S3E11: Assessing Tech Job Trends with Indeed SVP of Product Raj Mukherjee

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In today’s episode of the Learn to Code With Me podcast, I talk with Raj Mukherjee. Raj is the SVP of Product at Indeed – one of the most well-known job search sites in the world.

Before joining Indeed, Raj worked for Microsoft, Google, and GoDaddy. He transitioned into the careers industry because he wanted to work for a company that would allow him to have a massive impact on people worldwide.

In this episode, Raj shares the results of some recent studies on the job market. He tells us which tech jobs are growing and how employers view bootcamp graduates. Overall, he reminds us that there’s a huge shortage of tech talent.

This episode was transcribed with the help of an AI transcription tool. Please forgive any typos.

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Laurence Bradford 0:52
Hey, listeners, welcome to the Learn to Code With Me podcast. I'm your host Laurence Bradford. In today's episode I talk with Raj Mukherjee, Senior Vice President of Product at Indeed.com, the world's largest job search engine. Before working at Indeed, Raj works at major tech companies like Microsoft, Google, GoDaddy and others. Make no mistake about it, Raj is a seasoned technology professional. In our conversation, we discuss tech job trends, the most lucrative tech professions in the us the value of coding boot camps in 2017. And beyond, as well as much more. Remember, you can get Show Notes for this episode, plus more information about Raj at learntocodewith.me/podcast. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe on whichever podcast player you listen on. And if you're feeling particularly generous, a rating and review of the show would be greatly appreciated to enjoy the interview.

Laurence Bradford 1:52
Hey, Raj, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Raj Mukherjee 1:54
Hey, Laurence. How are you? How's everything going?

Laurence Bradford 1:56
I'm doing really well. How are you?

Raj Mukherjee 1:58
I'm doing great.

Laurence Bradford 1:59
So yeah. So excited to have you on the show. As I mentioned in the intro, you're the SVP of product at indeed, and really excited to talk to you about tech tech jobs. And you also had this really fascinating report recently on coding bootcamp. So can't wait to dive into that. But really quick, could you introduce yourself to the audience?

Raj Mukherjee 2:17
Great. Yeah. So I am the, as you mentioned, as VP of Product at Indeed, and been with the company for about eight or nine months now and very excited about where we are going as a company. And prior to this, I was at GoDaddy, before the company went public, and then took the company public. And then even prior to that, I was at Google and Microsoft. So long, long career of working in tech in different companies, and now finding my best work at indeed, and hopefully we are changing the world one day at a time.

Laurence Bradford 2:48
Awesome. So out of curiosity, how did you end up of course, Microsoft, Google major tech companies, and I know a lot of my audience is already familiar with GoDaddy, which does like domain purchasing, web hosting, I'm sure you have The whole other suite of products, how did you end up at a indeed and it kind of a bit of a industry transition going from these other tech companies to something that focused that focuses on careers?

Raj Mukherjee 3:10
Yeah, you know, it was an interesting opportunity. So I, I, right around the time that good I did my one year after good idea gone public, I was looking for a career transition myself and looking at different opportunities that existed, there is no dearth of opportunity in the Bay Area. There are lots of interesting opportunities that exist here. But I wouldn't do something that was called massive impact worldwide. And there are only a few things that I can think of that has that level of impact, I guess, jobs, healthcare, probably top it up in terms of the top three things that people can think of when it comes to massive impact worldwide. And I looked at a variety of companies that have entered into the job space, including obviously there are companies that exist such as LinkedIn, and I felt that indeed was one of those companies that Had the muscle to really change the world when it comes to basic job training and job capabilities that people need. And then finally, they want to search for a job. And it's such a foundational thing that people want that I got super excited. Once I started looking into it, I found the people in the company were incredible. The control freak was great. And I fell in love with what they were trying to achieve in the next 5-10 years. That got me to the company.

Laurence Bradford 4:27
Awesome. Yeah. And as you know, and a lot of listeners know, I'm super passionate as well about careers and helping people especially millennials, get new jobs in tech, and level up their skills. So another reason why I'm so excited to have you on since we have that kind of similar shared interests. So okay, so you've been at indeed for eight or nine months, and you've definitely done a lot while you're there, and you've done some really awesome like tech job research. And I know you've done it, there's various reports that you guys put out all the time, but with what you know now today The time that we're recording, what tech careers are growing the most in popularity?

