Advancing your Tech Career through Intensive Training Programs
I currently live and work in Vancouver.
At lunch if you walk along the waterfront, you can watch the seaplanes taking off. They are loud and they work really hard plowing through the water gaining enough momentum to get to those pontoons into the air. But once there is lift off, all the effort was worth it as the plane keeps rising and flies out to the ocean.
It occurred to me that the the emergence of tech training schools with Intensive Training Programs (aka “bootcamps”) offer a related experience.
Students who enrol in these schools with training periods in the range of 3–6 months are applying intense, focused energy to get their careers moving in a new direction in a short-time frame.
I have personally witnessed numerous students successfully “find their wings” in a 3 month time-frame, and gain employment within weeks or months of completing their program. Occasional students even secure work before the end of their program.
What accounts for their success, and why can these Intensive Training Programs (ITPs) be an excellent option for career change?
Here’s the obligatory tldr:
1. Structure
2. Focus
3. Validation
4. Accountability
5. Exposure to Industry Processes
6. Expertise and Mentorship
7. Connection
1 | Structure
Intensive Training Programs work because they provide the needed structure within which to systematically build knowledge and skills.
It is truly a privilege to live in this era of humanity, with so much information so freely and easily available to us. Anything that I could want to know about, I can find in seconds from a device that fits in the palm of my hand.
That’s great for product research, or trivia, or scrolling through a newsfeed, but if you want to truly learn a new skill, the availability of all that information can feel overwhelming.
Like building a home, if you start building without a plan, you get a poorly constructed shack, with bits of scrap that you have found around the neighbourhood.
What is missing is structure — a clear plan of what is needed and how all the pieces fit together.
Knowing what is important, what dependencies exist between sub-domains of knowledge, and the logical order to build skills is lost in endless blogs, videos, source-code examples from StackOverflow. You can piece it all together yourself if you want, but when you are new to this — that’s a lot of effort with the risk that you waste a lot of time.
Many students who enter into my classroom express feeling disoriented or overwhelmed by all the information. They have cobbled together what information they could, but ultimately know they are limited in what they can accomplish.
An ITP offers well a thought-out structure, based on industry knowledge, so that you don’t worry about what you should learn, or in what order. You can rely on what your are learning to be relevant to your career goals, and simply follow the structure provided for you.
2 | Focus
Intensive Training Programs work because they enable students to remain focused consistently over a sustained period of time on a single subject, with minimal distractions.
Focusing is the application of a narrowed, intense energy, and concentration. Just like the seaplanes above, that focused energy is powerful and actually moves you forward, in the direction you want.
Without focus, aspiring “tech-careerists” jump around from topic to topic with a fragmented learning punctuated by interruptions and distractions. They feel pulled in different directions and their learning goes around in circles, without truly going deep and gaining the skills they desire.
When you don’t have a plan and aren’t sure of the overall structure of what you are learning, there is a vague background doubt and anxiety about exactly what you should spend your energy on. This energy leak prevents the focus needed to truly learn anything in a meaningful and lasting way. Trusting a provided structure removes this background anxiety so that you can reclaim as energy for actual learning. You can get down to business and focus.
An ITP empowers students to focus in a way that builds small skills, day-by-day and week-by-week with repetition and practice so that they can create a reliable set of core competencies.
3 | Validation
Intensive Training Programs work because they validate the desire to learn a new skill with tangible action and results.
When you decide to make a change in your life, it can be helpful to make a concrete decision in time and space that you can point to. The desire to begin a career the tech industry is just an idea until you act on it. Signing up for an ITP commits your idea into an action with real energy behind it.
While you can study on your own through online learning, time spent in front of your computer watching YouTube videos or working through FreeCodeCamp may not feel as real as being in a classroom. It is easy to become demotivated and feel like you aren’t taking a serious step towards what you want.
Paying real money, to show up in person at a real location, where there are real people learning with you, and real people teaching you makes the desire to get into tech…real.
And while a certificate or diploma may not truly matter in the grand scheme of things, there is a psychological benefit to having concrete evidence of the effort you put in, the skills you developed, the people you met, the projects you built, and the stamp of approval from experts saying that you successfully completed certain requirements. All are tangible proof that make your efforts feel more real than time spent learning online (possibly in your pjs).
With the energy of completing an ITP, you can pitch yourself confidently to employers knowing that you were were serious. You took action, backed by demonstrable commitment, which shows that you are dedicated to change and learning, not simply dabbling in something you imagine you may like.
4 | Accountability
Intensive Training Programs work because they provide accountability to put in the time and practice needed to see results, and provide feedback to improve those results.
The problem with all personal development programs is putting in the work when you lose motivation, are distracted, tired, discouraged, or overwhelmed. We all have intentions that we still haven’t followed through on, and books we plan to read that sit on our shelves gathering dust. There is nothing really holding us back except for our own lack of motivation and discipline.
Change-making is hard. When there are lots of unknowns and vast amounts of information to learn, going at it by ourselves can be daunting or seem impossible.
