What happens if you give 200% in a coding boot camp.
There are possible outcomes after such a camp. Look for a position as a junior developer. Look for an internship. Never code again. Keep up with your job and add this magical skill of programing. In this article I’ll explain to you what happened to me after having given 200%.
Different personalities, one common thing.
First of all, if you are thinking about joining a coding boot camp, you’ve made half of the journey. It shows that you are interested in new technologies, it shows that your are curious to learn new things, it shows that you’re looking for something meaningful in this life. Exactly these kinds of personalities you will find in the coding camp. Tremendous active passionate entrepreneurs who want to learn and make an impact in this world. Forget about the degrees, the education, the college. That doesn’t count when it comes to code. Just two simple aspects count: a good logical thinking and an insane work ethic. First aspect is the only one that may differ among people: intelligence, logic, analytical thinking have a genetic component, although it can be massively improved during life. But insane work ethic is an aspect, that you will find for sure among your coding fellows. You can not study a ton of new concepts for 2–3–6 months every day, if you are not willing to put in the necessary effort. You can not be responsible of 60.000 lines of code if you are not willing to think, re-think, code, re-code, write, delete, enjoy it, hate it. Again, insane work ethic prevails over intelligence.
Background
This topic is very important, since it may be the very first question that one asks oneself before applying to a coding boot camp. Am I right for such an adventure?
I list out the different backgrounds that I met in my coding boot camp: U.S.A. soldier, MMA fighter (these two guys where the first ones to introduce themselves, I was about to run away from the class), linguistics, marketing guys, finance people, computer science students and myself, a mechanical engineer.
These different backgrounds lead us to a frequently asked question: is there a difference between people with a technical background and people without? Well, if I have to choose between a yes or a no, the answer is very easy. Of course yes. People with a technical background, engineers, computer science students, they all have already been through this process of analytical thinking. Therefore, they have some tools in their brains that others don’t have, yet. But that’s the wrong question and the wrong point. The right question to formulate, from my point of view, is this one: do you want to learn a new way of thinking, a new skill, putting aside your background, your comfort zone? These engineers, these computer science students were not born as tech people. They couldn’t even sum up 2 + 2 when they were babies. They learnt it. Consequently, at the end of the camp, people without a technical background learnt exactly the same. The course gives you thousands of concepts. It’s on you to discover how much you absorb. There are no excuses. It’s all about you.
Day by day or ups and downs
The most difficult thing of a coding boot camp, of learning how to code, is not the technical aspect, as most people think. Anyone can understand that an array is an object to store information in an indexed way. If I give you 2.000 easy concepts to learn, maybe you will also learn them. But if I give you 2.000 easy concepts to learn in 3 seconds, you will not. Time is a key factor during the camp. You don’t have the time to study how you would like, you don’t have the time to assimilate everything. And that leads to stress, frustration etc. Because the course doesn’t wait for you. The course follows its own path. That’s why the most important thing for such intensive courses is self-control. There will be days where you will feel like the king of the universe. On these days you will feel that you understand everything in front of you and the code just flows. Other days, on the other hand, you will not understand the concepts, you will spend hours with bugs, with wrong code structures that were made from the very beginning. The king of the universe turns instantly into a “loser”, with the dangerous thoughts like: “what am I doing here”, “I am not good enough”, “why do other people have finished the task and I haven’t” etc. You have to be prepared for these moments, you have to learn how to deal with these moments. Make a pause, do some sports, talk with your classmates about that. Don’t be arrogant. Ask, debate, share information. Admit that you didn’t understand the class. Admit that you needed more time. Admit that you are not a machine. Survive the bad days, no matter how, and excel in the good ones.
Life after the coding boot camp
After these months of hard-work, stress, joy, laughs, desperation, frustration, late hours at night coding, self-improving, you are done. Everyone comes back to their old lifes. Everyone. Old life is waiting for you, but you are not the same. You have a tremendous powerful new skill to be used. How you use it, it is up to you. Some students will try to find a job, others an internship. Others they won’t code ever again. Others will keep doing their old jobs, but mixing it with this new coding skill. That’s me. That’s the target group that I’d like to address. I was asked this question very often: “But it’s an expensive investment, will I find a job as a developer after the coding camp?”. Answer yourself. You do know the answer. Normally, software developers have studied computer science. And if not, they are self-taught coders. In both cases they spent years to achieve these solid fundamentals. Do you think that any company in the world would hire you as a senior software developer in a super demanding position, with just a couple of months of coding experience? Would you do it?
Of course not, but that doesn’t mean that there are no opportunities for you out there. You need to know what you want to get out of the coding camp before you get in. To me it was very clear. Luckily I was able to continue working in my company as an engineer. My goal for the camp was to learn as much as possible. With an insane working ethic. Working as many hours as I could. But why work more than 100% of your potential? Because I knew that that was an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I knew that the teacher assistants would not be there for me anymore after the course. I had two months just for coding, without distractions. I would be coding alone after the course. So I kept pushing and pushing during the course, thinking that the hard work would pay off somehow. How, I didn’t have a clue. But I did know what I wanted to do with the new skill.
Improve your surroundings
Within my company, I wanted to automate processes. I wanted to destroy PowerPoint and Excel tasks. I wanted to write small pieces of code to help my company be a better company. Help people, and of course, myself, to focus on the important tasks and get rid of the bureaucracy, get rid of the endless reportings, get rid of the tasks that can be coded once and for ever.
I didn’t expect to work directly after the camp as a software developer. I respect people who studied computer science too much. I understand how hard they worked to learn how to code, and how skillful they are. But I am writing this post two months after finishing my coding boot camp. Because today is the first day I have the time. Because today I finished the 3 coding projects for my company. Two months in which I worked as a junior developer. Two months in which I developed online apps that help my company to be more efficient. I helped to digitalize the company.
And of course, my company is happy with the outcome, therefore, they are happy with me. I will keep working as an engineer, yes. I still need to learn thousands of JS functions. I want to attack React JS at some point. There is a long journey ahead of me to become a true full-stack developer. But now, every time I see something with my own eyes, that can be automated, that can be optimized, I am able to act on it. Thanks to LeWagon, I am not only a thinker anymore, I am also a doer.
That’s exactly what happens after the coding boot camp, if you give 200%. You don’t just think about new ideas anymore, new ways to improve your life or your company. You open your Mac, you open Sublime Text, you use a back-end language, a front-end language, and you build a piece of software that works. You can create absolutely everything that pops up in your mind.
You become free.
Even within your organization. But remember: 200%. No short cuts.
