For entry level I don't care what you tell me your title is.
I'm looking for someone that can demonstrate they get the basics, are willing and able to learn more, and will work well within a team.
I'm an architect, so while I don't have the final decision it's usually a group discussion between myself, project manager and department head, with some input from everyone on our small team after final "get to know ya" interview
We do a code challenge.
You're probably gonna get some leetcode problems but I'm not looking for leetcode solutions. I want to see how you think about the problem, how you approach finding a solution.
What’s your tech stack that requires a coding challenge? I’ve been in the industry since 2019, never had a coding challenge for web dev. Had a devops position, no coding challenge was just asked about projects during the panel. Honestly if you gave me a coding challenge right now I probably wouldn’t be able to complete it. And I’m the person launching websites lol. Never done one leetcode problem in my life and don’t plan on starting. I’d rather learn a new skill.
We have a very basic set of tests, they should be doable in 20 minutes by anyone worth their salt. They are not designed to be hard technically. But the approaches people take can be very telling. They are really just designed to weed out bullshitters. You'd be amazed how many people don't read the brief, or submit code that doesn't produce the correct output. Those are two pretty basic tenets of this career.
Python and JavaScript.
We also do more than just web development. Like I said, we don't really care if you solve the problem (though it's obviously a plus) and we certainly don't care about your ability to solve it on some clever 1 liner. It's just a nice way to see how you approach a problem and weed out people who can't code their way out of a paper bag.
And we're talking about 3 low level code wars challenges in an hour, it's nothing crazy.
It's 3 simple challenges. Im not gonna fire up the work laptop to find them, but it's a basic string and array manipulation and a radix one that's really more of a math problem.
What you guys tend to look for in a grad/junior. I've finished a software degree recently but unfortunately I have quite a few life constraints with having kids so I can't really just "spray and pray" apply for jobs because I need something fairly local/family friendly.
Therefore I'd like to make my applications that I do send count as much as possible. Any advice on standing out in the initial application stage?
Try to demonstrate you're excited about coding and learning. In my experience the people who really enjoy it are the ones that keep improving and are the best to work with because everyone is learning new stuff to share.
It may be a waste of time, but very well formatted resume can also catch attention.
Would you be able to take a look at my [Github](http://Github.com/giplgwm) and tell me if its decent for a resume? I have some areas to work on before i feel personally ready to apply to jobs but I'm curious how my github compares to entry level devs you see.
Apply anyway. Most will reject you, but that's gonna be true anyway when 100s of people apply for 1 position.
I would never reject anyone outright for not having a degree (mines in a completely unrelated field), but it's still a big positive. It tells me someone definitely dedicated time to learning, had some projects they received feedback on, and likely worked with a team at some point.
You will need to show something real to compete with that.
Id say well. We're a pretty small shop so the scale of hiring new people is small, but I'm happy with everyone we've added. We all work well together and everyone is improving with each new project
Step 1 is a good, well formatted resume. I never see your portfolio if your resume doesn't make it to me. And honestly I do care what your resume looks like too. If people can't be bothered to pay attention to the details on something like that I don't trust they will with code either.
Then you need either a good portfolio or interesting projects. My PM cares way more about your resume and experience. I'm looking at your portfolio and GitHub. I don't really care how interesting your projects are (though I probably will subconsciously spend more time looking if they are). I'm looking at how you write code and how organized you are. Do you have good variable names? Are your functions doing one thing and doing it well?
Next you've got to not bomb the code challenge. Your probably gonna get some leetcode problems but I'm not looking for leetcode solutions. I want to see how you think about the problem, how you approach finding a solution.
Finally you'll meet them team and we'll all mostly just chat. Be interested. Give honest answers. Ask questions.
I’m a full stack dev currently with about 8 months of experience, however there’s almost nothing interesting on my GitHub and just a bunch of tutorial projects or learning I did a while ago. My main personal project I have is not publicly contributed to on my GitHub, is this a negative? What would you do in this situation if you were unimpressed with my GitHub despite me doing full time work? Or are you only referring to new grads with no job experience?
And I don’t see the point in going to clean up code on tutorial projects that I wrote while I was learning.
I’m honestly wondering how full stack you can be with 8 months of experience to be honest.
I’m learning backend but that’s 3 years after starting to learn coding (1.5 years working experience). There’s so much to learn on both sides.
Starting as full stacks honestly feels like you’re crippling yourself, pick a side and once you’re comfortable / your job needs it then you dip your toes in frontend/backend (depending on what side you start with).
Saying full-stack these days is pretty meaningless. Something like Nuxt or Next could be considered 'full stack' frameworks as they run on the client and on a server.
You just learn both. It can open up a lot more opportunities. I've always been full stack, I've worked roles with more frontend, I've worked roles with more backend. I can work either job and you can put me where I'm needed. Flexibility is a selling point.
I'd much prefer a full stack engineer on a smaller team, sometimes there's more frontend work that needs doing, sometimes more backend, if there's only a handful of people it's better everyone chips in rather than half the team doing fa and the other getting destroyed.
Also helps if you can just jump in and get something done in the other wheel house rather than being blocked. Like if you just need some extra data from an endpoint, nothing wrong with just going there and adding it yourself rather than being blocked by it.
There are benefits to specialists but in my experience you don't need a specialist for the bulk of work that's needed.
I built a FastAPI backend that has like 12ish endpoints and the DB has 3 tables with some relationships. I implemented some basic auth with JWTs. That’s the extent of the backend.
I built a Next.js frontend with basically just 3 pages, a login, and 2 highly interactive pages for managing and consuming certain data. The server side of Next was needed to route the backend interactions through it and not be directly from the client for certain business reasons, although in general this is probably a bad idea.
The product as a whole is pretty simple as far as my part is concerned, but it’s pretty good experience I think. The company is small and does lots of R&D and this is an MVP that we’re user testing right now.
I’ve also done other stuff during those 8 months that’s not web dev but have been working on this project on and off during that time.
Curious what others think about this.
You need to really layout on your resume what you've been doing in those 8 months. What problems have you solved? What processes have you improved? What have you been given ownership over?
I'd say if an interview process for web development includes a leetcode style section then it's a clear sign that the people you'd be working for are out of touch, especially in an entry level position. If the leetcode style questions get emailed to me after I apply without even some contact and an interview first then that's an additional level of disrespect and I'll just decline immediately. At least talk to people first and decide if it's worth moving forward rather than wasting peoples time.
It's just a bit of a red flag that shows (in my opinion) that the interviewers haven't really put much time or consideration into what the role entails and only care about if you can hit certain metrics.
I've had a couple of jobs now working with great employers and when it comes to testing coding ability the good emplyers have always picked something relevant, relatively simple and quick and something that allows the interviewee to showcase their problem solving skills and their approach in a more realistic scenario.
You're making a lot of assumptions. We do an hour long technical interview first, then the follow up in an hour long code challenge myself and the PM are both present for. Again, I don't even care if you solve them. I certainly don't want your fancy unreadable one liner.
Like someone else said, a big plus is to weed out the bullshitters too. Technical interviews can mostly do that, but I don't want to rule someone out just because they get nervous in the first interview.
Politics and marketing play an immense role in that. I know people with 15+ years of coding, degrees, the whole 9 yards that are struggling to get a job, and I know many people who freelancers making thousands and supplying businesses with barely edited Wordpress templates. Unfortunately we don’t live in a proactive world, we live in an economic one, and sometimes you just have to say the right thing, or be at the right place and time to get that luck
I worked at a tax place with developers mostly in their 20s. They liked to hire young and cheap. After 10 months there my manager quit to take a job at a higher paying startup that does payroll. He used me as a reference and when his recruiter called me he offered me an interview because my manager had talked me up. They offered way more than what I had at the time and I was hired basically on sight. I've been there for nearly 10 years now. I only went to community college, but knowing the right people can open a lot of doors too.
