"you have too many ideas" is not a valid reason to fire someone, doubly so if it came out of the blue and they made no attempt to address the issue with you beforehand (this goes for any reason that isn't gtfo immediately worthy).

You should sue for unfair dismissal.

Calling for three years experience for a junior is rediculous - anyone who is still working as a junior after three years is not managing their career correctly. It's pretty common for companies to ask for it though unfortunately. The nice thing is it gives you a nice insight into the way the company views its employees.

Companies should hire at the junior level as an investment - train them up and turn them into exactly the type of mid level developer they need as quickly as possible. When you see a position like this it just screams "we want a mid level dev at a junior level price asap"

btw, just in case you aren't already doing it, make sure you are learning more advanced front end technologies like React, Vue etc and especially testing - no company is going to hire you if all you can do is code the absoloute basics, even as a junior.

I haven't used Django, but Rails and its ecosystem was too opinionated for my tastes and really pushed me away from the idea of convention over configuration as an ideal that I would want to allign with.

How do you mean? Like, running brew/NPM/yarn commands etc? It's just the way it's done - it makes it easier to get all your dependancies installed as well as saving your work onto GitHub or pushing code up to a server etc.

Stick with it, you'll get used to it and be loving it before long.

@loebkes I usually TDD my code, but I've been having a bit of trouble since I started working with API's, so I'm trying to pick up some new patterns to help write code that's a bit easier to test.

I just can't seem to get comfortable with testing JavaScript and the way code is organised in Express after being taught with Sinatra/Rails.

Yet. I'll get there eventually 😆

It's not too late at all - I'm 32 and I'm just starting out. Pretty much everyone on my bootcamp was late 20's+. Most were in there 30's with a few 40+ people as well. Almost my entire cohort has been hired at this point and there's plenty more companies looking to recruit people every month.

Keep working on projects and stay active in the community - make sure you are going to events/meetups, expanding your LinkedIn contacts, start a tech blog and post regularly etc. You're in an area famous for tech startups so you need to make yourself stand out from the crowd. Stick with it, you'll find somewhere awesome eventually 🙂

Considering who's business card it is, I'm surprised there's no handcuff key on it 🤣

@Vip3rDev Awesome! I've tried a few similar kanban's but hadn't heard of Zenhub before now. Guess I have a new toy to play with over the weekend 😁

If you can afford to do it, I agree with @Root 100%. Best to start looking for a company that will treat you better regardless because your company culture sounds pretty toxic if a boss is going to let someone get away with doing this to his/her employees.

@Vip3rDev I do something similar using Trello. Photo's of your whiteboarding sessions and Trello boards are a great way to convince people you have strong teamwork skill and look great in your Readme's on GitHub.

@darkmiko Whiteboarding is more of a teamwork thing - having everyone standing around a whiteboard is a much better way to do planning in teams than sitting round a desk with laptops in front of you, at least in my experience.

People being on their feet tends to make them pay attention and be more willing to contribute. I still scribble away on paper occasionally when I'm at home though! 🙂

@Cyanide closest you can get is adding a method to the functions protype and then creating an instance of the function I believe. You can't call a functions methods unless you have an instance of it.

@1989 Huh? No-one was implying that they are the same thing....

When I'm whiteboarding and working out how different components in an application or different technologies interact I often do this. It helps people get the general idea and keeps the discussion moving forward without getting bogged down in syntax.

@sunfishcc Haha, don't even get me started on companies advertising "junior" positions that require 2-3 years experience... "So, you want a mid level deveoper that you can pay a junior developer salary to then?" 🤔

@zeoxo This is the lowest I've seen so far and it's an exception, rather than the norm. Sometimes salaries are a little lower because of the way a business earns cash - like museums, for example - but it's pretty rediculous to be offering 20k.

