Such a great article and a unique perspective that's frankly not shared enough!
I wanted to make one more point in favor of bootcamp grads that I think should be expanded on, and it's the fact that most bootcamp grads I've met had full-on careers before starting a bootcamp, whereas CS graduates typically enter tech right after school, and that remains their only frame of reference. All of that initial, usually non-tech experience means that bootcamp grads are often more mature and empathetic coworkers, are more flexible in their thinking, and are great at putting themselves in users' or customers' shoes, having been non-tech customers of software themselves.
I am a bootcamp grad myself, and worked as a writer for over a decade before switching careers. I got my first engineering job primarily based on the fact that the startup sorely needed documentation and had no one to do it, and my writing background was a huge asset in that regard. Now when I've mentored bootcamp students, I've stressed that they should regard their previous experience as an asset and find ways to make themselves stand out because of it. Worked as a nurse before going to bootcamp? Awesome! You will be far more valuable to a medical startup than a CS graduate without any context of that world and its customers' pain points. And so on.
This post also made me feel very good about my bootcamp (PDX Code Guild in Portland), which I actually found gave me a solid understanding of CS principles and some of the processes involved in working on a software team (git, deploying software, etc.), but I still learned probably 80% of the skills I use every day at that first job. On the job training would be incredibly valuable, and I wish more companies that can afford to do that (cough, FAANG, cough) would.
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Such a great article and a unique perspective that's frankly not shared enough!
I wanted to make one more point in favor of bootcamp grads that I think should be expanded on, and it's the fact that most bootcamp grads I've met had full-on careers before starting a bootcamp, whereas CS graduates typically enter tech right after school, and that remains their only frame of reference. All of that initial, usually non-tech experience means that bootcamp grads are often more mature and empathetic coworkers, are more flexible in their thinking, and are great at putting themselves in users' or customers' shoes, having been non-tech customers of software themselves.
I am a bootcamp grad myself, and worked as a writer for over a decade before switching careers. I got my first engineering job primarily based on the fact that the startup sorely needed documentation and had no one to do it, and my writing background was a huge asset in that regard. Now when I've mentored bootcamp students, I've stressed that they should regard their previous experience as an asset and find ways to make themselves stand out because of it. Worked as a nurse before going to bootcamp? Awesome! You will be far more valuable to a medical startup than a CS graduate without any context of that world and its customers' pain points. And so on.
This post also made me feel very good about my bootcamp (PDX Code Guild in Portland), which I actually found gave me a solid understanding of CS principles and some of the processes involved in working on a software team (git, deploying software, etc.), but I still learned probably 80% of the skills I use every day at that first job. On the job training would be incredibly valuable, and I wish more companies that can afford to do that (cough, FAANG, cough) would.