This is very timely as I'm currently studying to sit the GRE in August, with the hope of applying MS CS programs at the end of the year (Stanford, CMU, Princeton, etc). Perhaps I should reconsider this?
I'm a non U.S. citizen/resident and I'd like to work in Product Management in the U.S.; I had hoped that an MS CS from a top university would help bridge the gap between my design undergraduate from an unknown international university – helping me land a job at a top tech company as an Associate Product Manager or the like.
A MS in CS doesn't give you much useful hands-on knowledge that'd be immediately applicable at your day to day job in the corporate world. I'd look into a MS in Software Engineering, like the one CMU offers, if you're more interested in pragmatic skills.
You need to step away from all this. You clearly have a toxic mindset (though not necessarily by any fault of your own), and the fact that you insist on perpetuating it and projecting it on arguably unrelated situations is evidence of that. I feel like every thread I read has an identical anti-corporation or anti-manager comment from you!
I've said this before, but you often have some great insights in your posts. This negativity achieves nothing and simply works to discredit the rest of what you say.
So you had a bad experience, so what? The world isn't out to get you. Learn what you can from it and move on.
I got to the 3rd paragraph and thought: "Christ, this sounds almost as pessimistic as a Michael O. Church comment!"
Then I looked at the comment author.
Despite this pessimism I think you make some great points, but I do feel that your persistent negative bias towards corporations (and people in general) can detract from what are often great insights within your comments.
Speaking as someone who used to work at a company that several bootcamps had pitched for recruitment purposes, and having met several grads from bootcamps, I would say that these bootcamps are most certainly not for you. They are almost all universally geared towards beginners. In that sense these bootcamps do add a lot of value. It is really hard to teach yourself to code if you lack any foundation in coding, let alone teaching yourself X or Y technologies.
There is really nothing these bootcamps can offer you except for a boost in your motivation (such a boost is not worth $12-17k+). To give you a sense of what I mean, Dev Bootcmap, for example, spends half of its time on teaching their students Ruby and programming fundamentals, which makes sense if you've never/barely coded before, but does not make sense for someone with experience who can teach him/herself Ruby and most of its advanced concepts over a (focused) weekend. Even Hack Reactor, which bills itself as being more intensive and faster-paced, spends a lot of time on basic language/CS fundamentals.
These programs don't really improve your job prospects beyond the improvements that are due to a beginner learning new concepts, nor do they really provide any sort of networking opportunities beyond the kind of networking you can achieve by hanging out at engineering meetups once a week - the average wage at these programs is almost universally in the $85k area, which sounds like a lot but is essentially entry level for the SF area.
The same applies to most online course material out there, which is geared towards beginners.
You sound like you have a fair amount of knowledge on the subject so I'd be massively appreciative if you could give me any advice...
I'm planning to move from the UK to the States next year (American wife, so hopefully shouldn't be too much hassle) and combine it with a career change from project manager (please don't hate me!) to developer. I have a CS degree and similar Masters, but coding has been primarily a hobby since I graduated (i.e. I can make pretty much what I can think of given enough time, but I'm shaky on the core concepts: big-oh, data structures, design patterns and algorithms).
My plan was basically to (re)learn as much as I can between now and early-mid next year (focusing on RoR) and build up my GH portfolio, then jump into Dev Bootcamp to fill in the gaps and get some introductions hopefully leading into a job. However, after reading your comment it makes me wonder if it'd be $12k wasted?
Any advice or input would be worth at least a pint!
Without knowing the extent of your coding experience and the extent to which your CS degree taught you the fundamentals, it's difficult to tell.
Some thoughts:
1. Dev Bootcamp in specific seems to be geared to beginners. Which is great for a beginner but not so great for someone with even some experience.
2. I've sat in on some of these programs, and even in programs that bill themselves as faster-paced the majority of students will be beginners. Which means that to a certain extent many things will have to be geared towards the lowest common denominator and a lot of time will be spent going over things that you already grasp well, while comparatively less time will be spent going over more complex topics.
