I quit my job as a Product Manager and attend a coding bootcamp. Here is my story so far…
Just learnt that I passed my first out of two exams at Codaisseur Coding Academy. In the spirit of the high, I thought I would write something about my experience leaving my secure job as a Product Manager at VodafoneZiggo to attend a full-time coding bootcamp. I’m doing this not necessarily to become a full stack web developer but to gain technical knowledge, which I believe will make me become a better product manager or product owner in the future. Below are some of the questions I get asked a lot and my answers to them.
What is Codaisseur?
Codaisseur is a coding bootcamp in Amsterdam. The idea is you pay 800 EURO admission fee and if you find a job 6 months after graduation, either your future employer or you will pay the rest, which is 8642 EURO. If you don’t find a job within 5 months of graduation, it’s for free. When you find a job, You can choose to pass any offer as long as its within reason that you will find employment within in the job search. So you don’t have to take any job right away.
The bootcamp is 2 months and splits into 2 parts:
- Part 1: front-end web development including: JS, React, Redux and some HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, SCSS
- Part 2: back-end web development including SQL, ORMs, REST APIs, Middleware, Routers, and Security
After every part, there is a 2 days pass or fail assessment where you get tested on everything you have learnt by building a web application yourself.
If you fail this assessment, you get to re-sit it during the weekend. If you fail this re-sit, you are kindly asked to leave the bootcamp. Only those that pass get to continue to the end of the bootcamp.
What is your experience at Codaisseur? Would you recommend them?
The last day of my job was the 14th of February and the first day of the bootcamp was the 17th of February. I had 2 days in between to prepare for the bootcamp, which I didn’t because I thought I should relax on the weekend before the bootcamp starts. Boy, was I wrong…I started on the 17th and after 2 days at the bootcamp, it daunted on me that I was not prepared for this and was taking the express train straight towards fail-land.
I was expected to know basics JS when I entered class, which I didn’t. As a matter of fact, most of my classmates either already studied months in advance or had some background up to 2 years in web development. So, of course, they breezed through the first 2 days while I miserably lagged behind. On the third day, I thought this cannot go on any longer, so I went downstairs to the admission office and asked to be switched to a later class. They agreed because they want their student to succeed, which I really appreciate.
This was the best decision I made! I spent from end of February to beginning of April self-studying JS, HTML and CSS. When the bootcamp started, during the 1st week, I felt a lot better than I did in February because I already self-studied JS. However, I must say that attending the bootcamp helped a lot because despite the self-study, I was not able to write code and push applications online by myself until I followed the teaching methods at Codaisseur. Only after the first week, I was able to use JS to write this website from scratch: https://magical-joke-app.herokuapp.com/, which I thought was pretty cool.
In the 2nd week things got difficult when we moved on to React. As per usual, I started with no clue how to use this and struggled a lot the first day to apply React to make my web app interactive using states. I expressed this struggle and the head teacher showed us right away his process on how to write code. It was due to this and his dedication to teaching that I managed to understand and learn how to apply React in my code. To internalize this, I pushed through studying days and nights and weekends as well…Weekend? That word doesn’t exist in the bootcamp dictionary!
It was such a difficult first 3 weeks, but I never felt so good because I learnt so much in such a short period of time. I guess when I was at VodafoneZiggo, I experienced this learning curve at the beginning of the traineeship and of the PM job. However, towards the middle and the end, I felt that something was missing. I got to a point where I was so comfortable, I stopped listening to podcasts, reading self-improvement articles and stopped putting effort in self-development. I wanted to, but never got around to doing them. Of course, there are other reasons for my resignation but at the core, I felt as if I lost myself. Where is my ambition? Motivation? Drive? I knew then that if I ever wanted to find them again, I had to leave; throw myself out of the comfort zone and force myself to learn again. And that’s what I did.
I’m glad I joined Codaisseur. It’s a tough bootcamp. My time here is far from over because I still need to learn Redux and the backend. I might not pass the second assessment, but I’m glad that I am learning again. So, would I recommend Codaisseur? Heck yes. If you live in the Netherlands and want to learn to code. Do it. Step out of your comfort zone and join this program. It is intense and it seems like only 50% of the last class made it to graduation, but if you make it, it would be so worth it. Worst comes worst, you will learn a lot and self-improve in so many ways. The teachers are extremely dedicated and smart, so you are in good hands.
As someone coming from the PM world, now with some knowledge of coding, do you think it’s necessary for a PM to obtain technical knowledge? Or is commercial knowledge enough?
This is a difficult question, which I get asked a lot by my friends. I also ponder about this question a lot. With the knowledge that I have now, I must say that it really depends on the organization and the product.
In some organizations, a PM only needs to have good commercial knowledge. In other organizations, especially tech companies where the product is software, I think it really helps to have an understanding of the technical knowledge. At VZ, I once had to create an API MVP, I didn’t have an understanding API, so this task was so difficult for me. (Funny how now I can create my own API and fetch them from the internet and in 3 weeks I will be able to create my own middleware…oh time flies).
Anyway, what I am trying to say is that if you are a PM in a tech company with a technical product, you need to understand the technicality of your product to make prioritization decisions. If I had a technical product, I can imagine building a product starts with good software architecture that can balance out attributes such as performance, quality, scalability, maintainability, manageability and usability. This means, I need to be able to understand what these attributes mean in technical terminology, speak the same language as my architects, developers and UX/UI designers and most importantly, be able to make conscious prioritization decisions to balance out the impacts on time, quality and cost. Without the technical understanding, I will blindly be listening to the architect and cannot make the best decision on quality, timing and cost. Therefore, technical understanding is important to have for a PM/PO.
One task of a PM/PO is to be accountable for KPIs. There are different types of KPIs: revenue, cost, monthly recurring revenue. If you have a technical product that is customer facing, your KPIs should also include acquisition, activation, retention rate. I think revenue, cost, MRR are something a commercial product manager can do without technical knowledge. However, for acquisition, activation and retention it helps to understand the customer journey >> break it down to which part of the app has problem >> break down into which user story >> into which feature >> into which component to fix. Knowing this in detail helps a PM/PO gain an understanding of how long it will take, how much it costs and how to balance on time and quality.
For example, one way to understand acquisition is to ask: did the customer download my app? Activation is: What happens after they register? Did they have an AHA! moment where they keep coming back to it days, weeks, months after? Let’s say most customers downloaded the app and began to register but log out and never came back. A PM has to ask why is this so? It could be there is a problem with the signup form. The button doesn’t log the user information. With my technical knowledge, I can say fixing this takes less than a day because creating a signup form only takes this long in React. So yes, having technical knowledge helps me as a PM. There could be a case where customers were able to log in but the API doesn’t fetch their information from the database. This can take between a day or a week depending on how nasty the problem is. I believe this would be an easy bug fix or an easy new feature do to. I would not have thought so before I learnt coding.
In summary, I would definitely recommend any PM or PO to learn or brush up on their technical knowledge. I would wholeheartedly recommend Codaisseur as a coding bootcamp. Really, if you feel stuck in your job, leave the golden cage and go learn something. You will feel much better about yourself!! For all those needing a sign, this article can be it ;) (Of course, don’t do it during Covid time unless you have enough money to survive…let me know if you need help with your budgeting. I can advise you on that). Finally, I believe as a PM or PO, it is important to have technical knowledge to make conscious prioritization decisions. A PM/PO can ask for as much advise from specialists as he/she wants but the decision ultimately comes from him/her. A conscious decision cannot be made with a lack of understanding. Similarly, road mapping cannot be made without proper understanding of the technical product.
