Cask Data Engineer Shares His Bloc and Thinkful Experience

Edwin Elia, a graduate of Bloc’s Frontend Web Development course, recently accepted a role as a Frontend Engineer at Cask Data, a Palo Alto based firm that provides a platform for developers to manage and deploy data applications. As someone who went through first Thinkful and then Bloc before landing his position as an engineer, we wanted to hear about his experience as a bootcamp grad searching for a job. He even wrote two blog posts about his bootcamp decision process, and his overall experience with Bloc and Thinkful.

On Switching Careers after Bloc

Congrats on your new job at Cask Data. Tell me about your role.

Thanks. I’m a frontend developer at Cask Data, developing Angular apps mainly. I’m currently focusing on data analytics.

Was it difficult to transition from a Business Systems Analyst to a Frontend Developer? How did you manage it?

It was actually — the data analyst job I had prior was not a coding job, so I had to build up my portfolio again. Essentially I had to relearn all programming — it took me all of 2014 to get ready.

I started with Thinkful’s frontend course, I learned HTML, JavaScript, and jQuery. After I finished, I started applying for jobs, but found that my jQuery knowledge was not sufficient. It was hard to find companies to interview me at that stage. So, after I finished that I started going through Tealeaf academy doing their Ruby on Rails course — it gave me a great overview of an app’s architecture, but after that I still needed to develop my portfolio and algorithms skills, so I was doing a lot of practicing everyday — programing and problem solving skills.

That’s when I enrolled in Bloc to learn more about Angular. I started applying to jobs after I finished Phase 1 of Bloc’s program, and that’s when I felt that the companies I started applying to were more impressed with what I had. In my emails and applications, I would just send my GitHub profile and also a link to the project — a lot of companies were very interested in that.

The Mentor Experience at Bloc and Thinkful

What made you choose Thinkful first?

Price was really the biggest factor, however, I needed to know more in order to land a job in development. It [Thinkful] is okay as long as you know Java and HTML and CSS, but that’s not enough — you need modern framework, jQuery, and JavaScript if you want to be a software engineer.

What was your Thinkful experience like?

After getting limited responses and feedback, I realized I needed more, I didn’t know a lot of things about frontend and started researching more, and figured out that employers wanted more than what the Thinkful Frontend course provided. Thinkful is really good for getting the basics down.

What made you enroll in Bloc after graduating from Thinkful?

So, initially I went to Thinkful because of the cost. I wasn’t ready for a 5 grand investment at the time.

After I finished Thinkful, the result was not satisfactory — at least the rate of companies replying to my application was low, so I kept adding more skills and applying again. Over the course of last year I applied to over 100 companies — more actually — I was doing applications in batches. Those rejections made me realize that making an investment in a bootcamp is worth it.

That’s when I decided to learn Angular — at the time Thinkful had just released their Angular course. I didn’t want to be the guinea pig- and I was already eyeing Bloc’s Frontend course for a long time. After graduating from Bloc I felt way more confident applying. I only showed my employers 2 projects when I finally landed a job — all of them were Bloc projects.

How did Andrew your Bloc Mentor make a difference in your bootcamp experience?

Andrew made a huge difference in my job applications — he was working where I hoped to be someday. It was nice having that inside perspective, and having someone give me advice on how to solve issues.

On your blog, you mention that you got better results from Bloc. Why is that?

The mentor I had at Thinkful was mainly a web developer, not a software engineer. He knew a lot of jQuery, HTML, and CSS. He was excellent in that scope. But I wanted to branch out to learning Backbone.js and Angular.js, and he didn’t have experience in that.

So in that sense, my Bloc mentor was far superior. But that’s not a reflection on that person; my mentor at Thinkful was still great at what he taught me.

At Bloc, we’ve helped thousands of students change their lives and switch careers. We offer 100% online, mentor-led programs comparable to in-person bootcamps, and the results speak for themselves. If you’d like to read what students have to say about Bloc, read alumni reviews of Bloc here. #hacktheplanet