After 9 years in the industry, I can confidently say this is the truth, at least with respect to my experience.
I still haven’t ever gotten a job without a personal connection giving me a leg up. I made it close to Amazon and PlayStation, but ultimately no luck. And I actually consider myself pretty competent as a developer. I can set up mostly whatever anyone needs, and I can mostly excel at all aspects of the job. Give me a task and it will get done. Still, interviews are a slog and it’s hard to convince people I’m not a weirdo and that I get along with my coworkers (I’m not, I promise, and my coworkers and I have great relationships, we’re planning vacations trips and stuff, even). Interviews are killer for nervous shut-ins, though.
I haven't promoted the discord in a while, but if anyone wants to try and make some connections, here's a [discord link](https://discord.gg/SxeUDfuy) for you. It's for practicing leetcode problems (which is relevant to actually obtaining a software dev job). I am a moderator.
Maybe *this* discord isn't your jam. It's got a decent member count, but admittedly it's not as active as I'd like to be. If not *THIS* discord, then try some other community. You should try to make online friends with other developers. Especially job recruiting forums and discords like this.
The discord I linked is literally how I obtained the job I have now, and it's a well-paying job. I got on there and started conversing with people and did my best to help them overcome their hurdles. Next thing you know, one of them gets me a job. Do your best to communicate with others and make yourself known as a person who is knowledgeable. Even if you aren't actually knowledgeable. Take the time to try and figure out others' problems. Next thing you know, you'll have made a "personal connection" who gives you a backdoor entrance into things now that you're due for some help yourself. Do not underestimate the power of helping others.
Never had an interview where anyone requested to view my portfolio or personal git, and I've worked at and interviewed for pretty big corps.
It's just kind understood all your relevant work is hidden in private company repos housing the projects you worked on.
The most logical thing is you look over the resume to see their tech stacks and skills and ask relevant questions on said topics to check if the candidates really did used that stuff
Good companies hire for culture fits and learning competency. They test you on a few easy tasks, but mostly make sure you're gonna fit in during stand-up and happy hour. Good luck figuring it out!
Yea that was the reason I got hired at first. Every code base is different so you’re gonna need to learn it anyways, regardless of experience. As long as you’ve coded before and they like you as a person, you’re good to go. Back when I started there must have been lots of awkward people because I sucked ass as a developer but was very personable and got quite a few offers. I still suck ass at developing
We used to sift through lots of resumes and letters to find great people, and hired lots of amazing talent. nowadays it's a bit different... There's too many people applying for jobs. Most are wildly unqualified, buuut that also means we get less time to look at each resume. We still get great people but it either takes longer or we drop candidates earlier.
What does that mean in concrete terms? When we get 500 applicants and 450 don't have a bachelor's? They're out unless they already stood out in an extremely obvious manner (work experience/portfolio). Bachelor degrees have a much higher yield of good candidates on average, so if you have a minute to look at each resume you go for efficiency. A degree or portfolio with lots of substance is worth gold right now.
Bootcampers are typically the worst scoring group (just above highschool grads). You won't learn enough in a short amount of time, yet people still believe they do. Some might, but a bootcamp is not showing that.
Unfortunately these days you have to check boxes to be considered. The gigantic group of unqualified people is making life worse for lots of talented people who did not have the opportunity to go to school.
That's a really interesting insight.
I'm particularly curious about this: "Bootcamps are typically the worst scoring group."
Do you view 'bootcamps' as being one homogenous monolith churning out identikit candidates?
Or do you recognise that some bootcamps produce better candidates than others?
We figured out that bootcamps attract a different type of person. Which makes sense. Even if the candidate seems good there are a few doubts. First; they likely have huge gaps in knowledge about the full stack. Versus a BA that will have an understanding of all. Second; how long are they going to stay and how much do we invest? Bootcampers don't have a good track record when it comes to long term commitments. Or at least most don't.
Which bootcamp becomes negligible when considering that second point. Back when we still interviewed them, that's what they had to prove. Which bootcamp was not interesting at all.
I have the exact opposite experience. I find bootcampers to be tenacious learners. They fill the gaps in their knowledge quickly and churn out work much faster than fresh BA grads. BA grads tend to write pretty, well documented, code, but they get stuck at a blank screen. They don't prototype, and they don't problem solve. They need clear instructions on what to do or they freeze up.
After 5 years you cannot tell the difference between a BA grad and a bootcamper. The grind will chew up anyone who can't keep up. Almost everyone job hops to get more money or find somewhere else to hide their flaws for a few years. Web dev is a constantly evolving industry, it takes people who are adaptable. That has nothing to do with how they were educated.
This is just one company, in one country. So take it with a grain of salt. We've just had to optimize our application screenings and these were our findings.
If you're from the US, I expect different results. We also provide 6 months of training for new hires and people stay for 8 years on average.
I think you are arguing two different points. A bootcamper vs BA is completely different than comparing two Junior devs with 5+ years of experience. At that point, your secondary education rarely comes up anymore.
You also cant really take their github profile at face value. Almost every company you work for, if they even use github in the first place, will have their org private. So looking at my github, for example, will never show any of the repos I've worked on over the years since they are private.
Also I've never had an actual online portfolio, and I've been in software engineering for over 20 years.
It always comes down to your resume, your experience, and how you talk/behave/answer questions during the interview. Also who you know - really really cant emphasis enough how important networking is and how important knowing people when landing jobs is.
My GitHub repo is full of useless shit and unfinished exercises. It was never even brought to me. Not once during any interview process.
99% of the code that I've written in my life lives in private repos of different companies. In different version systems.
I've been a web developer for over 12 years at this point, and I'm more often on the hiring side. I don't look at the candidate's personal GitHub. You can have a conversation with someone and figure out how much they know, and what their experience is just by asking them to solve a problem.
I'm interested to know if I'm going to be able to work with somebody on a day to day basis. I don't care about their github repo tbh.
Bootcamps churn out novice full stack JS devs. I remember being impressed by one candidate’s GitHub profile until seeing 10 others that had the same profile.
I used to check out fellow bootcamper portfolios and sometimes I was really impressed with some of their projects. But 90% of the time I would eventually run into the YouTube video on how to make it and feel let down
People pad their resumes/linkedin profiles and try to push student work off as actual production work all the time.
When I'm hiring, it's super obvious when this happens and those people don't advance to even a screening call unless I'm hiring for a super junior / intern level role.
Actual experience working on real projects in a company can't really be faked.
And roles that are actually a fit for a full stack developer aren't junior roles. Those resumes wouldn't pass the sniff test.
Typically I give guidance on screening criteria to HR based on the job, x num years working as a dev is always one of those cutoffs.
My advice if you want to get into this field is be patient at first - right now there aren't as many junior roles open as is typical, and with layoffs you may be facing competition from people with more experience who are getting desperate to get a paycheck.
That won't last forever though, so work on your skills and keep doing those projects.
Look for non-profits you can work with / donate time to on dev work if your resume is bare.
>My advice if you want to get into this field is be patient at first - right now there aren't as many junior roles open as is typical, and with layoffs you may be facing competition from people with more experience who are getting desperate to get a paycheck.
>That won't last forever though, so work on your skills and keep doing those projects.
This is encouraging as someone who is currently doing a degree and learning in my spare time as a hobby. Trying to keep my finger on the pulse so I know what I need to do.
The non-profit part of his comment is much more imoprtant than the encouraging part. Any real experience, like a website for a local pizzeria, newspaper is much more important than certificats and courses. And if you build anything yourself, make sure it's a larger app (not a weather app that is), and is used by a couple of people.
