DEV Community: Brian Wood

April 15 2019 to April 15 2020, Call Centre to Web Developer: Part 3

Brian Wood — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 15:14:37 +0000

Hi there!

This series is a lot less "5 Facts You Need To Know About Boot Camps!" and a lot more "Now this is a story all about how my life and career got flipped, turned upside down". My intention is to share out where I was in life a year ago, where I am today, and the experiences that helped me during that time to go from working in customer service to working full-time as a web developer. I hope it's useful for anyone who is considering a career in coding, considering a career change, considering a boot camp, or any of the above.

Part 1 will focus on the boot camp; how and why I ended up there, and my experience with it. Part 2 will focus on taking my newly acquired skills to a job market in a new country, and Part 3 will look back on what it felt like to start a brand new job in a challenging new industry.

New job, new home.

Part 3: Starting Fresh

Day 1

By this point I'd gone through the boot camp process, I'd worked to make my CV and applications as strong as possible, spent weeks applying, and I'd now accepted a job. Several weeks later I'd flown to England, rented a new home and got myself ready to start the first day of this new career path. I'd even bought myself a nice new suit to wear on my first day.

Needless to say it was a busy and challenging month!

Day One was about what I expected - A lot of introductions and a lot of set up. Actually getting down to business and writing code came a short while later.

For now though, I was now a part of a small team. I got on well with everyone I met, but I quickly realised I was the only entry-level developer in the room. Everyone else I was working with was heavily experienced and had been working in development for a long time before I even had the idea to start in it.

The details of my first days and weeks aren't what's important here. What is important is the chance it provides to talk about the value of a healthy and supportive work culture.

I was very fortunate to land an apartment within walking distance of my new office!

Culture: Not Just For Yoghurt Anymore

It's a difficult thing to be the most green person in the room. Often our culture around work and career tells us that we need to always appear as competent, strong and able as possible at all times. We quickly learn that asking questions means we're revealing we don't know something, and we feel vulnerable thinking that maybe we should.

When you're new to a team and also new to an industry, there's something to be said for the 'fake it until you make it' attitude. You've fought hard to get here and likely had to put your best face forward and sell yourself on your ability in order to get hired. I believe that attitude can be valuable, but I also believe it needs to be balanced: In our careers we should strive not to appear confident and able but to be confident and able. I believe the best way to do this is to be transparent and honest with yourself and others. Be proud and generous with what you can do and with the knowledge you have. When faced with something you don't understand, don't fake it. Be honest, say you don't have experience in that area, and express your willingness to find answers or learn from others. Being able to be genuine and not know something is far better than trying to bullshit an answer to appear knowledgeable. More often than not, people will see right through you.

I can't stress enough how valuable it is to work in a culture where learning and growth are prioritised; where inflated ego and needing to pull yourself up by pushing others down is not welcome; where asking questions means you get support instead of disapproval.

In the first few days on the job I started to be aware of how incredibly fortunate I was to have found exactly that in my new workspace. It was invaluable to me then as a new starter, and still is today.

All that being said, having what I considered to be an incredibly supportive team and an amazing work environment still wasn't enough to completely avoid being buffeted by my own natural insecurities.

I remember in the first week or two on the job, I was working alongside a very experienced developer and we were about to get our hands dirty with some code for the very first time. We were paired up and I was in the driver's seat, ready to write with his guidance. I suddenly felt like I was 16 years old again taking a road test; ready to awkwardly over-steer while someone beside me told me where to go. He began saying "Right, let's start out making a new Git branch that we can work with."

My gut sank. I thought to myself, "I forgot how to write a new branch in Git. Did I ever know? I've used Git before, but I've never worked with a shared repository. Am I supposed to know this? I feel like I should know this, but I don't. The first thing I'm being asked to do on the job and I can't do it." My heart started racing, my hands became sweaty and I felt sick to my stomach. I stopped breathing. "All this work and I can't even handle something simple. Did I oversell myself? Are they expecting me to know more than I do? Why would they ever pass my probation if I can't handle this? How am I going to do anything useful if I can't do this?"

My partner may have noticed that after his simple suggestion, I went quiet and nearly passed out. He calmly continued, "Start out with typing 'git checkout -b' and then our new repo name."

Oh. Right.

