interview day at my bootcamp. 20+ companies came in and gave half hour interviews to the students. some companies sent 2 representatives. there were 23 students. i spoke with 9 different companies.
this went well for most students. I gotta say, my bootcamp is excellent at finding jobs for us. many of the students set up follow up interviews, or were contacted via email for another interview. how these companies were able to differentiate the students for a technical position without asking any sort of technical questions is beyond me. but the companies are indeed interested in many of my fellow students.
now, this does not apply to me. it could be the poker thing. it could be that I am too old at 34. I dont know, but they def prefer my cohort mates. this is ofc frustrating to me since I feel I am far beyond many of them. I mean, early in the class, we were given this problem
https://projecteuler.net/problem=2. no one else could solve it.
earlier I posted the interview question about converting an int to string without any library methods. the other 4 students were not able to figure it out.
a student who has like 3 job offers already could not figure out this problem:
our last project was a web application in spring mvc with a postgres database. it involved setting up a reservation at a campground. it was pretty involved but i think only 2 other groups finished.
so my conclusion is that, at least in my region, it really doesnt matter what you have learned, or what sort of technical abilities you have. the companies are looking for a certain very low baseline of skills along with a certain type of personality and background. that background does not seem to be playing poker for 7yrs followed by sitting on your ass for 4 more.
and I was actually asked 3 "technical questions." one guy wanted me to write 3 classes. a storage class, a stack class and a queue.
another was a method that would print out my name 3 times with an underscore separating them, except for the final time there would be no underscore.
another wanted 3 principles of object oriented programming.
so ya, this bootcamp is indeed taking these guys from 0 programming knowledge to jobs in 14 weeks. I am certain that no one in this class would be able to get into app academy or the other strong bootcamps. I may be able to if I studied hard for a few weeks.
Last edited by Victor; 04-07-2016 at 11:39 AM.