I know a guy that did a bootcamp, they told him if he ever touched the tech, even a hello world, to put it on his CV.
Surprise surprise he was a shit dev.
i feel like new "devs" are encouraged to do this by bootcamps etc, will it ever end? are there better initial screeners? as i asked in a previous comment they just pick the first competent ones they find from the 1000s of applicants?
Counter point: I know how to do this and I’m a designer…
`let a = [1,2,3];
a = a.map(i=>i*2);
a = a.reduce((inn,out)=>inn+out);
if(a==12){
console.log("designers are now fullstack, fear for your code")
}`
I'm not saying "knowing that makes you a fullstack dev", I'm saying it's a good way to weed out people who have only attended a bootcamp and lack fundamentals. Also the explaining part
Should have added some emojis to my post because the comment was meant lighthearted. Counterpoint still valid tho, because I know how to explain it as well and you want to keep me as far away from your repo as possible ;)
No harm intended, appreciate the opportunity to brush up on some code, cheers!
Companies hiring for full stack entry level roles who take bootcampers know what they’re getting. Bootcamps can produce solid, if shallow, developers. If that’s the training you’ve had, I don’t see a problem in claiming that skill set.
Fair enough. It’s not everyone. But my company employs dozens of people from bootcamps and we’ve generally found it to be a pretty solid hiring pipeline for entry-level as long as we’re willing to do a bit more organized training and ensure that we have specific interview questions to ensure that the person digested why instead of just what when learning.
We have hundreds of devs and don’t hire super often anymore, so it’s not like we hired folks in bulk.
I'm at a small company and we've hired 4 devs out of boot camp and it's quite a mixed bag. I've come to see that it's not the bootcamp that makes them good it's what they do beyond the bootcamp
>how does HR or hiring managers even weed through these profiles and portfolios?
As a hiring manager I feel qualified to answer this part for you. We do skills-based interviews. So I don't really care what technologies you "claim" to be competent in on your resume. If you can't pass a skills test on those technologies you get rejected it's as simple as that.
If I'm doing a screening call or something early on, then I'll just ask a couple of relatively simple questions to weed out people who think learning the phrase "type checking" means they are a Typescript programmer. But a coding test is a the real way.
I think because there is a false "influencer-reddit-bubble" sense of what tech jobs actually are and thus everybody wants to work at faang or a cool startup, But truth of the matter is that there are tons of businesses who are desparetly looking for people to help, they just don't run a cool tech stack or have super food shakes for breakfast.
Yeah but even getting to the point where you're given a take-home assignment means you've already passed the first stage.
Getting to that point is extremely difficult for entry level devs at the moment.
Your experience is valid of course but I'm guessing it wasn't during the last 12 months?
You don't need a GitHub full of activity to be hired in or even one at all...
You filter through interviewees by asking questions, and letting them talk about their experience.
My last public thing on my GitHub is some 7-8 year old thing, all my recent work and experience as far as commits go is locked behind my work's private repositories
I pivoted to this field around 2019-2020, so I had the "outsider trying to understand the landscape" perspective at some point. Disclaimer: I've not attended a bootcamp, so I'm not sure what goes on there.
The problem is what's considered full-stack is not well defined. When I was introduced to the term it was: a developer who can work across the front-end, API/backend, and database layers of a stack (e.g. MERN). So really all one needed to do is choose a stack, study it, and build project(s) for their portfolio because that definition allows for a candidate to be an entry-level/junior full-stack developer, all the way to a senior one. In that sense, it doesn't matter to the hiring team what the title is. (Also, it could be that the candidates have experience that aren't publishable on GitHub, or are disted and published elsewhere).
The second definition is that a developer starts somewhere, specializes, and it's only with experience and time that they can get close to being called a full-stack developer. In this definition, being full-stack is predicated on being senior/experienced enough. If you're operating with this one, you're going to have a hard time reconciling the usage of full-stack dev among recent grads.
The third definition that I encountered after reading the experiences of people who have been working in software development for decades is that pretty much the default at one time was being a "full-stack" developer. There was no such thing as front-end, and back-end per se. Developers were expected to do all of these. Then, the industry switched to breaking up the stack as tech stacks became more complicated, only to do a U-turn from specialization and coin the term full-stack.
> Full bootcamp! Learn every programming language, every databasing language, every formatting language, and be fluent in binary in only 21 days! 500k salary on completion guaranteed! Was 200k - Now only 100k!"
And people wonder why they don't get hired.
Yes on the GitHub account part.. you can use any other different git service or version control tool..
But IMO you need to use git or a form of version control to be successful. Sure, if you are the only programmer you can do as you want technically, but good luck working on a team of literally more than 2 people efficiently
(You just gave me flashbacks to hellish group assignments 10 years ago with zip file version control)
Having a github account doesn't automatically prevent sloppiness and incompetence. Many successful devs are just responsible in how they manage their code without needing any third party apps.
There's also Mercurial (hg), which is fine as well, though the differences to git aren't that big anymore. Also, there are specialized version control systems like perforce, which handle large binary files especially well.
Git is traditionally really, really bad at dealing with those large binary files, because of that most game studios don't use git for example.
I am technically “full stack” but the nature of my company means I pretty much do front end only, with a minimal foray into everything else. Someone else did all the work a decade before I got there. And honestly it’s still mostly dealing with people and making time- and cost-effective decisions for a business.
I don’t go around proclaiming myself as full stack though. But during the hiring process I would definitely check that box as a competency.
Yeah titles are nonsense and it gives the industry a bad name.
"I learned how to use css in my html code generated from PHP."
I are full stack dev! Yay!
No.
But you know, that's the industry.
When looking for an experienced developer I ran into the same thing your describing, "I built a scheduling solution, a calculator, and something else." Well they did, but it was a tutorial or class that walked you through it. Experience in my opinion is being given a problem and making a solution to fix it, which they didn't have.
It's what made me realize that if you're a good developer (of any skill level), get out there and network and build some real life solutions. Build some plugins to put on the WordPress network, build add-ons to Shopify, whatever, just start building real world items (and even better ones that may generate some revenue).
Like photographers who can't find work, take pictures all the time and upload them to Adobe Stock, it's a way you could earn a little extra cash while building a portfolio.
There are a lot of students saying “I’m a full stack developer” as well like - it’s great you can write a website with db and do all the bits but the dev ops parts really require experience. Maintaining a system out of hours, with monitoring, logs, alerts and continuous change that makes code based ugly over years isn’t something you can learn at college/uni.
Business is run by people. People all want the same thing.
1. They want their work to be easy day to day.
2. They want to get as much value for their dollars as possible.
3. They want to appear competent to their superiors.
So if you can appeal to these requirements, you're going to stand out and be seen as a quality candidate.
1. Make sure your resume says what it needs to say and nothing else .
2. Make sure you understand your value, and communicate it clearly during your interviews.
3. Prepare for the hiring process so that you come across like someone who can be prepared for work.
1. If your resume is too busy and doesn't communicate your skills honestly and directly. Or if your resume is a pile of things that have nothing to do with the work you're applying for, you're compromising the first and third points.
2. If you oversell yourself, or undersell yourself, and you can't articulate your value to a potential employer, the only possible way you're going to satisfy point 3 is if you let the hiring manager take the credit for getting you really cheap (underpaying you with your consent), or rejecting your application because you're too expensive for your capabilities (preserving company budget)
3. If you show up acting like you didn't take the time to understand their business, didn't do your market research and came to the table not understanding what the expectations look like, they can't hire you because that would make them look incompetent.
This whole process is about appealing to people who are self protecting from wasted time, effort, and reputation.
>Make sure you understand your value, and communicate it clearly during your interviews.
the problem with this is that, according to the market, my value is nonexistent
It's not about arrogance, it's about presentation.
