Thread by @upupdowndown, So now that I've finished my developer boot camp and accepted an [...]

So now that I've finished my developer boot camp and accepted an offer for my first developer job, I have Some Thoughts about what to look for in a dev boot camp if you're interested in a career change into tech, and I'd like to share what my own camp experience was like.

As far as I'm concerned, a boot camp needs to several things for you:
- it needs to give you a foundation in basic tech skills, and an understanding of how all the different pieces fit together
- it needs to teach you how to develop software with a team

- and it needs to teach you the career skills to find and successfully interview for tech positions. Tech resumes and technical interviews are very different than non-tech resumes and interviews, and you need to learn how to be successful in a tech career context.

my own program worked like this: a 4 week module grounding you in a programming language that's used on the back-end with a two day paired capstone project, a 4 week module on relational database queries and usage and tying to a database using your backend language with...

a three-day paired capstone project, and a final 4-week module on front end. we had a week for HTML/CSS, a week for JavaScript, and two weeks learning Vue.js, a framework to build UIs / web pages and hooking them to a backend. Then we had a final capstone, a team project where...

I had a team of 4 tasked with making an app for a bakeshop where customers could order standard and customizable cakes, and employees could handle orders and make new product offerings or discontinue current offerings. We had to do everything: the backend, the database, the front

end. We had an agile development process where we had three different 'sprints' and we were trying to solve specific user stories in each sprint.

while all this was going on to teach me coding skills and how to develop software with other people, there was a parallel track...

called Career Pathway, where we learned how to make elevator pitches, write technical resumes, and do introductory interviews, technical interviews, and behavioral interviews. We also had practice sessions for each type of interview. Our camp also brought in...

local employers 2-3x a week that were looking to potentially hire entry-level developers so we could learn about those companies and think about what kind of position we'd like our first tech jobs to be. Career Pathway culminated in two days of Matchmaking Interviews, where...

we all had 7-8 30 min introductory interviews over those two days with companies looking to hire boot camp grads. the position I just accepted came from one of those matchmaking interviews - I got excited about this company when they presented to our class, and they were my #1...

choice. So that's my story.

So... what should you look for in a coding boot camp??

First off, a good camp is going to have numbers for you to look at.

Numbers you'll want:
- what's the graduation rate?
- what's the career placement rate?
- how many years have teachers worked as devs?
- what's tuition, and what financial aid is available?

my own camp had a grad rate of over 95% and a tech career placement rate of about 90% within six months of graduation.

Second off, a good camp can connect you with alumni who can tell you about their experiences. Ask.

A good camp should also have a figure for how long their average instructor worked as a professional developer before becoming a teacher. The two teachers I had both had nearly two decades of development experience before becoming full-time teachers.

This is important because you're not looking to learn programming as an academic discipline; you're looking to learn programming as a *career skill* in order to make and maintain software with a team. You need teachers with lots of experience in the latter.

ask exactly what their program teaches, and how they break things up. My program was a full-stack program, in that when you graduated you were supposed to understand how to make a web application that connected to a back end and server. Other programs might specialize more

Personally I think the value of a full-stack program is that it gives you a really good overview of how things fit together, and you're exposed to enough different types of coding that you can begin to understand what you're drawn to.

I now know that backend and database work make my dorky heart sing, and that on the front end the logic and structure design appeal to me, but styling reallllly doesn't. That's valuable info, it means that a front end only position isn't one I should be applying to!

ask what their expectations for student effort and time were. My program's line was "imagine a full-time job PLUS your new favorite and demanding hobby". I was able to keep my first month to less than 40 hours a week because I'd already learned some about programming before, but

by the end I was pulling 60-70 hour weeks because a) Vue.js did not come naturally to me and I needed to put more time into it b) I was finishing up my side project to use to show to potential employers c) the final project was intense and one of our team members was kicked out..

. because he didn't do his own homework.

I would be EXTREMELY skeptical of any camp that would claim to be able to teach you what you need to know *part-time* in a few months. There's so much to learn and integrate here, and it takes time and practice for it to sink in.

Definitely ask how the prospective camp prepares people for the job hunt. A good camp will have that career/job hunt preparation integrated into their curriculum. For me, the value of having a local camp was that their network was local, since I wasn't looking to move

this next part is gonna be... controversial

and I know we all hated group work in school

but

you need to ask the prospective camp if there's a lot of paired programming and group work

and if they say "no," then you should probably look for another camp

you need to learn how to work *with other people* to make software. That's what it means to be a professional developer. Your work affects other people and has to fit in with other people's work. You don't exist in a vacuum! No one gets to be the 'lone genius' maverick coder

did I always enjoy group work? no. I found it v hard in the beginning if I was paired with someone who didn't know what they were doing. And hoo boy, I got into some real knock-down arguments in my final project.

BUT the most valuable lessons I learned were through group work.

The realizations in our final project of what potential pain points were *because we experienced them* was far, far more valuable than reading a list of 'common development team errors', and all four of us are going to keep the lessons learned for our entire careers.

our camp gave us the room to fuckup and the time to recalibrate, get advice, and course correct. Incredibly vital.

I definitely advise also trying to make sure that people like you can feel comfortable and succeed at camp.

My camp had an 85% tuition scholarship available every cohort for someone who was BIPOC and/or not a cis man, a lot of the staff put pronouns in their intro slides, and

they did multiple DEI-focused panels over the course of the camp, and they do a lot of free Women In Tech classes. Are they perfect? No. but they're trying.

Going through bootcamp is S T R E S S F U L because you're trying to learn so much and grappling with impostor syndrome

and you need to make sure that you're not adding to your stress by being in a nonsupportive environment. If you're not a cis man, or if you're a Black or brown person, ask the prospective camp to connect you with alumni who are like you.

okay, final leg of this monster thread:

let's talk about costs, baby

Camp is expensive, straight up. It costs money to have dedicated full-time teachers who have already been successful developers, the staff who support the camp, the career guidance folks, etc. Your prospective camp should also be able to talk about financial aid options

Sallie Mae and other student loan providers will provide loans for tuition and living expenses, and your state might have assistance available for retraining workers. Ask.

Besides the camp's tuition, and the lost income during the camp's duration (do NOT expect you can work)...

there's also the non-financial but very real cost of having your life be eaten by camp. It's something you need to talk about with your partner/family: you're going to be put in a very intellectually and emotionally demanding position for several months, and there won't be...

a lot of you to go around. My partners were extremely patient and supportive, but the fact is that in the last month I was really absent from my relationships and certainly not pulling my weight around the house. Your partner/family/household needs to know that you being in camp

will also cause additional stress and work being put on them. They need to be bought into your potential success as well (and you need to be prepared to do a lot of extra chores afterwards and whatever else you need to do to pamper and thank them)

only you and your family can decide if the tradeoffs are worth it. The average starting salary for a grad from my bootcamp was $60k a year, with the potential to climb quickly in the next several years. We decided it was worth the stress and money to launch me into a new career.

If you do decide to go for it, I hope this thread helps you think a little more about the realities of boot camp and what you need to look for and think about when choosing a boot camp. Any questions?

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