{"items": [{"author": "Tilia", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941594649652", "anchor": "fb-941594649652", "service": "fb", "text": "I get the sense that starting salaries for new programmers has dipped a little, compared to 7 years ago but it could just be that as I've lived here my \"sample size\" of starting salaries that I'm aware of has increased.", "timestamp": "1526408662"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941594649652&reply_comment_id=941595403142", "anchor": "fb-941594649652_941595403142", "service": "fb", "text": "→ This isn't a great source, but it looks like median SF H1B listings have gone:
2014: $110k (n=1236)
2015: $115k (n=1528)
2016: $118k (n=1577)
2017: $120k (n=1678)
2018: $122k (n=1013)
http://h1bdata.info/index.php?city=SAN%20FRANCISCO&em=...", "timestamp": "1526409187"}, {"author": "Tilia", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941594649652&reply_comment_id=941601341242", "anchor": "fb-941594649652_941601341242", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Maybe median salaries are increasing because starting salaries are dropping? I've heard 70k-80k is common, and 60k is not unheard of for a new hire.", "timestamp": "1526412529"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941594649652&reply_comment_id=941601930062", "anchor": "fb-941594649652_941601930062", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I see how starting salaries could decrease despite median H1B salaries rising, as is the nature of medians, but I'm confused about your use of \"because\".
$60-80k does sound lower than I'd thought for Bay Area starting pay. Is that total compensation, or just the salary component?", "timestamp": "1526412790"}, {"author": "Tilia", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941594649652&reply_comment_id=941605537832", "anchor": "fb-941594649652_941605537832", "service": "fb", "text": "→ what I meant by \"because\" was simply me hypothesizing that the pool of money was staying relatively constant, and experienced vetted programmmers were being able to be paid more because of savings on new hires, Regardless, I can't answer your second question, because to be perfectly honest I don't know. Do folks normally say \"They offered me a starting salary of 70k\" to mean just the raw salary? or does it mean the whole package?", "timestamp": "1526414574"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941594649652&reply_comment_id=941605702502", "anchor": "fb-941594649652_941605702502", "service": "fb", "text": "→ If they say \"salary\" they probably mean just that. It's hard to compare offers, though, without knowing total comp. And startups with very hard to value stock options make everything even messier.", "timestamp": "1526414742"}, {"author": "Tilia", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941594649652&reply_comment_id=941605797312", "anchor": "fb-941594649652_941605797312", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I'll be looking for post-boot camp jobs in 7 months, so I'll be able to give you more up-to-date field info at that point :D", "timestamp": "1526414795"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941594649652&reply_comment_id=941606959982", "anchor": "fb-941594649652_941606959982", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I'm not sure I see a reason for the pool of money to stay constant. Companies mostly pay as little as employees are willing to accept, so if more employees become available then wages can go down and the company is more profitable.", "timestamp": "1526415376"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941594649652&reply_comment_id=941695447652", "anchor": "fb-941594649652_941695447652", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I would be surprised if the \"pool of money\" hasn't gone up a lot in the last few years.", "timestamp": "1526472484"}, {"author": "Nannan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941594659632", "anchor": "fb-941594659632", "service": "fb", "text": "Very interesting - thanks for posting!", "timestamp": "1526408670"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941595877192", "anchor": "fb-941595877192", "service": "fb", "text": "\"Since bootcamps started, I've been expecting that they would expand enough that the labor market for programmers would cool down. Salaries would fall, initially for entry level people, later for more experienced people, and then level off as it stopped being worth it for people to move into programming. I think this hasn't happened, though I don't have great visibility into entry level compensation, and I don't really understand why. This indicates something about my model here is pretty off, and I'd be curious if people have ideas for why this hasn't happened.\"
Some interesting stuff in https://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/ that touches on this:
\"How is it possible that programmers are paid so well without these other barriers to entry that similarly remunerative fields have? One possibility is that we have a shortage of programmers. If that's the case, you'd expect more programmers to enter the field, bringing down compensation. CS enrollments have been at record levels recently, so this may already be happening. Another possibility is that programming is uniquely hard in some way, but that seems implausible to me. Programming doesn't seem inherently harder than electrical engineering or chemical engineering and it certainly hasn't gotten much harder over the past decade, but during that timeframe, programming has gone from having similar compensation to most engineering fields to paying much better. The last time I was negotiating with a EE company about offers, they remarked to me that their VPs don't make as much as I do, and I work at a software company that pays relatively poorly compared to its peers. There's no reason to believe that we won't see a flow of people from engineering fields into programming until compensation is balanced.