I took a breath, and we carried on. A short while later I realised I understood most of what we were doing, and began to feel comfortable venturing questions about what I didn't understand. Instead of anyone on my team ever being disappointed or surprised when I didn't know something, all I got from whatever questions I had were patient and supportive answers.

It's been a good road so far.

Looking Back

Six months on and while I'm far more confident and capable than I was on those first days, I can't say enough how I'm still learning - But I'm not the only one. I regularly see even the most experienced people on my team ask questions, struggle with solutions and reach out for support. I quickly realised that's exactly how they got so experienced.

I am thankful that I can only imagine how difficult it would be to start a new career in a work environment that doesn't have a healthy and supportive culture. One where coworkers are competition, or where fragile egos breed resentment.

Starting any new career is difficult. You'll likely be a similar position as I was - Being surrounded by people who know a lot more than you do. It's difficult, but swallow your pride and see that as the opportunity it really is rather than a challenge. Be honest with yourself and others. Share what you know and ask questions about what you don't. If you're at a point in your career where you're considering a switch of some kind, strive to find a work environment that encourages this. Speaking to potential employers about culture and asking them what sort of team culture they work toward can give you tremendous insight into whether or not you'd be a good fit with them.

Creating a healthy work culture also doesn't appear overnight on its own. It takes work and effort, and is the subject of much more writing. However if upon reading this you feel like you wish your own work culture was more like what I'd described, then ask yourself how you can contribute to making that happen.

Oh and maybe ask about the office dress code before you buy yourself a new suit to wear - Otherwise you might have your first day in your new career surrounded by people in jeans and t-shirts while you look like Mr. Peanut.

April 15 2019 to April 15 2020, Call Centre to Web Developer: Part 2

Brian Wood — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 15:18:12 +0000

Hi there!

Nearing the end of the boot camp, soaking it all in.

Part 2: Getting The Job

Shifting Gears

Toward the end of my 5 months of boot camp my focus shifted heavily. I didn't want to finish the 5 months and then get started on looking for work, I wanted to finish the 5 months and have that search already well underway.

Unlike coding, this was a department I had a lot of practice with. I've had many jobs over my life, from bussing tables and pouring espresso to teaching classes of people how to troubleshoot WiFi signals. Interviewing well is one of my strengths, largely due to how much practice I've had.

While I had my getting-hired experience going for me, I did have a major drawback: I was planning on moving to England, so for my first entry-level developer job I'd be applying from a different country with no local address or telephone number. I expected this to be very challenging, and I'd end up being right about that.

Before getting my applications out though, I needed to get my ducks in a row. Instead of spending my days working on my projects and developing my skills, I shifted toward reworking my CV. I quickly built up a portfolio website. I fleshed out my GitHub as much as possible. I updated my LinkedIn. I reworked my CV again - Only after all of this was finished was I ready to start sending out applications. I want to talk more about this prep work though - You can send out applications until you hit your monthly data cap, but if the applications you're sending aren't strong and well-thought-out then you may as well be sending them to space.

Please take a moment to remember that I'm not a professional recruiter or hiring manager, and I can only speak to what I feel has worked well for me in applying for and landing a job.

This is the view I had while I was fervently applying for jobs. No complaints.

Curriculum Vitae

It's very difficult to build a strong-looking CV when you're new to an industry. How are you going to get hired when you have less than a year of coding experience, no professional experience in the industry and your portfolio is a scant offering of mostly-finished tutorial projects? The short answer is that most of the time, you won't get hired. Most of the time, the job will go to someone with more expertise and experience. That also means that some of the time, a tiny bit of the time, you will get hired. Some of the time, the job will go to someone who might have less expertise and experience but can bring to the team some strengths and qualities that no one else put forward.

It's important to understand that you have an uphill battle to fight. This isn't meant to be discouraging, but merely realistic. Going into this with realistic expectations will only help you not get frustrated and discouraged later - Or at least, not AS frustrated and discouraged.

The layout and format of your CV should certainly be clear, concise and look appealing. Style and format is fairly subjective but the best thing you can do to feel confident about your format is to find CV templates online that you like and rework them to make them your own. If you're going to be a developer you may as well get used to copy-pasting things you find on the internet, right? Personally I used www.canva.com to build my CV from a template, but there are many other similar resources you may prefer.

