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Hola amigos! I've completed 65% of Treehouse's Python Techdegree program.

I started 3 months ago, with 0 coding knowledge. My only tech experience is in sales for a startup! I was a schoolteacher after that.

I was attracted to programming because it pays well, is in demand, and seems to have many remote work opportunities. It's also a fun flow state-inducing activity! I thought I'd struggle because of my "right brain" strengths, but learning the coding symbology has been quite enjoyable.

I have no idea what to do upon graduating. I know I will search for remote opportunities, but I still feel like a total newbie in this field.

I couldn't find another thread like this, so I was wondering: for people with experience in programming, and/or people that have gone down a similar path, can you share any advice or things you wish you knew upon going into the field?

For what it's worth, I have been quite disciplined about this. I have showed up every day (with the exception of 2 one-week periods with no access to technology) and average 1.7 hours of deep work/day. I earned "Exceeds Expectations" on all my projects so far, too. I'm trying to detach from the outcome of earning money and just focus on the craft.

I'm not sure how Treehouse compares to other companies, but it seems like good value. The quality of the instruction and its practicality are impressive. I'm all ears for any contrary opinions, though.

One last thing: I repeatedly see writing from "tech people" (on websites like Stack Overflow, for instance) that is horrendous. I feel that knowing how to communicate well and connect with others will be a serious asset in this field. I could be wrong, though.

Thanks for reading!

Now this isn’t a universal, but companies hire boot camp devs because they are cheap, not because they have a lot of experience (3-6 months) . So it’s gonna be tougher to get an internship/ f.t. Job right out the gate. It’s the same for CS grads, but they have 4 years of experience and probably 6-12 months of internship experience, whereas you have much less. So just expect it to be a little tougher, and expect the first job or two to have a lower pay than the general average. That’s the “prove yourself” sort of entrance. The nice part is, if you prove yourself and do a halfway decent job, you can grind out the first year for “bad” pay (and my “bad” is a joke to most non software engineers, it’s probably 70k at the low end), then just jump ship and take a higher paying job anywhere else like a normal SWE with 1 year experience.

All this to say, I’m not a boot camp grad, I went into the field with very minor programming experience, and now I do decently for myself (160k cash plus stock grants at 7ish years in) at a company I like without the burnout nose to the grindstone mentality and work a very leisurely amount while being one of the “guys who gets shit done”.

For background, I've been a software engineer for about 7 years. I work in consulting so have seen a lot of different companies, teams, etc. But still this is just my opinion.

+1 to Slevin"s comment about prioritizing getting your foot in the door, and jumping ship after a year or two. I had only a minor in CS, and got into the field by moving to an uncool city for a year, then jumped to a better company.

Since you mentioned focusing on the craft, I'd suggest learning about 12 factor apps, SOLID design principles, automated testing (especially test driven development), hexagonal architecture, and domain driven design (DDD). The DDD book is pretty long, but very good!

You're right about communication skills being an area of improvement for lots of engineers. Being able to explain your ideas clearly and engage with other roles is important. Asking the right questions helps build the thing your stakeholders are looking for.

Look for a company doing modern stuff like continuous deployment, cloud-native development, test driven development, etc. Consider checking out "Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps", a book about high performing teams. Engineering is more fun when you can build stuff instead of getting bogged down by processes such as "Scaled Agile Framework for the enterprise" aka SAFe.

Best of luck!

It's important to note that coding jobs vary tremendously in quality. You can work in two or three of them, think they all suck and this field is not for you, and then land a fourth one that is much better and makes you not hate your work. So, as with everything in life, it's important to remain hopeful and not give up early.

+1 to what everyone else said. I'll also add that if you are an engineer who knows how to communicate, you will go far in the field. I know a lot of people with full CS degrees who never made it in the industry because of their low charisma and inability to work with others.

***The important caveat for this post is, if you're already studying data structures and algorithms as part of your bootcamp, then you can ignore this whole thing. Now that disclaimers are out of the way...

Based on my understanding of what coding bootcamps generally do and don't cover, my recommendation would be to take an intro data structures + algorithms class, or to work through an intro DS+A textbook, depending on your preferred learning style. You don't have to do this right away, given that you only started three months ago. It should definitely be a lower priority than getting your foot in the door somewhere so you can start getting work experience. But if you stick with the software dev path longer term, you should do it at some point.

