Perfect example of how corporations abhor risk yet can't seem to help themselves from constantly creating it: for 4 years now we've been strongly encouraged to put all our documents, learnings, requirements, etc. on a home-grown Jive forum system. Well now they decided the licensing is too much.

So we have until the end of November to get it all off. It's going to be a gigantic PITA and a lot of information will be lost. Our bosses seem to have forgotten when they went along with deal - that it's not all just Word docs and PPTs. We have a ton of information in proprietary Jive documents and comment streams after them. The best option now is to save as PDF, which loses a lot and of course the content ceases to be a living document any more.

Just so stupid. We're going to have to spend 100s of man hours on this and lose a ton of valuable easy-to-access information. It feels like every month they find some new way to make us work with another hand tied behind our backs.

I have done tons of competitive selling against Jive. At one point last year I was the #1 adwords bidder against "Jive Software" and have been brought in to many enterprise Jive competitive deals such as Barnes and Noble, but mostly big tech companies. Funny enough, I stopped going after Jive so hard because the lock-in was so seemingly complete and most companies they couldn't ever pull the trigger on switching. Tons of time, not wasted, learned a ton but not much $$. Jive also at one point would completely drop their pants if Drupal Commons was mentioned on a competitive deal. I'm taking 6 figure yearly licensing becoming low 5 figures.

You can migrate from Jive to Drupal. Cisco did it with one of their large communities. https://supportforums.cisco.com/

Drupal Commons is the distro to look into. The migration is really not that difficult except Jive will not be helpful at times, but usually pressuring them will get you what you need.

I really cannot tell you how many companies have come to me and wanted to switch off Jive in 30 days and there is just nothing I can do, you need time to build a Drupal site from scratch, but Jive will sometimes let you go month-to-month. Losing information for that many hours is ridiculous and you shouldn't do it.

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately we already have another home-grown site, which is terrible, that we're moving everything to. I think they recently got the ability to show images in the page!

At one point I was considering building a Jive-like distro of Drupal, and obv giving it away for free.

But Jive is a sinking ship on their own. It is interesting because they had an overall good idea, but company wikis and internal collab tools costing so much is really not a good long-term solution. FOSS completely crushes Jive.

I think you are correct for the majority of people that use LinkedIn.
I've worked with great people that actually send congrats on LinkedIn for random things that are not necessary and will view my profile randomly; similar to how I'll do the same.

It really depends on how well you connect with the person and if they were actually fun to work with. People over 35 will not be social at all, typically from my observations so far in life on LinkedIn. I think 35 and up take life to seriously or think it's nonsense using the site in any social matter. I'm not that old yet but definitely can see why they don't give a **** about it.

so I am gonna interview with these guys next week.

http://www.techelevator.com/

http://www.crainscleveland.com/artic...code-get-a-job

from the article and website, it seems they have had 1 class of 6 applicants and the next camp starts in late January. the guy running it had previously ran a bootcamp called the Software Guild in Akron.

cost is 12k which they promise to reimburse if you cant find a job.

they have 2 camp options, either Java or .Net.

ive taken object oriented classes and ran through the codeacademy javascript lessons so i figure i will just try to refresh my memory on that stuff prior.

i had been strongly considering getting my sht together and applying to some of these bootcamps for a while but this one being in my home town prompted me to pursue it. so it would be nice to avoid relocating, but arent the talent level and employment opportunities much better in nyc or san fran, where many of these other camps are stationed? and really, their cost is similar and they are more established.

any thoughts about my situation are appreciated.

Why would you want to stay in Cleveland, Ohio? (full disclosure: I'm from Cleveland, Ohio)

I think it comes down to how heavy potential employers put weight on having a degree, and Ohio has a grip of very good colleges that you'd be competing with combined with a virtually non-existent startup scene and a dearth of good-paying jobs. Being a C# and Java camp would give me considerable pause, since those are classic enterprise languages. Other bootcamps are more focused on startup-y type languages like JS and RoR. With that said, I think it is neat that they are offering tuition reimbursement.

Mind that the cost isn't exactly the same in SF or NYC. Rent is absurd in those two cities, plus everything else is far more expensive. I bet you laugh at the suits drinking $7 beers in the Terminal Tower... in CA, that's happy hour pricing.

Pertinent to the conversation upthread about phone development dying: Google is partnering with General Assembly to create an Android dev bootcamp.

http://www.businessinsider.com/googl...-13500-2015-10

Believe it or not, people over 35 take life far less seriously than people in their 20s. That's why you don't see "us."

Man, thanks for quoting that. While still under 35 I'd like to point out that LinkedIn is hardly the definitive place to be social. I am not social on LinkedIn and yet still stay in touch with a large number of past coworkers.

In fact, is argue that the main reason I don't find LinkedIn particularly valuable is that my main network is people that I speak to outside of LinkedIn and so when it comes to networking for jobs, references, referrals, etc I just talk to them directly.

Victor,

Bootcamps are awesome for people like me who couldn't get out of their own way and just make time to self teach. I needed that structure to get the ball rolling.

