Post Graduation Entry #2

I spent the first two weeks of the new year on the road. I've been wanting to check out the Pacific Northwest for a long time and I thought about getting this new year started with a trip. After that finished I returned home and went full mode on the job search. I also got another temp job to keep an income while looking for something permanent. I posted my resume on Dice and Indeed and applied for jobs through there. For most of January that was my job hunting strategy but it didn't pan out so well as I usually got silence but whenever a recruiter did contact me it was to tell me that I lack experience and therefore am not a suitable candidate for consideration. I try to explain that this bootcamp and my projects can show them that I more than make up for in experience but that didn't matter as much as years I have under my belt as a developer. 

I spoke to a Dojo friend who found a job in the last month of the previous year about my approach and he admitted that job boards like Dice and Indeed charge recruiters to post jobs on their site, meaning recruiters will want to get their money's worth and find a candidate who is at least mid-level. His advice was to keep my resume on those sites and perhaps I'll get a couple of responses but in the meantime look for jobs through other means. He recommended Angel List, since there is no middleman agency and most resumes and inquiries go straight to the hiring managers and company founders. He also suggested that I subscribe to Coding Dojo's job boards for their Seattle and Bay Area branches. 

So I changed my strategy. The number of applications I submit each day went down significantly but I was getting a few more responses for interviews. Since then I've had maybe half a dozen phone interviews. They seemed to go well but I'd end up getting rejections in the end. The market is competitive and it may not seem like it at the moment but the recruiter is also speaking to other people who are way more qualified than me. 

Most of my classmates are in the same predicament as I am. At least two got jobs straight out of the Dojo; one went back to his old job; one is working remotely; one has moved away to escape the expensive cost of living; I heard another one has given up entirely and will be taking a sales position; another one is doing a startup; and two went back to college with one of them getting an internship not related to development. The rest are still on the search. 

I speak to VT every now and then. Before he left he said that he was going to work on projects and algorithms until January before starting the job hunt. Since January whenever we do talk he's usually vague on his end. I don't know if he's going through the same struggles as all of us are. 

One of my instructors left the Dojo in January to become a freelancer and asked me if I wanted to help him out as a volunteer for a startup he's working for. I agreed to; good experience opportunity and it was a chance to learn more about Rails, which I neglected to back in that stack. 

I got a few calls from recruiters and they managed to set me up with a couple of interviews. Most of them didn't pan out either but one of them did offer me a position as a developer in the east coast. My initial reaction was to say no but after speaking with my family I realized that I shouldn't be picky. They cite my desire to travel and the harshness of the currently job market that requires me to have experience. I admit that this position is tempting for all those reasons they said but I am uncomfortable of leaving the Bay Area for a couple of years. I haven't spent too much time in the east coast and am not sure what might happen over there. But then again I have spent most of twenties in the west coast and not much as happened since I finished college. So I won't say no but I won't say yes just yet, fortunately I have a small window to consider this further. 

It's tough and trying. There are a lot of jobs here but way more qualified people competing for it. A nice college degree and a coding bootcamp can give you a leg up in this market but you also have to be a little creative, whatever that might mean to you. 

Post Graduation Entry #1

A lot of time has passed by that I feel like I should give some updates on life since graduating from Coding Dojo.

The week after graduation I got a call from the temp agency I use to work for and spent the next month working as a data entry clerk in Gilroy and San Jose. It was great to be back to work and taking a break from all those lines of code but I knew that I still needed to attend residency and work on the job hunt so I spoke to the instructors about delaying residency until the next month, in December, and they were fine. I still came in from time to time to use the office space to get some work done. I also joined a gym to get back in shape after three months of sitting in front of computer screens and stuffing myself with protein bars.

December came around, I finished my temp work, and I was back in the Dojo. For residency the instructor wanted me to work on at least three projects since that amount of work will often gain students notice for jobs. After much thought I thought about doing the following:

