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Ask HN: Has anyone here gone through a development bootcamp?

4 points by dbpullman ↗ HN
Hi All,

I'm interested in taking a Development Bootcamp, but just wanted to get an idea about their success. Has anyone here been through one? If so, how successful was it in landing a job afterwards? Obviously the amount of time to land a job varies, but if anyone has gone through one I'd like to hear about it.

Thanks!

5 comments

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notjustanymike
I hired someone who did. He was on the junior end and managed to secure the job through asking excellent questions. My overall impression was that the camp did not prepare him enough, but that he had the kind of inquisitiveness that would cause him to succeed. It's been 6 months now and he's doing well, however the first month was a little bumpy.

My experience has been that a developer bootcamp is not enough for our company, but could probably land you a junior position at an agency. The camps give you a lot of buzzwords for your resume but the actual technical knowledge is skin deep. We have a technical interview, and most bootcamp candidates won't be able to complete it.

If you do try it, remember that simply going into a company afterwords and saying, "I want to learn! See? I took a bootcamp, I can learn!" is not an effective strategy. I've had a lot of candidates try to sell me on how quick they'll pick up on something. Sorry, this isn't a learning hospital. You have to demonstrate initiative and outline your personal learning plan, and convince me you'll be the one in charge of your educational path.

tryanother
this is exactly my experience with the bootcamp i did. aside from some codecademy courses, i had no development background, but i got in based on an aptitude test (IQ test type stuff) and my ability to complete an assignment that assessed very basic java/OOP skills. once i got to class, the learning curve was steep (i was the only one without either a CS degree or prior development experience), and now that i am in the workforce, the learning curve is still steep.

i agree re: the personal learning plan - if you are going to do a bootcamp, don't rely on it to be enough. in addition to working full time, i spend between 15 and 20 hours a week studying, whether it be codeschool, OCW, or working my way through math textbooks.

jenno
I took General Assembly's web dev immersive course last March. Truth be told, I had a terrible instructor -- he could code, but he couldn't teach very well. One caveat is that I already knew HTML and CSS before entering.

I appreciated that they try their damnedest to hook people up with jobs if they want one. The instructor you wind up with might just be the most important puzzle piece. People in previous classes with better instructors are now in jobs making 70-110k in NYC. I landed a job at an education startup and they offered me 62k.

A friend of mine who entered the bootcamp a few months ago, based on my experiences, landed a job paying 50k. We both admitted that there wasn't much actual coding going on, though -- my job was working with Puppet configs and building out new instances of cookie-cutter websites. His was mainly messing around on the front-end and putting together email templates.

I'd do it over again if I could. It did teach me a whole lot, and got me started on a junior path, but there is no question that most of us need a bit more experience and work before really being able to call ourselves junior devs. As the previous commenter said, a lot of the knowledge they impart is skin-deep -- until you run with it and make projects with it. The students that stayed up till 3am coding, then made it into class at 8:30am are the ones that you'd define as "successful" with 6-figure salaries now.

There are many threads on Quora that answer this question more in-depth, if you want more info.

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knrz
I attended Bitmaker Labs' 7th Web Development Intensive cohort (June 2014–August 2014) in Toronto.

I walked in knowing AngularJS and a basic level of Ruby/Rails (self-taught for both), whereas most of my classmates had either gone through the prework (very basic HTML, CSS, JS and Ruby) or were computer science grads (worked with Java, maybe C). I was ahead of the curb going in.

And that was the way things stayed. I stayed ahead because although the coursework was not designed for my level of knowledge, it helped a lot with filling in the holes of my knowledge. Also, the exposure and immersion and the side projects I did by myself led to many more 'a-ha' moments.

As for the instructors, all of them were super helpful, but they might not be very approachable early-on (the first 2 weeks or so). Depending on the kind of student you are, you'll either spend the majority of your time with the instructor learning or troubleshooting.

I echo @notjustanymike's thoughts: Bootcamp learning is only skin deep. If you go in with a lot of background knowledge you'll deepen your knowledge. If you wait a couple of months afterwards you'll deepen your knowledge. Really try to get a sense of how things work.

During the bootcamp I landed a fun gig at a local startup. Part time, not that good of a pay ($15/hour). I wasn't in the market for a job, but had I been I definitely could have gotten into the $60-$75k in Toronto.

Let me know if there's anything else you'd like to know.