3. The programs do help with introductions and they do a lot of heavy legwork in reaching out to employers. However, at the same time, the process of getting a job is, as I imagine (I have no personal experience with getting a job through this process), very much like a career fair type affair. I doubt the introductions will be the kind of quality/personal introductions that provide an advantage in applying. The introductions alone are nearly certainly not worth $12k+.
4. I think that as long as you have a marketable core skill (iOS, Android, Rails, Django, frontend JS, backend JS, etc), you should be able to attain the same job connections by attending engineering meetups and events in SF.
Many thanks for the input, mate - I very much appreciate it. It's extremely helpful getting a more objective viewpoint on bootcamps, since the majority of information out there is from alumni and will always be positive.
My degree was faiyly comprehensive, it's just that since I graduated I have become pretty rusty on the fundamentals, but I guess that's something that should come back to me with a bit of revision.
I guess my main worry was the difficulty of finding a job in a new country with no prior connections and no real professional experience, but I guess I've got around a year to make myself marketable and attempt to build up a few connections from across the pond (maybe I can find a few Rails OS projects willing to take on an eager learner).
Yes. And maybe even consider saving some money and then coming over to Silicon Valley for a period of time in order to network and get job introductions by attending meetups and such. SF is the place to be for networking (at least for small-medium-large sized startups), but it is VERY expensive. The networking opportunities in Palo Alto/Mountain View are comparatively fewer. If you do make the decision to move over to SV, be sure to post an Ask HN about recommendations as to where the best and most affordable places to live in SV are.
Hack Reactor. Nothing I can't learn on my own, but job prospects seem much better post boot camp. Plus the whole immersion with a sense of urgency idea just seem much more effective than a year of self-study. Not to mention the networking. I think the next best option is self study supplemented with paid resources - Codeschool, Thinkful, Udacity, General Assembly, etc.
You can also use something like Market Samurai to do keyword analysis. But by god, do NOT give them your daily email address, they will spam the crap out of you. Handy tool though.
Much appreciated – thanks so much for taking the time to review, and for the actionable advice! I'm considering living off savings for the next 3-6 months and really focusing on a few self-initiated projects that allow me to boost my UX creds – potentially an iPhone app, a SaaS tool, etc.
One of the downsides about living in Australia is that there's barely a handful of tech companies based here (that aren't just marketing/sales offices), and most agencies are just churn and burn (Facebook pages and banner ads, etc).
Do you think that having a few (i.e 3-4) strong personal projects where I ran both design and development solo would boost my creds for the likes of Google & Co?
Edit: As an aside – do you think it's preferable to have quality over quantity? I.e. ditch a few of the weaker pieces of work in favor of having say, 4-5 really strong portfolio pieces?
Having additional strong portfolio pieces definitely helps, and yes quality over quantity. Whether it will be enough for Google & Co, I don't know. Usually these companies require more experience, if you want to work as a UX designer for them. But don't let that discourage you - definitely work on your sideprojects - you never know.
Again, judging from your portfolio only, it looks like you should maybe focus on UI design first, as this seems to be your strong point and find a job in a UX specific agency, so you can see and learn what other UX practioners do, learn more about UCD etc.
I'm sure there must be UX only agencies in Australia or startups - a quick Google search came back with
I'm curious as to your reasoning behind spending 2 years developing this in HTML5? The art style is great and all, but you could have knocked up a game like this in an engine like Unity within 3 months and deployed it to iOS, PC/MAC, even Xbox Arcade.
I think that's an optimistic prediction for a game of professional quality, done by a single person. I reckon most of the work is edge cases, art & sound, tweaking, bug fixing, not working on the generic engine.
You could save time by doing this though, as you say. I'm leaning more towards the idea of reusing code and trusting other peoples engines at this point. But we've all made our own engines and, as other posters have said, this is the guys hobby, and most likely a labour of love.
I'm a non U.S. citizen/resident and I'd like to work in Product Management in the U.S.; I had hoped that an MS CS from a top university would help bridge the gap between my design undergraduate from an unknown international university – helping me land a job at a top tech company as an Associate Product Manager or the like.
Thoughts from the savvy HN crowd?