Coding Bootcamp. Is it worth it?
I joined a full stack development course with the intention of changing my career path. I went in with the goal to land a job as a developer 3–6 months after graduating and was fortunate enough to have gotten one within that time frame. Looking back, I don’t think that I could have continued this journey without this course. Javascript was a tough language to grasp and every topic following it was even more difficult. I imagine if I was going the self-taught route, I would have given up. I relied heavily on the teachers and teaching assistants for help and my classmates for emotional support.
I signed up for the part-time in person course at UCLA Extension. Classes were on Tuesday & Thursday from 6:30pm–9:30 pm and Saturday from 10am–2 pm for 6 months. Office hours were available 30 minutes before and after class. You could use this extra time if you needed help from the teacher or one of the two teaching assistants.
Each week, we had a new homework assignment which was due the following Saturday at midnight. We built everything from our portfolio to a real time train scheduler, an inventory database similar to Amazon and games like rock paper scissors, memory, and word finder. All of which utilized the new skills we were learning that week.
We had a total of 3 group projects which we were given two weeks to complete. We were allowed to pick our teams and project ideas. The group projects gave us “real world” experience developing software collaboratively. They helped us learn how to work version control, break down and communicate tasks, and not code over each other.
The course covered a lot in a short amount of time. Generally, we spent 1–2 weeks of class time learning each subject. We never went deep into any one subject, it was more like an introduction than a deep dive.
We were told beforehand to plan on spending 20 hours a week studying and working on projects/homework outside of class. This rang true for me and I ended up having to go from full-time to part-time with my job very early on because the course became overwhelming and time-consuming. I know that several of my classmates didn’t have the option to do that and they struggled between their full-time job and the coursework.
I imagined that I would be the only female in a room full of super techie men. I thought they would look at me and question what a poor little girl like me was doing in this course. Terrible stereotype, I know, but turns out I was completely wrong. The class was filled with both men and women of all ages coming from different industries. There was an accountant, a marketing specialist, an event planner, a Coast Guard Officer, a psychologist and an EMT. Student coming from literally every type of industry. Most people in the class were looking to switch careers while some were already in development and wanted to expand their skillset.
Our teacher was a great developer. He worked as a Software Engineer in the day and taught our class at night. Another bad assumption that I made was that our teacher was going to be this magical person who taught us everything that we needed to know. Oftentimes I sat in class beyond confused to a level I couldn’t even recover from. I started pretending to pay attention and told myself I would have to teach myself when I got home.
We went through a couple different TAs during the course. One left at the beginning because he was overwhelmed with his current developer job. Another left towards the end because he had landed a developer job. By the time we started our final projects, we had one TA and we all fought over his time to help us out. Eventually, they brought in another TA but he wasn’t experienced with React, the front-end library we were all building our projects with.
If you opted into the career services program, you were assigned a Career Coach who offered personalized feedback on your resume, cover letter, and LinkedIn profile. When you finished with the basics and everything was approved by your coach, you were considered “Employee Competitive” and could meet your Career Director. The Career Director would help you navigate your job search, inform you of the tools you could use to help push your resume through the application tracking system, and hold practice interviews with you. Attending UCLA extension does not guarantee you a job after you graduate like some other bootcamps but they do provide you guidance and help along the way up to 6 months after you graduate.
- Learn the basics of Javascript ahead of time.
It would have helped if I had been studying the basics beforehand. Someone gave me this advice before I started but I didn’t listen.
2. Don’t do it alone
It was a very difficult 6 months and I wouldn’t have gotten through the course without emotional support and comic relief from my classmates aka new lifelong friends.
3. Learn Data Structures and Algorithms
If you want to land a developer job you cannot avoid learning this. Most companies will give you coding challenges in the interview and if you can’t talk or work through most of it, you likely will not get the job. The bootcamp did not focus much on Data Structures and Algorithms, so this is another thing to add to your “work on your own” list. I would recommend starting sooner rather than later before you even start applying for jobs.
YES. The program itself was far from perfect but what I’ve taken from this experience is that no one is going to hand you anything. You have to actively work at it and learn on your own.
I had been building websites on Wordpress for years and had briefly dabbled in HTML & CSS enough to know that I was serious about pursuing development, no matter how difficult it was. From what I observed, more than half of the class decided not to continue pursuing it and stopped taking class seriously. If you want to be successful you need to show up. Go to class early, stay late, ask questions, take advantage of all the free programs that are designed to help you, take the group projects seriously and choose your teammates wisely. After you graduate continue to study. There are many resources online, both free and paid, available to you. It’s not an easy journey and the learning never stops but there’s a place for you if you work hard for it.
Good luck and may the odds be ever in your favor.
