My Software Engineering Bootcamp Journey

This year, I decided to pursue a full-time Software Engineering bootcamp to start a career in tech. I used to work as a Project Manager in the charity sector and was looking for something more. I didn’t know what it was, but I needed something different. It felt a bit crazy to change paths soon after getting a full-time, permanent role in the London charity sector (more on that in a future post), but I knew I had to do it. So I did.

In this blog, I will tell you a bit about my journey and then give you tips on how to choose and survive a bootcamp. Skip ahead if you only want to read my recommendations.

My laptop after 15 weeks of carefully selecting stickers

How did I choose a school?

I researched and asked around to find which were the best coding bootcamps in London. After I shortlisted certain schools, I booked a few campus tours. However, I ended up visiting only one school. You see, money was a big factor. Flatiron School offers deferred tuition, at least in London, so that was a great motivator. Also, when I visited their campus in Moorgate, I felt at home. I loved the space, the commute was really easy, 40 min door to door and only 1 train! I could even get a rail pass and save about £150 a month on public transport. I didn’t visit other schools, maybe I should have, but I don’t regret it.

The programme

Flatiron’s 15–week Software Engineering bootcamp is composed of five modules (or mods). Each module is three weeks long: you learn in week one, get assessed in week two and do a final project in week three. During the first 12 weeks, you learn Ruby, Rails, JavaScript and React then you dive into your final project for three weeks.

Mod 1: Ruby

My decision to change careers was quite abrupt, therefore, I didn’t have a lot of time to learn how to code beforehand. Flatiron requires students to do 100+ hours of course work before starting but, even though I did it, I didn’t understand all of it. As expected, Mod 1 was a shock to the system, but I loved the adrenaline. During Week 1, before my first-ever code challenge, I stayed late almost every day and I studied for hours that weekend. I remember feeling so scared of ‘failing’ the code challenge. After all that studying, it had not clicked. If you decide to enrol in a bootcamp, people will always tell you that it will just click. You never believe it until it happens to you — like most things in life. And then, just two days before the day, it clicked! I knew what I was doing, I finished a lab that was supposed to be harder than the code challenge and I felt ready. All that studying and those long nights paid off. Was this sustainable though? We’ll get there. During week 3, we were paired off for our first final project. My partner and I decided on our project quickly, we divided our tasks and carried on with our work. Even though I had a hospital appointment that took half a day and she was ill for a day that week, we never got angry at each other and the project worked, it was so exciting!

Following, I will summarise the other three mods, share my experience during the final project and share what I learned.

Mods 2–4

During Mod 2 we learned Ruby on Rails. I found it hard, it certainly didn’t click easily so, to tackle this, I stayed 9–14 hours a day at school, studying. It paid off because I got it 24 hours before the code challenge, but I was exhausted! The first two weeks felt like an eternity and when I got to week three, the fun week, I was too tired to enjoy our project as much as I should have.

Mod 3 was JavaScript. Need I say more.

Two things happened when I got to Mod 3. First, I was worn out from the long nights and weekends studying that my motivation and my energy to keep it up was halved. Second, I understood Ruby syntax after six weeks of cramming it into my head. So, when Mod 3 started, it was another shock to the system. I felt like I was in week one all over again, but will less energy. This was the module that I enjoyed the least, which is weird because I like JS now and I enjoy working in React.js the most. On to Mod 4.

React.js — Mod 4 was enjoyable, as enjoyable as Mod 1, full circle. No, I didn’t stay late every night but I did stay late on days that I had the energy and I felt I needed it. The code challenge went okay, not great as previous ones but I was not upset about it. On week 3, my project partner and I decided what we each had to do for the project and it went smoothly. We fixed bugs up to the last minute before presenting but we were relaxed about it, so it wasn’t a stressful day. This mod was the most balanced one, and to find balance during a bootcamp is crucial.

Final Project

This was my all-time favourite mod. For three weeks, during Mod 5, you get to work on something that is your own, and I came up with my idea in Mod 2, so I could not wait to get started. Looking back, maybe I should have started right away on the Saturday after Mod 4 ended, but I needed a break, I needed to clear my head and have some time to myself. It worked because on Monday, I felt recharged and ready. When you have ~2 weeks to create and polish a project, planning is essential. What are your priorities? How will you balance functionality and aesthetics? Will you use OAuth (will users be able to sign up/ login securely)? Do you need to learn new technologies to achieve your goals? If so, how long will that take? It’s better to plan everything well, even if it takes a day or two than to wing it and find your MVP increasing a little every day.

