Code Bootcamps

What are they? Are they effective? Are they worth the money?... As a graduate of the General Assembly bootcamp, I want to discuss the pros and cons of attending a code bootcamp to hopefully give some insight as to what to expect if you or someone you know are looking to get into the development field via a bootcamp. I'll also break down the costs of attending a bootcamp, comparing them to a traditional CS degree, and what to expect after graduating from the bootcamp if you do decide to attend one.

What are they?

Basically a coding bootcamp is a short-term, intensive training program that teaches students practical and job-ready tech skills. They aim to get students ready for a developer role by immersing them in non-stop and intense hands on learning by having students learn a technology and then build a project with that technology to reinforce the learning. But there are a few issues with this model of learning...

First, I want to stress the word "Intensive"! Ever heard of the term "drinking from a firehose"?...yeah, thats what learning to code at a bootcamp is like! Typically the learning curriculum is discussed prior to you signing up for the actual course, and the instructors will tell you that it is going to be a lot of material in a short amount of time coming at you, but you really don't process just how much and how fast all of it is until you actually start to go through the bootcamp.

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The reason I want to mention the speed of things at a bootcamp, is because if you don't work well under pressure or are bad at time management, then you might want to re-think your decision to attend one. I personally feel like I'm pretty good under pressure and time management, and even I felt like I was behind all the time in the work and just as I finished one task or project...there were 3 more waiting to take its place...every day...for 3 months straight! After a couple of weeks, this pace gets stressful and exhausting to say the least. So much that a few of the other students in my cohort even dropped out or quit due to the inability to keep up and that says alot about the pace, considering the price of attending a bootcamp (which brings me to my next point).

How much does it cost to attend a coding bootcamp?

It's not cheap...but cheaper than the alternative. Okay, the cheapest route to go in this case would be to go the self taught route. Being a 100% self taught programmer is certainly doable in today's information saturated world. There certainly isn't any shortage of free or super cheap resources like freeCodeCamp for learning to code, but these require an extreme amount of discipline because coding is definitely not easy and it can seem tedious and repetitive at times (especially when learning it) so do keep that in mind if you decide to go this route. The most expensive route is to go to university and get a computer science degree. This option costs both more money and more time since a typical student at an American university will take at least 4 years to finish out a bachelors degree, and the expenses for attending university is around $10,000 per year depending on where and what type of school you attend.

Bootcamps cost anywhere between $10,000 to $20,000 to attend and range from 3 months to 6 months in length. The one I attended was $15,000 and was 3 months long. Consider the time savings by not having to take any additional courses like you would in university, and the added benefit of having a structure to follow and instructors to lead you in the right direction when you are struggling which you wouldn't have going the self taught route, and the price tends to be reasonable(with caveats). Basically you get just the computer science part of attending university without any of the other useless classes required to "fulfill" your major. But do keep in mind that each bootcamp has a different curriculum and teach different technologies so please do your research before committing to a particular one! A simple google search for "coding bootcamps" will yield a whole bunch of different options for you to compare.

So...are they worth it???

In my honest opinion...NO. I personally wouldn't recommend going the bootcamp route if you can afford to go the traditional Computer Science degree route and here is why...

Companies are actively filtering out bootcamp graduates as viable candidates. Don't believe me?, just go on a job search board and look at junior developer positions...I guarantee you'll see in their requirements sections things like "Bachelors degree Required" or "Must have 3 years of Agile environment experience" or "Coding bootcamps do not fulfill the education requirements for this position" (I've seen them all!), and a host of other variations of the sort. Second, even if you do manage to land an interview and be considered a "qualified candidate", companies are almost always going to try to lowball you as far as a salary is concerned. I was offered a junior position right out of bootcamp making $35K/year with a 1 year probationary period.....HARD PASS!...not when a full stack developer salary should be between $80K to $100K per year!

So...there has to be SOME benefits from being a bootcamp graduate right? Sure!, you learn an awesome new skill! Then you get to build stuff and learn more and build more stuff and learn some more, until the projects that you build are seen by someone who thinks you are good enough to work for them....or......you start your own business like I did and bypass all of that crap(but I'll leave that for another blog)!

What if I end up not liking it?

There's always the possibility that you might end up not even liking to code. It's not for everyone. Its hard, it requires alot of reading and learning, and it's plain tedious at times! I personally have an engineering mind that loves to solve problems so I do enjoy it and find it fun....but this might not be you! and then what??? Well...if you find out you don't like it midway through the course, then you're pretty much out of the money you paid to attend the bootcamp (some might refund you 50% if you quit before a certain date, but most wont) which again....isn't super cheap. If you are new to development and you've never really had a career in the field....I STRONGLY recommend you start out by maybe buying a few cheap courses on Udemy just to get a feel for what it's like to be in this line of work, or reading a few programming books like these: Java Programming for beginners, Python for beginners, or Computer programming for beginners. But definitely DO NOT get into this field because "The money is good", or your parents said you should get a job "working on computers"(lol).

In conclusion

If you can afford to go to university and get a computer science degree, it will be significantly easier for you to land a developer role. There are plenty of bootcamp success stories and yes it is possible to land your dream job coming out of a coding bootcamp and being self taught...but you are going to have to work your ass off twice as hard to prove that you are better than the candidate with a computer science degree to prove their skills.

I hope you found this article interesting and informative.

Until next time my friends!

-David