The assumption that I'm making here is that the bootcamp you're taking errs on the side of practice, rather than theory. My impression of bootcamps is that they generally teach you how to code, and spend relatively little time on the computer science / mathy side of things. Which isn't a criticism; if the goal is to get attendees into an employable state as quickly as possible, then focusing on practice over theory is the correct call.

But the thing is, there's a basic level of theory knowledge that will 1) actually make you meaningfully better at your day job as a dev and 2) give you a much better chance of passing job interviews (at least for a certain sub-set of jobs).

And that level of knowledge is honestly low. I've gotten a ton of value out of the intro DS+A class I took in undergrad and basically zero value out of any of the subsequent courses I took. I'm sure the advanced stuff gets used by someone, but my experience has been that for the vast majority of devs, the basics are enough. You don't need to know how a red-black tree works, or how to implement a hashmap, but you want to be able to answer questions that might come up in your day-to-day work like "Does it make sense to use a list or a set here?" or to be able to tell "This is the kind of situation where I should use a map", that kind of stuff.

Incidentally, those are also the exact kinds of questions you'll want to be able to answer for coding interviews. I mean, you probably won't literally be asked something like "what is the time complexity of finding an element in a set vs a list", but you'll be expected to choose the optimal data structure for whatever problem your interviewer wants you to solve and be able to justify your choice.

TLDR: at least do the intro to data structures and intro to algorithms courses offered by treehouse: https://teamtreehouse.com/library/topic ... er-science. Probably also do a fully-fledged DS/A intro course or work through an equivalent textbook if you can.

P.S. Nice job with the bootcamp, and good luck with your career transition

Slevin wrote: ↑

Mon Jul 25, 2022 7:56 pm

...if you prove yourself and do a halfway decent job, you can grind out the first year for “bad” pay (and my “bad” is a joke to most non software engineers, it’s probably 70k at the low end), then just jump ship and take a higher paying job anywhere else like a normal SWE with 1 year experience.

Also, this was my exact path. So another +1 to this; there's no shame in taking a "bad" job to gain some experience. Getting some real reps under your belt to begin with is the most important thing.

I did the exact same thing tdurtsch did. My first job was horrible -- racist management, cut off from doing real work, a real Bullshit Job in David Graeber terms.

I leveraged that to move into a good company that I've progressed through quickly, and I've been here since.

Don't judge how programmers write and act from StackOverflow. Many thousands of people who write on there are non-native English speakers writing answers in spare moments.

Programming is getting harder and harder to get into every year. You have to figure out how to make someone hire you over a new college grad. My solution was to move to a city where college grads were escaping from. This was before COVID made everything remote-friendly, though. This means the competition will just increase.

Expect your job search to take a year -- if it's anything less than that, great, you got lucky.

Also, as someone who hires, a fresh bootcamp grad is never hiring-ready. You need another 6 months of study and portfolio building, at least. Most bootcamp grads who get jobs right after their bootcamp were previously in a different kind of programming (eg. systems to back-end transition).

Lastly, most people in this industry get jobs by referrals until the recruiters start banging down your door on LinkedIn. Referrals are vital.

Good luck.

@Slevin – Thank you! Your note about grinding it out for the first year reminded me of teaching school.

The “good” schools have many applicants to pick from, so people starting out usually have to interview at “less desirable” schools.

I got my first job at a school like that. What a blessing it was! That place helped me become great at the craft. The principal encouraged and incentivized creatively solving problems. The management was hands-off, so it was actually possible to do that. I also learned from some great teachers.

When I went to a “good school” a few years later, it was mind-numbingly boring. It didn't matter what you did, because everyone was insanely literate and slayed all the test scores. I heard the phrase “this is just what we always do” countless times. It wasn't good for growth.

So, here's my question to you: when you're targeting those “less desirable” roles, what are things to look out for (while searching, in interviews, etc) that might help distinguish a good opportunity from somewhere that is complete shit to work at?

@tdurtsch – Thank you so much! I've thought about targeting in-office jobs, because I think less people would apply to those than the remote ones. I'm currently in Mexico though, which is awesome. I would love to never set foot in an office again.

For you or anyone else that sees this- can anyone comment on specific strategies that could raise my chances of getting a remote position? Like targeting specific industries/sectors? Anything is welcome. I know that is a broad question, but any insight would be appreciated.

As for cities with programming jobs, I was thinking Atlanta or Chicago. I have social capital in those cities, and I actually like them. But if there are any cities that seem to have an out-of-balance supply/demand ratio for these types of positions, I'm all ears

Lastly, I appreciate the recommendations for what to look for. I will definitely read that book!

