1. I don't think there is a universal standard for "junior level" anymore. If you have a year's worth of working with Rails across the stack in a production setting, you are more than capable of landing a decent job in SF (not Senior or Lead, of course)
2. I can't quantifiably say there's a shortage, but I'd have to guess the amount of decent "juniors" that code bootcamps are pumping out are hurting the market if you're a junior competing for the same jobs in web. The bootcamps are collectively graduating thousands of students per year in San Francisco alone. HN doesn't think favorably of this lot, but they are hard workers, have learned modern programming conventions and best practices, and are desperate for work.
Caveat to #2: You can differentiate from this group if you basically _aren't_ a Ruby/Rails or Javascript dev, since those are the primary languages taught.
a. It's hard to say because as I admitted in 1, it's hard to know what "Junior" qualifies for anymore, and I'm unsure of what your metric is for it. If you'd like, we can talk separately and I can try to give you an honest assessment (I conduct engineering interviews at a YC '12 company) of where you stand in relation to what I perceive to be other juniors (and bootcamp graduates).
b. Yeah - bootcamp grads are taught to go after these junior-facing roles (and even forego internships), so this is definitely the market you're competing with, assuming you're Junior as well. Once again, I can only really speak for SF and in web.
I should have mentioned but I'm starting a bootcamp (Fullstack Academy) in 2 weeks. I thought that I'd be considered junior after I graduate and was wondering about the future.
If you wouldn't mind, I'd love to do some sort of assessment to see where I am. It's not too important (just curiosity really) so if you have other priorities I completely understand, but if you've got time HMU - azerner3@gmail.com.
2. I can't quantifiably say there's a shortage, but I'd have to guess the amount of decent "juniors" that code bootcamps are pumping out are hurting the market if you're a junior competing for the same jobs in web. The bootcamps are collectively graduating thousands of students per year in San Francisco alone. HN doesn't think favorably of this lot, but they are hard workers, have learned modern programming conventions and best practices, and are desperate for work.
Caveat to #2: You can differentiate from this group if you basically _aren't_ a Ruby/Rails or Javascript dev, since those are the primary languages taught.