Coding Bootcamp - Worth It?

How do you know if you'd be good at it ?

I enjoy building websites and have had fun learning HTML & CSS. I'm generally pretty technically competent and an logical/analytical/math type mind. I think the main thing is I just enjoy web based projects on my own.

Old Guy #365 wrote:

How do you know if you'd be good at it ?

The fact you are placed into a job doesn't mean you'll maintain it. That is the major catch here.

I highly doubt you will be job ready in 9 weeks but the job placement has been incentivized by both the company and the code camp ($$$). Could you go from couch potato to marathon ready in 9 weeks? A similar analogy applies here. You can't substitute a ten year cycle of the changing technology industry after a few weeks of code camp.

What do you mean by "You can't substitute a ten year cycle of the changing technology industry"I've had 2 friends take full time 8 month programs and get good (70-80k) paying gigs right out the gate. The coding camp is 2 months but FAR more intense so probably 4-5 months of that content but more immersive and seemingly way more industry connected.

Answers wrote:

The fact you are placed into a job doesn't mean you'll maintain it. That is the major catch here.

I highly doubt you will be job ready in 9 weeks but the job placement has been incentivized by both the company and the code camp ($$$). Could you go from couch potato to marathon ready in 9 weeks? A similar analogy applies here. You can't substitute a ten year cycle of the changing technology industry after a few weeks of code camp.

Too late to surf that wave.

surf what wave?

codermccoder wrote:

surf what wave?

I think you should do it. What did you teach?

Sign up for it this summer, planning on making a career change. If you hate it half way through, you can always go back.

I would think a tech company would like a coder who had teaching experience. I know a woman who headed the gmail team. I said , "wow you must be a genius." She replied something along the lines of, "I'm smart enough to understand what the geniuses below me need to do but I'm a rare person here that has people skills and can manage a team."

Answers wrote:

I highly doubt you will be job ready in 9 weeks but the job placement has been

Depends on how you define "job ready."

Personally I have a 4-year CS degree from a fairly well regarded program. Graduated and took a job and although I knew CS fundamentals I had absolutely NO CLUE how to do anything in the real world. Was I "job ready?" If you mean I could hit the ground running, hell no. If you mean could I work on stuff, yes -- with supervision.

More recently I've been in hiring roles and among others I've hired sophomore and junior interns who could barely get Hello World to compile. In most cases I've been able to get them to the point of being able to work on some pretty complex C# and SQL within a month or so. (Lots of very intense code reviews, naturally.)

So I think having some foundation really helps and in the end success depends on how smart and motivated someone is, plus the environment. A good mentor is important, and a company with good process/structure. OP, I would highly advise you to avoid startups for the first year or so at least.

Thanks Rojo,

I have a couple friends that went into similar techie fields with little experience and have been successful due to their EQ.

Maybe. Depends on your goals and what you desire.

The big money in computers are for those with a computer science background - either degreed or self educated.

Coders, especially website coders, are a dime a dozen. Much of that work has already been outsourced (might come back, might not).

Not that you will not be coding with more of a computer science background, but the types of things you will be coding are far more sophisticated (and far more difficult).

If you are doing it for money. You may be better off staying a teacher until you can start collecting your pension. Then start a second career. Unless you have far more than just bootcamp skills and are willing to put in the time.

It take years of work to become good enough to make great money for a long time in coding.

notacoder wrote:

Coders, especially website coders, are a dime a dozen. Much of that work has already been outsourced (might come back, might not).

It take years of work to become good enough to make great money for a long time in coding.

I'd add you have to have a niche.

And 50K seems tantalizing, but understand the industry is awash in those jobs because they pay poorly and generally function as burnout mills. Work X months in release crisis mode, then replace the coder with another after their health/social life starts falling apart and they leave.

Above very low salaries, you have H1B and outsourcing keeping salaries very low in the U.S. The only response to outsourcing is to be more productive than an outsource shop. Which, for many isn't a problem. But, as posted above, it takes years for most to get there.

notacoder wrote:

Maybe. Depends on your goals and what you desire.

The big money in computers are for those with a computer science background - either degreed or self educated.

Coders, especially website coders, are a dime a dozen. Much of that work has already been outsourced (might come back, might not).

Not that you will not be coding with more of a computer science background, but the types of things you will be coding are far more sophisticated (and far more difficult).