Raj Mukherjee 5:05
You know, it's a very good question. We always track the keywords that people use to search for tech jobs. And when we think about different kinds of jobs where people are looking at, particularly in the United States, because we are a global company, so we look at everything worldwide as well. But broadly United States, things such as the term like Ruby developer, that's really, really a key word that people are searching for. And that tells you that there is a lot of interest among Ruby developers to look for jobs specifically in the tech industry, things such as, when you broadly look at the tech industry, not just around the specific type of skill set, people are looking for a broad set of tech jobs in development. They're also looking at broad set of tech jobs that enable development, like product management or design. And so quite frankly, the entire tech industry and it doesn't require me to say this, but broadly, you know, this entire tech industry is in a huge talent shortage. There's a need to For more than a million developers are tech talent in the next three to five years, based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the United States itself. So this clearly is one of the source of high paying jobs in this country, which is something we are blessed with. And so people are looking for that.

Laurence Bradford 6:17
Yeah. And I love how you talked about like the differences in region? Well, you kind of just mentioned it. So most of the listeners on the show are from the US, but we do of course, have people in other countries like the UK, India, Canada, Australia, what has been some things that you found as far as like geographic differences in the things that people are searching?

Raj Mukherjee 6:38
Yeah, you know, it's funny in UK, the job search term that I've seen the highest growth is job coach, right. So it's a but it is pretty telling like people who are causing other people to get a job that has seen a huge number of huge, like, increase in crime and job cost is also think of it as it's also helping people goes up. So people are coming to indeed. And they are trying to see where Hey, how do I help? How do I get a better job. Things such as, when you look at the UK, again, is taking that example, things such as cyber security is seeing a lot of interest in UK. On the other hand, if you go to a different more traditional country, in Central Europe, like Germany, you're seeing things like a translator of English, that's getting a lot of job growth. And that makes sense, because many of the jobs that they're probably working on are looking for, and this is, again, a hypothesis, but they're probably working on jobs that require bilingual skills, both German and English. And so that job, again, is seeing a lot of growth. second job that I'm seeing in Germany is engineering. And that also kind of makes sense as local economy.

Raj Mukherjee 7:43
Germans are known for their high prowess in engineering. And so that term is again showing up a lot in job search in Germany. So probably there are some very interesting trends that we're finding, as we go across, just explained to you continental Europe versus United Kingdom and there's a significant Difference in that and if you go across the world and look at different parts of the world, you will notice such differences across the board. I mentioned briefly on the US jobs spike, I mentioned to you the Ruby developer term, which has seen the highest growth rate. But I mean, there are terms such as welder fabricator has also seen a lot of increase. And so that means there is also a mix of high skill and what you would call traditional skills that are in the mix as well. It's not just high tech jobs that people are searching for.

Laurence Bradford 8:30
Yeah, and of course, unlike some other career websites or job posting websites that may be tech specific, indeed, has all kinds of jobs in a range of industries. So not tech jobs only, in case any of the listeners weren't aware of that. But as you're talking about this, and we're thinking of what job seekers are searching and the key terms that you're that you're looking at analyzing, is there any correlation between these terms that job seekers are looking up and the job ads in the job listings that employers are posting.

Raj Mukherjee 9:03
Yeah, we certainly see a spike in listing of tech jobs. I mean, that's certainly there. But we also see a spike in other kinds of jobs. So there is some correlation. Have we done an analysis purely on the correlation of jobs versus job seekers we have. I think that's that's the data that I don't have in front of me this very second, but I'm more than happy to talk to you offline and online on it again. But broadly, I think think of it as there is a definite industry supply demand that gets reflected in job search, that always gets reflected in the number of jobs posted, and then under number of job seekers looking for those kind of jobs. And one of the things I would add, I think you mentioned that, indeed, is all kinds of jobs. It's very interesting. I mean, we have millions and millions of jobs worldwide, but also the job seekers that are coming in there from all walks of life. It's not just that the jobs are diverse, which by definition will be because they represent the economy, but also the job seekers. represent the entire economy, you have 200 million unique people visiting indeed, every month looking for all sorts of jobs.

Laurence Bradford 10:06
Yeah, yeah, that's that's a really good point as far as listings go, and then also with the course that job seekers coming and looking for jobs is a range of a range of people going there. So aside from the, the key terms that people are searching, and even like the job ad titles that employers are using, has there been any trends in skills, specifically tech skills that you've seen, so maybe certain programming language or some other kind of tech skill that seems to be seems to be growing in demand recently.