You'll likely have a challenge with listing your experience, since you'll have very little. While you may not have professional coding experience with a tech company between X and Y dates, at this point you do have experience with coding. List that. What projects have you completed? What languages were they in? What did the project do? Why did you build it? What's the link so I can see it for myself? This part is critical, as getting hired as a developer is often a lot less about what company you've worked for or where you went to school, but about what you have built.

This is your chance to highlight your best work. It doesn't have to be ground-breaking code or beautiful, modern web pages in order to be worthy of a spot on your CV. However, what you highlight should demonstrate your understanding of the fundamentals. It should give your potential employer some idea of what you've learned. If it's a project based on a tutorial, how did you make it your own? Show that you understand the code you're writing and not just typing what the tutorial says to type, or cloning repositories.

If you've got a small handful of projects highlighted on your CVthat you enjoyed building, projects that you understand and can speak well to, then you've got your experience section sorted. If you only have one project or none at all that fit that criteria, I believe your time would be better spent developing more projects than it would be on applying for jobs. At the same time, don't just knock out a few small tutorial projects because you want filler for your CV. Remember, what you list here should be projects that you enjoyed, that challenged you, that developed your skills and that you're proud of.

As for the rest of the CV, I believe listing any past relevant experience is worthwhile. As I mentioned, I've had many jobs and I included my work as a technical trainer on my CV. I included that because I believe that the skills I learned in that role such as patience, mentoring, effective communication, and troubleshooting were valuable qualities in a developer that might set me apart.

Finally, I made sure to include my technical stack; the languages and systems I had worked with. I'd also recommend that on your CV and throughout any application you don't use terms such as "aspiring developer", "I'm new but I'm eager", "hoping to break into coding", etc. I believe it's important to confidently present yourself as a developer - After all, if you've learned how to code, you understand the fundamentals of a few languages and you've built projects you can present, then you're already a developer. Start acting like it.

Wait, I'm leaving this to move to Manchester..?

GitHub, LinkedIn & The Portfolio Website, In That Order

You might have a CV at this point but there's still work to be done.

It would be very rare today for any developer to apply for a job without having an up to date GitHub. If you're not familiar with Git or GitHub then I suggest you put the brakes on applications to go learn the basics. I would highly recommend anyone applying for a developer role have an up to date GitHub - This will act as a portfolio for your best work. GitHub has too many features to speak about here but you can highlight projects here, likely the same as you highlighted on your CV. Git also offers hosting features to allow you to share out links to your work, depending on what that work is.

Working with Git and repositories is very common in many developer jobs, so make sure you're familiar with it.

I'm not a fan of LinkedIn at all, but I also believe it's important to include on your application, if for no other reason that you won't fall behind your competition that does have a sharp-looking LinkedIn page. It also becomes much more useful when it comes to looking for available roles. If you don't already have a LinkedIn profile, then I'd recommend getting started on one. List your experience, your projects, your training and education, you- "Wait, don't I already have all of this on my CV?" Well, yes. Part of applying for jobs in this day and age means duplicating information on your CV to a vast array of online databases. Argue all you like, but you may as well get used to it!

Finally, the portfolio website. I list this last because how important this is can vary - If you're going into web development then I believe it's very important to have a website dedicated to, you guessed it, showcasing your experience, your projects, and your training and education. At least with a portfolio website you can build it any way you like, and really make it your own. A portfolio website is one of the best areas to write a bit more about yourself - What your hobbies are, what do you do in your spare time, etc. If you're going into web development and don't already have a portfolio website, consider making it your next project - One that you can even include on your CV and GitHub.

If you're not going into web development, a portfolio website may be less important but still be a great way to set yourself apart from your peers. There are plenty of online resources that can help you, and why not add some additional skills to your stack?

At this point you should have a good looking CV, an updated GitHub, a LinkedIn profile and possibly a portfolio website. Make sure that each one generally links to the others - Your GitHub, LinkedIn and portfolio website should all link to each other, and your CV should link to all three.

Quality AND Quantity

Once I had all the aforementioned profiles and tools ready to go, I began applying earnestly. If you've done all the leg work up until this point, applying is actually fairly easy by comparison. You may find that you can start to bang out 10, maybe 20 applications in a single day. This feels good and feels like you've accomplished a lot, but it can also be dangerous. Once you get the hang of applying, you start to become accustomed to sending out the same application over and over. While it is a bit of a numbers game, you also want to make sure you're sending out quality applications as well.