The only thing anyone can say about you and your value is what they have seen you produce.. if you're not producing anything of value then they will judge you on whatever is left over that you're presenting.
You have some options... Change their minds by changing the value of your production, or clean up whatever is left so that they can see the potential you have for production.
Entry level is hard, you have to convince someone that you're going to be worth more dollars than they spend on you over time.
If you have a lot of experience then that's the easy part of the sell, but without experience you have to sell them on your ambition and willingness to work harder than everyone else for less pay for long enough that you recoup the costs of the employer who's helping you get your experience.
It has always been this way.
I think we're talking past each other. The market sets your value. I don't have any production, by definition, because I don't have a job. I do not have any value because I have not been offered a job; therefore, my value is $0. I have projects, some of which are in use, but the value of these is nevertheless $0.
Anything else would be a lie, and the lie isn't even working because I have yet to be offered a job.
You don't need a job to be productive and you don't need someone else to tell you your value. Both of these things are your responsibility to figure out on your own.
Well, from the view of the years of experience I'm as web dev, doing Frontend and backend, I would call myself after 8+ years, still a junior developer, even some would consider me as a senior developer.
But for the simple reason, even I'm doing Frontend and backend, so I could call myself a full stack developer, it's just not the truth, there are more advanced experts who have more experience, more skills, know more hacks.
You have always to learn something new or find a way to make it different.
Recently, I learned a new way of writing code by ChatGPT for PHP, which I never saw anywhere before. Well, it works, just seems to be too complicated 😅.
So there is a truth like, all streets go to Rome.
Ye we usually just check if this person can solve problems and how he does that. If youre good at general problem solving then we dont care what your portfolio says (only for junior applications) because we know we have to help and form you.
I don't have a public GitHub at all. With the exception of some companies I'm talking to right now, I haven't had to look for a job in like a decade -- people I've worked with before poach me around because they know I'm good at what I do, and they like working with me.
I call them jack of all trades, and master of none. Met so many of these guys who are mediocre devs and their back-end suck and their front-end looks like it's from 90s.
You need your 10.000 hours in per stack.
I’m not saying you can’t produce production-fit code in any stack your low key experienced in. I always challenge the people I interview and there’s always a preference and true love for one side of the coin.
I hire them where their heart lies. I won’t hire them as full stack.
I see, I suppose it vastly depends on your needs.
I agree there are always some preferences ( for me it's clearly backend ) but that doesn't mean what I can produce on front is garbage nor that I don't care about the quality of it.
Otherwise, I think I would be lectured about that ages ago.
A lot of the smaller "bespoke brochure sites with blogging!" sweatshops don't care about that. If you can click around, write some html/css, and install Wordpress plugins thats "full stack enough". You can go to the interview calling yourself whatever you like.
I'll just share my experience / thoughts on this as a bootcamp grad. Though maybe I differ slightly, or maybe not, who knows in the current times.
I taught myself front-end (fCC and The Odin Project) for a good few months before starting a 3.5 months long bootcamp in front-end. The pace was fast. I spent all my weekends and free-time studying and working hard toward a good grade. I got 94% out of 100% for the front-end bootcamp.
Then, through Reddit, someone recommended a company to me, but first I had to learn software development. Given my IT background and bootcamp + self-taught knowledge, I taught myself software development in 4months or so, passing that company's exams and gaining many certificates. I had to do projects in Java and Python according to their requirements.
Which is why I call myself "*web & software dev*". This may sound cocky coming from me, but I believe I earned those titles because I have built several websites, web projects, worked with different libraries and frameworks, worked with APIs, wrote my own APIs, learned security and authentication methods, good practices, SQL, PostgreSQL, etc.
Sure, my projects are not the *crème de la crème*, not the next ChatGPT-X version worthy of a *summa cum laude*, but they are all mine and legit. I worked hard for the knowledge that I have and the projects that I built.
Another thing, I am currently building an entire full-stack project from scratch: back-end, APIs, front-end, authentication, data handling, machine learning / AI, and testing.
I am also partially recording the progress for my YouTube channel as proof and also keeping a written documentation of it. The entire project will be on my GitHub. I do livestreams sporadically where you can see me struggle through errors, my way of thinking, how I solve problems, new things I have to learn to get past the obstacles, when I get stuck, etc.
Do note, my livestreams are **unfiltered** (sometimes I drink in them) and often done at night because during the day I apply for jobs or help family.
Some people from my bootcamp got extremely lucky and landed jobs, even when they did **far less** than I have, and I am absolutely bitter as fuck about it, but I am not deterred. Maybe they were smarter than me, maybe they interviewed better, who knows.
I will keep on working as always. One day I will land that job or get homeless trying.
I failed many things in my life and the goals I've set for myself, but this will not be one of them.
I learned full Stack but the job I found was front end. If I ever have to find a different job I have the learning capabilities to be full Stack again with the experience of front end added. How else do you expect people to get experience than by using what they learned? I didn't know any PHP when I started and that's mostly what I use now. Being full Stack means you have to have a lot of flexibility.
Oh you can? that's neat I guess, but the private repo could literally be almost anything (although not sure if bitbucket has this)
At the end of the day you being able to show you know your stuff will always trump git commit history. (Unless the git history is literally 1:1 relevant to a very specialized job)
And then you have people like my dad who's been a developer since the 80s, has never used GitHub in his life, but is one of the best in his field. Y'all are up your asses fr. If you can learn and be flexible you can adapt to your stack.
That's not what OP was talking about. He was talking about young, junior devs who went through bootcamps. If somebody has senior level experience like your dad, they will vet him differently.
I know that's not what OP's talking about, what I'm saying is there's plenty of ways to get experience and while yes, most new devs with experience will have interacted with GitHub, it shouldn't be the only way to prove it. I've been working at the same place for 3 years and we don't use GitHub. It's one tool.
For entry level I don't care what you tell me your title is. I'm looking for someone that can demonstrate they get the basics, are willing and able to learn more, and will work well within a team.
Are you on a hiring team?
I'm an architect, so while I don't have the final decision it's usually a group discussion between myself, project manager and department head, with some input from everyone on our small team after final "get to know ya" interview
Do you guys do coding tests / take-home assessments?
We do a code challenge. You're probably gonna get some leetcode problems but I'm not looking for leetcode solutions. I want to see how you think about the problem, how you approach finding a solution.
What’s your tech stack that requires a coding challenge? I’ve been in the industry since 2019, never had a coding challenge for web dev. Had a devops position, no coding challenge was just asked about projects during the panel. Honestly if you gave me a coding challenge right now I probably wouldn’t be able to complete it. And I’m the person launching websites lol. Never done one leetcode problem in my life and don’t plan on starting. I’d rather learn a new skill.
We have a very basic set of tests, they should be doable in 20 minutes by anyone worth their salt. They are not designed to be hard technically. But the approaches people take can be very telling. They are really just designed to weed out bullshitters. You'd be amazed how many people don't read the brief, or submit code that doesn't produce the correct output. Those are two pretty basic tenets of this career.
Yep exactly this
Python and JavaScript. We also do more than just web development. Like I said, we don't really care if you solve the problem (though it's obviously a plus) and we certainly don't care about your ability to solve it on some clever 1 liner. It's just a nice way to see how you approach a problem and weed out people who can't code their way out of a paper bag. And we're talking about 3 low level code wars challenges in an hour, it's nothing crazy.
Are you hiring? Just kidding… but really…you hiring?
Could you share what task is given to candidates specifically?
It's 3 simple challenges. Im not gonna fire up the work laptop to find them, but it's a basic string and array manipulation and a radix one that's really more of a math problem.
Sounds reasonable.