Raj Mukherjee 10:38
you know, clearly the what we are seeing is developer jobs broadly. And when I say development jobs, don't just think of it as a specific language. It's all sorts of language that you're using, whether it be traditional languages like Java, or whether it be Ruby that's seeing a definite significant increase in terms of interest, both on the job seeker side and On the employer side, and pretty pretty recently, we had published this whole study around is the tech talent, war, hurting innovation or not. And we basically interviewed hiring managers and tech recruiters across the United States. And we got the data on what what it shows. And it seems the data again reflects what the situation is almost nine in 10, respondents 86% said they find it challenging to find and hire technical talent with a third 36% saying is very challenging.

Raj Mukherjee 11:35
So when you think about from a perspective of whether you're a small company, medium sized company or a large company, and when I say small company, you could be a small startup, you could be a medium sized company, not always in barrier. There's many other companies, tech companies that are growing outside of area as well. And they're all struggling to find the right kind of technical talent. And it is almost one of those supply demand mismatches that to some degree pains me because I See and look at this from an economy standpoint, and the higher higher paying jobs are in tech, and the people who need to go there, they're not oftentimes able to go there. How do we solve that imbalance and enable a larger cross section economy to benefit from this tech boom that this country is experiencing is something that I personally deeply care about.

Laurence Bradford 12:19
Yeah, definitely. And this kind of ties into another report that you put out recently about coding boot camps, because of course, there's, you know, there's this mis mismatch with supply and demand, but not everyone has the time or the budget to go back to college full time or get, you know, get a Master's or something in a tech related field. So, power book, coding boot camps coming into this.

Raj Mukherjee 12:43
It's an excellent question. And look, there is no silver bullet to solving the technical talent shortage that exists in the country or broadly globally. And we have a situation where there are lots of people who are interested in getting into the tech sector, many of them may not have the skillset or the background To get into the tech sector, so how do we enable them? How do we get them trained, and get them to be part of this new economy that we have built now. And so when we think about the some of the things that the bootcamp or the coding boot camps are trying to solve is they are giving the people that are coming into those coding boot camps, the capabilities to find a suitable job in the tech sector. The question, the more important pertinent question then becomes, hey, are the people that are coming out able to find jobs able to find suitable high paying jobs that they were looking for? And are they delivering value to the companies that are hiring them? So we ran a survey, as you were mentioning, around what you would call understanding the value of coding boot camps. And what we found it was very interesting, the data, again, pure cutting and slicing it in many, many varieties.

Raj Mukherjee 13:46
We found that 72% of hiring managers and recruiters are aware of coding boot camp indications first level, it's awareness. People do feel like yeah, I think I know what they're what is happening. And then 90% This is a pretty big number 90% have considered job candidates who were from coding boot camps. So it's a stage where, Okay, great, I'm aware of it. And then out of that 90% people are saying, Yeah, I'm actually interested in knowing and hiring people from a coding boot camp. And then this is the part that really, really got me super excited. And something that I think I need to go and work with my team to come back and understand more, which is 72% say that coding Bootcamp, graduates are just as prepared and likely to be high performers as candidates with traditional CS background degrees. So when you think about three things, three data points I talked about one is people aren't aware of it. Second is they're considering it as part of the higher and third is when it comes to the performance of these candidates once they're in the job. They're comparing favorably. I'm not saying every single Code Camp. Goal bootcamp graduate is at the same level as someone who's coming from a top CS degree, but certainly they're comparable, and they're delivering value to the company. And that is these three combinations.

Raj Mukherjee 15:00
Certainly a very big shift that we're seeing in the tech industry. And to me, I think one of the things that we have to be careful of is obviously getting super excited and certainly saying, okay, all coding boot camps are the same. And they're all created equally. That's not the case. I think if you again, we asked a different question around regulation. And one of the things that came out was, look, even the hiring managers or the recruiters, they want coding boot camps to be to have some degree of regulation. I don't know what kind of regulation we can think of, but certainly some standards that are maintained when people are coming out of these coding boot camps. But there is absolute interest and demand for graduates from these coding boot camps.

Laurence Bradford 15:39
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Laurence Bradford 17:53
Yeah, wow, those numbers are really impressive and I also think they provide relief to people who are considering going coding boot camp as I know, there's a lot of listeners to the show, and people who read the blog that want to go to a coding boot camp aren't sure if it's right for them. Of course, I always tell people to do their research and try to talk to past graduates before making a final decision and attending and picking and coding boot camp to go to because as you mentioned, they're not all necessarily the same, and some could be better than others. Nonetheless, it is very reassuring to hear some of the stats that you just gave.

