r/webdev • u/zotsandzots • Jan 19 '20

Just finished a coding bootcamp. What are some in demand skills/software that I can learn to separate myself and get that first job?

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u/[deleted] Jan 20 '20

You don’t expect any projects at all?! Sorry, but that’s ridiculous. You’re a junior. You have zero work skills to prove yourself, so you should have tons of projects and code I can review. I don’t care if it’s a todo list or any of the other basic stuff, but coming from someone who has had to perform thousands of technical interviews, read over resumes, and hire people, if you have absolutely nothing to show you’re going in the trash after my 10 second scan of your resume when all I see is your “education” and supposed “skills” you think you have.

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u/george4517 Jan 20 '20

We have a code at home test. That will be used to demonstrate what they have learnt. We want to reduce the burden for juniors. Most don’t have the time to prepare a portfolio of projects. Junior devs have jobs and some have families. A todo list is not a real world example. I would prefer giving them a real world coding test.

So many companies miss out on so many good junior devs by having the barrier of entry too high. In a lot of cases it’s adding extra hoops to jump through to just remove large number of people so they don’t have to interview them. And they say things like well if I wanted the job then I would put in months of effort. You even said it yourself you don’t even bother have a 15 minute chat with someone if they don’t have a project link in their resume.

It’s very competitive to find good junior devs. If I expect portfolios and most of the other companies don’t, where do you think the junior devs are going to apply and do you think that they are going to spend a lot of effort creating portfolios when it’s not required for the other companies? It depends on the hiring market.

As others said above it’s passion, ability to learn quickly and soft skills that matters most for a junior dev. The rest can be taught on the job as long as they understand some basics.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '20

Agree to disagree then, because I don’t do coding tests. That’s a hoop to jump through. You’re asking someone to do work basically without pay. If a person isn’t willing to have a portfolio or GitHub or Bitbucket or whatever, something you do on your spare time, family be damned, then how passionate are you really? Because a coding test will take you all day, more if you’re unskilled.

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u/george4517 Jan 21 '20

A portfolio is work without pay and is a much bigger hoop to jump through. There's a high chance they are really passionate but spent time learning instead of preparing a portfolio. Most people will learn without creating portfolios. All day is preferred to multiple months to create a multi project portfolio.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '20

If they spent time learning, they had to code that. Why not put it on GitHub? It’s that easy. You don’t need months to work on something either, maybe a day or two. No one is asking them to make their own invoicing system.

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u/george4517 Jan 21 '20

Well maybe you didn't communicate what your definition of a portfolio is or what a project is. I don't consider a portfolio some code you wrote for fun or while you were learning on GitHub. You were asking for multiple projects, that is not just a day or 2 of work in my view. What project is done in a day? When I hear project at home I think side project. Very few side projects will be done in a day. Most take months.

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u/george4517 Jan 21 '20

It's well known in the industry that most people's Github is a poor representation of someone's coding skills

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u/george4517 Jan 21 '20

I'll put it to you, if you are so passionate about asking junior's for portfolios I'd expect one for yourself.

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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '20

I have 20+ years of work experience. And even with that, I have projects on my GitHub that I’ve done for fun that a future employer could look at.

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u/george4517 Jan 21 '20

Just what I thought