If you are doing it for money. You may be better off staying a teacher until you can start collecting your pension. Then start a second career. Unless you have far more than just bootcamp skills and are willing to put in the time.

It take years of work to become good enough to make great money for a long time in coding.

Coders are not dime a dozen. They are actually in very short supply and that is what these boot camps are trying to resolve. In the city that I work in they actually have a free boot camp that is funded by, I think, the city and some of the larger companies that actually need coders.

I've seen 2 of my son's friends graduate college, with non-CS degrees, go to boot camp after a year or two working in other fields and get coding jobs.

IT is one of the best paying fields to work in. Look around your city to see what kinds of industries there are and what kind of IT jobs they have open. Make sure what is being taught in the boot camp is actually in demand in your area.

travel to a 3rd world dump and take the bootcamp. make a vacation out of it. India, Russia, Israel has great coding bootcamps.

This is my problem.

Half the people say it is crap: low pay, outsourcing, ageism, dime a dozen and high supply, monotonous work with long hours etc.

The other half say great pay, great culture , super high demand, engaging and creative job etc.

Which is it??

No degree (some college), attended a 12 week full stack web bootcamp. Learned some things, a lot I really didn't learn other than what's out there and some general concepts. I did find out the parts I'm better at, and sort of focused there. A year later, I'm in my second job post bootcamp making 118k.

I had some wordpress blog management type experience going in and some html knowledge, but that was it. I do have much better than normal people skills for a dev and some business sense which have taken me further than my skills alone would have.

My suggestions:

1) Get a teamtreehouse.com membership for 3 months ($25/month) and work through a track. Front-end web developer is probably the best for going from nothing to something. If you like it, and understand what is going on then you have other choices, but if you don't like it and it's not for you... you didn't spend 8k.

2) Decide if you're going to stay in the treehouse/web learning world or dig in for a bootcamp and spend a ton of money. The bootcamp does have the advantage of a built in network and some established history of placing people that you won't have through treehouse. Although if you're near a large city, you can start attending meetups on topics that interest you and being proactive about meeting people.

3) Concentrate on really learning the basics, not just being able to build a few things. You'll get better with copying and pasting from stack overflow to be able to make things work and fake it 'til you make it, but semantic HTML, responsive css layouts, and vanilla javascript logic will allow you to learn damn near anything else to do what you need to do. Bootcamps often move too fast to fully grasp the basics. Outside of the basics, high level concepts will be more important to grasp than just memorizing the syntax.

4) Build a portfolio site and set up a github account. Regardless of which way you go, this will give employers an idea of what you have done and can do. Sometimes it's the literally what you did, and sometimes it's being able to look at the logic and/or design to see what you are capable of.

There are a ton of jobs out there especially for people who have good fundamentals and are dedicated to learning more.

Codermccoder wrote:

This is my problem.

Half the people say it is crap: low pay, outsourcing, ageism, dime a dozen and high supply, monotonous work with long hours etc.

The other half say great pay, great culture , super high demand, engaging and creative job etc.

Which is it??

Depends on:

Physical location, company, division of company, exactly what role you're doing or not doing, exactly who your manager is or isn't, exactly what direction the industry happens to be going in that week, what the CTO had for breakfast that morning...

Do your research and you'll be fine.

That said:

Anyone who says that outsourcing is an issue? Well that person was outsourced for a good reason. They suck. Anyone who says ageism is an issue? They're right, it is. I'm still young enough that I don't care yet. Dime a dozen? Yup. For quality? Nope. The dime a dozen guys get outsourced. Don't be one of them and you're fine. Long hours? Often. Monotonous? Only if you're one of the dime a dozen guys. Great pay? Can be! Great culture? Not often in my experience. Startup bro culture or dull corporate, not much in between. But I have a life outside of work so that doesn't matter. Creativity? Yes, often. But NOT FOR THE TIME A DOZEN GUYS. I think I've repeated myself enough. Any questions? GOTO That said;

Hey this is amazing thanks for that - what did you do before bootcamp and how old are you if you don't mind my asking ?

I owned a small business that was moderately successful but burned me out, and I'm in my early 30's.

That is accurate info.

Your work experience will vary wildly depending on where you work. I work for a large corporate entity that actually has a good, positive culture and work environment. Pretty flexible work schedule and location (I work at home 4 days a week) and I rarely have issues getting my run in at lunch time.

Outsourcing is an issue but companies NEED, and want, local workers also. Someone has to tell the offshore coders what to do and how to do it.