Raj Mukherjee 18:25
Yeah, no, I mean, I think we are indeed ourselves we are using and partnering with coding boot camps. And we have hired few interns from coding boot camps, and we realized the value it can be part of your hiring mix. And I mean, my advice would be, don't just jump in, join any coding boot camp, like you said, do your research, understand whether the coding boot camp has had a history of good placements for the people graduating from them have gone to successful career paths. And if they have then yeah, it's a good, good mechanism to retrain yourself and get ready for the new economy.

Laurence Bradford 18:56
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So I'm looking back at the study a bit By the claim boot camps, how many did you speak to or survey or wherever the method was?

Raj Mukherjee 19:06
Optimism was different. The method was survey of thousand US tech hiring managers and recruiters. So we essentially went and had a survey around them and basically gathered data on what they were looking for when they were thinking about coding bootcamp graduates, because idea was, we want to understand whether employers are valuing these candidates and placing them appropriately. And ultimately, that's the benchmark of success for any school, right? If they're, if they're graduating from school, and they're not getting hired, then what's the point?

Laurence Bradford 19:34
Yeah, yeah, no, that's interesting. And that totally makes sense. I think you kind of hinted at that in your answer about interviewing the employers and HR and other kinds of recruiters that are hiring or thinking of hiring coding Bootcamp, grads, so was there was there anyone who took the survey or maybe this wasn't even an option in a survey that had no idea what a coding boot camp was, or was that kind of a prerequisite before even taking the survey?

Raj Mukherjee 20:00
No, no, actually, it wasn't. So we found that some people were not aware of it 72% of hiring managers and recruiters are aware of the coding bootcamp education model. So they understand what this means. And they understand this as a source of talent. Now, clearly there is 38%, who are not fully aware of it. I mean, when when we say awareness, it's deeper, and it's like, hey, do you understand what coding boot camp means? Do you understand what application value they provide? Those kind of things. So they're probably not fully aware of that. And then again, the other thing we asked just to test and double back on it is 86% of respondents say that applications from coding bootcamp graduates have been going up over the last few years. So even if they were not fully aware of the bootcamp education piece, they know that they're getting graduates from that. So there that is also driving some awareness when they're like, okay, you know, I'm actually getting people who are coming from this coding boot camp. Let me try to understand what this means. So that is also driving some errands.

Laurence Bradford 20:58
Yeah. Oh, yeah, that definitely me sense and I'm looking at I have some numbers in front of me from from this study and this is also something is really interesting, just quoting exactly it says 51% say that they're that they are a good way to help job seekers from underrepresented groups such as women and minorities find work in the technology sector. And I don't know if I've seen an actual like, like I'm legit study published with with numbers on this. But I have spoken to lots of coding boot camps and people who've hired from coding boot camps and I feel like I've heard that that same sentiment because I are speaking from from myself in my story when I was in college. Even until a few years after college I never even considered getting a job and tacker I always thought I was really bad at computers there was no role for me. Things like that. So I so yeah, it's really nice that I think you can go back to a school a boot camps later and you can kind of retrain yourself and then have an equal footing and get a tech job later in life.

Raj Mukherjee 21:55
Absolutely. And there are so many people who are looking to have make a career At some point in their life, and they're probably in the second innings of their life, right? So they, they may have had a career and they may have reached a certain point. And they have decided that they want to do something else, and having the ability to go back and learn some new skills that are highly valued in this new tech economy. That I think is an incredibly powerful tool. And to me, I think, again, that's why I am interested in this space. I wouldn't always say that, as I've been saying, you have to be always cautious when something's new, and when something is coming to the fore, you have to understand the value of it. But for me, I think this actually provides a different opportunity for people than ever exists today.

Laurence Bradford 22:41
Yeah, and it's just crazy to think I think the first code coding boot camps are maybe around in 2010, maybe a little bit earlier, but they've really grown the last few years and I can't think of the number off the top of my head but it's like something insane like three x five x maybe even more than that, just like the number across the US in the world on just the number of options available?

Raj Mukherjee 23:03
Absolutely. I think that they have certainly scaled a lot. And they're, they're showing in numbers as well, the people that we are getting there, obviously have a coding bootcamp boot camp degrees. And so that also is showing an significant increase in number.

