A couple weeks ago, someone in one of my Facebook Groups got accepted to a coding bootcamp and asked if we would share advice or things we wished we'd known beforehand.
I went through a coding bootcamp 3.5 years ago and yes, I do have advice.
I was fortunate to be selected by Adobe for their Digital Academy (https://www.adobe.com/diversity/strategy/candidates/digital-academy.html), but the team I interned with didn't initially have any open reqs, so I spent my internship applying for jobs inside and outside of Adobe.
Here are my nine tips, both to prepare for a coding bootcamp and to set yourself up nicely for your job search.
- Do some pre-work so you're not going in with zero knowledge. I had taken a few courses beforehand and it helped a lot. Of the ~20 people in class, I think only one person who came in with zero knowledge was able to keep up with assignments.
- Be prepared to spend ALL your free time working on assignments. Our class time was 40 hours / week. I spent an additional 30 hours / week on assignments (and I already had some coding knowledge). If you're married, enroll your spouse in doing ALL household chores while you're in the program.
- If possible, go "above and beyond" on the big projects. I didn't do this and wished I had. Those projects will be your portfolio for your job search.
- Some bootcamps gloss over testing. Read more about it on your own. At least understand the different types of testing. Bootcamps might not make you write tests, but real companies will.
- When you're getting ready to interview for jobs, spend some time learning/reviewing regular expressions. I never memorized them and bombed my first interview because of it. Since bootcamp grads don't have a "known quantity" of knowledge like someone with a CS degree and usually have no coding job experience, I think we get asked more technical questions than others might because the company wants to see if we actually understand coding concepts vs just looking for answers on stack overflow.
- Practice writing code on the whiteboard in front of people. Don't rely on your IDE to do everything for you. I also did not do this and it hurt me. You WILL have to do this in an interview.
- Learn how to use 'git', especially branches. Most companies are not going to let you commit directly to the 'master' branch. This is more just to help you contribute to open source projects and not feel like SUCH a fool when you start your first job. A lot of companies give a coding challenge / project as part of interviews and you'll need to create a repo for it on github to share with the company.
- Learn how to debug and find/read documentation.
- Another thing I didn't do that I wish I had is put all of my assignments on a website as I went through the program. There's a famous example by Jennifer Dewalt who built 180 websites in 180 days back in 2013 as a way to learn how to code. Her website is linked from this article that talks more about it: https://leanin.org/news-inspiration/180-websites-in-180-days-how-i-learned-to-code . Yes, I had my github repos to show prospective employers, but seeing the code in action would have been more interesting than just imagining it working.
If you've been through a coding bootcamp, what is your advice - especially if your bootcamp was more recent? What do you agree or disagree with? Everyone's experience is different, so I'm sure everyone's advice will be different.
I will also point people here! Thank you for being real about the lessons you’ve learned and how they will help others.