Noob to 6-Figure Job in 12-Weeks
The truth about coding bootcamps from a development agency perspective…..(and how to actually land that 6-figure job)
With computer-related jobs expected to grow faster than the median for all occupations right through 2022, Coding Bootcamps have officially shifted into high gear.
Between 2014 and 2015, Canadian coding bootcamp graduates doubled to somewhere around the 1,000 mark. In the US, that graduate number is closer to 20,000. To put that in perspective, in 2014 the number of computer science graduates from accredited universities across the entire US was 48,000.
It’s a huge change in a market where there’s a ton of growing demand.
But are they showing results? It depends on who you ask and what numbers you look at. There are a number of people who both criticize the short and long-term effectiveness of bootcamps as well as the success metrics they publish about their programs.
While many require a time investment of 8–12 weeks of full-time hours and cost in the neighbourhood of $10,000, most (if not all) institutions boast hiring rates of well over 90%, many work with hiring partners.
Studies have shown an average wage increase of 44% after graduation, and there are no shortage of personal anecdotes telling tales of wildly fruitful career redirections and salary bumps.
So what’s the challenge?
As much as the technology world enjoys relying on data, there is an important but more qualitative, philosophical consideration to be made in the context of the bootcamp discussion — the consideration of whether or not these kinds of programs are akin to “experience” in the traditional sense and give you the skills you need to be considered an experienced (even as a Junior) developer.
Yes, there’s a tremendous amount of benefit to learning code, and yes, the bootcamps contain a plethora of great teachers and can give you a breadth of knowledge.
You’ll also find that upon completion a number of jobs will be presented to you (though the nature of those jobs vary drastically). But on coming out of a bootcamp, should you expect to be equipped with arsenal common to that of a game-tested junior developer, someone who has been grinding it out with a design, engineering and QA team for more than one or two or even three years?
The short answer is no. While boot camps most certainly put you on the right track, a coding bootcamp does not give you all the tools required to hit the ground sprinting (pun fully intended).
Here are a number of areas that we believe are important to acknowledge and some insights to consider in terms of how to get that much needed real-world experience and really leverage your bootcamp to coding success.
Learning a Language: It Takes Longer Than You Think
Tim Fernihough is a Co-Founder and Head of IT Operations at Myplanet. At one stage in his career, like so many students at coding bootcamp, he buckled down and dedicated himself to learning a new coding language. The time it took him to become good at the language, would not be what you would call, “friendly”.
“I wanted to learn Drupal,” says Tim. “Sitting with three experts every day, it took me five months to learn it with a significant degree of confidence. And I was a PHP developer for 10 years before that.”
When it comes to coding bootcamps, 12 weeks of full-time work might sound like a long time. But keep in mind that it is not often 12 weeks of total language immersion. Due to the compressed nature of the bootcamp, you only get to scratch the surface of “full-stack” development — a vertical approach that applies to everything from back-end server knowledge to UX and UI understanding. Naturally, a similar depth is not necessarily achieved within individual languages and frameworks.
How then do you build a deeper understanding? The 10,000 hour rule comes to mind here, but the reality is, this is most effectively accomplished through excavation, repetition, iteration and ideally, front-to-back project completion. It could be freelancing, it could be working on your own projects. It could be volunteering or working as an intern. The experience in project completion is what is key.
Pace and Distance Are Key to an Epic Journey
Luis Zuniga is the IT Manager at Myplanet and he went through a well-known bootcamp in Toronto. While Luis did see value from the 12-week program, due to its pace and the open-ended nature, he realized after graduating that there were certainly a number of gaps in practicality.
“Yes, you are a full stack developer because you’ve gone through everything, but if you don’t catch something on the way, you’re out of luck,” Luis describes. The pace is insanely fast. “What would have helped fill the gaps naturally would be going through a project from start to end. Yes, they do have this integrated, but it was very linear — you don’t really have time to get into the logic. A more effective format would be picking a project and just knocking the whole thing out. You know, similar to how it happens when you’re actually a developer.”
At the end of the day, while full of practical applications, in order to become an experienced developer you’ve got to cover the bases. And in order to cover those bases, many bootcamps are closer in form to a condensed academic curriculum than they are an internship or an actual project placement/assignment. Which neatly leads us to the final but perhaps most important consideration.
There’s No “Boot” in “Team”
“A lot of people can write code but can’t work efficiently or well in a group,” says Luis. Tim echoes the sentiment on a number of different levels. For one, given the inherent nature of the industry, the context of a team brings along its own naturally occurring technical challenges.
“The idea behind version control, is that there’s a standard for it: Git. They’ll teach it to you, you’ll know how to do it — in theory it’s manageable. But in dev teams, especially distributed, you can’t use that methodology. You have to understand branch management, and you have to know how to pull and merge the master branch into your story branch. You have to understand this intimately, otherwise you risk serious conflicts.”
The same kinds of limitations apply to the procedural levels of communication and execution in an Agile environment. “Enacting Agile principles — optimizing how you work in scrum rather than just being told about it — makes a huge difference. Every company has a different way of running scrum, but a lot of people haven’t had that level of interaction. The exposure ends up being more important than you might think.”
“[At bootcamp] there was a lot of teamwork, but no real direction or guidance on how to be a successful team player,” Luis says as he reflects on his bootcamp experience. “How do you interact with each other, how do you follow up on problems, or distribute challenges. Some people think that’s a waste of time and that you’ll just ‘pick it up’, but real world experience will show you that this stuff is actually the critical stuff in execution and arguably saves the most time in the long run.”
The “Ex (perience)” Factor
“The people with unrealistic expectations — the ones thinking they’re going to get a 100k job after 9 weeks — they’re coming at it with the wrong attitude,” says Tim. “They’ve got to think about building experience and building a broader understanding.”
While they are not legally positioned as “schools” (yet), compared to experience in a fast-paced, market-live development agency, a bootcamp is essentially based on a school structure. And much like that classic model, experiences before and after are critical to actually transforming the coding skills learned in a bootcamp into productive, sustainable job skills in the real world.
“The idea should be, ‘Hey you’ve got some skills and some insight, but you need a bit more,’” Tim says. “Programs like our Webcraft bootcamp are best for people who have had 1–2 yrs experience. From there, you should be seeking an internship or a volunteer position. You should be solving problems, you should be using the knowledge you have to get as much ‘live’ experience as possible.”
“Go and work for a web development company, but maybe not as a developer just yet,” Tim continues. “Try and find an in so you can get exposed to the things you want to be — proximity makes a huge difference in regards to what a Jr. Dev can ultimately do out of the gate.”
Finding good mentors, gaining experience going through projects from start to finish — and working on teams are all great ways to amplify your bootcamp skill, and get to that 6-figure job.
So like any good soldier, make the most of bootcamp and know that once you make it through, you’ll be in much better condition than when you started. Just don’t be surprised when things look a lot different on the frontlines, and you realize your journey is just beginning…
Published by: Cahill Puil
Interested in working with us? We’re looking for great Developers, UX and UI designers. Bootcamper’s as well! ;) Just show us something awesome you’ve done…and → Apply Here