One additional tool you can get into your arsenal at this point is a cover letter. This is often a few short paragraphs introducing who you are and why you'd like to be considered for the role. Keep it short and sweet, but also make sure that you're tailoring each cover letter to the specific company you're applying to; don't send a generic cover letter that can fit for any role. "Hi, I'd like to apply for the X role available with Y company. Here are some of the job requirements you listed that I'd be a good fit for. Etc."

This introduction that shows you've read and understood the job posting and you've put forward some skills that directly apply will really help set you apart from the rest of the people who are tossing in generic applications with little to no cover letter at all. Regularly ensuring these small extra details are covered will cumulatively help you stand out from the crowd.

Since it came up just then - Requirements. Most any job posting will list the requirements for the role. These requirements are infamously heavy: Years of experience, expertise with a wide variety of popular languages, expertise with a wide variety of unpopular languages - The list goes on. I cannot say enough that if the role is for a React Developer and you have React on your CV, apply. Do not be put off by intimidating job requirements. Those requirements are a wish-list, and the vast majority of applicants will not meet every requirement, so you don't need to either. The only way you can truly guarantee that you don't get the job is to not apply for it.

All that being said, while you do need to be meticulous and diligent in sending out quality applications, you still do need to send out a lot of them. When it comes to quality versus quantity, getting hired for your first developer job requires both. I believe that you can't afford to be too picky at this stage - While the goal of getting a job in development is realistic, getting the perfect job that works with the exact tech stack you want with the exact culture you want with the exact salary you want is less realistic when you're starting out. I'd even go so far as to apply for roles that you may not really want - The opportunity to go through the interview process can be extremely valuable practice for when you interview for "the big one", plus the information you get during the interview process may change your mind about the role.

Practically speaking, websites to seek out jobs online are a dime a dozen. A few that I have used and can recommend are the big ones you're likely already familiar with:

LinkedIn
Glassdoor
Indeed
Craigslist (seems to be more popular in North America than Europe)

Your specific country will most likely have many others as well. Find them and use them. Be prepared to create a large number of accounts across many job sites and get a lot of junk mail, but it's part of the process - Or at least, it was part of my process.

Moving on.

Call Screens, Interviews and Code Tests

After several days of sending out a large number of what I considered strong and thoughtful applications, I started to get some bites. This may be more specific to Europe, but most if not all of those bites were from recruiters. Recruitment agencies were never something I'd even heard of in Canada - Generally the only people contacting you about the job were a company's HR team or the employer themselves. This "middle-person" concept was new to me.

My experience was that many recruiters were less interesting in talking to me about the role I'd applied for and much more interested in getting my information and putting it into their system. Fine. While I felt like I was often jumping through hoops, I believe it's necessary to do so; that next hoop may well result in an actual interview, and that's not a chance you can afford to miss.

Regardless of who you're speaking to and regardless of how interested you are in the role, I'd like to highlight two pieces:

1) Try to avoid ever having a conversation with someone if you aren't certain who they are or what they want to talk to you about. This may sound obvious but in the mad array of job sites, applications and contacts you go through day after day, it gets very easy to lose track of things. Stay organised, keep a calendar, and always review the job listing and the company before taking a call about it.

2) Always put your best face forward. You may only have a passing interest in the role but you owe it to yourself to make the best impression you can. Show that you're interested and engaged by speaking to what you know about the role and the company. Talk about the experience you have with what's in their tech stack. You lack experience, so you need to make up for it every way you can - Genuine interest, being engaged and showing your ability to learn quickly will all help immensely. These are all more steps that will help set you apart.

I started to feel like the application process was more challenging than working with JavaScript - At least writing code made sense. Usually.

After many applications, many call screens and many rejection letters, I finished the 5 months of my boot camp with a small handful of promising in-person interviews in England. I already had plans to now dash from Barcelona to Vancouver to visit family and friends, so I rerouted my return flight from Vancouver to Manchester. It would be absolutely fine to book live interviews for the day after I make that whole trip.. right?

In hindsight I would not recommend this, but I can also say it's do-able.