Laurence Bradford 23:17
Yeah. Awesome. So this is kind of circling back to something you mentioned before. You were saying how Ruby developer was one of the most searched search terms in the United States, like the keyword search jobs that people people are doing on the on indeed, is there are there any tech jobs that are decreasing in search? Like any anything that keywords that maybe once upon a time they were really highly searched? And now they're not out of curiosity?

Raj Mukherjee 23:45
Maybe Maybe it's COBOL developer or something? i? That's a good question. That's a really good question there. There probably are some terms that are decreasing in relevance over time. And people are, I mean, partly because there aren't that many people who are creating those skill sets. I think think of them as older programming languages that existed in long time back. And some of them don't even exist anymore. And so the people don't search for those terms anymore, we probably don't have them in our list. But I could get a list after technology terms for you offline and send, send that over to you on some of the interesting terms that have seen a decrease in relevance over time over the last 10 years. Maybe that will be an interesting thing to follow up on.

Laurence Bradford 24:27
Yeah, cuz I, again, I get tons of people who write in to me and ask questions about what they should learn. And sometimes it'll be like, should I learn, you know, Java, or Ruby or JavaScript, or, you know, thinking of doing this, this that, and it's kind of, you know, it really depends, you know, the individuals and goals and what they want to do as a career because, of course, say if you want to be like a front end developer, then learning something like JavaScript would be a lot more useful and learning Java, but then if you want to, you know, build Android apps, learning job learning, Java would, of course, come into play. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's just interesting. So with that being said, What do you think? Or what if you've any data on this with with JavaScript like, has there been upwards trends of people searching JavaScript developer or maybe on the on the reverse job listings that employers are putting up that have any on there that are asking for JavaScript skills more than they were before?

Unknown Speaker 25:23
Yeah, so I think Java and JavaScript, if I go back to the United States, terms, like I shared with you Ruby developer as the highest growth, but the other ones that are very interesting, UX designer, and when I say UX designer, some of them are certainly user interface designers, as in, they are pure designers, but many of them are also like think of them as people who can code JavaScript as well. And that's seeing more than 500% growth in search terms. Things such as DevOps engineer, which you would say, okay, DevOps is actually in the quote unquote back office, but it's a very important part of running an engineering team that's seeing 190% plus growth application developer, which falls under the same category that you talked about Java, that senior, again, 190% growth. So these are very, very critical parts of the overall tech sector. Like when you think about how do I build a great user interface? How do I make that come to life? How do I make an engineering system be stable and reliable as the DevOps engineer comes in? And that's seeing a huge, huge amount of growth? And same with application developer? How do I write the application as necessary, and hand it over to the DevOps person so that they can run those applications?

Raj Mukherjee 26:36
So I think you're seeing it across the board, perhaps some areas are seeing a little bit more I think user interface design is actually become one of the most coveted professions in the tech industry. And for good reason, because as you can you and I both realize, creating a simple and visually appealing application is very hard. It's not easy to take the clutter out of something Make it very simple, and also, at the same time, make it visually appealing. And that's something that good interview user interface designers can bring to life. And if they can build a great interaction model, and that certainly can be a game changer for a technology company. So I think that's, that's what I'm seeing across the board when it comes to search terms. And also broadly looking at the entire industry, which have been bought out for the last 15 years, I'm seeing some of these changes to happening. And they're pretty dramatic changes. If you think about it, even user experience wasn't as valued. When I first started my again a decade, I'm going back in my history of my life, right? When you think about 2000 to 2003 timeframe, there wasn't time when user interface design was valued as much as it is today. But now it is, and I'm so happy for it because I think it actually fundamentally changes the joy you have in using the products and technology that you have in front of you.

Laurence Bradford 27:51
Yeah, thousand percent. It's, you know, it's so important. I just think so much so many of my conversations at my full time job relate to UI design. or user interface copy or something with the user interface in one way or another. So yeah, it's it's incredibly important, and definitely a really important role. So thank you so much, Raj, for sharing all this information. And some of these cool, like statistics and trends in tech. And I'm curious for a person listening, who is maybe more in the middle of their career, you know, they're not looking to go back to college. Do you have any advice for them on like, what they should learn or how they could get into this tech world?

