Due to excessive Groucho Marx syndrome (I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member), I'm considering alternative options to App Academy.

Stumbled across this option at Oregon State for current bachelor's holders. Looks like you can get a second bachelor's in as little as a year if you're willing to bust your ass.

Wondering if that might be a good option so I can apply to the plethora of "BS required" jobs I see posted all the time.

Why not do something like this after App Academy, maybe on a part-time basis if you can get a job? I'd consider something like an online CS degree as a complimentary thing, not the main thing you want to highlight. Snooty people who are hung on a CS degree are generally unlikely to consider an online CS degree alone adequate, but may consider App Academy + work experience + part-time online CS degree to be equivalent.

Yeaaa dealing with EU data that can't be downloaded locally to be looked at or evaluated...

It's not held against them relative to people who lived on welfare. Taking a job that doesn't pay well but is a better "resume builder" or working at a place that "overworks and underpays people who are struggling" are absolutely valid reasons to discount your actual level of experience. It's not about holding something against people but considering their likely circumstances. If two people had identical bullet points and titles on their resumes but were at drastically different comp levels, it's quite likely that the one who was paid much better was held to higher standards, worked in a more challenging environment and with higher-caliber people from whom they could learn and was a more valuable candidate coming into that job, despite them describing their experience similarly.

a/A rules dictate you have to be available to job hunt from 8-5 Monday thru Friday, basically, and having a part time job or possibly going to school is breach of contract.

I'd hate to set aside a year+ of my life for a/A and then have to go back and do a year at a college. Not least of which because the financials of that situation aren't too rosy.

But isn't the most likely scenario that you will find a full-time job? Once you have that, can't you do whatever you want? Or are you feeling that AA won't be enough to get you a job given what you're seeing/hearing? Or is this a location issue? I feel I've seen that you are contractually obligated to look for a job in a certain area.

Yeah, that's true too. Must find a job within forty miles of the a\A program you attend. Which might be tough on my marriage if she can't get a job out there. That's another risk, because the Cali nursing board is all sorts of jacked up and getting denied a license can be a huge drain on a career.

The most likely scenario at the time of their last stat gathering is getting a job, but I keep seeing indicators that there's some cooling in the market going on for web devs only, specifically in that area of the country.

I worry that a/A wont give me enough grounding in CS principles that I want to know. Like they wait until your job hunt phase to teach about, say, binary search trees. I feel like they just give you enough to mimick the ideas in a job interview, and not a thorough enough grounding to understand the topic. (Granted, I already learned data structures in school)

Ugh, that's really tough. On the bright side, nursing jobs in the bay area pay really really well. A friend of my wife moved there not long ago from NYC and she seemed to think everything way better for nurses over there. But your wife's situation may already be good where you are.

I think their approach makes a lot of sense for people who need to make a living and you probably need to prioritize finding jobs and getting work experience over CS principles or whatever. I also think you'd learn more if you do it over the course of a few years while working rather than cram it into a year. Also it's possible I'm confusing you with jmakin or something but weren't you taking some classes at some point?

Yeah, I'm just finishing up a two year CS degree. Already have a non-STEM BA.

I would love to get a job sooner than later as I'm only getting older, but I also don't want to feel limited to web dev jobs, and I worry a bootcamp + web dev job will, in the future, be a combo that means you're stuck doing one thing.

Yeah, it's nuts. There's a few ways she can get into the state without getting a state license, but it's difficult and the pay is like 20% less. If she applies for a license and gets denied, then she has a black mark for the rest of her career.

I think you're way overthinking this. There's nothing wrong with web dev and even if you want to do something else in software, web dev gets you there more quickly than no dev.

I guess you guys know more about this than I do but really? Why would being denied for a license be part of some kind of public record? Nevermind, just saw this:

http://www.infonetware.com/forum/job...tion/t11053/p2

WTF?

Well, it's a professional license thing. Looks bad if you apply for one in a state and have to put down that you were denied a license in another state.

Who on earth is talking about engineers at radically different levels doing the "same work", or people who technically have the same titles but different levels of skill, or any of this?

I was recently talking with a manager here and he mentioned how when he was at <large company you've all heard of> managing people, he once had two guys under him doing the same thing, one guy making $70k and $110k (this was probably years/decades ago), with the difference being that the $110k guy pushed for raises every opportunity he had and the $70k guy didn't. Presumably if the difference was based on skill level, or output, he would have included that, but he said that was the reason.

It seems like a no-brainer that $70k guy is underpaid in that scenario, but maybe in this bizarro world we can't really know.

Then we're talking about fantasy land here - in real world software development, no two people have the same level of skills or do the same things.

This is just poor management if two people he manages are indistinguishable in his mind. Either way, the guy making 70K is still not being underpaid unless someone else is willing to pay him more. That's what establishes underpaying from an economic perspective, not his equally productive peer making 110K. And he's far better in this situation than in another situation where he's making 50K doing the same thing as another guy who's making 30K, even though in that situation, you may think he's overpaid. You need to compare your situation against other situations you could be in, not against other people at the same company.

The goal is not to be overpaid relative to your coworkers, but to be in a situation where you're paid more (in terms of money or other consideration) than other situations you could be in. If anything, if two jobs pay the same, you want to take the one where your equally productive peers make more, even though you'd be more "underpaid" by your criteria. Clearly there's a larger surplus that's going around you could eventually tap into after proving yourself. The other offer may be equally attractive, but they may have stretched to get to that point and you may have a hard time justifying raises.

