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Ask HN: Is a bootcamp worth it for a recent math grad?

2 points by m1nz1 5y ago

I recently graduated with a degree in computational math. I took about 8-9 computer science courses. The most notable are probably C++, operating systems, and algorithms. I started the major late -- end of my second year. That meant that I had to take summer classes to graduate on time and didn't have an internship until my Junior year summer. The internship was good, but it wasn't at a big, reputable company. Now, I am looking for jobs. I have had reasonable success, but haven't landed anything yet. I've applied to a few hundred positions, but I've only been interviewed by 6. Of those, I've made it to the onsite 3 times now. I made it through one and got axed by the manager, didn't pass another, and have the third coming up. I also currently have a job, but I really want to leave it because my manager essentially lied to, telling me it was a software engineering role when really all I do is excel all day. I am wondering whether you think it is worth it to try a bootcamp if this next onsite doesn't go my way? I'm desperate to leave my job, but I've heard mixed things about bootcamps.

andymoe 5y ago
1. Y’all should always tell us your location when asking for job advice here (and probably make it easy to contact you - email in HN about field) 2. Math degree and a little experience should be enough in the current US market but again don’t know your location. Personally would not do a boot camp in your situation. Give it another couple months of applying with a focus on places where you know folks. If you don’t know folks in the industry solve that problem.
- verdverm 5y ago
  I second this and will add that a "career or job coach" will be worth the money. They will help you get your resume, linkedin, and such in order. The big thing they offer is experience and insights into the process, and coaching / review on e2e process. Finding a good coach is the hard part.
- m1nz1 5y ago
  You’re totally right! I’m in NY. For a while I was looking only for work here, but as of a few weeks ago I’m aiming for any city. I’m an Italian citizen so I could even go to Europe hahaha. Thank you for the optimism about my position. I’m wondering how you would suggest meeting more people at companies that interest me? LinkedIn? I wasn’t a CS major so all but one of my school friends are nowhere near these industries.
PaulHoule 5y ago
A few hundred applications leading to 6 interviews is not "reasonable success" unless you were in a field where jobs are super-hard to get (say tenure track professor) or we were in a recession. You need to debug your job hunt. Conventional wisdom is that you need to think only about the stage you are getting stuck: that is, if you ratio of applications to interviews is bad (it is) you need to improve your resume, CV, cover letters, who you apply to, etc. The level of success you're describing in the interview process is not abysmal but I can tell you are worried about it and would say you also need to work on "presentation of self". Most of the bootcamps out there are: (i) applications programming in Javascript or (ii) data science with Python. These don't work miracles but they might fill in a gap if there really is a gap. What kind of jobs are you looking for?
- m1nz1 5y ago
  I should have clarified. I do not consider my rate of getting interviews to be reasonably successful lol. At first, I was very unsure of what I wanted to do. I spent a lot of time applying to really competitive software/quant jobs at finance firms. I mainly did this because I felt pressure to come home (NY). I then wasted a lot of time applying to data science roles with experience requirements that were out of my range. I am good at Python, SQL, feature engineering, and stats for an undergrad (I think), but these jobs all wanted 2+ YOE. I thought that I might make it with my math background. I was also panicking about the lack of entry level positions I was seeing. I had a terrible go of it and it really shot my confidence. I had the two onsites during this period. Now there are more entry level positions and I've been applying for lots of data/software engineering positions. I've applied to maybe 20 places in the past month and gotten 3 interviews. All 3 are at companies that a few months ago I thought had zero interest in me. I am also about to start searching outside of my home city (NY) because that was a stupid constraint to put on myself in the first place. I do worry that my resume is not as strong as others due to only having one internship and projects. I've been working on a few projects to jazz things up, but progress is slow because I have this terrible excel job at the moment. I was thinking a bootcamp would be a good way to work on projects with less of a gap on the resume. That is probably the wrong reason to go for one because it is mainly about the optics...

There are two paths to getting a quant job in finance: (1) prove you can make money trading, (2) have connections. I am in Ithaca and make it to NYC from time to attend free conferences of various sorts, some put on by vendors (Sun Microsystems, AWS) and others put on by industry associations (say American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) also there are all sorts of meetups. Tell the guy pitching a system that it's not quite the bee's knees for main memory databases in 2005 and you might get a business card pushed into your hand from somebody who works at a really famous hedge fund. If I were in NYC I would be going to those kind of events as much as I could and I'd be dressed as a goth corporate raider/vampire. To stick out at that kind of event takes a mindset similar to the person who "makes money trading" in that you need to be 90 degrees out of phase in the leading direction. "Having a connection" thus works in a different modes, one of which is "I am a bright and bushy tailed ivy leaguer who was on the rowing team", another one is that you find out about opportunities before other people do, know the people who make the collection management software used at the Met, etc. That last one might take 6-18 months to pay off but it pays off handsomely. Unless you really don't like NYC for some reason I wouldn't leave it. I think most of the "data scientists" and organizations that employ data scientists are poseurs. I blew a really good opportunity because I didn't have the courage to say: you're going to have to make a big investment in building a training set which matches the business problem you're trying to solve. Instead I went ahead and did the same things that couldn't possibly work that everybody else did. There is nothing like a good demo, my experience is that every side project I start and stick to seriously changes my life somehow in about 18 months. Looking at your last round of job hunting I would say you should be focused equally on resume and interview, I would point you to this guy https://job-interview-answers.com/job-interview-tips/about-bob-firestone/ https://job-interview-answers.com/job-interview-tips/about-b... and take what he says seriously, he helped me get over my fear of job interviews and actually feel like they are fun and empowering instead of scary!