@sunfishcc You should move to the UK, I'm getting swamped in React recruiters offering me £450 - £550 per day for contract work, usually at least six months contracts 🤣

@vacoup What? this isn't even close to normal in the UK. In London, most companies offer around 30k for a junior/graduate developer. Outside of London it's a little lower, but not 10k lower...

Slightly different context because they aren't supposed to teach you like the Phoenix Project does but the Cuckoo's Egg and Ghost in the Wires are both great tech/IT books and pretty eye opening where information security is concerned.

@isashi great language to start out with! I'd recommend learning Sinatra before rails though, because it will force you to learn how RESTful architectures work and you'll have an easier time learning rails afterwards. Make sure you learn some form of testing as well and have fun!

@ScribeOfGoD You're kidding, right? There is always someone who is smarter than you are, a new 0 day being exploited or a configuration slip up to be made. That's why there's a whole industry revolving around protecting network systems.

Hell, even hackers drop the ball and fall victim to exploits - the Defcon conference regularly features a 'wall of sheep' naming and shaming attendees that have been hacked while at the conference and it's always full of people who really do know what they are doing.

@ScribeOfGoD If you're a competent sysadmin you wouldn't be installing it in the first place! Installing cracked software on an enterprise system is asking for trouble

@crazed @clemfrieckie imposter syndrome?

@crooks5001 Did they provide you with any support or introductions to companies during or after your course? Seems like the level of support you get varies drastically between bootcamps unfortunately.

it feels really odd that so many people are unhappy with their experiences with bootcamps while everybody on mine is over the moon about how things have gone so far. This is probably the first time I've ever felt that I'll have some of the power walking into an interview.

Are you still in contact with the rest of your cohort? How did they fare? I'll definitely be taking your advice over the next few weeks.

What boot camp did you attend? I'll be finishing my in three weeks so I'll be going through the same thing soon 😂 at least you have some practical experience behind you this time... should be a lot easier to find something else, depending on your location ofc.

@phexter yes, that's true. My intention was to point out that a good boot camp is a great way to get you into a position where you are job ready.

Theres a big focus on my boot camp about teaching people how to self teach and learn effectively in a short period of time so you can pick up the tech stack at a new company and become productive as quickly as possible. They also help you develop a continued learning plan in the last couple of weeks and alumni are encouraged to keep in touch and reach out for help if needed.

As for how I know that the course is good, I'm pretty far in now so I have a pretty good grasp of what I'll walk out with skill wise. There's also seeing what kind of companies hire from the boot camp. Compare the market, thoughtworks, the financial times and Kurt Geiger are a few of the regular employers that jump to mind ☺

Yeah, you're definitely not alone in what you are doing. Bootcamps can be a bit of a mixed bag so make sure you so your research. Make sure they teach TDD and agile and try to find out what sort of companies hire from them.

Check if there's an entrance test and what the acceptance rate is - only about 10% of applicants make it onto my course and they have some of the best companies in the UK as hiring partners. It's your hard earned cash at the end of the day so you don't want to waste it on some half baked course.

I know exactly how you feel - I spent two years working at a company that's probably best described as the "white trash of retail" in order to save up for the boot camp I'm now on.

It will be worth the effort in the end, so don't give up! If you can afford it, going the boot camp route is definitely worth it - it will massively accelerate your learning and the decent ones will help you find a job afterwards.

Ok this one actually made me lol. Have an upvote!

When you start working in teams and need to communicate ideas or explain how something works effectively they will become really useful. You'll spend a lot of your time drawing diagrams on a whiteboard and discussing ideas so it really is a useful skill to have, even if it's a bit boring to learn.

Who is hiring these people??? When I was in college version control was being taught and that was over 10 years ago...

We had a couple of guys from Capital One's tech dev team come in to give a talk a couple of weeks back and they gave some advice about this that really stuck with me.

They said that if you visualise your knowledge it should be shaped like a capital 'T' - that is, you should have a broad range of knowledge about different technologies and know one thing really, really well. This applies particularly well to web dev, but I feel it's pretty relevant to other parts of the industry as well.