Why I Chose Eleven Fifty Academy to Help Change My Career
There are lots of options for people looking to learn to code. These are some of the reasons why I picked this specific bootcamp.
Indianapolis is a bit unique in terms of its job offerings. The sale of ExactTarget to Salesforce in 2013 kicked off a run of innovation focused mainly on the technology, software-as-a-service industry. Since then, Indianapolis has emerged as a Midwest powerhouse for new and exciting companies in the tech sector.
And where there’s technology, you need coders that can speak the various languages. As I pointed out in my last post, there’s already a nation-wide shortage for software engineers and Indy is not immune from that. To help meet demand, coding “bootcamps” have become extremely commonplace to help transition more people into the field.
Fortunately for Indy (and myself), some of the city’s entrepreneurs decided to invest their successes back into the larger tech community. There used to be a place called The Iron Yard that closed a while ago, but I had multiple friends graduate from. There’s Kenzie Academy which is associated with Butler University here in town. And there’s the bootcamp that I ended up choosing, Eleven Fifty Academy. It was founded by Scott Jones, who was the guy that invented a little thing called Voicemail (yes, like that voicemail). There was lots of thought that went into this decision so let’s talk through some of the bigger points.
Courses and Languages Offered:
I think that this should be the main decision-maker for anyone looking to dive into a coding bootcamp. Not only are the offered languages going to have an effect on your ability to learn, but they’re going to have an impact your job offers in the future depending on the demand for those languages. Eleven Fifty offers courses for JavaScript, .NET, Python, and one on Cybersecurity. .NET is a widely used language made popular by Microsoft and is particularly relevant here in Indianapolis because it’s used heavily in Salesforce. From my understanding (I’m still new to all this!) Python is a relatively easy-to-comprehend object-oriented language that is usable for many applications. JavaScript underlays most of the modern internet, making up probably all the “cool” websites that come to your mind when you think of them. Seeing that Eleven Fifty covered all of these was a sign to me that they knew what languages were in demand and that they were dedicated to building developers who had skills to get lasting jobs.
The length of the bootcamp was another large differentiator for me. While Eleven Fifty focuses on languages, Kenzie offers a “UX Engineer” course that goes over more design principles that eventually apply to the skills that someone learning JavaScript might need. The difference, however, is that Eleven Fifty is a 12-week course, and Kenzie’s course is a year long. The design principle portion of Kenzie’s course was extremely appealing to me, but for my specific situation, I didn’t want to take a year out of my career before getting back into the thick of it. For some people, that might be the right call, but in the end, Eleven Fifty’s three-month course was the correct choice.
(I’ll go into why I picked JavaScript in another blog. Stick around for that later!)
Price and Availability of Funding:
Listen, I’m still paying on student loans to two different colleges for a degree in Journalism that I did not use in my career. The idea of taking out more money on top of that did not come lightly, I assure you. However, in this situation, I had to look at the long-term gain of where I was and where I could be if I added these skills to my toolset. The starting salary for someone proficient in these coding languages is (conservatively) somewhere in the $50,000 to $60,000 range and that number only goes up depending on your skill (When I visited Eleven Fifty for an introduction class, they were quick to point out one of their graduates earned a starting salary of $101,000 out of their program due to his familiarity with Photoshop and Illustrator). Eleven Fifty has three partners to offer funding for students and even though I ended up going through Skills Fund, every option seemed viable:
Most bootcamps will offer scholarships to students who qualify as well. Kenzie offers up to $12,000 for students who participated in a local robotics competition and up to $5,000 for students who are women looking to get into tech. I completely understand that the idea of taking out a loan of that size is daunting in itself, but it’s going to work out on the end.
(More on this topic in a later blog as well!)
Proximity:
This ended up being the main differentiator between my two options of Eleven Fifty and Kenzie Academy. During this transition period, I’ll be moving in with my parents to cut down on the costs of living.
Given my new address, Eleven Fifty will be less than half the travel time of what Kenzie would have been. It’s a small thing, but it would add up quickly over the course of my time at either of the schools, so I definitely wanted to take that into account.
Reputation:
Finally, it’s important to talk to people within these courses. First, that means talking with representatives from the respective bootcamps and listening to what they have to say. Many of these places will have introductory courses to help people understand if this is the right course for them, GO TO/COMPLETE THESE! It’s the best scouting you can get into the path ahead of you. In my experience, Kenzie’s introduction was an online, code-at-your-pace lesson which was very fun to complete. Eleven Fifty’s was an on-site meeting where we learned more of the same that Kenzie had, just in a different setting. I did enjoy being on-site to get more of a sense of how the culture of the school was going to be, but I’m positive you can book tour times with other bootcamps if you call (you totally should).
You should find former students from these courses if possible and pick their brains. I was fortunate enough to speak with graduates from each bootcamp and while the reviews were both glowing, it helped to shine more light into my choice. When I was on-site at Eleven Fifty, the councilors were quick to talk up all the benefits of their school but even as nice as they were, I’ve been in marketing too long to know to take that as the whole story. Not to say that they’re hiding anything (because I still chose them obviously), but just do your research for something as important as this. The more investigation you do beforehand, the better your end result will be.
So those are a few of the reasons why I’ve chosen Eleven Fifty Academy as the bootcamp to kickstart my career change. Over the course of my three-month course, I’ll be updating this blog with some more coding-centric thoughts as well as some more professional-focused thoughts.
I hope you join me on the ride!