1. Treedentity - In the Fall of 2014 I took a class in college that was centered around applying technology for the community. The team I was with was tasked with designing a tree-leaf identification site for a middle school in Cupertino. I was the main developer for this project and without any knowledge of frameworks and libraries much of the code was written in manually, resulting in a rigid site with content that didn't change with the device it was being seen in. After this bootcamp I went back to the code, cleaned it up a lot, applied Bootstrap and the MEAN stack to make it into a single-page application that was more fluid and changed depending on the device it was seen in. Final code is on GitHub. 
2. Paper Crane Translations - Do you remember my German friend starting up his own business and asking me to design the website for it? Since the site was very simple and didn't require any back-end I figured it would be easier to do the entire site as a single-page application, henceforth used the MEAN stack. My German friend wasn't always available to give me his inputs so I used my spare time to create the logo and background images for the site. By the time he finally got back to me and gave me his inputs the site was ready for deployment. Today you can find it under www.papercranetranslations.com. 
3. Graffiti - My first two projects were easy and was not the best use of everything I learned at the Dojo. The instructor reminded me of that and encouraged me to pursue a more challenging project. The main bulk of Coding Dojo's curriculum focused on CRUD designs (create, read, update, destroy). Sites that allow users to make posts, update them, show them off to other users, and delete them if necessary are CRUD sites. Think about social media sites like Facebook or Twitter. So I decided to make my own social media site called Graffiti (you can write on the "wall" like graffiti) and using Ruby on Rails. I tried initially to do it on MEAN since I am very accustomed to it but after a week of solving one problem after another I realized that MEAN is not built for something of that magnitude. MEAN is centered around single-page sites and in social media sites often involve changing pages when users log in/out or visit static pages. After about two weeks of working on that project I deployed something basic. Check this out. It's not complete and there are a lot of bugs that I am unable to work out but I felt like a learned a lot more about Rails and how to implement complex designs. I also learned that it is important to work with others since sites like Facebook are so big and complicated that one developer cannot hope to understand every single detail on their own. 

Also, you might have noticed that I used the word "deploy". Up until residency I had no idea how to deploy sites after completing them. It wasn't until I got around to Graffiti that I was forced to figure that part out. It took a whole day to get it up online but once I did it became easy for Paper Crane Translations, which really pleased my German friend. I used Amazon Web Services for both cases and for the domain name I used Godaddy. 

I wish I could go into more detail about that and what else has happened since December but one of my college friends has asked me to help him out so I have to go and meet him. I have a lot more to say and perhaps it would be better to split this into two entries. 

Thanks for sticking around. 

Day 74: Graduation

The last day was yesterday and I should have written about it then but I missed that entry. I'll explain what happened.

I got there at the usual time. There was no algorithm this morning and everyone was working on the last touches of their final projects. I called my German friend again but his phone is turned off. I sent him a video demonstration of what I had so far and told him to get back to me with his review. After that I filled in the contents with lorem ipsum, German and English versions, so it could look somewhat presentable.

Rough draft website for Paper Crane Translations

VT had to a plane to catch in the afternoon and was planning to the dojo at 10am to SFO. On the last day of college everyone was hugging, crying, and telling each other how enriched their lives were made because of the other person's friendship. That wasn't the case here. VT was determined to get as much work done as possible for his team before he took off. I sat on the couch, coded whatever I could and waited for him to start saying his goodbyes. When the time came he said his goodbye to everyone. We hugged and said that we'll stay in touch. RS drove him to the airport. 

I was pretty much done with Ruby on Rails so I opened up the MEAN stack book VT has given me last month and I started reading through the first two chapters in preparation for the residency program I'll be starting next week. Three months ago I would have panicked at all this information but this time I felt calm and in control.

At 1pm the MEAN stack class started presenting. I watched the first two presentations before I got bored and went back to my desk. I started thinking again about the future. What will I do? How will I do it? Will I muster up the courage to do this or that? Will my time here have meant something? I was also feeling hungry. Nobody went out for lunch and we were told we'd get served pizza after the presentations.

Our class presented next. While I was waiting to present VT messaged me and asked how everyone was doing and encouraged me to do my best and to sent him some photos. It made me feel better that we were keeping in touch like this. I presented and as expected my site was the simplest, shortest, but most applicable out of all of them. After our presentation we had pizza, took our group photo, and then headed out for drinks. A couple of us disappeared as soon as the presentations were finished and some of us were left in disappointment over what had happened. I'll go into detail about that in a little while. We went to the nearby pub and had a couple of drinks and chatted about our time there. Some of the guys talked about getting food afterwards but after one drink I was so tired and so relieved that the bootcamp was over that I wanted to go home and sleep early. I said my goodbyes and walked back to the dojo and got in my car. I went to bed early that night and woke up the today wondering what this all meant.

