Should I Join a Coding Bootcamp?

March 03, 2021

My Most Frequently Asked Question: Should I Join a Coding Bootcamp?

Yes. Coding bootcamps are relatively new, very intense, and not for everyone. But if you have the inclination, they’re one of the few ways to completely change your life trajectory in 6-9 months.

Let’s start with my background. I had previously been employed as a Marketing Associate, handling copywriting and email marketing. I’d seen how useful basic web programming was to digital marketing, and after leaving, well getting fired, I thought I wanted a more technical job.

Brief tangent. You know it’s well past time to leave a job when you get fired and the first feeling is of massive relief. I’d been writing copy for an education technology company, and given the audience of K-12 parents and teachers, the pool of risk-averse terminology meant that it was a lot of recycling the same stuff over-and-over.

I long past hit a mental roadblock, but it was my first job out of college and I was also in the end state of a relationship with my first girlfriend, who I lived with. I was failing in all aspects of my life and I couldn’t get out of the rut myself. Getting fired was a blessing.

I’d been enrolled, but hadn’t started, a Udacity Nanodegree in Front-End Web Development for some number of months, and decided the first step would be finishing it¹.

After I’d finished the Nanodegree, I’d been attending meetups in growth marketing as I pursued a technical marketing job, though I didn’t know what role I wanted and was fairly aimless. One post-event meetup at a bar had me chatting with a fellow who upon discovering I was 26, was visually and vocally surprised that I didn’t know what I was doing with my life. He bluntly stated that I sounded like someone just out of college, not someone with four years post-college experience.

What some may take as a rude comment, was the wake-up call I needed. I decided that if I could get into one of the top bootcamps and it was starting soon, I would make a go of being a software engineer. I landed on Hack Reactor.

Things to consider before applying to a bootcamp:

Research! Google around to find what people are saying. Like all things these days, there are plenty of online reviews for the quality and experience of bootcamps. Search Linkedin / your social media for connections, however flimsy, who have attended any bootcamps you’re considering and reach out to ask for an informational interview about their experience. See what the employment rate is for graduates into software engineering roles.

Not everyone attends a bootcamp to get a job as a Software Engineer, I know multiple people who used it as a way to get a technical skillset before moving into Product Management, but the explicit point of most bootcamps is to get you a Software Engineering job.

Most bootcamps are not 0 - 100% learning experiences, usually it’s 10% - 90% or 20% - 95%. This means you need to do some self-study beforehand. In my case I’d done the Udacity Nanodegree, most bootcamps will include some resources to work through before you apply.

When I was looking at coding bootcamps, there were two that were presented as above the rest, App Academy and Hack Reactor². Things have changed since I’ve attended, but at the time there were two main differences:

1. Hack Reactor is a pure JavaScript bootcamp, whereas App Academy teaches Ruby and JavaScript.
2. App Academy only used Income Sharing Agreements (ISA) to finance their program, while Hack Reactor was an upfront cost.

An ISA is a financing method, where instead of paying for your program upfront, the bootcamp gets a percentage cut of your monthly wages after you’ve landed a Software Engineering job, for a set period and up to a capped amount. It’s appealing as you don’t have to take a loan out yourself, and makes the bootcamp an interested party in your success, as they don’t get paid unless you’re employed.

I prioritized Hack Reactor for 3 reasons: 1) Having completed the Nanodegree, I wanted to focus on JavaScript and not have to learn another language at the start, 2) Hack Reactor had a cohort starting sooner, 3) App Academy’s ISA meant that your application included a detailed history of yourself, since they need to make sure you’re employable, whereas Hack Reactor cared only about ability. If you could pass the online test and the coding interview, you were in.

That Hack Reactor cared only about competency, and not about your background, appealed to me. Having been fired from my last job, and undirected for a while, I was apprehensive about having to explain my recent history.

Advantages I Had Going In:

1. I was from San Francisco and living with my parents at the time. Bootcamps aren’t cheap, and neither is SF rent, so if you’re planning on moving to join it’s worth weighing the full cost plus your lost earnings while studying and job hunting.
2. More on upfront costs. My parents had saved money for both college and what they’d hoped would be an MBA, but were kind enough to cover the cost of Hack Reactor, in place of graduate school, once I’d been accepted and walked them through the potential benefits.
3. I’d completed the Udacity Nanodegree in Front-End Development, which familiarized me enough with Front-End frameworks and development to give me a good foundation going in.

What was Hack Reactor Like:

Exceptionally intense.

Hack Reactor is broken up into two sections:

The first section is all pair programming, every two days you get a new partner and try to work through the project/curriculum over those two days. These two-day projects would kick-off with a lecture, you’d spend the rest of the time trying to get as far as possible, and then you’d have a closing lecture that explained how to complete the basic requirements of the project. This goes on Monday - Saturday, with Sundays off, for ~ five weeks, 12 hours a day. Frequently Sundays would be spent trying to learn/practice what you’d gotten stuck on earlier in the week.

The completion of the pair programming is the minimum viable product (MVP) project. You get two days to build a full-stack application, after which you present the app to your cohort and get sorted into your group for your first group project, Greenfield.

