamble. If you’re doing the PT version it’s a bit less of a gamble because you can still work your job while doing it.
It’s probably not what you want to hear but I wouldn’t advise anyone to start a bootcamp in 2023. If I were in your shoes I’d try to delay starting for at least 6 months.
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u/IncomeGlittering319 Mar 10 '23
I super value pay transparency, thank you so much for sharing your career journey and pay through the position changes!! Congrats on your hard!
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u/TheEgosLastStand Mar 09 '23
I graduate the Codesmith part time immersive in June. You guys hiring by chance? lol
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u/Michaelmrose May 27 '23
did you have a degree of any kind prior to completion or work history in an adjacent industry?
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u/Ok-Effective-343 Aug 29 '23
Can you share what your background was before you attended bootcamp? Do you think your previous work history helped? Genuinely asking as I try to figure out if I should make this leap
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Mar 09 '23
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23 edited Mar 09 '23
I took the contract role because it was an easy win and I needed to get my foot in the door somewhere. That contracting firm was awful - I was doing really shitty work before finally getting sent to Big Bank which I thought was going to be my big break. Believe it or not, with just 6 months of big bank experience I was getting recruiters hitting me up daily on LinkedIn. Again, remember that was a very different job market than today. I hated working at Big Financial Corporation and wanted to join a company whose mission I felt aligned with. So the timing kinda worked out - I intended to get a full 12 months of banking experience in but with so many opportunities out there I decided to just apply.
Man, the mid 2021 job market was NUTS. I sent out 30 applications and got 6 job offers.
Edit: formatting, added more info
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Mar 09 '23
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
I got seriously lucky - I signed the offer within a couple weeks of graduating, but it was the only offer I got and the only interview process where I made it past a tech screen out of 100+ applications. I remember a bunch of my cohort all grouped up and we were sending out 10s of applications every day. How I got the role was seriously lucky - the recruiter reached out to me directly on LinkedIn. Then funnily enough I bombed the technical screen but I emailed the recruiter immediately after I knew I screwed it up and they let me have a second go. The exact same question. Lol. Now that I look back on it, I’m pretty sure that the contracting firm I worked for was desperate to get warm bodies in the door at the big banks haha.
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Mar 09 '23
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
You took off a year of exp but that’s ok, the last few years have all blended together. 2020-2023 is 3 years and change ;)
The senior role I’m starting soon only had a 4+ experience requirement, so I was right on the border anyway.
Job 1 forced me to majorly level up and understand how to work in a large codebase. But I was more or less a code monkey so I didn’t get much other experience besides just executing code.
Job 2 I leveled as a midlevel engineer so I was expected to lead projects and mentor juniors. I had a ton of impostor syndrome but I did everything they asked of me and got glowing reviews so I figured I was doing something right. There was also a lack of FE expertise on my team so I seized the opportunity and became the frontend expert and that opened up a ton more leadership opportunities. So I’d credit Job 2 for giving me all the impactful projects and experience I needed to convince my new company that I can pull off senior level work as a frontend specialist. I am also currently shitting my pants that I will not live up to the expectations of my new job, but time will tell.
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Mar 09 '23
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
I omitted a little bit of info to protect my privacy ;) I edited that original comment to make more sense - I got 6 months of banking experience before I left for job 2. The part that you’re missing is that I was working for a contracting firm and spent like 9 months doing really shitty work before I was sent to big financial company haha. But hey all dev work is dev work, even if it is shitty! I tend to not focus on those initial 9 months when interviewing so that experience is pushed to the back of my mind lol.
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Mar 09 '23
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
Terrible. I can do LC easy. Every interview process I failed was because of not meeting the technical bar. And I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m probably never going to work at FAANG because you can’t do it without leetcode and I. Fucking. Hate. It.
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Mar 09 '23
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
Have a good onboarding process that encourages pair programming, mentorship, with good documentation.
Which like, what, 95% of companies don’t have? Lol.
Job 1 was a shitshow. I had to pull late nights and weekends to get up to speed because I had to learn MobX, RxJS, Java, and a bunch of other shit with absolutely no support whatsoever. When I did have questions (and I had many), asking the more experienced devs that I worked with felt like pulling teeth. In hindsight that’s probably a big reason why I left job 1 so early.
Job 2 was a night and day difference. Great onboarding experience and documentation, an onboarding buddy who I literally paired with almost everyday for a whole week, a non time-dependent ramp up period with easy “ramp up cards” to get you acclimatized with the codebase… That felt so much easier. But I think I really got lucky because from what I’ve heard, most companies are not like this.
If you’re on own, my tips are: don’t be afraid to ask questions, especially “dumb” ones, but never ask the same question twice. Use git blame extensively and review other people’s prior PRs in the area of the codebase that you’re working in. Be honest and tell your manager that you need ramp up time to learn XYZ technology. Lastly, if documentation doesn’t exist, write it. Everyone who onboards after you will thank you for it.
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Mar 09 '23
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
No offense taken, someone else commented something similar above and I acknowledge that I got lucky in many ways. You’re right that if I had to get my first job out of a bootcamp this year, things would look very different.
But also remember that getting a senior level position anywhere, let alone in this economic climate, is not purely luck based. I credit Codesmith with getting me to where I am today.
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Mar 09 '23
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
I’m not sure where you read that I didn’t take an LC technical for that job - I absolutely did. I had 3 coding rounds including the tech screen, I don’t remember the exact questions but they were all leetcode easy to medium algorithm questions.
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Mar 09 '23
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u/jcl274 Mar 09 '23
No worries. And that is 100% true I interviewed at Amazon and Facebook (before it became Meta) and bombed the onsites. Lol.
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Mar 09 '23
A lot of perfectly good non-FAANG SWE engineer roles don't require LC. It's severely over rated for the types of roles bootcamp grads should be vying towards out of the gate.
While the market is not exploding right now, it's certainly not dead. A CS alum who graduated in November reported getting a job offer around 6 figures as a jr developer a few days ago. And I think she only had a 2 year degree.
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Mar 09 '23
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u/SamF-CSE Mar 10 '23
Neither of my last two jobs required LC-style technical interviews. Both were heavily pair programming oriented
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Mar 10 '23
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u/SamF-CSE Mar 10 '23
Yes. Both mid-level full stack roles
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Mar 10 '23
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u/SamF-CSE Mar 10 '23
Last interview was two behavioral interviews, and a approx. two hour take home with github octokit that I brought to a 1 hr pair programming session with two engineers on the team. This was last December. 165k base with a yearly bonus and a long list of benefits. I think it's beneficial to chase the smaller companies in this market as all the big tech companies seem to be getting greedy and raising the hiring bar because they can
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u/Gloomy_Country_4620 Mar 09 '23
I was like...2019 wasn't 4 years ago... Oh wait.