From Bootcamp to Engineer

Teacher. Writer. Editor. With a B.S. in Communications and B.A. in English, this made sense as a career path in my first three years after college. Reading and writing were my bread and butter — at least so I thought. But 2.5 years into my job in the content department of a legal SEO company, I found myself languishing from the boredom and tedium of writing what felt like the same thing, hour after hour, day after day. I needed a change.

Five years later my career path looks a lot different: Teacher. Writer. Editor. Software Engineer. Product Manager. I clearly got my change, and lots of it. So how’d I do it? Well, it all started with a coding bootcamp.

My Path to Bootcamp

In 2014 I was working my “dream job” — writing and editing 8+ hours a day, but I was unchallenged and unfulfilled. You know those commercials you hear on the TV and radio — “If you’ve been injured in a car accident, we can help”? That’s the kind of stuff I was writing, and I could do it in my sleep.

I was conflicted, unsure, and considering a number of different options: another company, graduate school, the Peace Corps, but the thought that I kept going back to, and had been for the last few years, was becoming a software engineer. I had taken 2 computer science (CS) classes in high school and one in college. Initially I was just looking for another AP class I could take, but then found out I truly enjoyed learning how to code. It challenged me and satisfied my need to always be digging deeper, to find out “why.” And, honestly, it’s downright fun.

At the time, I did consider going back to get my B.S. in computer science, but it would be at least a year and a half, or more if I kept working. I wasn’t ready for that jump, so I took a “safer” route: determining if an editing job at another company would be a better fit. A full time position was open at a company I was a part-time contractor for, and I reached out to a friend to find out more about it and the company. Turns out it was her position and that she had left a few weeks prior to attend MakerSquare.

“Bootcamp? What’s that? And Is It for Me?”

MakerSquare — now Hack Reactor, after being acquired in 2015 — is an immersive full-stack coding bootcamp. I’d never heard of coding bootcamps, let alone MakerSquare, until that moment. But it was like a lightbulb had gone off for me.

I’m not going to lie to you. I love learning. I was THAT kid who was excited the day before school started after summer. The opportunity to spend time immersed in learning programming and be able to start looking for a job after only 3 months? Consider me sold.

Of course, I seriously considered if I was jumping into this because I could or because it was something I really wanted. I did a few full courses on Codecademy in HTML, Ruby, and Javascript, in addition to auditing an actual MakerSquare class and talking to one of their teachers. By the end of it all, I knew I was still deeply invested in learning how to program and taking this path. And I reasoned that if my salary after coding bootcamp was equal to my previous salary plus the cost of MakerSquare (roughly $10K when I went), it would definitely be worth it.

This thought process is pretty common, as I learned from both my classmates and BigCommerce bootcamp graduates, especially when deciding whether to go to a bootcamp versus college. Kate Walters, a software engineer I at BigCommerce who attended the Iron Yard* in Austin, said she already had a bachelor’s degree, so “bootcamp made more sense over a traditional CS degree,” and Roberto Alvarez, a senior software engineer at BigCommerce who attended Hack Reactor in San Francisco, “wanted to up level fast and [Hack Reactor] was only 3 months long.”

There are many reasons to consider a bootcamp though. Mikaela Rodriguez, a Developer Documentation Specialist at BigCommerce, started out teaching herself HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Javascript frameworks; however, she found it “hard to know what to learn and if [she was] building the right habits.” Bootcamp felt right to her because it would allow her to “deeply understand [programming] concepts in a holistic way.”

One aspect that really sold me on MakerSquare and a bootcamp in general was the required interview to get into the program. Though similar to a regular job interview, it included a test on the pre-course work from Codecademy. The goal of this was twofold: to keep cohorts small (mine was only 16 to start), ensuring students got ample attention and support from the teachers and staff, and to make sure that only students who were prepared, invested, and demonstrated the skills necessary to succeed as a developer were accepted.

Before you start panicking at needing programming skills to even get into a bootcamp, you should know that this doesn’t mean being able to write fully functioning applications or even having a great deal of subject knowledge. It means being able to learn quickly (a bootcamp is, after all, an accelerated learning program), apply what you’ve learned, and have the willpower and dedication needed to struggle through hard times; because these are the skills that you are going to need on the job, especially in your first job as a programmer after coding bootcamp.