I'd be hesitant to do any bootcamp that takes payment up front and isn't one of the best and most established camps. That money back guarantee isn't worth much from a camp that had only been through one very small class. And even if it there were deferred payment you don't know what kind of track record that place has because there have been so few students.

I echo what Dave is saying about those being enterprisey languages and you're in an area where more of the job opportunities will want a degree and specifically a cs degree. It might be hard to even get past HR filters.

At the very least see if they can put you in touch with some graduates from both this camp and the guild one. If they can't or won't that's a huge red flag. If they come through try to see if the grass can answer about how others from their group are doing, how long it took to land a job, and if it was especially challenging to do so.

thanks. i was a bit skeptical of the language options. i guess, they arent really the "sexy" new types.

and ya, it would be nice to gtfo of here. but also, i got a nice place to stay for a good price, a dog, family, and all that, so its a lot easier to navigate 3 months of no income than just showing up to san fran penniless and sleeping in my car or worse.

is there really no start-up scene here? that bootcamp, and media reports attempt to convince otherwise. also, when i was messing around with some classes at tri-c, they had a presentation that outlined over 20 tech startups in the area.

ya, id say bolded fits me perfectly.

the rest of your points do echo and elaborate on some of my concerns as well. thanks.

You might find this free online course interesting.

https://www.edx.org/course/introduct..._source=Eloqua

I don't believe that paying for the certificate is worthwhile but there is that option if you want it.

So I'm talking to strongloop tomorrow about a developer/evangelist position which would involve a lot of speaking and travel. Kind of a long shot since I really don't have a huge body of work in that area. Anyone have any experience with them?

also, here are both curriculums, and they do mention javascript. i will definitely ask them about this when we meet.

lol capstone

whats your background so far? Have you programmed before? Do you know what Java looks like? 12k is a ton of money for nothing that is gauranteed.

I think he may be underprepared, if the above is just it, but maybe i'm wrong.

That time period seems like a huge cram on any newbie and they probably wouldn't be guaranteed a job, but supposedly you get the 12k back so no biggie.

Yet, what if you're in a class filled with newbies, that come out not being able to program and they end up robbing you of the 12k back guarantee because they have already payed your money to the teacher of the class or some **** lol.

Anyway, you're missing out on lots of cool stuff, if you do rush through that list provided above.
Yet if you can recall it all and be able to look it up as constant refreshers, then maybe employers will let it slide if you're rusty.

I can't imagine, how he is so confident if majority signing up are newbies and how will he know they will be 'a programmer fit personality' like people pay lots going into university and they end up having to change professions sometimes if its not for them.

Guy will be making bank at 12k per student if he succeeds at master teacher, or he is going to get fleeced for his time by Tech Elevator, if marketing takes their cuts and gives back his to the students.

Thinking that if you had a capstone project already that needed programming you could just pick up all this on your own. I get and understand why you want a more structured environment for learning. I don't know much about capstone projects. I did a little Googling as that along with Grue's comment would lead me to think that it might not be that applicable to what employers are looking for with new developers. Not sure about that though. Certainly post technical questions you might have about any of these topics. There is plenty of expertise around here to get them answered.

I'd probably go the .NET route but just because you can get a hold of Visual Studio 2015 community edition that is free and has a comprehensive set of languages and tools that are easy to install/use plus there seem to be a growing need for these skills. Certainly could be wrong about the future in going that way though.

Java has a very mature toolset so I think this is a weak reason to base your choice of language on.

My suggestion would be to try both languages and see which one you like better. Then maybe do some research on the demand in your job market. Besides, if you're a good java/.net programmer you should be able to transition to the other platform if needed.

Did I say otherwise? Best IDE for developing Java code on Wondiws is?

Two new languages for a newbie at the same time? C'mon. Learn one then move to the other.

The way I understood your post was that you were recommending .net over java because .net has VS2015. I disagree because I think both languages have strong IDEs and an IDE should not be the deciding factor in a choice of language. If that's not what you meant then I apologize.

I like https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/. It has a free (as in beer) community edition and is just as feature rich, pretty and easy to use as VS2015.
Eclipse is good as well, but not as polished, although it's FOSS which is a plus.

Both of these run equally well on win/mac/linux, which is great if you ever switch your OS in the future.

Agreed, I take that comment back.

I left in 2001, so I don't know. I do remember when something about the "tech bubble popping" was all over the news. Nearly no one I knew had ever used a computer, much less been on the internet.

Of course, things may have changed, but don't be fooled by the raw numbers. It only takes one company to be interested in you. There are many options, like being a webmaster for some law firm, or building some huge excel -> SQL Server system (god bless your poor heart). Programming is a huge world.

I'd say look up meetup.com. Start ups often host these things, so I consider it a decent way to get a pulse on what is happening in the city.

Out of interest, what kind of start up are you learning about out there?

He should definitely not take the .Net one since that teaches VBA and C#. Those language are pretty dissimilar, right?