Of course, it is not impossible and there are numerous online programs for those who are motivated. Self-directed learning does work — for some. But that depends on your personality and what stage you are at in your learning. Self-directed learning is much easier at later stages when you have already developed a map of your domain, and fluency in it’s language.
Consider the case of personal fitness, losing weight, or building the body of your dreams — all the information you need is out there, and there are numerous apps that will guide you through different training regimens. Some people will individually manage to achieve their goals, and yet, nothing beats hiring a personal trainer or joining a class. As much as I enjoy going to the gym, I enjoyed it a lot more when I was working with a personal trainer.
There is no arguing that through self-motivation and self-discipline you can change your career, just like you can change your body, with all of the free/cheap resources available these days. But for many people, the value of working with an instructor in a classroom environment relieves stress, confusion, and provides the accountability needed to gain new skills. We all know that being in an environment with others moving in the same direction will lead to greater results than working in isolation.
In fact, the speed at which you learn, the retention of knowledge, and the possibility of mentorship/connection make an ITP much more effective than working by yourself.
5 | Exposure to Industry Processes
Intensive Training Programs work because they expose students to industry work-place processes and team-based projects allowing for quick integration into real teams.
One of the places where ITPs really shine is the work-like environments they create around projects, introducing students to Agile Methodologies and Design Sprints that are commonly used in the tech industry. This collaborative process is something that is a lot harder to achieve online, especially if you aren’t enrolled in an online program and are predominantly learning through videos.
While fundamental skills are necessary as an individual to do your assigned tasks, when you work in the tech industry, you will be working in teams. Knowing what that looks like, and the tools used, means that you can easily move into your first job with awareness of how everything generally works.
Employers want to minimize training time and hire employees that can be productive ASAP. With basic skills under your belt AND an awareness of the general product development process, all you really need to learn is the specifics of your particular company’s processes.
Amongst the various cohorts that I have taught, there are always surprises when we shift from working individually to working in teams. Understanding team dynamics, how to pitch ideas, compromise, and take leadership are all experiential things. The unique dynamics of personalities within a tight deadline like sprints lead to various pressures that are good to figure out before your paycheque is on the line.
6 | Expertise and Mentorship
Intensive Training Programs work because they are led by seasoned industry professionals who share knowledge from a place of insight and experience.
The value of 1-on-1 time with someone who has been where you want to go is a huge benefit of the ITP. A critical element and selling feature of an ITP is that the programs are taught by industry professionals, with years of experience. That experience really is the lynch-pin that holds together the effectiveness of ITPs.
Many students in College/University programs who excel often do so because they are able to form mentoring relationships with their professors. But the size of those programs often prohibits most students from having access to the professor in that way — and often not until the upper levels of a program.
ITPs often have deliberately small class-sizes to facilitate the kind of hands on learning required, and the ability to ensure all students receive the support needed to truly excel in such an intense environment.
Speaking from my experience as an educator, it is a privilege to have the opportunity to mentor students daily through their journey into tech. I believe in my students, and seek to inspire them as they courageously take the risk of stepping out to pursue a potentially life changing interest. Sharing my own career journey, struggles, mistakes, victories, and perspective gained over years provides insight that can’t be gained from videos, lectures, or textbooks.
This kind of support and insight invaluable.
7 | Connection
Intensive Training Programs work because they are a meeting place of like-minded individuals where personal networks can grow, and bonds of friendship can be formed.
Perhaps most important of all, students have the opportunity to meet and form relationships with other individuals aspiring in a similar direction.
While College/University may provide a similar opportunity for bonding over a longer period of time, many of those interested in a bootcamp experience are more mature, focused, and career motivated than the average undergraduate student, making an ITP a better fit for forming truly meaningful professional relationships.
Post-program, students find themselves facing the next hurdle in their careers: looking for work. While the program itself can provide career support, nothing beats the motivation of working with others in the same situation. Alumni often form study-groups, network together, and share leads for job opportunities, and are sometimes able to open doors for one another.
Online self-directed learning just doesn’t provide the same level of intensity, camaraderie, and networking that an ITP can provide. I often witness bonds forming that turn into deep friendships outside of the classroom — bonds that could last a life-time.
Conclusion
The benefits outlined above are what I see everyday as an Educator in an ITP environment. But I also believe that when challenged, we are capable of more than we know. And that challenge is the secret-sauce of ITPs.
It doesn’t need to take years to learn achieve competency. Software design and development is a complex and vast domain — but with the right environment and the right amount of pressure, it is amazing how much can be accomplished and how quickly the career of a motivated student can take off.
Disclosure: I work as a full-time educator at BrainStation, a digital training company. This post is not a promotion for a specific company/school, but thoughts about the benefits of Intensive Training Programs (i.e. bootcamp-style training) where I have observed many students make successful career changes.
I am not advocating for or against self-learning, bootcamp-style learning, or traditional education. Each has it’s place depending on goals. I personally have a BSc in Computer Science, have taken various college level programs and week long intensive trainings, and practice self-directed learning on an almost daily basis through sites such as Udemy and YouTube. All have served me in my career and empowered me as a life-long learner.