What Was Bootcamp Like?

Did you ever have hell week in high school or college? Maybe for sports or finals? Coding bootcamp is like that, but for 3 months instead of a week. I don’t tell you this to scare you away, but to prepare you. And if you’re invested and excited to learn, they’re also probably going to be some of your best and most rewarding 3 months.

In addition to the pre-interview coursework, MakerSquare required 100 hours of pre-work in core programming skills, such as git, Ruby, and Javascript. This was all done online and support was provided from both fellow students and teachers via online forums. It may sound like a lot, but I was ultimately glad for it, as it prepared me for the 55+ hour weeks and allowed us to hit the ground running with more advanced concepts.

Most full time bootcamps have similar hours, ranging from shorter 11 hour days to longer 14+ ones. As Kate said, “[you] spend most of your waking hours learning and coding.” My classes at MakerSquare were from 9 a.m. — 8 p.m. Monday — Saturday. And like Roberto, I rarely did anything else but study and work on projects on Sundays. Fortunately, most bootcamps offer part time classes for those that can’t take on such a time-consuming schedule. In fact, Mikaela is currently attending Austin Coding Academy while working full time for BigCommerce!

Day to day, they’re also fairly similar in structure, with instruction on a language, framework, or concept in the morning, and exercises or project work in the afternoon. At the time, MakerSquare taught HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Ruby. I was particularly lucky in my cohort, as it was the only one where they taught core CS concepts only, rather than focusing on a framework. That’s not to say that teaching frameworks is bad, it just worked out best for my ultimate path as a backend engineer that I learned more about object oriented programming and how to apply it, regardless of language or framework.

The projects are where you’ll find bootcamps really start to differ. At MakerSquare, we did one a month in and 1–2 over the last half of the course. The first was a team project, while the others had to be individual (you were required to do at least one on your own) or with a partner. A lot of bootcamps will make you do the same project as everyone else or provide a set of projects to pick from. At MakerSquare, we choose what we built every time, which really allowed us to focus on what we liked and develop skills in the areas in which we were really interested.

My team project, an application titled “Give a Penny, Take a Penny” that created a community for people to find volunteers and volunteering opportunities, taught us how to split up work and function as a team (merge conflicts anyone?) — both key skills in a job. My two final projects, one with a partner and one individual, gave me the opportunity to dive deeply into databases and large data sets, something that really interested me. For the partner project, I wrote the backend code to power an application that dynamically showed a user an evolutionary tree by genus. My individual project, titled “Walking with the Dead” (™ The Walking Dead)”, was a completely terminal based dungeon game, ala Zork (one of the first interactive fiction computer games), with ASCII art. Building that game was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done.

I’d strongly recommend, from my perspective as an interviewee and interviewer, asking questions about these projects when making your decision. Most employers are going to want to know what you’re interested in and what you can do on your own. Your choice of projects and the work you do on them are going to be some of the most important aspects of demonstrating this to potential employers. Have something that you can show to them that you did on your own.

Another aspect that set MakerSquare apart for me was the mentorship program with developers in the community. The volunteers told us a little about themselves, their jobs, and their path to engineering, then we were given the option to choose which ones best fit our interests. I got pretty lucky in that I ended up having two, as a classmate connected me with his mentor as well. This gave me the ability to ask questions of two professionals in completely different jobs and companies, and get support and guidance from two super smart guys when building my game. Plus, I got my second job post graduation as a result of one of them reaching out to me about a position at his company!

It’s important to note, however, that one bootcamp is not another. They may be similar in a lot of ways, but each one is unique. From the length of time to the curriculum (languages, frameworks, and concepts) taught, the required prerequisites to the support in your job search to the , the amount of involvement from teachers to the types of projects you do, no bootcamp does it quite the same as another.

Consider what you want out of the experience and what kind of job you want afterwards. I knew I didn’t gravitate towards frontend programming, so a curriculum that taught languages and concepts needed to succeed as a backend software engineer was integral to me.