Raj Mukherjee 28:30
You know, if you are what I would call a mid career professional, you have some skill sets that are extremely valuable to your current industry. I would say, take a step back and really try to understand why you are wanting to get into the tech sector. Because oftentimes, shiny objects are just trying just because something is like being talked about, just don't run into it. I think just take a step back understand what your like goals are, and this is just general sound carrier advice, I would say I received from many, many people when I was starting my career or it was in the middle of my career and thinking about different things that I wanted to do. And I got it from others. So that's step one, like reevaluate, understand where you are, really make sure that you are in for career change, and do it for the right reasons. Now, once you've decided that you want to be in the tech sector, I think things such as you can be a self made programmer programming is one of those things that you can pick up by picking a book, getting excited about it, and learning by yourself. If you have an analytical mind, it doesn't require you to go to any coding bootcamp or anything, you can start doing it, quite frankly, as I said, on your own, with your own computer, in your own office in your home. So I think that's one like immediate thing I would do.

Raj Mukherjee 29:48
If someone was thinking about moving to the tech sector had an analytical bent of mind, whatever degree they might have had in their career that took them to that job level that they're in, just experience it for yourself and double check, whether it's Something you find exciting or not, because it's one thing to say, you know, I'm excited by the salary, I'm excited by the opportunity that it provides. It's another thing to actually enjoy the 1012 hours you spend every day coding. So you've got to really enjoy that. And so you need to know whether that's something you want to do or not. And then once you have figured out that, yeah, I mean, those things kind of match up and you really like, what you, you, you're sensible about your career things you like what you want to, and programming is the thing for you, then I think coding bootcamp or something that allows you to expose yourself to a wide variety of languages, even colleges. I mean, I've seen people go back to college community college, I mean, I live in an area where there community colleges nearby people go back community colleges to pick up courses in Decatur associate degree in computer science, and that helps them a lot too. So figuring out a way or mechanism to validate your skill sets and learning from it and then try to get an internship with a company that would be willing to take a bet on and essentially saying, Hey, I'm going to really learn and dedicate myself to this new career. Going forward. I think if you do these three things step one, reevaluate. understand where you are. Step two, really understand whether you can do programming. And are you excited about that as a day to day job and step three, finding the necessary skillsets through all the avenues possible, and potentially getting a way to exhibit your skill sets. I think it will be set.

Laurence Bradford 31:20
Awesome, thank you so much for sharing all that Rochus. Great advice. And finally, where can people find you online?

Raj Mukherjee 31:27
You know, they can find me at Twitter. I have a handle that call @Rajatsm. R-AJ-A-T-S-M, so they can definitely find me at Twitter.

Laurence Bradford 31:35
Okay, great. Yeah, listeners will definitely put that in the show notes in any of their links and some of these reports that Raj mentioned, we'll put a link to those as well. So thank you again, Raj, for coming on the show.

Raj Mukherjee 31:45
Thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and hopefully your listeners find this enjoyable.

Laurence Bradford 31:56
I hope you found our conversation helpful. Again, the show notes for this episode can be found at learntocodewith.me/podcast. If you're listening to this episode in the future, simply click the Search icon in the upper navigation of the page and type in Raj's name. His name is spelled like R-A-J and his last name M-U-K-H-E-R-J-E-E. If you enjoyed this episode, visit my website learntocodewith.me where you can find even more awesome code related content, like my 10 Free Tips for Teaching Yourself How to Code. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I'll see you next week.

Key takeaways:

  • There’s a massive talent shortage in the tech industry. The USA will need over a million developers in the next 3 to 5 years alone!
  • For the most part, recruiters are aware of coding bootcamps, and bootcamp grads fare just as well as candidates with computer science degrees.
  • Not all bootcamps are created equal, so do plenty of research before you choose one. Talk to former students to find out about the jobs they’ve landed since graduating.
  • If you’re thinking of moving into the tech industry, take a step back and evaluate your life goals. Make sure it’s the right move for you.
  • Find out if you actually enjoy coding before you invest in a bootcamp or degree course.

Links and mentions from the episode:

Thanks for listening!

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Special thanks to this episode’s sponsors

Flatiron School: Flatiron School offers an online web developer program with a focus on community, actual development tools, and a curriculum that will teach you the skills you need to land a career as a developer. Visit flatironbootcampprep.com to get an amazing $500 off your first month.

FreshBooks: FreshBooks is excited to announce the launch of an all new freelancer-friendly version of their accounting software. To claim an unrestricted 30-day free trial, just go to freshbooks.com/learntocode and enter LEARN TO CODE WITH ME in the “How Did You Hear About Us?” section.