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Wellness Wednesday for December 21, 2022

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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So, I'm trying to do another coding camp. I've completed one, but it was very basic and I didn't really learn much.

I was thinking of epicodus, but before I start, I have to write a pro DEI affirmation, we will have weekly guided small group discussions on DEI concepts, several weekly large group discussions, and homework on DEI topics throughout the course. I can't just nod my head, I have to actively participate and affirm this stuff on an ongoing basis. At the end of each day, we even have to rate our pair programming partner on whether they made us feel "unsafe".

I understand that I will have to bite my tongue wherever I work, but this seems oppressive to me, and I don't know if I'm socially adept enough to make it in an environment like this.

Does anyone here know anything about Epicodus?

I live in PDX, and if anyone can suggest a rigorous boot camp, preferably with a focus on pair programming, that would be great. And if there isn't one in PDX, are there any I could take online? Are there strategies I could use to get through Epicodus or will I just be banging my head against the wall?

At this point I'm half considering the trades, but if I want to immigrate to another country, and I might, then working in tech will be an advantage in a way that plumbing might not.

I'll disagree with most of the replies.

My general observation is that for people of ordinary ability/motivation, boot camp attendees seem to be more likely to get jobs. I am not entirely sure why but I think it's because "boot camp -> entry level" is now a recognized entry pathway and therefore you don't pattern match as "weird". Plus many employers have a plan to allocate N interviews to particular boot camps (perhaps including yours), you may get one of those slots, there is no equivalent plan for weirdos who learned from the internet.

Also you should absolutely attempt to navigate the DEI stuff while hiding your power level. It's a compliance ritual of the modern workplace and it's often hard to avoid, so getting practice with it in a safer environment is useful. This is something I very much wish I had when I came to the US. Instead, I awkwardly tried to understand WTF people were talking about based on what I knew. "So it's like reservations, what is the quota?" Guess how well that went (and it's probably worse now).

I have no recommendations of particular boot camps beyond Bloom School (formerly Lambda) and I've only been to PDX once.

Damn, I think you're right. I've searched and searched and found nothing that has the kind of setup they do. I was having nightmares about it, because I'm a pretty socially anxious person, but I don't know that I have a choice. It's this or the trades, and starting a trade at 36 is rough.