The group projects portion had you put into groups of 3-4 and consisted of three sections, Greenfield (2 weeks), Legacy (1 week), and Thesis (4 weeks). Greenfield was creating a whole app from scratch, Legacy was taking another group’s Greenfield project and building upon it, and Thesis was getting into a new group and building another application from scratch, but with more time and a larger scope. Finally, after the project phase was a week of job hunt prep.

Greenfield is interesting as you spend the first four days getting the project planned and kicked off. On the 5th day is the Cumulative Assessment, it’s one full day and is pass/fail. Fail and you’re either retaking the first 6 weeks with a new cohort or you’re leaving the program entirely. Pass and it’s on to solo week, named for the second half of Greenfield where you’re off-campus and working with your team remotely, meeting up as necessary. The Cumulative Assessment can be a bit unnerving as the first and only “test”, but treat it as a learning experience. If the support staff or technical staff hasn’t already pulled you aside to have a conversation, you’ll be fine.

Bootcamps aren’t like traditional schools, they’re continuously A/B testing and changing content, even between cohorts running at the same time. The curriculum they teach is constantly affected by feedback from graduates to ensure you’re learning things that are relevant to the industry, which means a project or a topic a graduate tells you about might not be something you do.

The Job Search:

My job search was a bit rough and entirely of my own making. If there’s one thing I can advise folks on post-bootcamp, treat the job hunt like a real 9-5 job, put in the work, and keep up the momentum. I graduated in May and landed my job in January. I 100% could have gotten a job before then, but let laziness and anxiety get the best of me. There are 2 important things to do during the job search, applying and practicing, I did not apply to as many jobs as I should have, and that decreased my odds of getting an interview. I’ve always been a more reserved person and handling the imposter syndrome around pitching myself as a software engineer did not come easy.

I got over my anxiety thanks to the Cognitive Behavior Therapy appJoyableand by forcing myself into anxiety-inducing events likeBATS Improvclasses. I was also lucky to get invited into an alpha job search program Hack Reactor was testing. The alpha ran from October 25th to November 24th, with another invitation to get rolled into the beta program that started on January 13th, and I left ~January 22nd after accepting the offer at my current company. The alpha and beta programs ran 9-5 Monday-Friday and were a great way to get structured practice and accountability added back into my schedule.

My Hack Reactor Takeaways and what does all this mean for you?

I was accepted to the February cohort as a standby student. A few people tend to leave the program during the first week and I would get my spot at Hack Reactor if a few people dropped out, otherwise, I’d be waiting another month and a half. This meant that while everyone else was pair programming out of the gate, I was working solo off my laptop in the kitchen.

At the end of the first week of Hack Reactor, I’d been struggling through a basic algorithms project all day and kept swapping between feelings of accomplishment as I passed sections, and feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, and confusion as I rammed my head against the next section.

That evening we had a lecture from a co-founder of Hack Reactor, Marcus Phillips. Two things stick out in my mind from what Marcus said:

• That feeling of uncertainty and confusion as we tried to work through problem sets at and above our ability, would be a constant feeling throughout our careers, so we should get used to it. Software Engineering involves solving novel problems, there isn’t a level of mastery that brings you all the answers. This means that you’ll always feel uncertainty as you tackle something new and you’d better get used to this uncomfortable feeling.

A bug turned out to be a feature, and my anxiety washed away instantly. In my mind the feeling of discomfort was surely a sign that I wasn’t meant to be here, we only had 12 weeks, sure I was getting through the curriculum, but each problem set prompted a whole new feeling of uncertainty. Getting past that anxiety was the final hurdle to fully committing to the program, and with a single phrase, I was confident.

• You will get laid off, probably more than once. Any number of reasons can lead to software engineers getting let go, by no fault of their own (i.e. the company gets acquired, the company runs out of money, and/or the company pivots). Software engineers are not cheap, so removing a team of them is quite the money saver. It may sound silly, but I needed permission to fail. Being told through no fault of your own, you’ll lose your job, was oddly reassuring.

My greatest takeaway from Hack Reactor wasn’t learning to code or getting a job as Software Engineer (though those are great), it was a fundamental shift in my mindset and approach to life. I didn’t think I was allowed to fail, more precisely, I didn’t think I was allowed to fail publicly. When I was failing at my job and failing in my relationship, I didn’t seek help. I didn’t know how to evaluate my problems and seek solutions. Hack Reactor and the job search that followed built that in me.

Bootcamps aren’t for everyone, there were people who dropped out the first week of Hack Reactor, and one person who dropped out after failing the Cumulative Assessment. But that doesn’t mean it’s not for you. If you’re even considering joining one, I’d say take the dive.

It is entirely true that you can learn this skill set online if you have the dedication and self-sufficiency to work at it, but I needed the structure and community to succeed, or rather I needed the structure and community to embrace failing openly. Something I’m still working on today.

If you want to know if you should join a coding bootcamp, my answer is yes, because I interpret that question as asking “should I try improving my life?”, and my answer will always be yes to that.

Written by Paul Mills who lives and works in San Francisco building useful things. You should follow him on Twitter

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