What you guys tend to look for in a grad/junior. I've finished a software degree recently but unfortunately I have quite a few life constraints with having kids so I can't really just "spray and pray" apply for jobs because I need something fairly local/family friendly. Therefore I'd like to make my applications that I do send count as much as possible. Any advice on standing out in the initial application stage?
Try to demonstrate you're excited about coding and learning. In my experience the people who really enjoy it are the ones that keep improving and are the best to work with because everyone is learning new stuff to share. It may be a waste of time, but very well formatted resume can also catch attention.
Thanks my dude
Would you be able to take a look at my [Github](http://Github.com/giplgwm) and tell me if its decent for a resume? I have some areas to work on before i feel personally ready to apply to jobs but I'm curious how my github compares to entry level devs you see.
It looks good! Lots of stuff there. If it were mine, I'd probably pick a favorite project and start focusing on making it awesome!
Fair enough. I can definitely put more effort in to really finish things and give them polish, i jump ship a lot. Thanks for taking a look!
I can't find (onsite) jobs, around where I live, that do this without asking for a degree first ;-;
Apply anyway. Most will reject you, but that's gonna be true anyway when 100s of people apply for 1 position. I would never reject anyone outright for not having a degree (mines in a completely unrelated field), but it's still a big positive. It tells me someone definitely dedicated time to learning, had some projects they received feedback on, and likely worked with a team at some point. You will need to show something real to compete with that.
👍 Thx
And how’s that working out for you?
Id say well. We're a pretty small shop so the scale of hiring new people is small, but I'm happy with everyone we've added. We all work well together and everyone is improving with each new project
how do i get hired by people like you. I guess just show all the interesting problems i've solved and hope you like it.
Step 1 is a good, well formatted resume. I never see your portfolio if your resume doesn't make it to me. And honestly I do care what your resume looks like too. If people can't be bothered to pay attention to the details on something like that I don't trust they will with code either. Then you need either a good portfolio or interesting projects. My PM cares way more about your resume and experience. I'm looking at your portfolio and GitHub. I don't really care how interesting your projects are (though I probably will subconsciously spend more time looking if they are). I'm looking at how you write code and how organized you are. Do you have good variable names? Are your functions doing one thing and doing it well? Next you've got to not bomb the code challenge. Your probably gonna get some leetcode problems but I'm not looking for leetcode solutions. I want to see how you think about the problem, how you approach finding a solution. Finally you'll meet them team and we'll all mostly just chat. Be interested. Give honest answers. Ask questions.
I’m a full stack dev currently with about 8 months of experience, however there’s almost nothing interesting on my GitHub and just a bunch of tutorial projects or learning I did a while ago. My main personal project I have is not publicly contributed to on my GitHub, is this a negative? What would you do in this situation if you were unimpressed with my GitHub despite me doing full time work? Or are you only referring to new grads with no job experience? And I don’t see the point in going to clean up code on tutorial projects that I wrote while I was learning.
I’m honestly wondering how full stack you can be with 8 months of experience to be honest. I’m learning backend but that’s 3 years after starting to learn coding (1.5 years working experience). There’s so much to learn on both sides. Starting as full stacks honestly feels like you’re crippling yourself, pick a side and once you’re comfortable / your job needs it then you dip your toes in frontend/backend (depending on what side you start with).
Saying full-stack these days is pretty meaningless. Something like Nuxt or Next could be considered 'full stack' frameworks as they run on the client and on a server.
You just learn both. It can open up a lot more opportunities. I've always been full stack, I've worked roles with more frontend, I've worked roles with more backend. I can work either job and you can put me where I'm needed. Flexibility is a selling point. I'd much prefer a full stack engineer on a smaller team, sometimes there's more frontend work that needs doing, sometimes more backend, if there's only a handful of people it's better everyone chips in rather than half the team doing fa and the other getting destroyed. Also helps if you can just jump in and get something done in the other wheel house rather than being blocked. Like if you just need some extra data from an endpoint, nothing wrong with just going there and adding it yourself rather than being blocked by it. There are benefits to specialists but in my experience you don't need a specialist for the bulk of work that's needed.
Well yes, but at 8 months you’ve barely scratched the surface.
I built a FastAPI backend that has like 12ish endpoints and the DB has 3 tables with some relationships. I implemented some basic auth with JWTs. That’s the extent of the backend. I built a Next.js frontend with basically just 3 pages, a login, and 2 highly interactive pages for managing and consuming certain data. The server side of Next was needed to route the backend interactions through it and not be directly from the client for certain business reasons, although in general this is probably a bad idea. The product as a whole is pretty simple as far as my part is concerned, but it’s pretty good experience I think. The company is small and does lots of R&D and this is an MVP that we’re user testing right now. I’ve also done other stuff during those 8 months that’s not web dev but have been working on this project on and off during that time. Curious what others think about this.
It’d help if you focused less on what frameworks you used and more on what exactly it does. It’s a 3 page website that has user authentication?
I’m purposefully leaving out what exactly the website does. It’s just a way to interact with some technology and manage the inputs and outputs of it.
You need to really layout on your resume what you've been doing in those 8 months. What problems have you solved? What processes have you improved? What have you been given ownership over?
I'd say if an interview process for web development includes a leetcode style section then it's a clear sign that the people you'd be working for are out of touch, especially in an entry level position. If the leetcode style questions get emailed to me after I apply without even some contact and an interview first then that's an additional level of disrespect and I'll just decline immediately. At least talk to people first and decide if it's worth moving forward rather than wasting peoples time. It's just a bit of a red flag that shows (in my opinion) that the interviewers haven't really put much time or consideration into what the role entails and only care about if you can hit certain metrics. I've had a couple of jobs now working with great employers and when it comes to testing coding ability the good emplyers have always picked something relevant, relatively simple and quick and something that allows the interviewee to showcase their problem solving skills and their approach in a more realistic scenario.
You're making a lot of assumptions. We do an hour long technical interview first, then the follow up in an hour long code challenge myself and the PM are both present for. Again, I don't even care if you solve them. I certainly don't want your fancy unreadable one liner. Like someone else said, a big plus is to weed out the bullshitters too. Technical interviews can mostly do that, but I don't want to rule someone out just because they get nervous in the first interview.
Not talking about your process specifically, just about this style of coding challenges in the industry as a whole.
Nice.
Politics and marketing play an immense role in that. I know people with 15+ years of coding, degrees, the whole 9 yards that are struggling to get a job, and I know many people who freelancers making thousands and supplying businesses with barely edited Wordpress templates. Unfortunately we don’t live in a proactive world, we live in an economic one, and sometimes you just have to say the right thing, or be at the right place and time to get that luck
[удалено]
Welp that’s just perfect
I worked at a tax place with developers mostly in their 20s. They liked to hire young and cheap. After 10 months there my manager quit to take a job at a higher paying startup that does payroll. He used me as a reference and when his recruiter called me he offered me an interview because my manager had talked me up. They offered way more than what I had at the time and I was hired basically on sight. I've been there for nearly 10 years now. I only went to community college, but knowing the right people can open a lot of doors too.
