The Truth About Bootcamps
A few months after graduating from a bootcamp found me at a Toronto Meetup for designers. Five local designers were chosen to talk about their path to UX. This involved sweeping generalizations and a glaring lack of specifics.
“I went to school here and then I got my first job here” left something to be desired for those of us struggling through a job search. Cool, but how did you get that job? Did you search through job posting after job posting? Send so many cover letters that the copies earned their own folder on your computer? Did you have to redesign your website three times? Did you struggle at all? No? Just me? Sweet.
One of the presenters included a timeline on her presentation slides. She hadn’t been in the game too long — only a few years. She already held a senior position at her company. Seemed aspirational. (Note to self: go talk to her after the presentations). Her timeline revealed that she had attended the same bootcamp as I did! Amazing. So if I played my cards right I too could have that kind of job security.
I made a point to go talk to her after the presentation, and was beaten to the punch by someone who I recognized to be a current student in the bootcamp I had just completed. I stood politely to the side to wait.
“So you went to Bitmaker?” the student asked.
“Yes.”
“As someone currently in a senior position, would you hire from a bootcamp?”
She paused before answering. “Honestly? No.”
….
….
I’m screwed.
She cited her reasoning. “I’ve come to know what to expect from people who apply out of bootcamps. It’s very cookie cutter. Bootcamps teach a prescribed process, and I rarely see graduates breaking the mould. In an interview, I know what they’re going to say before they do.”
She was not the first perspective employer I came across that was hesitant about bootcamps. Bootcamp graduates, in my completely unbiased opinion, get a bad rep. She was, however, the first person I’d come into contact with who had attended a bootcamp and still harboured those negative preconceptions.
So I’m here, young ones, to share with you the truth about attending a bootcamp.
The Beginning
I gave up a lot to go to Bitmaker. And I wasn’t alone. Every single one of my classmates had left something behind to be there. It was like ripping out pages from our life stories to start fresh. We were raw, but we were there, 100%.
I left my dream behind. The thing that I had worked towards since childhood. The thing that I had bled for, cried for, taken terrible minimum wage jobs for. I had sacrificed so much of my life for that dream. But I left it behind for a fresh start. For my chance at something tangible.
It’s important to stress this because, in the eyes of employers, we are like newborns. I’ve been talked down to, and belittled. But my career did not begin with this bootcamp. I am whole heartedly and unashamedly the sum of my parts. I have a university degree. I got my first job when I was 16. I am no stranger to the workforce. I have a multitude of skills born from years of sweat. And I am not alone.
I chose a bootcamp over a degree for many reasons. The most pressing, perhaps, was that I had already been there. I was not willing to walk backwards. I may have been starting again, but it was in an attempt to move forward. A bootcamp was supposed to be intense, immersive and incredible. I was ready to throw myself off of that cliff. To embrace the hardships and the teachings and to give myself completely to this new knowledge.
I don’t for a second pretend that 10 weeks of schooling have taught me everything there is to know about UX Design. I had skills going in. Bitmaker taught me to apply those skills to the basic principles of design. From there it was up to me to find a company willing to see me through further growth.
Many companies I have been applying to explicitly mention the desire to hire an applicant who is willing and excited to learn. Someone who does not pretend to have all the answers, but who is set on finding them as they work. I am such a person. Especially in an industry like technology, I know that the learning will never end. It’s one of the things that drew me to UX Design in the first place. I never want to be stagnant. I want to constantly move, to change, to adapt. Life would be boring any other way.
The Middle
Bitmaker was amazing. For the first time in my life, I liked school. We would be privy to 3 hour lectures each morning, and they never once lost my attention. I don’t know if this was a product of my inherent interest in the material, or if it was good teaching. I think it was a combination of both.
We were incredibly lucky in our primary instructor. Ahmed was passionate and eager. He was smart, and he cared about our journeys. I will always be grateful to him for all that he gave to us. His love for design was infectious.
Every day we were given at least one assignment to complete based on the lecture. This was my element — I learn by doing. I revelled in the opportunity to practice the principles that were being taught to me daily. I never once struggled to complete my assignments. Even as they grew more and more difficult.