I came to Coding Dojo with high expectations. In reality it was both a blessing and disappointment. I went on small rants like this in previous entries but let me try to lay it out for accurately and neatly:

Pros:

• Education: College thought theory but Coding Dojo took that theory and applied it into practical material. I learned not just to code but to code for an application that will be used in real life by real people with the hope that it can do real good. 
• Resources: When studying on my own I'd often run into problems but couldn't find anybody to help me get passed it. In here we were all studying the same things and it was easy to find others who could help us out. 
• People: My classmates made a good effort to connect in and outside the classroom. We ate together as much as possible and went out to celebrate at least once a week. They made me feel like I belonged there and not just a number. When it was over I made a few new friends who I feel like I could stick to.

Cons:

• Education: Coding Dojo offers to teach three stacks to give us diversity and room to learn a new stack on our own. The problem with this approach is that you do not learn how to master any of them. "Jack of all trades, master of none" was the quote that got passed around here. 
• Resources: Many times the instructors would lecture only a few times each week and then leave us alone to figure out the problem among ourselves. In the beginning this was a great approach but as the material got complicated we needed them around more. When that wasn't possible we became disorganized. 
• People: My class started off with a size of 21. We were strong, energetic, and wanted to work and grow together. After the first stack the enthusiasm wore off and many of us drifted off to do our own work. Shifting into a new stack after putting in so much work on the first one left us drained. Some of us opted to study independently and rarely showed up while others dropped out completely. Being in a confined space like this also caused emotions to flare up and many times we fought and allowed minor annoyances to affect us. In the end there were 10 of us left; exhausted and apathetic. Yesterday as soon as the presentations were done at least one left before the group photo was taken and didn't bother sticking around for pizza and celebration. 

Overall my experience in the dojo was decent but not the best. In hindsight I would have gone for a coding bootcamp that focused on only one stack (MEAN) with a duration of less than 12 weeks. Most of my classmates felt the same way. Some of you who have been following this blog might feel differently and if you still feel like Coding Dojo is a good fit then I suggest you go for it. There are some benefits to coming here and I have met plenty of students who have enjoyed their time here very much. This place matched their desires and learning styles and perhaps it will fit yours too.

So what happens now? I think I'm going to sleep for the next few days. I'm not going to code, leave the house, or see anybody, just sleep. After that I got the residency and my websites to build. I'm not always going to be coding so I'll also need to go looking for a job, any job. I spent all my savings on this endeavor and I need an income as I'm applying for a tech job. I heard of a few places that are hiring and I'm going to reconnect with a temp agency I use to work for. I also need to reconnect with some of my old friends who I neglected these last three months. One of the biggest pieces of advice I got in this place is to network but knowing people makes your life easier. Applying to jobs won't be easy but it's best to keep good friends around to make the waiting enjoyable.

I hope you enjoyed reading my blog. I tried to portray an honest picture of life in Coding Dojo that included good and bad days. I am still going to make entries but they won't be as frequent as this has been. I'll let everyone know how the residency program is going along with the job search. I'll make my final entry when I get a tech job.

Thank you all for your support and please keep checking in. 

Day 73: Final Full Day

Today is the last full day at the dojo. It is also the last day I'll be hanging out with VT. I did some updates on my friend's site but without being able to speak with him I cannot do anything more. The guy is a good friend but he's not perfect. One of his flaws is that whenever he's in Europe it becomes really difficult to get a hold of him. He usually doesn't keep a phone on him, or reserves it for European-only calls. And other times he's too entrenched with life over there that he can't be reached. And of course the nine hour difference does make it difficult to coordinate a good time to reach him. Over the years I've learned patients in my attempts to reach him.

Even though this is VT's last day there really isn't anything special we can do. We're treating this like any other day. He won't be around too long tomorrow to present his project but he wants to get as much done and have his partner present it. His partner is a student from one of the new classes. As for me after a few lines of code I took my computer and sat down on the couch and browsed through job listings and contemplated my future. In less than two days all of this will be over. What will I do then? I have my friend's site to work on but that shouldn't take too long once I get a hold of him. I do have to go looking for jobs. That's always been a daunting task, especially since my past experience with searches usually results in silence. I'd apply for a job and rarely hear back from anybody. I try to follow up but they either don't respond or tell me that they'll look into it further and disconnect as soon as possible. 

