Disclaimer: The following may contain product affiliate links. I may receive a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these links. I will only ever provide affiliate links for apps that I've used and highly recommend.
Disclaimer: The following may contain product affiliate links. I may receive a commission if you make a purchase after clicking on one of these links. I will only ever provide affiliate links for apps that I've used and highly recommend.
Coding bootcamps are absolutely still a viable option to become a developer in 2024. Now, I know this is going to make a lot of people mad and you guys are wrong and I'm going to explain why. So if you go to r slash coding bootcamp, you might be given this illusion that coding bootcamps are an absolute scam, that no coding boot camp prepares you for what dev jobs require nowadays and you're not able to just finish a coding boot camp and get a job. These are all true. I've literally been saying this stuff for years where coding boot camps will get you majority of the way and, yeah, some people might land jobs after they graduate a coding bootcamp, but you are diving into heavy project work afterwards. None of this has changed. The requirements for dev jobs have just gone up a little bit. That's it.
Don Hansen:
Coding bootcamps really gained a bad reputation because of misleading marketing and coding boot camps deserve to completely be shit on for that misleading marketing. Now, not all coding boot camps did that. Not all coding boot camps do deserve that, but I'm sure you and I both know that many do. I'm not arguing that you shouldn't shit on coding boot camps and their advertisement and them basically having salespeople for their admissions and not being honest and upfront with people. I completely understand being critical when coding boot camps mislead prospect students because they are desperate I get that. But the coding boot camp model still works and it works really well.
Don Hansen:
I'm going to lay this out initially and I think this will give you a different perspective, and then we'll dive into some details and you can decide and basically decide wherever you want to fall and which side of the spectrum of like. Do we hate coding bootcamps? Do we support them? But I want to give you some details and I want you to truly try to hear me out with this. So, to start with, if you go to a coding bootcamp, you should spend at least a few months on the self-taught path, digging into the stack that you think you're going to go into, that you think you're going to learn.
Don Hansen:
If you're trying to become a front-end developer, build some websites with HTML, css and JavaScript. Don't jump into React. Just build with the fundamentals. Get comfortable with some fundamentals. Just get comfortable building a website. You should be able to build a website as a front-end developer before you go to a coding boot camp. There's no reason you shouldn't this idea that coding boot camp should be teaching you from a to z. Um, it's bullshit. Coding boot camps keep failing with that. Trying to keep everyone on the same page from start and actually get them to the finish line. Where there are varying skill levels, you haven't really weeded people out that don't really enjoy coding. It's a clusterfuck, and you honestly should be very wary of coding bootcamps that are trying to say we are beginner-friendly and we're going to have you job ready at the end. Those two things don't usually work out.
Don Hansen:
What you want is people aspiring developers to go to the self-taught paths, flush out what they like about it, what they don't do. I even want to do this because that enjoyment enjoying those aha moments, having some grit or developing some grit to push through a lot of the frustrations that come with getting stuck on the same bug for an entire day straight until you have to fall asleep and wake up and you finally discover what it is like. If you can't get through that stuff and a lot of people can't, they don't really enjoy coding enough to get through that stuff then you should be blowing all that money on a coding bootcamp. But I think everyone, before they go to a coding bootcamp, should spend a few months with a self-taught path and even see if it's for them. Maybe the self-taught path is something you just want to continue to pursue. That is completely fine. Spend a few months with the self-taught path. Do heavy research into the coding bootcamp that is going to actually Teach you the stack and teach you the things that you need to be able to solve the problems you want to solve at specific types of positions and specific types of companies that you want to apply to Right.
Don Hansen:
Don't expect that stack to transfer over. Don't expect to be hired as a junior developer when you basically learn JavaScript on the back end and they have a Python Django setup, learned JavaScript on the backend and they have a Python Django setup. Don't expect them to want to hire you because that's going to still take time for that knowledge to transfer over. Yes, it'll be a little bit easier, but companies nowadays it's not obvious. They want you to hit the ground running. They want you to know the stack. They want you to know the languages they're working with. They want you to hit the ground running as fast as possible, because companies don't have a lot of runway like they used to.
Don Hansen:
So you're going to have to do proper research and go through that coding bootcamp that you find has a really solid reputation and it does supplement your weaknesses, and those first few months are about understanding what those weaknesses are. Do you need your handheld with a coding bootcamp or do you need just a little bit of a? Maybe a one-on-one mentorship, maybe once or twice a week? Give me an hour, give me two hours with a professional software engineer. I can ask these questions and honestly, I'm willing to go for a cheaper coding bootcamp and just supplement on my own, like do you know how resourceful you are to be able to make that happen? Or are you someone that needs solid structure throughout the entire thing or most of it, because eventually you want to start being a problem solver and figuring out how do I look these things up and how do I learn these new things? You can have the coding bootcamp hold your hand forever, but you should know yourself. You should know your weaknesses, do proper research, choose your coding bootcamp and when you finish that coding bootcamp, here is the thing that people don't realize Fuck the marketing, fuck whatever coding bootcamps are trying to tell you to make you continue through the program or sign up.