But this time, I was the strange one.
People were dropping out because of the workload. It was too much — we were learning an incredible amount of information every single day, and before it could really sink in, we were being asked to apply our learnings on softwares that were brand new to us. This was too much for some people. I acknowledge that I am an anomaly. I loved it. There was so much coming at me, and it was exciting. I had been stagnant for so long. It was like standing after a long flight. I could run. And run I did.
I won’t for a second say that I was the best in the class. Far from it. We all had natural skills that aided us in certain lessons. My greatest asset was that I was efficient. This allowed me opportunities to iterate beyond the prescribed tasks. This is also where the cookie cutter metaphor goes to die.
Because of our diverse backgrounds, we all had such different perspectives to bring to each task. We had already developed methods for approaching a challenge. We were not raw cookie dough to be moulded. Rather, we were a harder, less yielding substance to be whittled. We were fully formed already. Our properties were not changing, they were simply being altered.
I revelled in my natural ability to problem solve. UX Design began with a problem, and that was like music to me. In everything I had done up to that point in my life, I had developed my skills for empathy and logic. I was an incredibly efficient communicator. I was told by the staff at Bitmaker that they had rarely seen someone with my level of soft skill. They told me it would take me far.
Others had a knack for visual design. Watching them work only served to teach me more. I began to develop the ability to break a design down to its parts. To figure out what made a great design great. I learned from my peers and they, in turn, learned from me.
The End
10 weeks went by faster than I ever could have anticipated. Despite this, I felt ready. I have always been prone to imposter syndrome, but for the first time in my life I felt qualified. I had found something that I was good at. It was tactical — UX Design involved so many of the skills that I already possessed. It was simply a matter of reimagining. Bitmaker helped me lay the foundation to begin construction on my hard skills. I felt confident that I could continue down that path.
In many ways, Bitmaker tried to prepare us for the hardship were were going to face upon graduation. They warned us that we would likely be out of work for 3–6 months. They gave us a method of job searching with a particular emphasis on networking. But nothing can really prepare you for unemployment.
I have been unemployed before. I am no stranger to financial struggle. What I was unprepared for this time was the intense feeling of frustration. I felt qualified. I felt capable. Employers felt differently.
No one would give me the time of day. I received email after email citing my lack of experience. Could they not see that I had experiences beyond UX Design? I’d never shipped a real project before. But I had done work that paralleled. But I’d never shipped a digital product before. So I did freelance work. Well one project barely counted as experience.
This is the risk of taking a bootcamp. Getting through it is one thing, but once you’re out, you’re out. Many bootcamps will stress their outcome programs as a source of support through your job search. But in my experience, the best support should be accessed through your peers. They share seats in the same boat. At times, our oars would disappear. We were floating; drifting in our search for an employer who would talk to us. Someone who would look past our limited relevant experience to our prior experiences. Someone who would talk to us to find out who we were and where our skills lay. In short, we needed someone to take a chance on us.
It’s a mantra that I hear myself repeat to people who inquire about my job search. “I just need someone to take a chance on me. I know eventually someone will take a chance on me.”
And there are those who inherently doubt bootcamp graduates. They might believe us to be bred the same, or perhaps that we have little to offer a company. They would be wrong.
Bootcamps exist to fill a void in the workforce. It serves not only the students, but the industry. In 10 weeks, they provide the job force with people who are dead set on proving themselves. The people who graduate from bootcamps have mismatched pasts that they anchor in new teachings. They give everything to enhance those skills, and to learn new ones. They press pause on their lives and devote their sanity to forge a new path.
To some, we are less than. We are carbon copies or a half-baked teaching. Those are the people who have not given us the time of day. If they did, they would know how wrong they are.
TLDR: Bootcamps provide a vital service to a rapidly growing industry. They do not seek to churn out perfect, fully realized designers, rather, they provide eager audiences the tools with which they may build a career. Bootcamp graduates often get a bad rep as people fail to see them for what they are: a sum of their parts.
