
Advice for Software Apprentices - jparise
http://bthdonohue.com/2019/09/27/advice-software-apprentices.html
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danpalmer
Good list. I’ve just met some boot camp grads at their graduation demo day
sort of thing, and I think a lot of this would apply to them.

They all called themselves full-stack, but the author is right, this is
spreading themselves far too thinly given the amount of knowledge and
experience they actually have. Instead pitching themselves as “frontend
focused with some backend Node experience” would be far more convincing to me
when hiring.

One thing that bothered me was that they all called themselves a “Junior
Software Engineer”. Technically this is sort of wrong, as none have been
employed and so don’t yet have a title. For practical purposes I understand
wanting to have a title to pitch yourself as, but I don’t think anyone is a
Junior after 3 months of training. After 3 years at university, or 1-3 years
in industry (depending on candidate and environment), I can see Junior being
an appropriate level. I wonder if “apprentice” is a better level for them to
call themselves.

Maybe boot camps should be encouraging that title, and maybe even helping
companies develop progression plans. I’m skeptical about hiring a boot camp
grad straight out of a program because of how long it may take them to become
productive. If the program provided a sort of roadmap, with further skills
development, I can imagine being more interested as there might be less
uncertainty. That’s not to say we couldn’t develop this roadmap ourselves with
the candidate, but the boot camp providing it may help pitch candidates to
employers.

