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Thread: Boot Camp?

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    Narkotiq's Avatar
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    Boot Camp?

    Not sure if this would be the right section to post this or not but feel free to move it.

    Has anyone attended/completed a coding boot camp that can answer a few questions?

    Is it worth it to attend one? They seem pretty short (a couple months) and are usually pretty expensive (~10k usd which can't be covered by grants or student loans like school).
    Do you feel like you actually learned what you needed to and didn't get rushed through it just because it's a 'boot camp'? Has it helped you get a job related to the field? Does it look good on an application? and Would you suggest the boot camp route over going to a long-term school if you're wanting to get coding jobs?

    Thanks for any help. I looked into it a few years back when I first heard about coding boot camps but got busy with life and put it out of my head until a few days ago my best friend messaged me telling me she may be going to one which made me want to look into possibly trying to pursue that again as well. The one she may be attending is offered by a university, but I've also seen privately done boot camps as well. (not sure if private is as good or even counts?)

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    overthink.exe
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    Hi!

    I'm happy to answer any questions to the best of my ability. I have an undergraduate degree in computer science and also attended a bootcamp. I also taught at a bootcamp for a couple of years.

    It's worth it if you find a good one. There are a lot out there with varying degrees of quality and success, so I'd suggest doing a fair bit of research if you can, maybe reach out to recent alum. Some good resources are (you need an account to see links) and (you need an account to see links). That said, it definitely can be worth it!

    For me personally I learned exactly what I needed to. My undergrad was a very theory-heavy program, and I didn't actually spend that much time writing code. The bootcamp filled in the gaps, and this is something I've seen a good number of other people do. In watching my students and just through general networking, people with all sorts of different backgrounds learn and be successful. Some had to put in more work and independent study than others, and some people just don't learn well in that sort of environment at all.

    It definitely helps you get a job, but you're likely going to need more just the bootcamp to find one. This will also vary depending on where you attend due to a combination of the program's interview prep, job search assistance, networking opportunities, probably some degree of "brand recognition". If you're talking just in terms of skills needed for a job, definitely helped, but it didn't start or end there. Also, some large companies have programs specifically for bootcamp gads, but they get competitive.

    It's hard to say if it looks good on an application because it depends the person reading it and everything else on there.

    In my opinion a bootcamp is probably all you need if the primary goal is of the Get Any Coding Job variety.

    Let me know if I can help more!



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    i'm a software engineer + have done a decent amount of recruiting and interviewing at my current and past companies. I have never done a bootcamp, but can speak a bit about what it looks like from the other end! As an interviewer, I'm looking for someone who ideally understands algorithms and would be interested in what completed projects they've done. I've seen some bootcamps which seem to teach syntax and algorithms, but none of that is interesting to me if the interviewee doesn't understand how to apply what they've learned to real code. I wanna say there are bootcamps out there that go through how to do a complete web app? Something like that, combined with an eagerness to learn and an ability to describe how and why they engineered things a certain way, are definitely bonus points for me as an interviewer.

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    Quote Originally Posted by kittyray View Post
    Hi!

    I'm happy to answer any questions to the best of my ability. I have an undergraduate degree in computer science and also attended a bootcamp. I also taught at a bootcamp for a couple of years.

    It's worth it if you find a good one. There are a lot out there with varying degrees of quality and success, so I'd suggest doing a fair bit of research if you can, maybe reach out to recent alum. Some good resources are (you need an account to see links) and (you need an account to see links). That said, it definitely can be worth it!

    For me personally I learned exactly what I needed to. My undergrad was a very theory-heavy program, and I didn't actually spend that much time writing code. The bootcamp filled in the gaps, and this is something I've seen a good number of other people do. In watching my students and just through general networking, people with all sorts of different backgrounds learn and be successful. Some had to put in more work and independent study than others, and some people just don't learn well in that sort of environment at all.

    It definitely helps you get a job, but you're likely going to need more just the bootcamp to find one. This will also vary depending on where you attend due to a combination of the program's interview prep, job search assistance, networking opportunities, probably some degree of "brand recognition". If you're talking just in terms of skills needed for a job, definitely helped, but it didn't start or end there. Also, some large companies have programs specifically for bootcamp gads, but they get competitive.

    It's hard to say if it looks good on an application because it depends the person reading it and everything else on there.

    In my opinion a bootcamp is probably all you need if the primary goal is of the Get Any Coding Job variety.

    Let me know if I can help more!
    Thank you so much. This is all very helpful information. It's difficult to find an answer about whether bootcamps are worth it or not online because there are so many ads, biased articles, and people pushing their own bootcamps. I'll definitely be doing research on which ones are the best, the one my friend may be attending has a really good brand as a university (much better than what I can attend in my location at the moment), but we do have a good school I was looking at that offers computer science. I work near the university and school is almost back in so I'll ask around about how good the computer science program actually is and see if a boot camp may be a better fit for what I want to do.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Houndoom View Post
    i'm a software engineer + have done a decent amount of recruiting and interviewing at my current and past companies. I have never done a bootcamp, but can speak a bit about what it looks like from the other end! As an interviewer, I'm looking for someone who ideally understands algorithms and would be interested in what completed projects they've done. I've seen some bootcamps which seem to teach syntax and algorithms, but none of that is interesting to me if the interviewee doesn't understand how to apply what they've learned to real code. I wanna say there are bootcamps out there that go through how to do a complete web app? Something like that, combined with an eagerness to learn and an ability to describe how and why they engineered things a certain way, are definitely bonus points for me as an interviewer.
    Thank you for your input. It good to know what employers and recruiters are looking for so I can prepare from the beginning. I'd hate to finish a boot camp or school and just think "Ok time to get a job" just to be slapped with "So what projects have you completed?".