I landed in Manchester after a long day of travelling and only wanted to rest up - My first interview was the very next morning. I won't be speaking much about how to interview well - There are many resources available on that topic and I did nothing differently interviewing to be a developer than I did anything else. If anything, refer back to "genuine interest, being engaged and showing your ability to learn quickly".

One unique aspect about the developer interview is that you may be asked to take a coding test. This is an exercise in which you're given some sort of coding problem by the interviewer and asked to write the code that either solves the problem, executes a certain function, returns a certain value, etc. I can confidently corroborate the many stories you'll hear about coding tests where you can be given a simple task, but in that environment your fingers will suddenly stop working and get magnificently sweaty.

All you can do to mitigate the panic is practice. Fortunately there are many resources to practice coding tests - The night before my first interview I practised several exercises on www.codewars.com and I couldn't have been more relieved that I did this. It was invaluable in helping me get over my nerves and not instantly forget everything I'd just learned. There are many resources outside of Code Wars to practice these tests; find what works for you.

I should also note that I believe, unless otherwise stated by the interviewer, that Googling something during a coding test is absolutely valid. More often than not the interviewer is looking less at the answer you provide and much more at how you go about getting your answers; how you handle situations where you don't know the answer. I can tell you now that looking at a problem for a while and saying "No, sorry I can't do it" will not get you far. Trying and not succeeding at something will always be better than not trying at all.

Several days of interviews later, I flew home to Barcelona and right away got back to my application process. I was hopeful that the last few days would yield positive results, but I also knew that if all the interviewers declined me I wanted to already have my search back on.

After I had received a few phone calls and emails, almost all of the companies I'd just interviewed for did decline me. But that didn't matter, because one didn't.

Manchester might not be quite as warm outside, but it's plenty warm inside

Celebrating

Ironically, the role that I'd been offered was to work with a JavaScript framework I hadn't learned at all during my time at the academy. However rather than asking the interviewer to simply trust that I can learn quickly, after I'd landed a face to face interview for this role I spent as much time as I could learning the basics of this new framework and built a small project. By the time I sat down for the interview and heard "Now I know you don't have experience with this framework.." I was able to gently interrupt and say that in the interest of this role I'd taken the time to learn this and that about the framework. Here's what I did, and here's what I enjoyed about the process.

I believe that step was an important part of why I received an offer. Genuine interest, being engaged and showing my ability to learn quickly.

Within minutes I'd run back to the boot camp where this all started and shared my good news. I had to start packing my bags, but first things first - Celebrating into the night with a great deal of Estrella.

I'd gotten the skills needed to do the job and now I had gotten the job. All that was left to do was to actually go and do the job. Part 3 will be the final entry in this series and I'll speak about my experience and challenges with stepping into a new role in an entirely new industry. I'll post that next week on April 29th.

April 15 2019 to April 15 2020, Call Centre to Web Developer: Part 1

Brian Wood — Wed, 15 Apr 2020 09:34:17 +0000

Hi there!

This article is a lot less "5 Facts You Need To Know About Boot Camps!" and a lot more "Now this is a story all about how my life and career got flipped, turned upside down". My intention is to share out where I was in life a year ago, where I am today, and the experiences that helped me during that time to go from working in customer service to working full-time as a web developer. I hope it's useful for anyone who is considering a career in coding, considering a career change, considering a boot camp, or any of the above.

The day I'm posting this, April 15 2020, marks exactly 12 months since I quit my customer service job and started at a programming boot camp with the goal of making a career change, and finding work in the coding / programming industry.

The early bird gets the worm. It also gets the best seat in the house.

Part 1: The Boot Camp

Unmoored

In the Spring of 2019 I found myself working at a call centre in Barcelona after having moved there from Canada. It wasn't a terrible job by any means, but it was enough for me to wake up one morning feeling very much like I needed a change. That day I arrived early to work and quite literally Googled "Best Careers 2019". The top results were all in the healthcare industry which I felt ill-suited for, but everything after that was about software development, web development, coding, and programming. Many of the articles I found elaborated that programmers and developers were not only in very high demand now, but they expect them to continue to be high in demand years later. I'd always been very comfortable with computers and technology but never had any formal training, so I started digging deeper.

