To find clients that will pay good rates you're mostly going to have to deal with them directly, which rules out most sites that try to act as a middle-man.
You make a good point-- If I study part-time, by the time I graduate I would have accumulated ~5-6 years of experience which would diminish the value that I'd get from a degree. I'm leaning towards joining a bootcamp, building a portfolio and then looking for work. I feel like I'm missing out on the whole university experience, but in 4 years time I can accumulate a lot of work experience.
The only issue with finding a job right away is I would likely be starting as a junior at whatever company that will take me. I'm afraid that this will make me a less desirable candidate to good companies later on. The last thing I want to do is be stuck at a unknown company for a few years doing menial work and not learning anything new.
I never considered studying part time because it would take so long to complete the program, but a lot of people in this thread are suggesting I do it. I have no clue how people work and attend college part time? If I work it would likely be a 9-5 job and I wouldn't be able to attend my classes.
Although, the downside of going taking this route would be that I'd have no time for side projects and making things.
I did a mix of fulltime school, fulltime work (with an occasional class) and part time work/part time school. Employers seemed fine with my being in process of a degree and having done basic reqs, so no degree wasn't a barrier at entry, but it did slow down my career path as the highest status/most interesting groups couldn't justify selecting me until I had the degree.
I'm from Canada, so I'm not sure how much value I'd get from the top tier american bootcamp programs like HackReactor or AppAcademy. Much of the value that comes from those bootcamps is their connections in Silicon Valley that get people jobs. It would also cost me like ~20k USD? If I were american I would definitely consider it.
There's a few bootcamps near me (Toronto), but I don't know if they're worth attending. The cost is a fraction of the top tier ones (~9k CAD) and they're 9 weeks long web dev programs.
Sorry man, I'm not going to let other people's preconceptions place false limitations on my own abilities.
Someone linked a blog post in this thread where a guy joined a bootcamp around my age and is self-taught. He recently got 120k+ offers from Google, Uber and many other good companies and settled with Airbnb for a 200k+ offer. I also spoke to someone else recently who started their postsecondary education at my age, and they now work for Uber.
Ok man, you can obviously do whatever you want. I'm just saying that you aren't that guy. Good luck! Software is extremely easy and anyone should be able to learn everything they would need to land a $200k+ job in a few weeks.
I've read that blog post before :) Unfortunately, the advice directed to 19 year olds might not be best for me. Sam suggests a 3rd option: going to college for 2 yrs and then dropping out. A 20-21 year old drop out with no work experience isn't the same as a 30 year old dropout /w no experience. And a 22yo fresh grad is very different from a 32yo grad.
Yeah maybe it doesn't all apply directly to your situation, particularly if you care a lot about building a CV. The post is largely about accurately assessing the risks though which I think is the important point - and it's going to be tricky to optimize for happiness/career/potential/security simoultanously.
That being said, no one will care if you're 20 or 30 when you drop out of college and bootstrap your own startup :-)
I'm embarrassed to say that I've been making a living playing online poker for the past 5 years. I have never had a typical job before. I took web development courses at a community college for one year, while self-learning through sites like codecademy. I learned html, css, javascript, jquery and a little bit of php and sql. I know enough to build a front-end web dev portfolio with practice projects.
Hah. I'm always surprised by how many times someone suggests this. I've known people who moved into trading, and the skill set definitely seems similar. But I know nothing about trading, and I think I would rather enjoy building things and being creative. I guess it's something I should research (I wonder what the learning curve is like?).
I don't exactly feel proud for being 28 and having no formal education and work experience. Online poker was good while it lasted, and it helped me grow independently. But it hasn't really granted me skills that I can translate to a real world career. I'll have a huge gap on my resume, and I know that some people tend to hold low opinions towards poker players. Many ignorant people dismiss the 'professional poker player' as a degenerate gambling addict.
I'm going to have a tough time making my resume look good!
But the media, with the movie 21 and the huge amount of poker tournaments on TV, seems to make is quite a 'cool' thing to do.
Maybe reality isn't as romanticised as the TV, but I guess playing poker takes a lot of skill and loads of hours, multitasking and so on that could translate to 'willing to put in work + smarts' that some recruiter could enjoy?
Maybe you should compile these facts, time spent, focus on the 'number aspect' of it. And such things. Put this and 'self sustained/employed?' on your resume etc.
Honestly I have no idea what hiring managers would think, and maybe I am far from their mindset.
Because he probably had to deal with people to whom you can't explain that there are variants of poker that are more than beatable with the right circumstances (rake %, player pool, fish-reg ratio, etc.)
That was my initial plan, but I don't see it working out. My hands will be full with school and I'll have to commit to my tuition costs early on and sign a rental lease, and most importantly I won't have time to build a good portfolio while in school.
I've always been curious about how freelancers make such a high hourly, because freelance websites are full of people charging $15/hr.