After Graduation

Another key component in my decision to choose MakerSquare was the open house they hosted at the end of the course. All grads displayed their projects (I had attendees play my game!) to companies and people in the Austin tech community. I 100% attribute my post-graduation success to the projects I completed at MakerSquare and this open house.

It’s where I met the CTO and CEO of my first employer, Datafiniti. I had an interview with them within a week and a job offer as a Data Engineer within 2 weeks of graduation. I was extremely fortunate, as, though 73% of graduates get a job in the field, according to Course Report, it often takes a bit longer than 2 weeks. You may end up submitting 100s of applications, like Kate, but don’t be discouraged. It only takes 1 place to say yes and give you that first foot in the door.

Since that first job offer, I’ve worked as a developer at SparkCognition, an artificial intelligence company where I wrote the original code to power event-based predictive analytics for industrial IoT data, and now as a Technical Product Manager at BigCommerce. How and why did I go from software engineering to product management? That’s a blog and story for another time. Afterall, this is “From Bootcamp to Engineer”.

The more important point to me is that I met the goals I had set for myself before attending MakerSquare. I’m challenged on a daily basis, constantly learning and working with code (if not writing it daily), and in a much better place financially. In fact, I now make nearly 3 times as much as I did when I left my editing job in 2014.

And I’m not alone. I’ve seen so many people achieve great success post coding bootcamp. Mikaela, who is still in her program, was promoted from a Tech Support Representative based on what she has learned already. And many of my co-workers at BigCommerce who are bootcamp graduates are now senior engineers.

Key Takeaways

Whew, that’s a lot. Want the TLDR? Here are some key takeaways.

1. Do your research.

If you’re thinking about going to coding bootcamp (and you probably are if you’re reading this), do your research. I mentioned it before, but I can’t stress it enough. Write a list of what you want out of the course and in a job afterwards. Compare bootcamps. Talk to past and current students. Sit in on a class if you can. See if the bootcamp offers financial support, such as financing or scholarships (many do. I was awarded one as a woman in tech, and so was Mikaela as a woman-of-color). Look for mentorship. Find out not only if they have career support during the course, but also afterwards (Hack Reactor offers lifetime alumni networking and job search support).

2. Network, network, network.

Finding a job is difficult in general, but it can be particularly hard when you’re switching careers. Someone has to bet on you, and your life and job search will be so much easier if you have people who can vouch for your skills. Get your classmates to write recommendations for you on LinkedIn. Find meetups on topics that interest you on meetup.com, and attend seminars and talks (many are free!) so you can meet a variety of people in the tech community. The value of human connection cannot be overstated.

3. Have confidence & sell YOU

Here’s a secret: your past work and life experience doesn’t stop being valid or relevant once you change careers to become a web developer. In fact, it will likely make you a more attractive candidate. Being a successful engineer is not only about writing code; it takes people skills, critical thinking, problem solving, good communication skills, project management, and more. Think critically about what you have learned in your prior roles and how you can apply it to any job you’re interviewing, then sell it.

4. Practice interviewing

And finally, probably the best piece of advice I can offer is to practice your interviewing skills. Technical interviews can be scary and intense, especially at first. This is a little bit because of the “Imposter Syndrome,” but mainly because there’s almost always a coding exercise. You’re going to have to get in front of several people and whiteboard, and it’s going to be so much easier and better if you’ve done mock interviews. I did several with classmates, teachers, and engineers in the community who were gracious enough to volunteer their time. Actively seek feedback and practice these until you are comfortable. When you don’t know something, just admit it. And when you don’t understand, ask why. Do this in your actual interviews too. Humble, honest, and inquisitive are far better qualities in an engineer than arrogance and deceptive.

Conclusion

Going from bootcamp to engineer to product manager has been a journey — my journey. And if you decide to go to a bootcamp, you’re going to embark on your own journey. Yes, it’s cheesy, but it’s also very true. It’s going to be full of bumps, unexpected turns, “Aha!” moments, and so many things no one can predict. A bootcamp can open a number of doors, many of which you might not even imagine when you start. But, ultimately, it’s going to be what you make of it.

Sounds a lot like life in general, no?

* — The Iron Yard closed in 2017