The Good, Bad, and the Ugly of Web Dev Coding Bootcamps.
Not all bootcamps are created equal.
Full disclosure: I’m a Sr. Software Engineer that specializes in teaching & mentoring, and have taught across a decent amount of coding bootcamps and courses as part-time roles. Any and all thoughts and opinions on this article are mine alone only and do not represent the institutions I’ve worked for. Thank you.
So…Coding Bootcamps. Calling them a controversial way to get into coding as a career path is nothing short of an understatement. Right? Some people love them, some hate them. Some think of them as little more than a quick cash grab to ride the influx of developer roles. Plus, it would explain why the most often received question I get in my inbox is:
What do you think about <insert bootcamp name>? Do you think it’s worth it?
Sadly, there is no short answer 🙁 So, in an effort to help all these people on the edge of considering a Coding Bootcamp…I’ve decided to write this article summing up my experiences teaching at bootcamps, seeing students rise and fail, lessons learned, and any tips and advice I’d give to anyone considering a Coding Bootcamp.
The Good ✅
The thing Coding Bootcamps excel at the most, is at providing direction. Learning how to code can be a daunting, overwhelming task at times. There is so much you need to know, and so much important stuff you can’t possibly know that you don’t know. Bootcamps make this easier by providing a curated learning path.
The other fantastic thing about bootcamps, is the community that often comes along with it. Learning on your own and getting stuck can often be a deeply demoralizing experience. One that changes drastically once you have a whole community behind your back.
There’s also the portfolio of projects aspect. Most bootcamps have a roadmap that lets you end with multiple portfolio projects by the time you graduate. This is the key to landing a full time job with no experience, and probably the hardest part of learning on your own. As you will probably be faced with the common “what do I build?” type of question and end up building nothing.
For the ones that offer it, there’s also the invaluable career services option. For those unfamiliar, this is basically a service for course graduates that helps you find a job, polish your curriculum and social media, and basically does its best to set you up for success. Not too bad!
Lastly, there’s the 1:1 support which is invaluable as a beginner coder. This is one the biggest things I envy the most as someone who had to learn coding pretty much from scratch (I am not a CS graduate). It’s an incredibly frustrating experience getting stuck for days at a time, only to finally arrive at a random meetup and have a stranger point out a single line of code is to blame. I would not have had to go through so much frustration if I had a 1:1 mentor back in the day.
The Bad ❌
There are a LOT of bad coding bootcamps. I cannot understate this enough. At least in my area, I’ve seen an increasingly large amount of cheap, online coding bootcamps. These are made by people who are only out there to cash in the public interest to learn coding, but don’t really care about making you employable. And you can quickly figure this out by just looking at their curriculum.
Some bootcamps barely go into JS/CSS/HTML fundamentals, and then rush you into a React/Angular/Vue app and call it a day. This will NOT land you a job. The market is saturated with people who know how build a hello world React App but lack the pillars that really make up a developer. Training a person properly takes time, and money. This of course means that a good bootcamp will not be cheap. I’m sorry if that’s not something you were hoping to hear 🙁
The second thing you need to know before even considering a job in coding, is that you need to make sure you ❤️ this line of work. Nobody really ever tells you that a life in coding, is basically a career where you can never stop learning. And one where sometimes you’ll have to sacrifice free time to stay up to date to current trends in technology if you wish to either stay relevant, or go up the professional ladder. I’ve met a lot of people who joined bootcamps, but were not prepared for the amount of time they had to sacrifice to complete it.
Lastly, time. Due to the challenging nature of a lot of coding bootcamps, it is important you consider the need of having to put in more hours into the course. This is by far the biggest thing I see catching people off guard. What this means, is that if the bootcamp you are considering asks you for 20 hours a week to complete, be prepared to spend up to 40 hours a week when the going gets tough. If this is impossible to you, I would say find another one with a smaller time commitment that fits better in your time schedule.
The Ugly 💩
First, and possibly the most controversial topic on this article:
You NEED to know how to code BEFORE joining a coding bootcamp.
I know what you are all thinking. Isn’t that why you would join a coding bootcamp? Well, not exactly. The thing about learning how to code from scratch, is that quite frankly…it’s HARD. Not to mention every person learns differently both in technique, and at a different pace. This in turn, makes it extremely hard to design course material. Specially when you have to predict the specific amount of time it takes to complete, how easy/hard it will be to most people.
Which results in bootcamps that are either:
- Easy and a breeze to complete, but yielding almost no value to students in terms of employability. Meaning you’ll probably have to pay for another course/bootcamp to even be considered for most programing jobs.
- Hard and challenging, but with high student drop out rates due to the challenging nature of the course. Of course, this also means that should you not complete the course, you will not be getting a refund.
These two stereotypes are the reason why even reputable bootcamps always have their fair share of complaints. Such as: the course was too easy, I couldn’t find a job after graduating, or that the course was so hard I always felt like I was drowning and received no help.
Having said that, as you can probably imagine, only the hard/challenging ones will give you your money’s worth when it comes to becoming a job ready software engineer. However, in order to highly increase your chances of graduating, my recommendation is that you learn how to code before joining a coding bootcamp.
In summary: Does this mean there are no good bootcamps? No! There are fantastic bootcamps out there. However, like buying a house or a car, you should do your own research before settling on which one to pick. And I can definitely vouch to there being fantastic coding bootcamps. You just need to find them.
That’s all folks!
Do I hate bootcamps? Of course not! I work for one after all 😁 at least at the time of writing this article. Still, I’ve received so many messages lately about bootcamps, I felt writing a piece on this was the right step to help people. Hopefully you can pick up the right bootcamp, or if it proves too expensive, maybe hire a private mentor? 👀
Until next time! 👋 Adios!