    I'll definitely start a project portfolio from the beginning of whatever I end up doing so that I'm prepared for that kind of thing.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Narkotiq View Post
    Thank you for your input. It good to know what employers and recruiters are looking for so I can prepare from the beginning. I'd hate to finish a boot camp or school and just think "Ok time to get a job" just to be slapped with "So what projects have you completed?".

    I'll definitely start a project portfolio from the beginning of whatever I end up doing so that I'm prepared for that kind of thing.
    Yeah! Since I did uni courses I used the projects from those as examples, but without the courses, it'd definitely be like, ok here's my github and here are the things I've built. Some places definitely only look at the interview questions to determine hire/no-hire, but my interviews definitely included dives into their projects to see if I can figure out which engineering decisions they actually made in their projects so that we could talk through the hows and whys.

    I'd say that if you don't end up doing a bootcamp and want to still pursue a job in software engineering, I'd definitely recommend doing some project that fixes some pain point in your life (-cough- maybe even a neopets thing lolol) cause people who are passionate about their projects always talk better than them than someone making a webapp just to do it.

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    Yeah, I probably should have mentioned projects specifically! I also want to echo @(you need an account to see links)'s point, especially about doing things you personally find fun and interesting! Doesn't mean some more "generic" things aren't worth your while, because there definitely are a lot of tutorials/follow-alongs which can be great, especially for things like learning new languages/tools, but when learning I find more value in coming up with some of my own shenanigans and I found I got more interviews after I added a couple odd things to my resume.


    The local college is definitely worth looking into, maybe even see if you can audit a class to get a taste for things!



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    I was a FAANG SWE and want to add that it seems like the utility of bootcamps has been changing slowly in the tech field. Originally, it was easier to get into this line of work just by learning on your own, but with more and more people wanting to do it, more and more people also have relevant degrees from universities. That said, I personally know two people who pivoted to SWE after a bootcamp. The first was already an engineer from a highly acclaimed private university and just didn't want to continue in that career path. Imo, if you are already in a technical field, a bootcamp can definitely help you make the transition and it will be easier. The second was a bio major at my school and he was definitely on academic probation while we were there, so I don't know if the clout of our university, despite his undergraduate gpa, helped him to get a second look or what lol.

    Either way, I saw on the news during the pandemic many people were still making the switch via bootcamp. While it can be harder to stand out with a bootcamp, it's definitely *a way* in especially if you have other relevant experience (e.g. engineering). The most important part is getting the interview and showing that you can solve the problems or at least try to logically think about it, something I saw many candidates struggle with.



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    Super late to this post, but wanted to throw my 2 cents in:

    I used to work in tech programs for the continuing education dept at a big university in California and worked quite a BIT with boot camps. At the end of the day, I say it depends on your specific circumstances. For example:
    1. Do you have time to commit evenings? 2. Looking for more of a short term intensive program? 3. Do you think you might pursue more education in this? 5. What are your finances looking like? Boot camps are often pitched as being more economical and just as beneficial as a CS degree, but that may not be worthwhile in the long run. I did a lot of recruitment for Data Scientists for an education program I was doing and across the board, all of the professionals I spoke to said that their companies/recruiters cared more about degrees. The people I spoke to were working for Bay Area tech like Autodesk, Cisco, Netflix, Lyft etc. and they actually did take boot camps to get the basics down of data science/coding, but they still went on to pursue masters degrees or already had bachelors degrees in supplemental fields (like business). Boot camps can absolutely help you land the most entry level job in that tech field, but it might take longer to move up the ladder.

    Also, lots of boot camp programs use pretty predatory practices that I saw first hand leading students to believe this was worth any academic credit whatsoever. My team partnered with a boot camp company and I had the unfortunate job of dealing with students on the university side, even though I had no say/influence on the program itself. I basically was kind of like PR damage control for the university. It was quite frustrating not being able to do anything to help the students other than saying "this program isn't actually affiliated with the university". Many students were trying to use the program as transfer credit for a bachelor's or master's or for employer verification, but they couldn't because boot camps aren't academic credit bearing programs. The students didn't know this and the boot camp company I worked with never trained their people to distinguish this no matter how many times I told them or wrote documentation.

    To add to the point above, my sister used to work in an HR dept for the state government and reviewed applications and she used to tell me of how many people were rejected from even being considered for interviews because they didn't meet the education qualifications for the job. Many were trying to use boot camps or continuing education credit to satisfy requirements of actual academic college units.

    I pivoted from a non-technical role into my current technical role and what I did was take classes online at a community college. The workload is a much easier lift than a bachelor's degree, the classes were flexible, suuuuuuuuuuper cheap, and were academic bearing so I can use them to transfer to bachelor's program if I wanted. Also, I feel like community colleges have internship/career counseling resources that people often overlook so it's worth taking a look at. My manager also said that he didn't care about the technical skills because that would still have to be taught to some degree, but cared more about the other "soft skills" needed for the job. I'm also currently being mentored by the CISO (chief information security officer) at the university I work for and she echoed the same thing. She said she prefers to hire people with varying non-technical degrees because she needs people to think outside of the.......technical box I guess.

    tl;dr

    Make sure you research boot camp programs on places like reddit or whatever where you can get raw, honest feedback from students. I worked for a long time adjacent to 3 tech boot camps and they left a bad taste in my mouth with how they operated. Boot camps are still useful, and I'm sure there's a bunch with better business practices, but you also need to really know yourself in how you learn best and how urgent this may or may not be. Maybe go on LinkedIn and reach out to people working in tech to ask about their experiences IN the boot camp and AFTER the boot camp. Also I highly recommend looking at community colleges. Again, boot camps can be very useful!! I just want to point out that they aren't the end-all option imo, and there are other options and combinations of skills-learning you can do to fit your lifestyle better.

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