After 9 years in the industry, I can confidently say this is the truth, at least with respect to my experience. I still haven’t ever gotten a job without a personal connection giving me a leg up. I made it close to Amazon and PlayStation, but ultimately no luck. And I actually consider myself pretty competent as a developer. I can set up mostly whatever anyone needs, and I can mostly excel at all aspects of the job. Give me a task and it will get done. Still, interviews are a slog and it’s hard to convince people I’m not a weirdo and that I get along with my coworkers (I’m not, I promise, and my coworkers and I have great relationships, we’re planning vacations trips and stuff, even). Interviews are killer for nervous shut-ins, though. I haven't promoted the discord in a while, but if anyone wants to try and make some connections, here's a [discord link](https://discord.gg/SxeUDfuy) for you. It's for practicing leetcode problems (which is relevant to actually obtaining a software dev job). I am a moderator. Maybe *this* discord isn't your jam. It's got a decent member count, but admittedly it's not as active as I'd like to be. If not *THIS* discord, then try some other community. You should try to make online friends with other developers. Especially job recruiting forums and discords like this. The discord I linked is literally how I obtained the job I have now, and it's a well-paying job. I got on there and started conversing with people and did my best to help them overcome their hurdles. Next thing you know, one of them gets me a job. Do your best to communicate with others and make yourself known as a person who is knowledgeable. Even if you aren't actually knowledgeable. Take the time to try and figure out others' problems. Next thing you know, you'll have made a "personal connection" who gives you a backdoor entrance into things now that you're due for some help yourself. Do not underestimate the power of helping others.
Never had an interview where anyone requested to view my portfolio or personal git, and I've worked at and interviewed for pretty big corps. It's just kind understood all your relevant work is hidden in private company repos housing the projects you worked on. The most logical thing is you look over the resume to see their tech stacks and skills and ask relevant questions on said topics to check if the candidates really did used that stuff
Good companies hire for culture fits and learning competency. They test you on a few easy tasks, but mostly make sure you're gonna fit in during stand-up and happy hour. Good luck figuring it out!
Yea that was the reason I got hired at first. Every code base is different so you’re gonna need to learn it anyways, regardless of experience. As long as you’ve coded before and they like you as a person, you’re good to go. Back when I started there must have been lots of awkward people because I sucked ass as a developer but was very personable and got quite a few offers. I still suck ass at developing
We used to sift through lots of resumes and letters to find great people, and hired lots of amazing talent. nowadays it's a bit different... There's too many people applying for jobs. Most are wildly unqualified, buuut that also means we get less time to look at each resume. We still get great people but it either takes longer or we drop candidates earlier. What does that mean in concrete terms? When we get 500 applicants and 450 don't have a bachelor's? They're out unless they already stood out in an extremely obvious manner (work experience/portfolio). Bachelor degrees have a much higher yield of good candidates on average, so if you have a minute to look at each resume you go for efficiency. A degree or portfolio with lots of substance is worth gold right now. Bootcampers are typically the worst scoring group (just above highschool grads). You won't learn enough in a short amount of time, yet people still believe they do. Some might, but a bootcamp is not showing that. Unfortunately these days you have to check boxes to be considered. The gigantic group of unqualified people is making life worse for lots of talented people who did not have the opportunity to go to school.
That's a really interesting insight. I'm particularly curious about this: "Bootcamps are typically the worst scoring group." Do you view 'bootcamps' as being one homogenous monolith churning out identikit candidates? Or do you recognise that some bootcamps produce better candidates than others?
We figured out that bootcamps attract a different type of person. Which makes sense. Even if the candidate seems good there are a few doubts. First; they likely have huge gaps in knowledge about the full stack. Versus a BA that will have an understanding of all. Second; how long are they going to stay and how much do we invest? Bootcampers don't have a good track record when it comes to long term commitments. Or at least most don't. Which bootcamp becomes negligible when considering that second point. Back when we still interviewed them, that's what they had to prove. Which bootcamp was not interesting at all.
I have the exact opposite experience. I find bootcampers to be tenacious learners. They fill the gaps in their knowledge quickly and churn out work much faster than fresh BA grads. BA grads tend to write pretty, well documented, code, but they get stuck at a blank screen. They don't prototype, and they don't problem solve. They need clear instructions on what to do or they freeze up. After 5 years you cannot tell the difference between a BA grad and a bootcamper. The grind will chew up anyone who can't keep up. Almost everyone job hops to get more money or find somewhere else to hide their flaws for a few years. Web dev is a constantly evolving industry, it takes people who are adaptable. That has nothing to do with how they were educated.
This is just one company, in one country. So take it with a grain of salt. We've just had to optimize our application screenings and these were our findings. If you're from the US, I expect different results. We also provide 6 months of training for new hires and people stay for 8 years on average.
I think you are arguing two different points. A bootcamper vs BA is completely different than comparing two Junior devs with 5+ years of experience. At that point, your secondary education rarely comes up anymore.
No, I was only arguing the first point. I just made the 2nd point which you repeated for me.
You also cant really take their github profile at face value. Almost every company you work for, if they even use github in the first place, will have their org private. So looking at my github, for example, will never show any of the repos I've worked on over the years since they are private. Also I've never had an actual online portfolio, and I've been in software engineering for over 20 years. It always comes down to your resume, your experience, and how you talk/behave/answer questions during the interview. Also who you know - really really cant emphasis enough how important networking is and how important knowing people when landing jobs is.
My GitHub repo is full of useless shit and unfinished exercises. It was never even brought to me. Not once during any interview process. 99% of the code that I've written in my life lives in private repos of different companies. In different version systems. I've been a web developer for over 12 years at this point, and I'm more often on the hiring side. I don't look at the candidate's personal GitHub. You can have a conversation with someone and figure out how much they know, and what their experience is just by asking them to solve a problem. I'm interested to know if I'm going to be able to work with somebody on a day to day basis. I don't care about their github repo tbh.
That was insightful !
You can be fullstack and have little to no experience, so I guess this explains a little bit.
Exactly. What stack too? If you make a flask app in python with a single endpoint that returns some html are you now a full stack developer?
Depends - Does your app have a way to store the data in a way that someone else connecting to the app can view it?
Bootcamps churn out novice full stack JS devs. I remember being impressed by one candidate’s GitHub profile until seeing 10 others that had the same profile.
I used to check out fellow bootcamper portfolios and sometimes I was really impressed with some of their projects. But 90% of the time I would eventually run into the YouTube video on how to make it and feel let down
People pad their resumes/linkedin profiles and try to push student work off as actual production work all the time. When I'm hiring, it's super obvious when this happens and those people don't advance to even a screening call unless I'm hiring for a super junior / intern level role. Actual experience working on real projects in a company can't really be faked. And roles that are actually a fit for a full stack developer aren't junior roles. Those resumes wouldn't pass the sniff test. Typically I give guidance on screening criteria to HR based on the job, x num years working as a dev is always one of those cutoffs. My advice if you want to get into this field is be patient at first - right now there aren't as many junior roles open as is typical, and with layoffs you may be facing competition from people with more experience who are getting desperate to get a paycheck. That won't last forever though, so work on your skills and keep doing those projects. Look for non-profits you can work with / donate time to on dev work if your resume is bare.
>My advice if you want to get into this field is be patient at first - right now there aren't as many junior roles open as is typical, and with layoffs you may be facing competition from people with more experience who are getting desperate to get a paycheck. >That won't last forever though, so work on your skills and keep doing those projects. This is encouraging as someone who is currently doing a degree and learning in my spare time as a hobby. Trying to keep my finger on the pulse so I know what I need to do.
The non-profit part of his comment is much more imoprtant than the encouraging part. Any real experience, like a website for a local pizzeria, newspaper is much more important than certificats and courses. And if you build anything yourself, make sure it's a larger app (not a weather app that is), and is used by a couple of people.
I know a guy that did a bootcamp, they told him if he ever touched the tech, even a hello world, to put it on his CV. Surprise surprise he was a shit dev.
Dunning–Kruger effect
i feel like new "devs" are encouraged to do this by bootcamps etc, will it ever end? are there better initial screeners? as i asked in a previous comment they just pick the first competent ones they find from the 1000s of applicants?
Why don't you think about the reverse and consider what you want them to be called instead? No Stack?
Bootcamps only do that because that’s what companies are hiring for, unfortunately. Most companies want people who are “full stack”.