I searched up "Programming Training Barcelona" hoping to maybe find a school that offered training in English. Much to my surprise, I happened to be in a city with dozens of what I now know are called coding boot camps, or programming academies. Boot camps like this were a new concept to me, but seemed attractive. I never felt like a 2 or 3 year post secondary degree was a good fit for me; I didn't see an easy way for me to go back to school for several years, and many of these boot camps advertised complete training in as little as 9 weeks. That seemed like it was too good to be true. I felt skeptical that I could really learn what I needed to land a job in that time frame, which is why I was very attracted to a boot camp that I found offering a 5 month course around web development. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Vue (I know), Java and Spring Boot.

While the course looked great and reviews seemed solid, I was still very apprehensive about committing such a large amount of time and resources; if you're not already aware, coding boot camps are not known for being inexpensive. I had many questions and concerns: What if I'm not good at it? Am I too old for this? What if the course is a scam? What if I can't get a job? Those and many other questions troubled me. To find some resolution and clarity I did what would become very useful for me as a developer: I asked for help. I spoke with people I knew in the industry about my concerns.

Foosball or Table Football was a way of life at the academy.

Fear & Doubt

I'll pause here to address some of those concerns more plainly, using a combination of what I learned from them and what I've now learned for myself:

What if I'm not good at it?

You won't know until you try - and the good news is that it's extremely easy to try your hand at coding for no money at all. Websites like Codecademy, Udemy, Udacity and Pluralsight all offer a wide range of courses, and many offer free trials. It costs nothing to learn the basics of any of the most popular programming languages. If you try some introductory / beginner content and enjoy what you're learning or at least find it interesting or engaging, that's a good sign that you're on the right track. I strongly believe that you don't have to love coding like many hobbyists do in order to make a career out of it.

Secondly, I also believe that even if you were to learn the foundations of some programming language and then later decide that coding is not for you, that would not be time wasted. Learning something new is never a waste of time, and the attention to detail, the analytical frame of mind and the fundamentals you'd learn from even the basics are all highly transferable and applicable to a wide variety of work beyond coding.

Am I too old for this?

In short, no. From what I've seen at the boot camp, at my current company and at within online communities around the developer industry, that industry is progressing in a direction that cares far more about your attitude, your work and your attitude about your work than it cares about how old you are.

What if I can't get a job?

Many boot camps will advertise that they guarantee a job - However I would take that with a grain of salt. My boot camp advertised a very attractive success rate but I was never under any illusions that it would come down to anything but my own grit and persistence in order to get hired. Getting a job at the end is never guaranteed, but if you can put a good foot forward armed with a variety of projects that showcase what you've learned, it's absolutely possible. More on this later.

How do I know which language / field of programming is right to start with?

"Programming" covers a wide variety of roles, similar to working in "healthcare" there are many different disciplines and it can be difficult to identify which you'd be best suited for. Personally I started with looking at what boot camps were available to me and which I liked best. Of those I liked best, I looked at what they offered in terms of course curriculum. As I already said I chose my course because I was attracted to the long timeline (5 months) and there were two courses that ran concurrently - Web Development and Data Science. I did some digging into both and while both appealed, Web Development felt like a slightly better fit. Try new things, find out what clicks well with you and compare it to what's available locally if you want to also go the boot camp route.

Finally, and honestly this was my primary concern - What if this boot camp was a scam?

I tend to be very sceptical of marketing. Most boot camps seem to promise the world, and that was a big red flag for me - Especially when it comes to putting down a sizeable deposit to even get registered. Furthermore, there are many articles and posts about people having negative experiences at boot camps. These are for-profit businesses that need to advertise to stay in the black, yet they'd also not survive long if they had a bad reputation. To put my mind at ease about this specific program, I searched up graduates of it on social media and asked about their experience. I found a handful of people and cold-messaged each of them, and all of them had positive things to say about the academy.

With those testimonials and the research I'd done, I took the plunge. I should stress again that while I did what I could to feel at ease about my decision, I never felt absolutely 100% certain that I was doing the right thing. I still don't, but so far so good.

I didn't always love living in Barcelona, but I can think of worse places.