Another possibility is that U.S. immigration laws act as a protectionist barrier to prop up programmer compensation. It seems impossible for this to last (why shouldn't there by really valuable non-U.S. companies), but it does appear to be somewhat true for now. When I was at Google, one thing that was remarkable to me was that they'd pay you approximately the same thing in a small Midwestern town as in Silicon Valley, but they'd pay you much less in London. Whenever one of these discussions comes up, people always bring up the \"fact\" that SV salaries aren't really as good as they sound because the cost of living is so high, but companies will not only match SV offers in Seattle, they'll match them in places like Madison, Wisconsin. My best guess for why this happens is that someone in the Midwest can credibly threaten to move to SV and take a job at any company there, whereas someone in London can't2. While we seem unlikely to loosen current immigration restrictions, our immigration restrictions have caused and continue to cause people who would otherwise have founded companies in the U.S. to found companies elsewhere. Given that the U.S. doesn't have a monopoly on people who found startups and that we do our best to keep people who want to found startups here out, it seems inevitable that there will eventually be Facebooks and Googles founded outside of the U.S. who compete for programmers the same way companies compete inside the U.S.
Another theory that I've heard a lot lately is that programmers at large companies get paid a lot because of the phenomenon described in Kremer's O-ring model. This model assumes that productivity is multiplicative. If your co-workers are better, you're more productive and produce more value. If that's the case, you expect a kind of assortive matching where you end up with high-skill firms that pay better, and low-skill firms that pay worse. This model has a kind of intuitive appeal to it, but it can't explain why programming compensation has higher dispersion than (for example) electrical engineering compensation. With the prevalence of open source, it's much easier to utilize the work of productive people outside your firm than in most fields. This model should be less true of programming than in most engineering fields, but the dispersion in compensation is higher.
I don't understand this at all and would love to hear a compelling theory for why programming \"should\" pay more than other similar fields, or why it should pay as much as fields that have much higher barriers to entry.\"", "timestamp": "1526409635"}, {"author": "Alice", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941595877192&reply_comment_id=941597473992", "anchor": "fb-941595877192_941597473992", "service": "fb", "text": "→ My guess is that (a) the threat to form a startup gives tech workers more salary leverage (check my seeing payroll % vs profits) my other guess is that the sector is growing even faster than workers are entering it (look at income growth and capitalization growth) (c) dev\u2019s have a high propensity if straight white men, a population whose work is usually seen as highly valuable and paid accordingly (check if dev demographics are different from EE demographics, seems unlikely)", "timestamp": "1526410621"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941595877192&reply_comment_id=941602094732", "anchor": "fb-941595877192_941602094732", "service": "fb", "text": "→ \"(a) the threat to form a startup gives tech workers more salary leverage (check my seeing payroll % vs profits)\"
This one seems likely to me. Specifically, I think it's likely that the growth in startups as a normal thing to do since YC started has put a lot of upward pressure on salaries at big software companies. This explains why software engineers are generally better compensated than other kinds of workers who can make their companies a lot of money: going into business as a programmer is way more doable than as, say, an EE, because capital requirements are so low. But I don't think this explains the continual rise in salaries, since people should keep switching into software.
\"(b) the sector is growing even faster than workers are entering it (look at income growth and capitalization growth)\"
This also seems likely to me, and would be the basic supply and demand explanation. Supply has gone up, but demand has gone up even more.
\"(c) devs have a high propensity if straight white men, a population whose work is usually seen as highly valuable and paid accordingly (check if dev demographics are different from EE demographics, seems unlikely)\"
Is the idea that managers overestimate the productivity of hires in this demographic, and so overcompensate them?
Developer demographics also skew heavily East Asian and South Asian relative to the general population, and before the tech boom I don't think we would say those were groups whose work was usually seen as highly valuable.", "timestamp": "1526412846"}, {"author": "Alice", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941595877192&reply_comment_id=941621001842", "anchor": "fb-941595877192_941621001842", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman it is true that white men are often paid more for the same work, but also that industries gain status and pay via association with white masculinity.
Certainly code developer has simultaneously gotten much more make and much higher paid, and I do believe that the two are mutually reinforcing.