VT is always telling me that networking is the key to finding jobs since most positions aren't advertised and most recruiters want to speak with someone who they've seen in person at least once or a friend could vouch for. The career counselor did say stuff like that already and she advised us to attend meetups to connect with more people. I miss those days when you could just submit an application and you'd expect a letter or phone call in a couple of days asking to come in for an interview and if not then a rejection notice. Applying for college worked that way so why not it apply for a job? But I guess this is just another reminder that the real world is way more different than college.

Around 7PM most of the people went home, leaving only VT and I from our class here. Earlier in the day I suggested we go out for drinks or see a movie or something else before he heads back but he said that he has work to do so we settled for dinner at Denny's. We usually drive there but neither of us were in a hurry so we walked there. We talked about his life back in London and what his plans are for the next six months. He plans on dedicating the next couple of months to hone his skills and algorithm knowledge and then begin applying to jobs anywhere he can. In the meantime he'll work whatever job he can get and save up money. That's kinda my train of thought too. We both have our works cut out for us but it's important that we remember that we're not alone in these endeavors. Dinner went by and we returned to the dojo late. He went off coding all I could do was make this entry. Nothing else to do. 

I am worried about the future. I signed up for Coding Dojo to escape a rut of not being able to learn anything useful to apply for a job. I ended up escaping it but now I am in a new rut of not knowing how to get a job and do more with my life. Everybody kept saying I shouldn't be thinking about these things while I am in the dojo but now that I am on the eve of graduation I am filled with this feeling of uncertainty. 

Day 72: Saying Goodbye to RP

We said goodbye to RP today the best way we could: Korean BBQ. RP told us that back home beef is a rare commodity since land is limited and cows take up too much grazing space. So imagine our surprise when everybody stuffed themselves with steak and briskets. I asked RP if this stuff reminded him of home and not to my surprise he said it didn't. Well regardless the food was amazing and I ate more meat than I should have. I was even feeling daring and tried out cow intestine, which was chewy and had an aftertaste that reminded me of something you normally expel in the bathroom. We split the bill among ourselves but we covered RP's part. Everybody loves the little guy and having him leave us two days too soon was just hard.

The lunch lasted two hours with everybody eating up more food than they normally have eaten. The topic of conversation fluidly changed each five minutes and in the end it was about the freakiest Asian cuisine out there. One guy said that he once ate at a restaurant where they serve live baby octopuses. They float in your bowl and you just need to pick one up and stick it in your mouth but you need to chew it carefully unless you want it alive inside you. God forbid it tries to crawl out. I was visibly disgusted by it and one guy said that if I thought that was disgusting I should try eating live squid. He pulled out a video on his phone and showed it to everyone. I didn't see it but saw everybody disturbed. VT was sitting between us and when the guy turned to show it to me I burped simultaneously. VT thought I was going to throw up from the video and jumped up the table screaming. Everybody broke down and started laughing except me. I would have joined in on the laughter but I was disturbed by the one second of video I saw of what appears to be a squid trying to escape a bowl. It was like something you'd see from an alien movie.

During lunch a friend from college texted me asking if we could meet tonight so I could help him with a web development problem, which I agreed to do. I also needed to go to the car dealership to deal with a maintenance issue. RP also asked me to drive him to the place he was renting so he could pick up his stuff and then drive him to the Caltrain station so he could go to San Francisco where he'll crash at a friend's place and be near enough to the airport to make it there on time. So I had my day scheduled and it wasn't looking like I'd have any quality time at the dojo.

RP said his goodbye and everybody hugged and wished him the best of luck. At his place he gave me his spare travel bag and accessories he wouldn't be needing that including Korean facial cream. At the Santa Clara Caltrain station we hugged and said we'd see each other again.

After dropping him off I drove to the dealership and they said that my car needed to stay with them and gave me a loaner car. I was emptying out my car when I noticed RP's water bottle that he had forgotten. He loved that bottle and emphasized that he couldn't leave it behind. I have to remember to bring it with me when I go to Korea.

After getting the loaner car I drove home to rest for an hour before heading back to school to see my friend. He was working on a project that was very similar to Rails and I helped him the best I could. Afterwards he took me out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. That's two times today I had Asian.

Am home now. Super exhausted. Eyes are barely open. Need to sleep. Just two days left. Oh my god, how things are just winding down when I don't want them to.