Don’t get me wrong, the last three weeks were also extremely stressful, filled with incredibly long nights. We all went through an emotional rollercoaster with bugs that took a whole day to fix, CSS issues (it took me 4 hours to get the Amazon icon where I wanted it to go) and general fatigue. And, I was learning new things every day because my focus was on the output so, I had to find ways to make it work, even if I had not used them before. Adding to the stress was my basic knowledge of CSS combined with the fact that one of my priorities was for my website to look smart, clean and easy to use. I had to compromise and build my website with a combination of UI frameworks and pure CSS. Was it frustrating? Not really. I knew what I wanted my website to look like so I had to find the means to get there in two weeks. Is this an opportunity? Yes! I recently created a copy of my frontend repository and will attempt to rebuild the website using pure CSS. You can improve every project you create after the bootcamp, things don’t have to be perfect before you graduate, you can always enhance your functionality and design and better yet, build new projects. Remember, it’s better to work with a small but bug-free MVP than with a huge MVP that will eventually lead to more bugs. Start small and build on it.

What I learned

Was it hard?

Yes. Extremely hard. I’ve studied a lot, maybe too much and after pursuing two master degrees, I have to say that this bootcamp was the hardest thing I have ever done. I was completely thrown out of my comfort zone for 15 weeks, non-stop. I was learning every single day. It’s a lot of information to take in and going from 0 to where I am now (who knows what the number is) is overwhelming. But I made it! I graduated, I’m really happy with my final project (The Feminist Hub) and I’m about to start a new job!

It is important to build a support network, whether it’s family, significant others, or your bootcamp friends. You need someone that will be there for you if only to hear you moan. Thankfully, I had my husband for this and it would have been 10x harder without his help.

Before you start:

1. If you have the time, do a few months of online coding before you start, having some fundamental knowledge will help you and the uphill sprint will not be as inclined.
2. What is your learning style? Do you need the buzz of a school feeling with everyone around you studying? If you do, then a bootcamp is the right place. But maybe you like to study in the evenings in the comfort of your home? You might have children and a bootcamp schedule may not be for you. Is time of the essence? If so, you will learn faster at a bootcamp but the learning curve will also be higher. Remember that you can also learn to code online through informal channels or structured lessons, there are online bootcamps as well! These give you more time to process information and more flexibility in your daily life. Do what feels right for you!

Tips for learning:

1. Don’t burn out.
2. Don’t burn out.
3. Don’t burn out. If you need to, stay late some days and study at the weekend but try not to make this the norm. Give yourself evenings to watch Netflix, listen to music, cook food and enjoy a nice glass of wine (or two). Most importantly try to have a free day on weekends. Your mind needs to turn off to come up with great ideas to debug that lab or project you’ve been struggling with. Trust me. As of Mod 3, I would always take Saturdays completely off, sometimes I even went rogue and did not code the entire weekend.
4. Eat well. Drink water. Walk around. Eating well is essential and also very difficult to accomplish when you are working so hard. Prep food if you can on the weekends, buy healthy food, or make a salad at school. If you have a bad back, like me, invest in a backrest for your chair.
5. It’s okay if you don’t finish all the labs (or tasks). Focus on learning and understanding what you are doing. Do you know what your code is doing behind the scenes? Do you know why you are passing the tests? Quality vs quantity.
6. ASK FOR HELP. Stupid questions are those that don’t get asked. Ask your classmates, there is nothing wrong with not understanding — it’s why you are doing the bootcamp! Ask your instructors. If you don’t understand the answer, ask them again, or ask someone else. This is your turn to speak up and your opportunity to learn, take it.
7. Learn how to debug using byebug, debugger, binding.pry, and others. Make it a habit to use them all the time and console.log everything. Once you get into the habit of it, everything will click faster.
8. Read the documentation. I didn’t read it as much as I should have and regret it. Going back to all of it now.

Tips on surviving:

1. Be kind. You’re all in this together. It is not a competition. The bootcamp is not a zero-sum game, you can all get to the finish line and land a dream job. It’s better to get there with friends and a support network than to get there first. It is also okay if other people know how to code better than you, you are on your own path, embrace it.
2. Pair programming is not easy but if you focus on communicating effectively instead of solving the issue first or finishing the project quickly, you will learn more and enjoy it — and maybe, make a friend out of it.
3. Go to Meetups. Go climbing. Go to yoga. Find something to do that takes your mind of it. You will be dreaming in and of code, really. So spend a little bit of time away from it. I’m very into feminism and social projects so I went to Women Who Code, Tech For Good, Women of Wearables, Codebar events and even attended a Hackathon. I loved networking and meeting people in the sector. Find groups that you like and join them!

I hope this helps! If you have any questions, leave them in the comments and I will try to help as much as I can. Good luck!