The immigrant component is an interesting point, and I would be surprised to see demographics explain the gap between dev\u2019s and EE\u2019s.", "timestamp": "1526423578"}, {"author": "Ruthan", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941595877192&reply_comment_id=941667927802", "anchor": "fb-941595877192_941667927802", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I'd be interested in information on the average longevity* of a dev career versus a career in, e.g., EE. My skips-a-lot-of-causal-steps hunch answer to the question \"why do developers get paid so much?\" is \"because tech gets a ton of VC\". You (a startup) take on a huge round of funding, hire 100% more people, lather rinse repeat; almost every such business eventually ~fails, either by literally collapsing or by getting restructured away in an exit, and everyone who hasn't already jumped ship is facing a period of unemployment ranging from days to forever. So possibly _risk_ is a relevant economics consideration here?
* By which I think I mean \"total days worked\", so, accounting time between jobs against \"longevity\".", "timestamp": "1526441853"}, {"author": "David Chudzicki", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941595877192&reply_comment_id=941695886772", "anchor": "fb-941595877192_941695886772", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Ruthan I don't think the high pay is compensation for risk. It's true that involuntary turnover is pretty high for smaller companies, but (a) I think people often find new work pretty quickly, and (b) larger companies (which are a lot of the employment and IMO tend to compensate higher than startups) don't have this so much.", "timestamp": "1526473008"}, {"author": "Quinn", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941598207522", "anchor": "fb-941598207522", "service": "fb", "text": "I managed to go from \"education in math but little programming knowledge\" to \"SDE 1 at Amazon subsidiary\" in 15 months of full-time self-study (Dec 2012 - Feb 2014). I suspect that the focused path of a coding bootcamp could have accelerated this timeline (left to my own devices, I detoured a lot into functional programming, which I don't regret now, but it wasn't very helpful in getting the first job).
I personally found Learn Python the Hard Way too boring and instead used Udacity's Python courses plus Project Euler for the basics. I also think it helps to have a few \"finished projects\" on GitHub and your resume (e.g. I had a Tetris game, and Scrabble against a computer opponent).
Cracking the Coding Interview is great for algorithms at the level of 1-hour interviews. When I was interviewing for my first job, I was very weak at object-oriented design and testing (e.g. I did not even know what a unit test was!), and I believe I failed a few interviews because of this.", "timestamp": "1526411206"}, {"author": "Peter", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941601296332", "anchor": "fb-941601296332", "service": "fb", "text": "A terminal MS in CS used to be a reasonable way for someone with no prior experience and no CS to get in the door, but the rise of \"boot camps\" has called that into question. Still, if you want to learn a little CS with your javascript, it isn't the worst thing for a career-changer. As a second CS degree, it's pretty useless.", "timestamp": "1526412476"}, {"author": "Michael", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941601296332&reply_comment_id=941611545792", "anchor": "fb-941601296332_941611545792", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Except as a stepping stone to a doctorate, which can be useful but isn't always.", "timestamp": "1526418467"}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941603816282", "anchor": "fb-941603816282", "service": "fb", "text": "I'm going the opposite direction -- trying to run fast away from anything that only involves I.T. and programming. Not to say those skills won't come in handy in future, but being an I.T. admin/code plumber for the rest of my life isn't my idea of a good time.", "timestamp": "1526413512"}, {"author": "William", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941603876162", "anchor": "fb-941603876162", "service": "fb", "text": "I tried and failed with Learn Python the Hard Way multiple times. I finally succeeded when I took Udacity\u2019s CS101 course (back when it was open and free and wasn\u2019t also trying to sell a credential - the program may have changed now), and I now think an in-browser IDE is the best possible feedback loop for self-teaching programming.", "timestamp": "1526413536"}, {"author": "KC", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941603995922", "anchor": "fb-941603995922", "service": "fb", "text": "May be worth noting that word on the street is that bootcamps in the US are either closing down (a couple just last year e.g.) or not opening when they might have a few years ago, while bootcamps in other countries are booming. The bootcamps are having trouble finding pricing models that pay for the cost of the education but are affordable enough to the demographics they're trying to recruit, and hiring bonuses from partner companies aren't compensating for this sufficiently; both of these sound like bootcamp saturation to me. Not sure what exactly the consequences for new programmers entering the market will be. (But don't let that distract you if you are interested in entering.)", "timestamp": "1526413666"}, {"author": "Phillip", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941604779352", "anchor": "fb-941604779352", "service": "fb", "text": "Back