How I took the Plunge and Became a Software Engineer
Growing up, I was always told to take a “traditional job” be it a lawyer/doctor/accountants etc as they are seen as recession proof. After graduating from university with an accounting and finance degree I started working in a bank climbing up the corporate ladder. Somehow however I feel a sense of not being satisfied with what I do. Day in and day out i will be doing similar task thinking to myself that I could achieve much more and doing something more fullfilling with my life. So 8 months ago I decided that I was going to make a career change before i turn 30.
Throughout the last few years you realise that more and more people are becoming more tech savvy. New websites/apps/products are popping up. I thought to myself that I am interested in solving problems and always wonder how does one get a product to the market. I research around and settled on learning how to code. Coding seems to have a low barrier of entry compare to other jobs which might require me to take a degree of sorts. So I took the plunge and quit my corporate job signing up to a 7 months intensive coding bootcamp in Sydney called Coder Academy where hopefully at the end of the course I will be a full stack web developer. Why Coder Academy and not other bootcamps such as GA or Fire Bootcamp? I thought to myself, how much can i actually learn in a short course 4 weeks or 12 weeks. It just wouldn’t be worth me quitting my job. So i opt for coder academy’s 25 weeks to make sure that I could give myself sufficient time to fully dive into the coding world. Plus after the 25 weeks of intensive bootcamp there is a 1 month internship experience which is offered as part of the course which I thought would be great to actually work in the industry to see how it is. In addition to that, I had a previous work colleague which did the same course and recommended the course highly.
Before the start of the course, they make you do some prework on codeacademy(html and css) to get familiar with coding. Completing those I felt confident not knowing what actually awaits for me.
From the start of the 1st day of course, we were just being overloaded with information each day until the end of the course. Getting our machine setup with text editor, getting familiar with terminal commands, home-brew, running ruby etc on day 1. 2 weeks in and you notice a few people dropping out of the course and at times makes me wonder if this course is for me. But having already quit my job, there is just no turning back right now. It feels as if its a never ending marathon.
Below is how the semesters are being split out with most of the main topics. There are 3 semesters each being 7 weeks long.
SEMESTER 1 — Machine Setup, Git, Github, IRB, Ruby, HTML, CSS, Ruby Gems, Mailer, Payment. A terminal app assignment at the end.
SEMESTER 2 — Rails, Authentication, payment(stripe), javascript, DOM, JSON, callbacks, jQuery, Vue, Node, mongoose, mongoDB. A Rails assignment(2 sided marketplace) at the end.
SEMESTER 3- React, middleware, salting & hash, component life cycles, node authentication JWT, Express, Babel. A real life React assignment at the end where we had to look for a client and build a website based on their business.
Tips and Resources which helped me through the course
Udemy, Codeacademy, W3 Schools
Ruby- Learn to Program by Chris Pine
Rails- Agile Web Development with Rails 5.1 by Sam Ruby and David Bryant Copeland
Javascript- Read You Don’t Know JS.
React, Mongoose, Node.js, Express, Ruby- The docs are the best place to learn as they have a collection of resources.
Last of all, asking questions and help from the lecturer/teaching assistants or just your classmates.
What did i take out from the bootcamp?
- You don’t have to take a bootcamp course in order to learn coding as you will be doing most of the learning by yourself. All the resources you need are online and it being a bootcamp course, the lecturer have a lot to cover over a very shot period of time. Don’t expect to be spoon fed as the lecturer will basically “touch and go” on a topic. They are like how the course coordinator describe“being Sherpas and showing the way”. You have a lot of self studying to do and before you could understand/master a certain topic you are being introduced to a new topic.
- You make lifelong friends who have the same interest in coding. Where everyone is just so helpful and willing to help one another. Classmates which understand what you are going through and just support one another. Knowing that they are going through and feeling the same thing as you are helps.
- Teaching assistants and classmates which helps you after lectures.
- You learn the most by just starting to code. You could read all the websites and articles in the world but if you don’t start coding you will not learn.
- Coder Academy invites industry leaders, past cohorts almost every week to give a talk. You get to hear from their experience and more about their company. We had CTOs from Finders, Carsguide, Lux Group, software manager from Amazon Web Services to recruitment agency come and give a talk.
- Coder Academy organizes visits to Atlassian, Finder, Google where you get to see how the offices are like.
- Networking is important. Going for meetups, Rorosyd, React Sydney, SydJs.S is the best way to meet like minded people.
- An internship at the end of the course just help with getting a foot to the door of a tech company and just see how the industry is.
Having finished my internship today marks the end of my bootcamp. Am i glad that I did this bootcamp? I sure did. I probably would have given up if I took up coding on my own and getting stuck not understanding something. Without having the support I had doing this course I would probably be stuck with not knowing. However having said that, there would probably be some things which I would changed about the bootcamp.
Having turned 30 last week I was lucky enough to be offered a full time role in the internship company which I was interning with. I am glad that I took the plunge to make a career change and it works out until now. I guess it’s always not too late to make a change in your life.
HERE’S TO THE START OF MY NEW CAREER