Day 71: Sky High And Oakland Trip

After lunch everybody took a trip to Sky High, a trampoline center in Santa Clara, as an alternative to our game day in the park. We got passes for two hours and believe me that those two hours were more than enough for us coders who spend more time sitting in front of a computer screen than at the gym. All that jumping around and playing dodgeball on trampolines exhausted us and our muscles sore as VT and RP would describe later in the day. Even now my back is aching and it was a burden to carry my backpack around.

Today was RP's last day at the dojo. Tomorrow he will only be at the dojo briefly before leaving to SF to be near SFO so he can catch his flight on Thursday back to Korea. VT and I wanted to give him a proper goodbye so we decided to go out with him. He expressed an interest in Oakland, a place he hasn't seen yet so after Sky High we got in my car and drove off. We parked at a BART station and walked to Lake Merritt. The last time I was in Oakland was in December 2013 as part of a weeklong school trip and on our final night my group took a walk around the lake. That memory stuck with him and I wanted to show them the lake and we got dinner at a restaurant that overlooked it. After dinner I took them on a walk around the lake as I had done back then and halfway through we stopped at a bar to split a bottle of wine. Why wine? It was the first thought that came to my head and the others were ready for anything. We continued our walk and the guys talked about their plans for life after the bootcamp. We all want to get jobs but understand that it will take time. VT talked about working in the UK, then switched to Canada, then the US, and then suggested going back to school. RP expressed an interest in returning to the US because he doesn't want to live in Korea any longer. I talked about the goals I want to achieve as well. Everybody has ambitions to be somewhere and do something with their lives but I don't think any of us have a clue on how to achieve it. I mean job hunting takes time and for the ones who want to live in the US immigration is an issue. Most of us made things up as they came along, which is how life progresses for most of us. We ended our walk in an unknown location and with another long walk back to the car that none of us wanted to take. So we called an Uber back to BART and returned to the dojo. That was the first time I used Uber and it was very efficient. Along the way we listened to 90's boy bands on Pandora so we can reminisce about our youths. VT sang to almost every song that came up while I enjoyed the pleasant nostalgic feelings in silence.

I'm back home exhausted from the day, unsure about how to say goodbye tomorrow. I think back to my German friend and how in the early years of our friendship I'd be sad whenever he'd leave to Germany. I'd act like I'd never see him again but no matter how many times he left he always came back. Saying goodbye got a lot easier each time cause I knew I'd see him again. The last time he left home was in 2012 and when we parted we hugged and I said "I'll see you around", cause our goodbyes are never permanent. I told RP and VT that we'll stay in touch after the bootcamp and I'll make an effort to visit so our goodbyes won't be permanent either. When tomorrow comes all I could do is just say "I'll see you around".

Day 70: Start Of The Final Week

And so begins the final week at the coding bootcamp. I can't believe time went by that quickly. I don't even remember going home most nights. Maybe that's why I feel so tired most of the time. And yet I don't want it to end. There's still so much I feel like I haven't learned yet. I don't want to go home yet, even though there is nothing else for me to do tonight.

I spoke to my friend in Germany today and after catching up he told me about what he's expecting for his business' site. Three months ago I would have panicked at everything he listed out but this time I ended the conversation feeling confident about this project. Since this is the final week I am going to work on this for Friday's presentation but I don't expect to finish. I signed up for the dojo's one month, post-graduate, residency program and spent that time working on the site and two other lesser projects to create a solid portfolio for the job hunt.

After the call with Germany finished VT and I went to get lunch/dinner at a Chinese restaurant. After we ate we walked to an Asian grocery store and got some pie cakes, which are like quiches but sweeter, and ate them in my car. This is going to be one of the last few times we'll be able to do stuff like this. I can't believe that it is finally hitting me. And he's not even going to stay until the Friday presentation; his plane is scheduled to leave on Friday, making Thursday his final day. I am going to miss him. I've said goodbye to plenty of good friends before, and after a while you learn that it's not forever, if you're good enough friends you'll see each other again. I said that I'll come and visit him and he said that he intends to come back next year for work.

We got back and I sat down to get started on the site. Setting up the site is easy, now the real fun is getting the statements from my friend to post it on there.

After 6PM I tired down and decided to call it a day and watch some videos on Hulu. VT did the same. I thought about leaving early cause I was feeling guilty about not doing any work here but VT encouraged me to continue since this is our last week together. So we sat and watched our stuff together.