when I was young and dinosaurs roamed the earth many of the most talented programmers were lured away before they finished college.", "timestamp": "1526414061"}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941605198512", "anchor": "fb-941605198512", "service": "fb", "text": "Programming used to be cool. Now it's mostly helping corporate and government entities steal (aka \"cloud\") your data, mine it, and track your habits so better ads can be tossed in your face.", "timestamp": "1526414304"}, {"author": "Phillip", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941605198512&reply_comment_id=941605682542", "anchor": "fb-941605198512_941605682542", "service": "fb", "text": "→ If it were only for ads that wouldn't be so bad.", "timestamp": "1526414724"}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941605198512&reply_comment_id=941605832242", "anchor": "fb-941605198512_941605832242", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Phillip -- true, the relationship between corp scum and gov't scum (in the US) is unholy. Read about the Securus scandal that broke in the last few days -- a company that's scraping all US cell location records. Officially it's for law enforcement only, but they don't check for warrant validity, so anyone with access can stalk anyone.", "timestamp": "1526414815"}, {"author": "Phillip", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941605198512&reply_comment_id=941606211482", "anchor": "fb-941605198512_941606211482", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Andrew My father used to say to me: I'm glad I'm going and not coming. I sadly understand him. I wish we, as a society, would not look at dystopian novels as \"how to\" books.", "timestamp": "1526414947"}, {"author": "Ezra", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941618621612", "anchor": "fb-941618621612", "service": "fb", "text": "Jeff, if what you describe is truly the easiest path, it could be that more people aren't becoming programmers because most people can't afford to invest that much time into self-study.", "timestamp": "1526422404"}, {"author": "John", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941638900972", "anchor": "fb-941638900972", "service": "fb", "text": "Benjamin Schwyn", "timestamp": "1526428719"}, {"author": "Zera", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941641480802", "anchor": "fb-941641480802", "service": "fb", "text": "I\u2019ve figured salaries for boot camp grads have dropped and that it\u2019s harder to find something as a new grad, given camps flooding the market, but that experience beyond boot camps actually does matter quite a bit so salaries for experienced engineers haven\u2019t been particularly affected.
Also web devs, which is what boot camps seem to mainly teach, are only a portion of the job pool, so maybe web dev salaries will go down a bit while data engineer / infrastructure engineer / etc is less impacted or less quickly impacted.
Lots of speculation though, may be totally off base.", "timestamp": "1526429724"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941641480802&reply_comment_id=941641645472", "anchor": "fb-941641480802_941641645472", "service": "fb", "text": "→ \"I've figured\" -> as in this is your experience, or what you guess is happening?", "timestamp": "1526429836"}, {"author": "Zera", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941641480802&reply_comment_id=941641914932", "anchor": "fb-941641480802_941641914932", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Jeff Kaufman this is my expectation, which seems to match with the limited data I\u2019ve seen in terms of industry numbers, job boards / listings, anecdata of continued willingness to pay larger and larger sums for experienced engineers and bright seeming boot camp grads taking a while to find a job despite lots of openings.", "timestamp": "1526429969"}, {"author": "Zera", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941641480802&reply_comment_id=941645233282", "anchor": "fb-941641480802_941645233282", "service": "fb", "text": "→ It also matches with my personal experience (my salary has continued to increase over time, I\u2019m not a boot camp grad or web dev).", "timestamp": "1526430059"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941641480802&reply_comment_id=941647463812", "anchor": "fb-941641480802_941647463812", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Salary continuing to increase over time could just mean experience is is valuable, or the labor market for experienced devs is tightening, without telling us anything about entry level jobs though", "timestamp": "1526431178"}, {"author": "Zera", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941641480802&reply_comment_id=941658771152", "anchor": "fb-941641480802_941658771152", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Right. You just asked whether my view was my experience or my guess as to what's happening, so I mentioned both aspects even though my experience doesn't apply to entry level jobs (and if I were entry level, it wouldn't apply to experienced engineer jobs).", "timestamp": "1526437604"}, {"author": "Zera", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941641480802&reply_comment_id=941659105482", "anchor": "fb-941641480802_941659105482", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I can't imagine my current company hiring anyone, even bootcamp grads, at 60-80k and expect if anyone is getting those amounts it's because they're talking to a startup that is offering equity as alternative to market salary.