Getting hung up on how you compare to coworkers (not just in terms of money but also in terms of skills, abilities, etc) is absolutely one of the worst mistakes you could make in your career, especially if you don't work at a very large company.

Sounded like his own manager was willing to, had he needed to.

Now, if you're a manager or otherwise building an organization, you have to understand that people do think like goofy and dave and others here and structure compensation accordingly, but I think a lot of people manage their careers suboptimally because of this kind of thinking. It's very common for people say things like "I get paid X, which is not a lot but it's okay because it's still very high for the industry/company/etc." Well are you actually getting something in return for being at that company or industry or whatever that has a lot of tangible value? Or is it so important to you that you get paid more than your coworkers? All else equal, I'd much rather be at a place where I'm surrounded by people who are overpaid.

Which doesn't establish market value unless he's willing to hold out for that. And a lot of managers don't have the unilateral power to give raises so it's entirely possible that the manager's evaluation of the situation doesn't reflect reality. In most large companies without completely dysfunctional management, asking for raises isn't going to have that much impact on your compensation, especially if you're on an upward career trajectory - it's much more about performance reviews, team performance and politics.

Noodle, maybe take a quick look at Odin for the best of both worlds. Just saw that applications for their remote bootcamp in July end on Friday.

The issue is part the question, and the part about "why." In interviews, we are supposed to spin everything onto a positive, and you have been given no less than 3 reasons that are brutally honest, but things that you generally don't say in an interview. You are left to either make up your own why, which is probably wrong, hear a fake why, or get a real why that makes things very uncomfortable.

I'll even go further and say that I'd love to build companies out of people who think like goofy, dave and rusty because I think it would be relatively easy to keep them happy. Either way, I think most people are better off following the middle path, instead of what I'm seeing here. The vague sense I'm getting is that in one instance, in dealing with your current employer, some of you act like you're in a commune, market forces don't matter at all and compensation is this black magic that's completely divorced from external reality, yet in another instance, when you're talking to recruiters or new companies, some of you imagine you're Donald Trump practicing the art of the deal and have it all figured out.

It's this discrepancy that I don't understand. Just be open about your situation and be straightforward in asking for what you want. I'm sure that's not entirely optimal, but it definitely beats what I'm seeing here. My impression here is that some of you have a lot of trouble asking for what you want or figuring out ways to get it, then end up with this bottled-up frustration that often gets dumped onto poor recruiter types who work really hard to find the right matches and generally make less money than we do.

None of us are perfect and we're all asked questions during interviews that we'd rather not answer or questions to which true answers are less than flattering. In that regard, there's nothing special about this question. Not having this emotional hangup around this issue will help you understand the motivations of those on the other side and answer the questions in an effective and professional manner.

Some "open" answers I've gotten in interviews:

-- The company is completely sexists. I've seen the numbers and every woman earns less than the men. The men I manage are getting paid 2x more than me and none of them do anything but chat the day away about sports. I want to find a company that respects my work ethic and move on with my life.

-- Yes, I work 15 hour days and I earn $35,000 / year. I have two kids at home to feed and my deadbeat husband isn't paying alimony. ****'s tough right now. I'd gladly take a pay cut if I could just work normal 40 hour weeks and be around my kids. The baby sitter is expensive, which would offset the pay difference.

-- My company is a sinking ship, but they are paying me what they can, which isn't enough. I'm trying to get out before they go under.

-- I just needed a job. I knew the pay was terrible, but rent was due.

-- I wanted a chance to prove myself. I think I did, but the company never gave anyone a raise in the 5 year history they have been around, so I never got a raise. Haven't had a lot of luck finding a new job.

-- I never asked for a raise because I hate the job and don't care either way.

When you don't ask "why" and you don't get brutally honest answers, you simply assume that the person was a slacker or wasn't a good worker, you know, because all companies are ran fairly and make economic sense and you assume all employees are strictly driven by money, which isn't true at all.

As you can imagine, I stopped asking about pay history. I really don't want to know people's personal issues. I just want to know if they can do or learn the job at hand.

Wait, so you used to ask candidates in interviews why they are paid so little? I think discussing compensation in general is a little tacky during a normal interview - it should be done before (HR/recruiter stage) or after (offer stage) - and asking directly why they are making so little is out of line either way. It's okay to ask why someone wants to leave, why the gap between what they are asking for and what they are making so large, etc but to imply that they are making unusually little and demand explanations is out of line IMO.

I've been asked why many times in interviews and from recruiters, and I've had to defend my prior pay rate and why I feel I deserve more on many occasions. I've also faced utter disbelief that I'd do the quantity of work I've done for the pay I was getting, to the point I've been called a liar to my face. This is the very tactic and ugly question I've been railing against for the past dozen posts! If it is tacky and off-base, I've certainly not experienced it.

You are assuming that the companies I worked for had HR and used recruiters, which is not the case at all.

Also,

Most of these are huge red flags btw. 6 should be disqualifying. 1 is probably disqualifying as well. 2 and 4 are big red flags. 3 and 5 aren't as bad but still negative IMO. Being open and transparent does not mean you should talk about irrelevant personal details that put your candidacy in bad light.

But you used to ask these questions yourself?