Can A Coding Bootcamp Change Your Life?
My Insights From The Ironhack Experience
Beginning of 2019, I decided to switch career and become a web developer. Although I started my learning journey in an autodidact way, the decision to attend a coding bootcamp started to make more and more sense: it should help me getting to the next level, learn faster, and — probably above all — be among a community of people like me. This is how I hopped on board of Ironhack Web Dev Bootcamp: an intensive 9 weeks full stack training.
Some common interrogations about this type of programs are:
- Is it really that difficult? Do a lot of people Burn-out?
- What atmosphere should I expect?
- How is a 9 weeks training really valued on the job market?
At the time of writing, our batch just graduated and all went… very fast! So it is now time for me to drop some lines about what just happened and relate the experience.
So what can one expect to find in a coding bootcamp?
A group of individuals from various backgrounds
Being back to school after some career years feels weird at first… but also nice at the same time.
It appears to be a quite gender-balanced group with ages varying between barely twenties to mid-forties, but the most important are personal stories: a student deciding that university is not the right choice, a contemporary artist looking for a financially safer alternative, an entrepreneur who wants to master tech, a business developer who’s health situation brings the need to work remotely and developers with several years of coding experience who want to specialise in web technologies.
Each story is different, each story is worth to be listened and reminds that despite all differences we are here for a common goal that unites us.
A dense and fast-paced schedule
Not a big surprise: the program is dense. Very dense. The goal in 9 weeks is to use 8 technologies and be able to build a Full Stack web app from scratch. I said use — not master as the focus is the resulting apps that we build, but at the end of the program a lot of knowledge doors are wide open, the basics of web and JavaScript are already deep, and it’s up to us to be hungry for more.
The amount of info to ingest, the boundaries to which each one of us is pushed, the struggles and frustration are part of daily conversations. How to relax, get enough sleep or time off-screen or be able to memorise more efficiently — too.
These conditions, — extreme in a way — are also what connects us together: the ones that come trough challenges faster help the others, we talk and share impressions, open-minded atmosphere can be clearly sensed. The “Can-do” attitude that is advised on the first day is clearly part of the package.
“What strikes me the most so far is not the content itself but the atmosphere of mutual support” — (Student on first week)
Preparation is key
Having in mind the density, it seems natural that ingesting the content properly requires extra work on the side.
Online tools and courses are many, especially for JavaScript and associated frameworks, they can help you entering the magical world of code and make you feel comfortable for the start.
Don’t get too comfortable though, because the fast pace will catch you up at some point, but to my view it is very helpful, especially when you don’t have any professional coding experience. The bet here is to be ready for the job market right after graduation.
“My friend learned alone for 8 months, then attended a bootcamp… First week was chilled, then the real challenge started!” — (Student on first week)
…but it’s ever too late
If you didn’t have time to prepare, or even if you did, the after-bootcamp is a good time to review all that ultra-condensed pack of content, train it, feel comfortable, and go further, because (spoiler) after 9 weeks you still don’t know everything and (spoiler 2) even after 10 years you will not.
No software engineer knows everything, even after 10 years of career, and that’s what makes it exciting: there is always something new to learn.
So choose your new battles: learn React hooks? Redux? GraphQL? Train Php for the backend? The world is your Oyster!
Projects: an occasion to give it all
Some of the most special moments of the bootcamp are the famous project weeks, where everyone puts the best possible efforts and transforms then newly acquired knowledge in a very personal creation.
The final project is a sum of hard work, sweat, intense emotions, joy, passion, cries, tension, edge of nervous breakdown… you see the plot. It also includes some of the most memorable moments of the bootcamp, what brings the people even closer together and crowns the studies by a tangible, show-off-able portfolio element of us developer newbies.
What is my value on the job market?
One of the main reasons to attend a bootcamp is to switch career, and that means not only to have acquired knowledge, but also to have skills recognised as valuable by tech recruiters and companies.
Let’s face it:
The phase of re-entering the market wearing another hat is always a delicate moment but like in any other activity or profession, one has to build a network, prove value and market themselves. Good news for devs: there is a strong demand and there are many ways to show skills and gather experience before being hired.
9 weeks is a short time compared to a 3 years CS degree but focusing on the practical work, using latest technologies and building apps together puts alumni in a “ready for the market” position.
There are many alumni, from many bootcamps and this number will trend to increase in the future years. To stand the competition, one must develop a genuine passion for the topic, constantly build-up their knowledge and set their own goals.
The market is developing rapidly and in being constant need of people mastering tools that are only a couple years old, this is of course a chance that can be taken.
The bootcamp shows the way, sets the pace and the idea of learning a new tech in a couple of weeks becomes normal. Curiosity should be an asset that keeps you ahead of the tech-game.
To wrap this up
My conclusion will not break apart all pre-existing ideas in a revolutionary way: bootcamps are not a miracle solution to achieve your dreams overnight and come from a lambda employee who hates Mondays and his stagnating boring job to an accomplished superstar hacker wearing the most stylish hoodie while binge-scripting a state-of-the-art AI algorithm… but it can help you a lot to take this path.
The crazy pace of the 9 weeks also made us assess our learning abilities and considerably raise the bar in terms of what I can do and shall aim at.
Projects helped us to develop teamwork skills and coordination, putting us in a situation of teach team during a dev sprint.
Career support gave us tools to properly position ourselves on the job market with the new skill set and meet companies.
Being part of an ecosystem of like-minded people from various backgrounds and striving to achieve a common goal is an inspiring experience that clearly differs from what can achieved alone, and a powerful extra boost towards learning goals.
But all good things have an end, and it is stunning how fast time can flew while I was on a state that we can call the flow. Time to get ready for next steps!
