I swear, articles like this are going to cause me to have an existential crisis. I started learning programming as a child in the 80s. More than 30 years later, I like to think that I've acquired a lot of valuable knowledge and experience across a broad range of topics, and yet... when I hear about people training for three months and walking into decent jobs, I start to wonder what actually differentiates me at all.
For the sake of my ego, I'd love to hear that these bootcamp graduates have shallow, fragile knowledge in a narrowly focused area.
Shit man, I feel your pain. I'm actually quasi-looking for a job now at a super senior level (lead engineer or above) and finding it surprisingly frustrating. I'm employed full-time and have a family. I get daily phone calls from recruiters with interesting positions and then expected to be available for 8 hours of interviews and crap like that.
I jumped through a few of these hoops early on but since I have a breadth of experience instead of a laser specific focus on one technology, I'm apparently getting disqualified from some of these positions. It's been a really weird experience for me. I mostly gave up, figuring that if I lost my current (good) job I'd have the free time to devote 16+ hours each week interviewing/applying for the types of gigs I want. Our industry is bizarre at times.
It's weird being on the other end. Almost all of my jobs have come from word of mouth and personal networking where I never even needed to interview. I interview and hire all of my engineers by taking them to lunch and just getting a feel for their interests and personality, so seeing how everyone else seems to be doing it has been a huge culture shock.
Well, they definitely don't have 30 years of experience...
And that matters. A big part of what you've learned in 30 years is mistakes not to make. It's the bugs you don't write, and the bad architectures you don't build. That makes you a much better programmer, even if you know less about the new shiny than someone who just went through a bootcamp.
For the sake of my ego, I'd love to hear that these bootcamp graduates have shallow, fragile knowledge in a narrowly focused area.