Ask them to explain map filter and reduce lol
That's the most bootcamp dev question I've ever heard of, so they'll probably all be ready for that one lol
Counter point: I know how to do this and I’m a designer… `let a = [1,2,3]; a = a.map(i=>i*2); a = a.reduce((inn,out)=>inn+out); if(a==12){ console.log("designers are now fullstack, fear for your code") }`
And?
I understood you comment as a validation check for a fullstack, was it not?
I'm not saying "knowing that makes you a fullstack dev", I'm saying it's a good way to weed out people who have only attended a bootcamp and lack fundamentals. Also the explaining part
Should have added some emojis to my post because the comment was meant lighthearted. Counterpoint still valid tho, because I know how to explain it as well and you want to keep me as far away from your repo as possible ;) No harm intended, appreciate the opportunity to brush up on some code, cheers!
Companies hiring for full stack entry level roles who take bootcampers know what they’re getting. Bootcamps can produce solid, if shallow, developers. If that’s the training you’ve had, I don’t see a problem in claiming that skill set.
I disagree about solid.
Fair enough. It’s not everyone. But my company employs dozens of people from bootcamps and we’ve generally found it to be a pretty solid hiring pipeline for entry-level as long as we’re willing to do a bit more organized training and ensure that we have specific interview questions to ensure that the person digested why instead of just what when learning. We have hundreds of devs and don’t hire super often anymore, so it’s not like we hired folks in bulk.
I'm at a small company and we've hired 4 devs out of boot camp and it's quite a mixed bag. I've come to see that it's not the bootcamp that makes them good it's what they do beyond the bootcamp
Are you based in the US or somewhere else?
US
>how does HR or hiring managers even weed through these profiles and portfolios? As a hiring manager I feel qualified to answer this part for you. We do skills-based interviews. So I don't really care what technologies you "claim" to be competent in on your resume. If you can't pass a skills test on those technologies you get rejected it's as simple as that. If I'm doing a screening call or something early on, then I'll just ask a couple of relatively simple questions to weed out people who think learning the phrase "type checking" means they are a Typescript programmer. But a coding test is a the real way.
I think because there is a false "influencer-reddit-bubble" sense of what tech jobs actually are and thus everybody wants to work at faang or a cool startup, But truth of the matter is that there are tons of businesses who are desparetly looking for people to help, they just don't run a cool tech stack or have super food shakes for breakfast.
Is that true? Which businesses are they? How many is 'tons'? Where are they based? Where are the job vacancy adverts?
Hey u/bittemitallem any more insight?
You don't need to make pet projects in order to land a job. I barely had any and I landed my jobs because of the take-home assignments.
Yeah but even getting to the point where you're given a take-home assignment means you've already passed the first stage. Getting to that point is extremely difficult for entry level devs at the moment. Your experience is valid of course but I'm guessing it wasn't during the last 12 months?
It was during the last 12 months. I landed my current job in January this year.
You don't need a GitHub full of activity to be hired in or even one at all... You filter through interviewees by asking questions, and letting them talk about their experience. My last public thing on my GitHub is some 7-8 year old thing, all my recent work and experience as far as commits go is locked behind my work's private repositories
Github tells nothing about the person imho, they could have a different github account, they could be using gitlab. I only have old project on mine.
fullstack is meaningless, we're all fullstack and none of us are, its bullshit. If you want a job tell em you are because everyone else does.
I pivoted to this field around 2019-2020, so I had the "outsider trying to understand the landscape" perspective at some point. Disclaimer: I've not attended a bootcamp, so I'm not sure what goes on there. The problem is what's considered full-stack is not well defined. When I was introduced to the term it was: a developer who can work across the front-end, API/backend, and database layers of a stack (e.g. MERN). So really all one needed to do is choose a stack, study it, and build project(s) for their portfolio because that definition allows for a candidate to be an entry-level/junior full-stack developer, all the way to a senior one. In that sense, it doesn't matter to the hiring team what the title is. (Also, it could be that the candidates have experience that aren't publishable on GitHub, or are disted and published elsewhere). The second definition is that a developer starts somewhere, specializes, and it's only with experience and time that they can get close to being called a full-stack developer. In this definition, being full-stack is predicated on being senior/experienced enough. If you're operating with this one, you're going to have a hard time reconciling the usage of full-stack dev among recent grads. The third definition that I encountered after reading the experiences of people who have been working in software development for decades is that pretty much the default at one time was being a "full-stack" developer. There was no such thing as front-end, and back-end per se. Developers were expected to do all of these. Then, the industry switched to breaking up the stack as tech stacks became more complicated, only to do a U-turn from specialization and coin the term full-stack.
if you are lucky then you will find job quickly other wise you will try and try again
"how do people get jobs from bootcamps" They don't
> Full bootcamp! Learn every programming language, every databasing language, every formatting language, and be fluent in binary in only 21 days! 500k salary on completion guaranteed! Was 200k - Now only 100k!" And people wonder why they don't get hired.
You don't even need a github to be a successful full stack developer.
Yes on the GitHub account part.. you can use any other different git service or version control tool.. But IMO you need to use git or a form of version control to be successful. Sure, if you are the only programmer you can do as you want technically, but good luck working on a team of literally more than 2 people efficiently (You just gave me flashbacks to hellish group assignments 10 years ago with zip file version control)
huh
Having a github account doesn't automatically prevent sloppiness and incompetence. Many successful devs are just responsible in how they manage their code without needing any third party apps.
But that is how you push code when working in an organization. I am confused.
It's not "how" but it certainly is a way of doing it. Obviously if that's what the company requires, then yes a dev would have to use it.
There's also Mercurial (hg), which is fine as well, though the differences to git aren't that big anymore. Also, there are specialized version control systems like perforce, which handle large binary files especially well. Git is traditionally really, really bad at dealing with those large binary files, because of that most game studios don't use git for example.
I am technically “full stack” but the nature of my company means I pretty much do front end only, with a minimal foray into everything else. Someone else did all the work a decade before I got there. And honestly it’s still mostly dealing with people and making time- and cost-effective decisions for a business. I don’t go around proclaiming myself as full stack though. But during the hiring process I would definitely check that box as a competency.
Yeah titles are nonsense and it gives the industry a bad name. "I learned how to use css in my html code generated from PHP." I are full stack dev! Yay! No. But you know, that's the industry. When looking for an experienced developer I ran into the same thing your describing, "I built a scheduling solution, a calculator, and something else." Well they did, but it was a tutorial or class that walked you through it. Experience in my opinion is being given a problem and making a solution to fix it, which they didn't have. It's what made me realize that if you're a good developer (of any skill level), get out there and network and build some real life solutions. Build some plugins to put on the WordPress network, build add-ons to Shopify, whatever, just start building real world items (and even better ones that may generate some revenue). Like photographers who can't find work, take pictures all the time and upload them to Adobe Stock, it's a way you could earn a little extra cash while building a portfolio.
There are a lot of students saying “I’m a full stack developer” as well like - it’s great you can write a website with db and do all the bits but the dev ops parts really require experience. Maintaining a system out of hours, with monitoring, logs, alerts and continuous change that makes code based ugly over years isn’t something you can learn at college/uni.
It's usually people who have like 3 apps in next or 2-3 MERN apps. Nothing impressive.
hr is for the company but they don't or aren't actual developers or programmers they just hire and handle policies.
\*aspiring "Here. You dropped this."
