Re:How I got my dream job in the tech industry without a CS ...
by komali2 on Tuesday March 14, 2017 @08:08PM
(#13872742)
There's about 1,000 Web-dev specific jobs posted to Linkedin, daily, in the SF Bay Area, so yes if you're interested in getting a job fast I recommend it. But if you're a CS undergrad I'd target some of the more niche stuff that you can leverage your degree to get, like Machine Learning, Machine Vision, AI type stuff that are inaccessible to me until I get projects under my belt. If you're halfway, in two years you'll be up against even more bootcamp grads than I was - not something that would be much fun.
We focused on:
Javascript
Node
Express, and building a server/routing
HTML
CSS
Angular
React
Backbone
MVC client-side
Security and XSS basics
Auth basics (I wish they had focused on this more)
Basic algorithms and data structures (your binary search trees and whatnot)
Interview Prep
SCRUM stuff (couple group projects)
Git
Deployment (mostly heroku)
To condense it down, I'd say you should be able to, upon graduation: Build from scratch a functioning web application, with a backend that you wrote, that is accessible via the internet one way or the other. You should definitely have some projects published by the time you graduate, because you'll be going up against bootcamp grads with 2-3, or more, demonstrable projects. A big sell the bootcamps go on is that their grads are actually more "job-ready" than someone fresh out of a CS program, the perception being the CS person will have a spotty knowledge of actual hands on programming and deployment. Obviously your program results may vary, but just be aware that's the perception bootcamps and their grads are exfiltrating into the tech community, so it'd be a very bad idea to fall on that radar.
EDIT: I'm remembering now that a lot of CS applicants to my bootcamp would have projects on github, but would need to be pulled down and compiled to actually work (python projects and whatnot). If you end up with a lot of these from your classes, see if you can use that language's server systems to set up a simple API, with a very basic front-end, that allows interaction via the internet. Being able to, in a job fair, literally pull a project up on my phone and show it to a company rep was a very powerful tool.
We focused on:
Javascript
Node
Express, and building a server/routing
HTML
CSS
Angular
React
Backbone
MVC client-side
Security and XSS basics
Auth basics (I wish they had focused on this more)
Basic algorithms and data structures (your binary search trees and whatnot)
Interview Prep
SCRUM stuff (couple group projects)
Git
Deployment (mostly heroku)
To condense it down, I'd say you should be able to, upon graduation: Build from scratch a functioning web application, with a backend that you wrote, that is accessible via the internet one way or the other. You should definitely have some projects published by the time you graduate, because you'll be going up against bootcamp grads with 2-3, or more, demonstrable projects. A big sell the bootcamps go on is that their grads are actually more "job-ready" than someone fresh out of a CS program, the perception being the CS person will have a spotty knowledge of actual hands on programming and deployment. Obviously your program results may vary, but just be aware that's the perception bootcamps and their grads are exfiltrating into the tech community, so it'd be a very bad idea to fall on that radar.
EDIT: I'm remembering now that a lot of CS applicants to my bootcamp would have projects on github, but would need to be pulled down and compiled to actually work (python projects and whatnot). If you end up with a lot of these from your classes, see if you can use that language's server systems to set up a simple API, with a very basic front-end, that allows interaction via the internet. Being able to, in a job fair, literally pull a project up on my phone and show it to a company rep was a very powerful tool.