Or, as we speculated, the flooding of boot camp grads is hurting foot-in-the-door positions rather more than later ones. At my current company new hires get somewhere around 100k though.", "timestamp": "1526437755"}, {"author": "William", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941651665392", "anchor": "fb-941651665392", "service": "fb", "text": "When my partner was deciding last year which bootcamp to attend, we looked at several deferred tuition boot camps, but ultimately decided that none of the deferred tuition plans on offer were convincing signals of quality vs. the competition. The fine print always specified something like: in order to be off the hook for tuition, you first had to apply about a full-time job's worth of effort consistently job-hunting for a solid year after graduation. This seemed like much longer than most people would be willing or able to stick with it if \"do a bootcamp\" turned out to be an obviously failing plan after graduation, and therefore the bootcamp would get its pound of flesh regardless.", "timestamp": "1526433613"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "→ this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1526502630"}, {"author": "William", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941651665392&reply_comment_id=941754314682", "anchor": "fb-941651665392_941754314682", "service": "fb", "text": "→ If that's the case, it seems like it would be in their interest to write the actual plan into the contract instead of writing something else that scares off potential students but would be business suicide to actually enforce.", "timestamp": "1526506293"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941651665392&reply_comment_id=941755971362", "anchor": "fb-941651665392_941755971362", "service": "fb", "text": "→ My guess is what they can enforce depends on how lenient they write it. Like, maybe now they say a year of looking but in practice they won't sue if you stop after six months, but if they wrote six months into the contract it might be bad PR to go after people who stopped after three months.", "timestamp": "1526507328"}, {"author": "David German", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/111229345142780712481", "anchor": "gp-1526437700740", "service": "gp", "text": "I was going to say \"demand growth\", but Alice beat me to it. The BLS is optimistic this will continue:\n
\n
\nhttps://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm#tab-6\n
\n
\nI think SWE demand is different from EE demand because EE labor scales so much better. Few businesses would have a use for custom chips, but lots of businesses have a use for custom software. \n
\n
\n
", "timestamp": 1526437700}, {"author": "Andrew", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941701370782", "anchor": "fb-941701370782", "service": "fb", "text": "Has anyone here who worked in an office used https://automatetheboringstuff.com/ to learn to code while solving problems at your employer? I've long suspected it would be a good strategy but I got a bachelors in CS so I can't tell firsthand.", "timestamp": "1526477372"}, {"author": "Leah", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941701370782&reply_comment_id=941778825562", "anchor": "fb-941701370782_941778825562", "service": "fb", "text": "→ Back when I had the sort of job where things like \"manually rename a bunch of files\" were part of my workload, I considered doing this sort of automation and was told by my then-boss that I wasn't allowed to. I think the objection was partly \"You're asking to install something I don't understand on your work computer\" and partly \"That's cheating, your job is to rename these files and you're trying to find ways to get out of doing it.\"
Obviously, not everyone's boss is like this. But.", "timestamp": "1526517522"}, {"author": "Erica", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941701370782&reply_comment_id=941790552062", "anchor": "fb-941701370782_941790552062", "service": "fb", "text": "→ I had a temp job that included \"fixing\" a Word template every time you used it (and filling/ sending these out was the job, so you opened it MANY times a day). My boss didn't know what a macro was. IT had blocked them. My boss wouldn't let us use them.
Da fuq.", "timestamp": "1526524391"}, {"author": "Alison", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/100446102291436828363", "anchor": "gp-1526483509622", "service": "gp", "text": "I have a bachelor's in math and taught high school geometry for a number of years. I quit my job to be a stay at home mom when my first child was born, but I knew that I wanted to return to work in five years or so and start a new career in software. Attending a bootcamp wasn't compatible with caring for my kids, but I was afraid that I didn't have enough motivation to keep up with self-study without some form of accountability, so I've been working on my master's in computer science part-time. Because my choice to leave the workforce was independent of my desire to switch careers, there really wasn't any opportunity cost, and the tuition at my local state school has been very reasonable. That said, I am learning basically none of the skills I need for an entry-level job. In four years in this program, not a single living person has ever looked at my code. So I basically still have to do all the self-study I would have had to otherwise, on top of jumping through the hoops provided by my classes. The only thing I think I'm getting out of the program is some reassurance that \"I'm on track\". If I were just doing independent study I would feel more anxious that I wasn't doing enough to prepare. I do hope that my degree will signal something positive to employers - but I've realized it is not remotely sufficient on its own.", "timestamp": 1526483509}, {"author": "John", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/941587329322?comment_id=941716166132", "anchor": "fb-941716166132", "service": "fb", "text": "Some ancient history: In spring of 1962 I got a job to write the code generator for a new Fortran Compiler (in assembly language of course); this launched a fine career. I had taken 1 programming course at Columbia in fall 1961 while winding down my unliked PhD Physics graduate studies, and then 2 course at MIT - one with Marvin Minsky - and a part-time job at the MIT Computation center. I still have a card deck of a Fortran English-to-Piglatin translator that I wrote then.", "timestamp": "1526487257"}]}