Posted on 04/12/2013 7:15:30 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
"Learn to write software in 9 weeks? New coding boot camps promise to launch tech careers"
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Looking for a career change, Ken Shimizu decided he wanted to be a software developer, but he didn't want to go back to college to study computer science.
Instead, he quit his job and spent his savings to enroll at Dev Bootcamp, a new San Francisco school that teaches students how to write software in nine weeks. The $11,000 gamble paid off: A week after he finished the program last summer, he landed an engineering job that paid more than twice his previous salary.
"It's the best decision I've made in my life," said Shimizu, 24, who worked in marketing and public relations after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley in 2010. "I was really worried about getting a job, and it just happened like that."
Dev Bootcamp, which calls itself an "apprenticeship on steroids," is one of a new breed of computer-programming school that's proliferating in San Francisco and other U.S. tech hubs. These "hacker boot camps" promise to teach students how to write code in two or three months and help them get hired as web developers, with starting salaries between $80,000 and $100,000, often within days or weeks of graduation.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Yep, all it takes is Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Flash, PHP, MySQL, Database design, CSS, HTML5, Java, User Interface Knowledge, Photography background, and artistic skills to design decent websites. I am sure the cert covers all this and more.
you need natural talent, training and experience ~ in whatever proportions are necessary, and then you need to keep up to date.
When I was in SF, I thought that it would be a nice place to visit for a day or two. Good food. Pretty scenery all around - Sausalito and the Muir Woods and the PCH and Monterey, and, and, and.... I was younger, there was a thriving nightlife there.
I was out there for several months. After the first couple of weeks and I'd seen everything that I'd wanted to see, SF was just lousy. Dirty, got tired of being panhandled constantly, unsafe, just a generally unpleasant experience. If I'd not been on a (virtually) unlimited expense account, I'd have REALLY hated it, I'm sure.
And don't get me started on Oakland. :-)
You want to get job offers, volunteer to give a presentation at a local user group....I did that, and I got offers out the wazoo.
IT is tough, but satisfying. It gets in your blood, though, I guess. I just hope that my kids don't go into it.
Did he get the three or six month contract?
Sounds great! no need for years of experience to know how to write event handlers to queue up RS-232 input for another thread to run through a state machine to update the user interface to control other hardware and embed a WPF graphical 3D display and high-pass filter the images...
You can learn all about that stuff in just 9 WEEKS!
Send me his resume! I’ll TRIPLE his salary
just curious. how does someone get experience in coding (or anything else) if no one will give them their first job in that field?
I get a lot of work from CA where they have to pay 100/hr for senior level engineers through a contract agency... (or more)
They can contract with me for $50K less (annually) and I am more than happy to get it. I am turnign stuff away, because I can’t work more than 16 hours a day
codecademy.com
IT is a strange field. I actually know of few people that have a "related degree". Mine is in Electrical Engineering. My team is made up of a couple of accountants, a couple of business majors, a handful of people without degrees, but received technical training in the military, and a (of all things) a music major. It's very much a profession that you can discover that you have an aptitude for, and fall into it. That's changing, slowly, but it's still very true.
So how do you break into it? I couldn't find a job as an EE. I liked to play with computers, so I took a (VERY) entry level job in a repair shop. Worked lousy hours for a year, then went into consulting, where I worked even lousier hours for a couple of years. Did every crap job there was, lots of 3am work, lots of last minute oncall, stuff the more senior guys hated.
As a result, I saw everything and learned more in those few years than anyone ever would in a class. 20 years later, here I am. One of the senior guys, foisting crud that I don't want to do off on to the newbies.
So - to break in, get a good computer setup at home. Break it, and fix it, a lot. Volunteer at local places - churches and schools are always looking for help. Join user groups and network. Start at the bottom. The VERY bottom. Work your butt off. Volunteer a lot..."Sure, I can come in at 1:30 to change that around". It's not easy, but that how you can do it.
our HR weenie...
You owe me a keyboard!...Just sprayed coffee all over it. LMAO!
I am a cost analyst and contract administrator for a government contractor and they can pay more than that in DC is well. Of course, that includes fringe, overhead, administrative costs and company profit as well, but a qualified SharePoint or Drupel developer in DC probably averages a salary of $120k right now, which is $95.19 with a 1.65 wrap rate. Higher level enterprise architects make a lot more than that. Do you have your own business or do you work as a 1099 consultant?
Remember the days people took pride in writing elegant code? When a big app was 7 megs.
Hey- lets do it! Integrity just means we tell them reaslistic expectations.
That is a great idea...!
I have been asked by some of my daughters friends at school if I could tutor them in C#- I should start an actual class (and get paid for it)
It depends on the contract- I generally have one on W2 so I can let them take out the taxes (I claim 0) then I can go 1099 on my other ones I am usually OK, tax-wise
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