The Plunge

The next 5 months for me were some of the most difficult, exciting and most fun of my life. The boot camp was, after my extensive investigation, mostly what I expected:

The boot camp I attended focused its learners on living the life of a developer from Day 1. Each day was started with a stand-up meeting to discuss 'what are you working on, what are your goals for the day, what are your blockers', etc. From then we had an online portal that accessed the curriculum, which was broken down into various tasks. Many of the tasks were things we didn't know how to do, but links and documentation were provided and we were encouraged to find our own answers. When we got really stuck with something and couldn't find answers, we'd book time with a mentor in order to get unstuck. We had excellent mentors who would endeavour to not tell us the answer, but instead help us get ourselves to the answer.

It's worth noting here that any experienced developer will tell you how important it is to be able to find your own answers and be self-sufficient. I believe that the boot camp having almost zero "classroom" time and nobody guiding us through every step was an extremely valuable introduction to working in this field. I also believe that this sort of learning environment is not for everyone. Some people became frustrated - "Why did I spend all this time and money if nobody's going to teach me?" And it's a very fair concern. This has been and will continue to be a point of debate, but I believe that the most valuable thing I took away from the boot camp wasn't how to be a developer, but how to learn how to be a developer. The end goal is never to be the person who has all the answers, but to be the person who can get all the answers. Or at least most of them.

"Fine", you might say, "I know how to Google things. I'll save my money and just teach myself at home."

That's an absolutely reasonable path, and for many people that will be the best one. Between a Computer Science degree, a boot camp or being self-taught, all three paths have significant pros and cons that will weigh out differently for each person.

For me personally, I needed the structure. Teaching myself at home would never work because I distract myself too easily. I needed, and still do need, a dedicated work space; one that I can go to and leave every day - I need a team of people working alongside me, and I need a clearly laid out curriculum of projects or work objectives that other people expect me to accomplish. These are some of the reasons that the boot camp path was the right fit for me. These are also some of the reasons that I think I would do poorly working as a freelance web developer - More on that later.

I progressed fairly well through the 5 months at the boot camp. I had very little experience with web development since writing some basic HTML websites on GeoCities for my Quake II clan in the 90's, so everything past that was brand new to me. Nonetheless, I managed to put together the various projects I was tasked with. It certainly wasn't easy though. I learned that coding can be incredibly frustrating. I learned that it feels amazing when you finally get a tiny thing to work correctly. I learned how important it is to be able to ask for help. I learned to be humble and to be comfortable with admitting I didn't know something. I learned to be patient, especially with myself, and I learned that for every step I take on this road, the end of it becomes two steps further away. Most important of all, I'm still learning those things every day.

There was always something to look forward to at the end of a hard day!

Looking Back

I didn't come out of the boot camp looking like a superstar. By the time the 5 months were over I had several projects under my belt, but none of them were particularly amazing or attractive looking. My Vue project was missing a lot of core functionality. My Java / Spring Boot project, the work I struggled with the most by far, still sits unfinished. Even the first project, the HTML/CSS website, looks a bit like it was inspired by my old work on GeoCities.

While I look back on some projects and wish that they could've gone better, wish that they looked better or even just wish they got finished - I don't see them as failures. Sure they still sit there in the back of my mind as well as the back of my git repository - But I still learned how to work with data transfer objects in Spring Boot, and I learned how to manage state in Vue. I was in this boot camp to develop my skills and learn new concepts - Spending time making something perfect while not learning anything would've been the only failure.

I look back on those 5 months now and often say the same thing I did every week I was struggling there: The decision to do this was one of the best I've ever made. Make no mistake though, the boot camp wasn't perfect. There were small aspects of it I didn't like, and there were many good days just as there were many bad days; bad days or bad weeks where I felt as though I wasn't getting anywhere. Boot camps also aren't known for being easy. I believe that a good one will push you not to the brink or over the edge, but push you enough to get beyond how far you think you can go, to how far you actually can go. More often than not, that line is much further than you realise.

Graduation Day. Lluis and Vasil were some of the best mentors a new developer could hope for.

Furthermore

While the boot camp worked well for me and may for you too, that path won't be the right one for everyone. I hope that if it's something you're considering, this might give you some insight and ideas on what to look for.

A significant aspect of my 5 months that I haven't touched on was how after 4 months in, I slowed down my progress on learning and development, and put most of my time and attention on the final goal: Getting hired. I now supposedly had the skills needed to land a job in the industry. It was time to make that happen.

More on that to come in Part 2, which I'll post next week on April 22nd 2020.