@zbigi- thank you, sir! I asked Slevin about red flags while searching and interviewing, but could you also comment on that? I'd appreciate anything you have to say. No pressure though.

@AnalyticalEngine – Thank you!

@white_belt - Thank you for linking to that thread (that thing could be a track on the ERE Forum's Greatest Hits CD.) I didn't want to hijack it with my questions, and I figured my situation was unique enough (and likely to be replicated by someone else eventually) to warrant its own thread

@dustbowl: Thanks for taking the time to write that- you are so right! Unit 2 in the Python TechDegree goes into data types, and when it makes sense to use a list, set, tuple, dictionary, etc. But I definitely need a deeper understanding of the theory. I will absolutely take that course on Treehouse and get that book! I appreciate it big-time. Also, thank you for the encouraging words!

@recal – I appreciate your message! And thank you for the reminder about not judging- there are indeed many pros in the field who are excellent communicators and enjoyable to be around.

Thank you for the insight on the hiring process, too! When you say to continue studying and portfolio building, what do you suggest doing exactly?

Here are my projects (I figure this will help.)

1. Number Guessing Game

This is a console game that prompts a player to choose a number in a specified range. If they guess the incorrect number, they see a message indicating whether the right number is higher or lower. Any errors are caught with a try block.

After the user guesses correctly, they see the number of attempts it took to guess correctly. Then they're prompted to play again or quit. If they play again, a new number (that isn't the number they just guessed) is generated. They also see their high score.

2. Basketball Stats Team Tool

I made a function that loops through a list of dictionaries with data for 18 players.

It creates a new dictionary for each player, and it adds a new key:value pair for each category of data (name, guardians, experience, and height.)

While creating key:value pairs for the "fixed" dictionary, the guardian's string is split into a list, height is converted into an integer, and the player's experience is converted into a Boolean value (this helps with data processing later.)

Then another function distributes an equal number of players to each team (and ensures that each team has the same number of experienced and inexperienced players.) Each time the script is run, the teams get a different set of players.

3. Phrase Hunter Game (Object-Oriented Programming)

I created a word-guessing game using OOP. My script selects a phrase at random, hidden from the player (it's displayed as underscores.) A player tries to guess the phrase by inputting individual characters. They have to guess the phrase before they run out of attempts!

I've completed the first 3 projects! I have 2 left:

4. Store Inventory with SQLAlchemy

This is a console application that loads an existing store's inventory data from a CSV file into a SQLite database. The application allows a user to interact with the records stored in the database to view existing records, add new items, and backup/export the existing state of the database into a CSV file.

5. Portfolio w/ SQL Alchemy
- This is a web application using HTML, CSS, and Flask. The web application, a portfolio, displays information about my work which is stored in a database.

Based on this, is there anything you recommend specifically targeting?

Hey RFS,

re: Remote jobs. Specialization in a growing field helps here. I don't think that's possible from a bootcamp, though. ML/AI, for example. I'd also recommend targeting software agencies rather than tech companies if you'd like to stay remote, you may have a better chance as people don't generally try to work at agencies as much.

re: Projects. Those all seem very basic and handed down from your bootcamp. (We call that basic CRUD apps.) I'd just recommend trying to make a couple of real applications or real open-source contributions. I'm not a Python expert so I don't necessarily have many recommendations, but something involving data mining... AI... augmented reality... or again, open source. Build something that your best mate would go wow to.

Here is a blog post about the current state of hiring in tech: https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/advi ... engineers/

RFS wrote: ↑

Sun Aug 21, 2022 7:50 pm

@zbigi- thank you, sir! I asked Slevin about red flags while searching and interviewing, but could you also comment on that? I'd appreciate anything you have to say. No pressure though.

Sure, no prob! I'd say one simple piece of advice would be to avoid working in agencies if at all possible. By "agency" I mean anyone who's doing software projects development as a service for other organizations. Doesn't matter if it's a 10 person local web shop or Accenture - they all react to the same incentives and market pressures, so are all similarly messed up and have terrible practices (the most qualified and highest paid people in these companies are salespeople - to make sure the company lands the contract, and the lawyers - to make sure the company won't be sued by furious client afterwards. The actual delivery, i.e. tech work, is an afterthough). In such companies, you're likely to be managed by stressed out incompetents, and have colleagues who aren't very strong technically. They also quite often belive in death marches, so they may be some weekend work etc. On the other hand, they have lowest bar to entry, so it can still be an ok first job if one can't immediately land anything better.

