By definition and practicality, schools and fields of work will remain a pyramid i.e. at any given time, there will only be a few fields and colleges that "give advantage", being able to absorb only a fraction of students by competition. e.g. field of programming can only absorb a million odd engineers in next few years. (Ironically, when it absorbs more, it will no longer remain a field with high wages).
The remainder of the iceberg hence, will need to go to other lower parts of the pyramid. ISAs won't do anything for that. Only the government will. And the Govt does it for us, with our money, because not providing education to lower levels of pyramid will result in nothing but societal anarchy.
ISAs hence shouldn't be hailed as panacea for education loans which is what marketing makes us believe. The only advantage of ISAs, is that they unlock better education for some "motivated students" (for lack of an accurate phrase) from underprivileged circumstances. That's not a trivial advantage for those who qualify. I don't know what that % of population is, but it can't be much.
In any case, however small, that number sure seems enough to build a business around it with some feel-good marketing (like this article).
But then such schools that predominantly work on ISAs, will pre-select for good students, who are most likely to succeed and also for industries where the compensation is higher. Remainder (which is arguably 90%+) of the students will still be at the mercy of other schools + taxpayer.
It seems, this just provides one more payment option to students who are likely to succeed anyway and a refreshing business model for schools that move early into the space.
It doesn't address the real problem with schools i.e. making the 20th%le student successful and not a taxpayer burden.
1. There was a time when the pay distinction between working for big companies and small/mid was clear and present. But these days, the line is blurring.
BigCos have realized that startups are eating their lunch and hence they are investing heavily in new ideas and doing better engineering on the old ones to develop those markets even further, faster.
Smaller companies too have realized that they need to compete with the BigCos and hence have started to offer similar comps/perks. More and more of the VC funded fast-growing companies are offering packages competing with BigCos.
2. Hence, for a software engineer, the main reason to join/not-join a company today is less about pay. It's more about the type of work you will get to do, and the people that you want to work with.
3. There is something to be said about having a brand, but given how tech is percolating everything we do, it is also getting very differentiated. There are hence brands in every "flavor" of tech. e.g. if you want to work on self-driving cars, Waymo is a great brand. But if you want to work on healthcare tech, there are others.
I train software engineers to do better at challenging interviews and I do that for a living. The way I see it, the landscape has been shifting in this direction for at least past 5 years, if not more. At least in the large tech hubs of the US.
Unless your customers need you to incorporate, the idea is to incorporate when you start seeing potential liability. One of the earliest sources of potential liability, is when you hire a W2 employee (in the US). So that is a great time to incorporate i.e. before hiring your first W2 employee. And if you don't intend to raise money, issue stock, or setup international offices any soon, then LLC is a far simpler, cheaper (taxation at exit) structure to setup.
Interview Kickstart | REMOTE, SF Bay Area, Bangalore | Full-time, Part-time | Software Developer & Instructor
Interview Kickstart is a coding bootcamp, that is specifically focused on helping software engineers do better at challenging technical interviews. We have been around for 3+ years and have helped nearly 1000 engineers across the globe, mostly in US. Candidates we have trained routinely get offers at top tech companies with staggeringly high compensation packages.
We're looking for Software Engineers who also like teaching Computer Science concepts, and inspiring others to do well via hard work. The role has a great mix of
problem setting, software development, and teaching. Teaching is about 20-40% of time, rest is development and/or problem-setting, as per your interest.
It can be done full-time (preferred) or part-time.
If you are looking for a drama-free, no-nonsense workplace with a mission, then we are that place. We also pay highly competitive wages.
I am the founder. Please reach me at my email in the profile.
If you consider yourself pretty good at Concurrency with first-hand production experience (preferably at a top-tier tech company), and also like to teach in general, then we'd love to talk to you!
We're an online Computer Science school, that is looking for instructors to teach Concurrency. Our current instructor leads an important team at a top tech company and we're looking for another one!
We are based out of Silicon Valley, but you can work from anywhere. Part time or full-time. You can also teach many other things with us, if you'd like. We pay well and in USD.
There are usually several of these $10K ones, especially from angels the founders like and want to have a longer term relationships with. Also, most initial development is either outsourced or done by the founders.
Probably better to hack/FLOSS. But there is a severe lack of structure there. Very easy to get started and get distracted, work on suboptimal projects and in general, never get validation on what you worked on.
It's a part-time bootcamp focused on preparing for technical interviews at (so-called) top-tier places i.e. places which interview heavily in DS/Algos and Large Scale Design for their core engineering roles, and also make staggeringly high offers. Think G/F/A/Netflix/Amazon/MS etc.
It is intense and also taught by Sr. Engineers working in core systems at these places. There is a rigorous academic take to it, with homework, tests, mock interviews etc.
A little known fact, is that many people come to the program with no intent to look for a job. They are already at good places, paid well, and just want to get better as an engineer, which I think is what you're looking for.
Many have figured out, that the structure and the forcing function challenges them to be better. Most of your peers will have backgrounds in CS/CS, and you'll also see people coming FROM some of the same companies others are aspiring to go to (e.g. Amazon, Microsoft etC).
We start an online cohort every month, where people join from all over US and Canada (and sometimes even other countries).
When asked about salary, people often assume that's a loose ask, and mention their total cash compensation i.e. including bonus. Not including equity though. Bonuses at many companies are in the range of 10-20%, so if one is making 180k, it's easy to round up to 200k in conversation. Plus there are perks and awards.
180k is not uncommon at all. Several candidates from our course have had those numbers. And even otherwise, Sr engineers with a few years of experience, make 180k at most well known tech companies. Of course, not every Sr. engineer makes that much, but those who have had an excellent interview and have negotiated well, very often do.
Elephant in the room, IMHO, is the technical interview process.
In software engineering roles at big/desirable/fast-growing companies, the interview process favors faster (by definition, younger) minds. Both young and old are put thru the same/similar coding interviews at many of these places, and often faster coders are younger, and get the job.
You can't fix ageism without fixing the interview process. Being jovial, healthy, nice and culturally sensitive are necessary and useful things to keep your job after you join, but the gatekeeping itself is biased on the other side, which reduces the intake to a trickle.
tl;dr for me: You’ll need to think deeply about the world and invest years of concerted effort into building a good intuition for thinking about the future. Even then you’ll be right only a fraction of the time. But you can still get much better than random chance.
[Shameless plug] We're one more option for preparation: http://interviewkickstart.com. We're a bootcamp, which continually tries to answer this very same question - where to start and how far to go, when it comes to preparing for technical interviews?
We usually remain booked very far out though. But if we can help you any time in the future, please feel free to reach out!