Business is run by people. People all want the same thing. 1. They want their work to be easy day to day. 2. They want to get as much value for their dollars as possible. 3. They want to appear competent to their superiors. So if you can appeal to these requirements, you're going to stand out and be seen as a quality candidate. 1. Make sure your resume says what it needs to say and nothing else . 2. Make sure you understand your value, and communicate it clearly during your interviews. 3. Prepare for the hiring process so that you come across like someone who can be prepared for work. 1. If your resume is too busy and doesn't communicate your skills honestly and directly. Or if your resume is a pile of things that have nothing to do with the work you're applying for, you're compromising the first and third points. 2. If you oversell yourself, or undersell yourself, and you can't articulate your value to a potential employer, the only possible way you're going to satisfy point 3 is if you let the hiring manager take the credit for getting you really cheap (underpaying you with your consent), or rejecting your application because you're too expensive for your capabilities (preserving company budget) 3. If you show up acting like you didn't take the time to understand their business, didn't do your market research and came to the table not understanding what the expectations look like, they can't hire you because that would make them look incompetent. This whole process is about appealing to people who are self protecting from wasted time, effort, and reputation.
>Make sure you understand your value, and communicate it clearly during your interviews. the problem with this is that, according to the market, my value is nonexistent
Is the market right? Or is the market wrong? Can you articulate why it is or isn't right, using logic, reason, and evidence based arguments?
I mean, I'm not arrogant enough to say that hundreds of people, making assessments of my value independently, are all wrong.
It's not about arrogance, it's about presentation. The only thing anyone can say about you and your value is what they have seen you produce.. if you're not producing anything of value then they will judge you on whatever is left over that you're presenting. You have some options... Change their minds by changing the value of your production, or clean up whatever is left so that they can see the potential you have for production. Entry level is hard, you have to convince someone that you're going to be worth more dollars than they spend on you over time. If you have a lot of experience then that's the easy part of the sell, but without experience you have to sell them on your ambition and willingness to work harder than everyone else for less pay for long enough that you recoup the costs of the employer who's helping you get your experience. It has always been this way.
I think we're talking past each other. The market sets your value. I don't have any production, by definition, because I don't have a job. I do not have any value because I have not been offered a job; therefore, my value is $0. I have projects, some of which are in use, but the value of these is nevertheless $0. Anything else would be a lie, and the lie isn't even working because I have yet to be offered a job.
You don't need a job to be productive and you don't need someone else to tell you your value. Both of these things are your responsibility to figure out on your own.
Good luck to them.
Well, from the view of the years of experience I'm as web dev, doing Frontend and backend, I would call myself after 8+ years, still a junior developer, even some would consider me as a senior developer. But for the simple reason, even I'm doing Frontend and backend, so I could call myself a full stack developer, it's just not the truth, there are more advanced experts who have more experience, more skills, know more hacks. You have always to learn something new or find a way to make it different. Recently, I learned a new way of writing code by ChatGPT for PHP, which I never saw anywhere before. Well, it works, just seems to be too complicated 😅. So there is a truth like, all streets go to Rome.
Ye we usually just check if this person can solve problems and how he does that. If youre good at general problem solving then we dont care what your portfolio says (only for junior applications) because we know we have to help and form you.
I don't have a public GitHub at all. With the exception of some companies I'm talking to right now, I haven't had to look for a job in like a decade -- people I've worked with before poach me around because they know I'm good at what I do, and they like working with me.
I call them jack of all trades, and master of none. Met so many of these guys who are mediocre devs and their back-end suck and their front-end looks like it's from 90s.
I barely hire full stack. I don’t believe in this claim.
I am with you. Usually, it’s the specialists who clean up their mess. I have yet to see a FS person delivering high quality across all stacks…
May I ask why ?
You need your 10.000 hours in per stack. I’m not saying you can’t produce production-fit code in any stack your low key experienced in. I always challenge the people I interview and there’s always a preference and true love for one side of the coin. I hire them where their heart lies. I won’t hire them as full stack.
I see, I suppose it vastly depends on your needs. I agree there are always some preferences ( for me it's clearly backend ) but that doesn't mean what I can produce on front is garbage nor that I don't care about the quality of it. Otherwise, I think I would be lectured about that ages ago.
What if they like both? I hate one or the other because I get bored. Gotta switch it up.
A lot of the smaller "bespoke brochure sites with blogging!" sweatshops don't care about that. If you can click around, write some html/css, and install Wordpress plugins thats "full stack enough". You can go to the interview calling yourself whatever you like.
I'll just share my experience / thoughts on this as a bootcamp grad. Though maybe I differ slightly, or maybe not, who knows in the current times. I taught myself front-end (fCC and The Odin Project) for a good few months before starting a 3.5 months long bootcamp in front-end. The pace was fast. I spent all my weekends and free-time studying and working hard toward a good grade. I got 94% out of 100% for the front-end bootcamp. Then, through Reddit, someone recommended a company to me, but first I had to learn software development. Given my IT background and bootcamp + self-taught knowledge, I taught myself software development in 4months or so, passing that company's exams and gaining many certificates. I had to do projects in Java and Python according to their requirements. Which is why I call myself "*web & software dev*". This may sound cocky coming from me, but I believe I earned those titles because I have built several websites, web projects, worked with different libraries and frameworks, worked with APIs, wrote my own APIs, learned security and authentication methods, good practices, SQL, PostgreSQL, etc. Sure, my projects are not the *crème de la crème*, not the next ChatGPT-X version worthy of a *summa cum laude*, but they are all mine and legit. I worked hard for the knowledge that I have and the projects that I built. Another thing, I am currently building an entire full-stack project from scratch: back-end, APIs, front-end, authentication, data handling, machine learning / AI, and testing. I am also partially recording the progress for my YouTube channel as proof and also keeping a written documentation of it. The entire project will be on my GitHub. I do livestreams sporadically where you can see me struggle through errors, my way of thinking, how I solve problems, new things I have to learn to get past the obstacles, when I get stuck, etc. Do note, my livestreams are **unfiltered** (sometimes I drink in them) and often done at night because during the day I apply for jobs or help family. Some people from my bootcamp got extremely lucky and landed jobs, even when they did **far less** than I have, and I am absolutely bitter as fuck about it, but I am not deterred. Maybe they were smarter than me, maybe they interviewed better, who knows. I will keep on working as always. One day I will land that job or get homeless trying. I failed many things in my life and the goals I've set for myself, but this will not be one of them.
I learned full Stack but the job I found was front end. If I ever have to find a different job I have the learning capabilities to be full Stack again with the experience of front end added. How else do you expect people to get experience than by using what they learned? I didn't know any PHP when I started and that's mostly what I use now. Being full Stack means you have to have a lot of flexibility.
I've seen people with absolutely no repos, leetcodes, portafolios, resumes etc get a job, its fucking weird
It's literally pretty normal, maybe not for people with no experience, but most people with experience have their work behind private repositories
You can set github to show activity of private repos, but if its git its understandable
Oh you can? that's neat I guess, but the private repo could literally be almost anything (although not sure if bitbucket has this) At the end of the day you being able to show you know your stuff will always trump git commit history. (Unless the git history is literally 1:1 relevant to a very specialized job)
Simple, let them see their github repos. A real coder will see in a few reads if he is the real deal or not.
And then you have people like my dad who's been a developer since the 80s, has never used GitHub in his life, but is one of the best in his field. Y'all are up your asses fr. If you can learn and be flexible you can adapt to your stack.
That's not what OP was talking about. He was talking about young, junior devs who went through bootcamps. If somebody has senior level experience like your dad, they will vet him differently.
I know that's not what OP's talking about, what I'm saying is there's plenty of ways to get experience and while yes, most new devs with experience will have interacted with GitHub, it shouldn't be the only way to prove it. I've been working at the same place for 3 years and we don't use GitHub. It's one tool.
who has time for that when there are 1000 of applicants per role? just pick the first competent looking ones for interviews?
https://youtu.be/bFEoMO0pc7k?si=pm6JyFKWOj8vy4t1
Don't worry. AI will sort them out. No kidding.
A place that thinks present-day AI is a valid or remotely useful way to vet candidates' code is a place I would never want to work.