DEV Community

shawnhuangfernandes
shawnhuangfernandes

Posted on

8

Booting Up: Why I Chose A Coding Bootcamp

Hello!

My name is Shawn Huang Fernandes and I am an ex-power systems engineer who is trying to become a developer! I am currently taking Flatiron's Software Engineering Immersive program at the Seattle Campus.

So, Why The Blog?

This blog is to help give others an insight into what I did during my coding bootcamp to ensure that I got into the tech industry. Hopefully this might help someone else navigate the same water I did!

Quitting my job and becoming a student again was really scary, and one of the hardest questions I had to ask myself was:

How Do I Re-Invent Myself Into A Developer?

I had heard of three routes:

  • Teach yourself, be awesome, someone will hire you
  • Formal Education, get a degree, someone will hire you
  • Bootcamp, learn coding, someone will hire you

Route 1: Teach Yourself

At the time I was considering my career transition, it occurred to me that I could possibly study coding on my own time. This option was appealing as it required $0. However, it would mean I would need to:

  • Structure my own learning
  • Research what the industry was looking for on my own
  • Coordinate networking opportunities outside of my work hours
  • Possibly quit my job
  • Figure out a reasonable timeline for when I could start interviewing for jobs and try to land a job

Why I turned this option down:

As much as my ego wanted to make me believe I could learn to program, network, and figure out the industry on my own, I turned this option down because there were too many unknowns (and I had recently gotten married and purchased a home, so I wanted to take a smart risk).

Route 2: Formal Education

I had come from a 4 year institution, gotten an internship, and landed a career, so the fleeting thought of doing that all over again did cross my mind. Getting another degree would mean I would need to:

  • Possibly be out of industry for 4 years
  • Pay upwards of $40,000
  • Quit my job

Why I turned this option down:

The 4 year time commitment, along with the financial burden of a degree made me turn this option down. And from what I understood about the software engineering industry, relationships and skills are everything. Having an institutional degree would not be a guarantee of success in the software engineering realm.

Route 3:The Bootcamp Approach

Because I had dabbled in coding, I started getting notifications about coding bootcamps (what a coincidence). I had always assumed bootcamps were places that taught you how to code, and then let you loose on the world. On my way home on the bus I saw a sign for Flatiron and decided to do some further research by attending an orientation and surfing their website. What I learned was that going to Flatiron's bootcamp would mean I would need to:

  • Definitely quit my job (the program is 9-6 Monday through Friday)
  • Be responsible for my own networking (provided opportunities from Flatiron)
  • Be responsible for my own learning (provided a curriculum and coaches from Flatiron)
  • Pay $15,000 dollars
  • Commit myself for 15 weeks

Why I chose the bootcamp option

There's a couple reasons I chose to do a bootcamp over the alternatives, and they were all based on my situation:

  • I wanted to be software engineering ready within a couple months
  • I wanted a program that would keep pace with my learning speed (or slow down to accommodate me)
  • I needed guidance from professionals to position myself to get an awesome tech job (building an online presence like LinkedIn, portfolios, and blogs!)
  • I needed networking opportunities to make connections with startups and larger companies
  • I didn't want to be broke after attending the program

Preparing For The Bootcamp

I remember putting in my two weeks at my job, knowing that I didn't want to spend time sitting around; I wanted to start the bootcamp as soon as possible. Flatiron's earliest start date was two weeks away, and they had a platform full of coding labs and lessons that needed to be completed before you could schedule your technical interview. There were a lot of obstacles I had to overcome.

  • There were a LOT of pre-work assignments.
  • The coding language was in Ruby. A language I had never heard of.
  • I was still working for the next two weeks (right until my interview)

I had two options:

1) Push my start date out.
2) Buckle up and do the work.

I decided I would spend the next two weeks completely immersing myself in the material Flatiron provided and spending every waking hour either:

  • At Work
  • Cooking
  • Coding

Because I condensed a lot of the concepts of programming and web design into a two week period, the knowledge was fresh during my technical interview, and I passed!

If you are considering joining a bootcamp

1) Do your research. Will they help you find a job or will they teach you how to code?
2) How much time do you need to prepare? Pick a start date that fits your pace
3) Commit to Learning. Joining a bootcamp means making sacrifices, if you are not prepared to commit to learning you're throwing your money away!

Thanks For Reading! I'll be posting some more updates as I progress through the bootcamp!

Heroku

Build apps, not infrastructure.

Dealing with servers, hardware, and infrastructure can take up your valuable time. Discover the benefits of Heroku, the PaaS of choice for developers since 2007.

Visit Site

Top comments (4)

Collapse
 
mrrwmix profile image
Matthew Winemiller

What's it like being in a full time bootcamp? How's the pace? Can you and your cohort keep up?

I ask because I attended a part time bootcamp, but I committed myself to a strict schedule like what you're doing. Maybe a full time program would've been a better fit.

Collapse
 
shawnhuangfernandes profile image
shawnhuangfernandes • Edited

Hey Matthew!

The pace is very quick. In my cohort we have few people coming in with programming experience (like a CS degree), and majority of people with no experience. I lie somewhere in the middle (because of my EE degree). Everyone is keeping pace, it's actually really inspiring

That being said, this specific program is split into 5 "mods". Mods are basically levels or "grades". You graduate from one mod to another by completing a code challenge and a project (that encapsulates the concepts you learned during the mod), and each mod is 3 weeks long.

I am currently in Mod 2. My experience in Mod 1 was like this:

  • I was bombarded with new concepts, and I benchmarked my own progress by completing coding labs
  • Every day during the 9-6pm session I worked with my cohort on discussions questions, pair-programming excercises as well as the labs. I took this time to get support from coaches, instructors, and my peers to fill the gaps in my knowledge so I maximize my time learning and not be stuck.
  • Because I am a slow learner, I spend my nights and weekends also working on labs (and creating cheat sheets or "brain dumps" to make sure I was ready to tackle the next week). I'll be writing a blog post on my strategy for "learning" coding concepts soon!

I am so glad I am full-time, because I feel like it's a good reflection of what working as a dev might be like:

  • It teaches you how to learn, and learn quickly
  • You have to learn to leverage the knowledge of other people (peers or otherwise)
  • You get out to industry quicker
  • Everyone in my cohort is extremely driven, so it's a great environment to work in

From what you're telling me, you would have been an awesome fit for a full time program. But the important thing is that you're through!

Thanks for asking!

Collapse
 
mrrwmix profile image
Matthew Winemiller

That sounds like such a wonderful environment to learn coding in. Your dedication and preparation will take you far! I would suggest looking at problems on Hackerrank, Leetcode, and Code Wars to get better at whichever programming language you're learning, if you're not doing something similar already. A few classmates and I studied on those sites together weekly to prepare for interviews. That being said, however, I was only asked to reverse a string and query SQL tables in the interview I had for my current dev job.

Thread Thread
 
shawnhuangfernandes profile image
shawnhuangfernandes

Thanks for encouragement! We do a daily algorithm but I didn't actually know all the different places these algorithms were pulled from. I'll be incorporating this into my weekend study sessions! Really appreciate your input Matthew!

👋 Kindness is contagious

Please leave a ❤️ or a friendly comment on this post if you found it helpful!

Okay