Another piece of advice - the tech world is very much a meritocracy, so, if I have the time, it makes a lot of sense to try learn as much as possible before you even start applying. Companies are looking for self-starters above anything else (there's little day-to-day guidance in everyday tech work), and showing that you could implement a decent-sized project on your own is definitely a good sign. By "decent-sized project" I mean maybe something like this forum (at least the most crucial features of it), if you're into web dev.

zbigi wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 22, 2022 5:21 am

the tech world is very much a meritocracy

Not in my experience. It's riddled with bias.

ducknald_don wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 22, 2022 7:04 am

Not in my experience. It's riddled with bias.

Yeah, I meant among people who meet the prerequisites, i.e. mainly are not too old.

I'm wondering if the problem is not so much age per se but that age increasingly correlates with "having a life" outside of work such as e.g. family, home maintenance, or other interests/responsibilities. Of course this doesn't change the prejudices but it may explain why the prejudices are there. If you hire a 25yo nerd, you'll likely retain their focus close to 100% for 168 hours per week. If you hire a 35yo nerd, an increasing percentage of that focus will be directed towards the spouse, children, the light switch in the kitchen that needs to be fixed, the boat in the marina, etc. Since there tends to be a multiplier effect for complicated jobs---not talking piece work here---one person with a 100hr/week focus is worth more than 2.5x persons with a 40hr/week focus. They can simply do things that the 9-5ers can not.

That's a good theory, but I'd simply say it comes down to like wanting to be around like. I'm saying that as someone who pursued tech very young, at the age of 21, but had an extremely hard time getting in due to being a woman. Once I made a whole fake personality, changed my professional style of speech, etc.. to be more nerdy, I could tell people treated me like I wasn't incompetent and actually started to listen to me. (Well, some of them.)

If there's already 6 25 year old men, they're more comfortable around other 25 year old men -- the "beer test" (would I get a beer with this person?) is often what it comes down to when everyone you've interviewed is pretty much the same level of competency.

jacob wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 22, 2022 9:41 am

Yes, that's exactly the case. 25 years old have plenty of reasons to work hard. They often don't have that much of a life, have been an (over)achievers all of their short (life) so far and don't know nothing else, want to prove themselves, want to quickly get to those fat senior engineer salaries, are excited about difficult roles such as manager and architect and the responsibility that comes with them, aren't yet resentful towards companies in general etc. They basically want to live the lifestyle as depicted in shows such as "Suits". Whereas people at 35+ have basically often grown out of that mindset and prefer to just coast at their jobs. And a tech company where most of the programmers are coasting is destined to basically slide into irrevelance. See the latest from Zuck: https://futurism.com/the-byte/zuckerber ... ance-goals

That's also why I think taking a semiFIRE approach, with lots of long periods of time off in the CV, can be a kiss of death in a tech career. I mean, someone like that is obviously prioritizing quality of life and is not going to kill themself on the job. In the current super-hot job market for SWE it does not matter, but if things cool down a little, it could be important.

recal wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 22, 2022 10:29 am

On the other hand, from my experience, plenty of companies are falling over themselves to hire women coders (for their diversity quotas). They tend be to on the corporate side though, and thus usually require university diploma.

zbigi wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 22, 2022 2:20 pm

On the other hand, from my experience, plenty of companies are falling over themselves to hire women coders (for their diversity quotas). They tend be to on the corporate side though, and thus usually require university diploma.

Not to get into this debate here -- but as someone on the hiring side at a large company, they say they are, but in practice it's all talk and no action. I personally have wanted to ERE since I was 16 (and a lot has changed so I'd generally say I drop the last E these days) and I chose tech because I knew that I wouldn't have much longevity within this field anyway -- and never wanted to be trapped in a situation in which I was uncomfortable. It only makes sense to pursue an exit plan and to control one's spending when so much of how our career treats us is out of control.

recal wrote: I'm saying that as someone who pursued tech very young, at the age of 21, but had an extremely hard time getting in due to being a woman. Once I made a whole fake personality, changed my professional style of speech, etc.. to be more nerdy, I could tell people treated me like I wasn't incompetent and actually started to listen to me. (Well, some of them.)

I feel for you having attended an engineering school with something like 10:1 male to female ration in my youth.

Now that I am old (57) and pursuing a masters in the tech field, my current strategy for "getting in" will be to develop a project for my portfolio which will be something like a habit breaking app that recognizes and automatically deletes male genitalia selfies as soon as they are taken.