Don Hansen:
The reality is you are probably going to spend at least minimum a year doing project work and doing all of the things to increase your chances for marketability as a junior developer. And that means going to tech events or getting involved in the dev community and building projects and building projects that are meaningful and useful and valuable to people that transfer over, or at least you're solving a simple problem, that is, solving a similar problem to the company that you're applying to. You're building like, for example, maybe you want to build fitness apps, right? You come from the fitness industry. I want to become a developer in this industry, I'm going to build fitness apps and I'm going to apply for depositions in the fitness industry. That is perfect alignment, right? So you're really optimizing your strategy. You're doing a lot of the right things. You are building your presence, you are posting projects, you are engaging with people online in the dev community, you are building LinkedIn connections. We could go on and on and on and on. That is not what this video is about, but you were doing a lot of the right things, and that is my point.
Don Hansen:
A year after you graduate that coding bootcamp, majority of it is spending time with project work, heavy project work to reinforce things and continue learning just a little bit, a little bit of data structures and algorithms and focusing on that job search strategy, focusing on the self-branding, focusing on proper applications and building connections and getting warm leads and doing a lot of the right things. But again, majority of it is spent on project work. That's how you make a coding bootcamp work. You extend your timeline significantly more than what you're telling or what they're telling you minimum a year and then if you don't get that dev job within that year, then you have a backup plan right. So to do this full-time with that coding bootcamp, I'm talking about a full-time plan. If you are considering a part-time program, it's going to take you more than a year. Maybe that time link does not sit well with you and I don't think it sits well with a lot of people, but I think you just need to bite the bullet with this and understand that it's going to take a much longer time than you think it's going to. And the reason why you hear how coding bootcamps are scams.
Don Hansen:
I'm going to browse r slash coding bootcamp and I want to talk about that for a few minutes. So r slash coding bootcamp is probably the biggest, most unintelligent, toxic dump of information that I have found on Reddit in the programming community. I could just rant and rant about this. The people that are shitting on coding bootcamps and r slash coding bootcamp. There are a few types. One you are a self-taught developer and you are justifying.
Don Hansen:
Not paying the price for a high-quality education Doesn't mean you can't get high-quality education as self-taught, but it's not going to be as guided, there's not going to be as much mentorship, right, and I'm pushing away a lot of the shitty coding boot camps I'm talking about. There's still quality coding boot camps that provide high quality education, high quality mentorship. You have to do your research to figure out what works best for you, but it's a lot of self-taught developers that just want to justify that they think education should be cheap or free and they have all the high quality education, but they don't have the mentorship, they don't have the structure. Most of you that are self-taught are not resourceful enough. Most of you that are self-taught are not resourceful enough. Most of you that are self-taught do not have enough grit. You will fail. That is the reality and I hope you, if you are going through the self-taught right now, I hope you look at this video. You look me in the face right now and you say, fuck you, don, I'm going to succeed with the self-taught path. I don't give a shit what you say. If you have that attitude, leave it in the comments, let me know. But seriously, you need that type of attitude because it takes that type of grit and energy to push through the long ass path that it takes to get to the finish line with the self-taught path, especially nowadays.
Don Hansen:
But you have a lot of self-taught people that don't have the money for a coding boot camp and um or you know they don't really have the budget. They have the savings but it's not worth it and they're just justifying their path. A lot of people justify their path or they were successful to self-taught path. You know, four years ago or in 2021, when you know developer companies were desperate to hire developers, they're like, oh, I did self-taught path. It worked for me. Yeah, no shit. In 2021, it worked for anyone that basically could breathe and write a for loop. You know it's. You got to understand that. A lot of people posting in subreddits like this when did they get hired? How did they get hired? Did they have a friend that pulled them into the company? You miss a lot of context like that.
Don Hansen:
But you also have people in r slash coding bootcamp that came out of shitty coding bootcamps and there are a lot of shitty coding bootcamps. There are more shitty coding bootcamps than there are quality coding bootcamps and I am truly sorry if you got tricked into signing up for a shitty one. That sucks. I've been doing this for many years. I've been reviewing a lot of coding boot camps. There are a lot of shitty programs. I reviewed mostly some of the higher quality ones, but we did go through some crappy ones.
Don Hansen:
If you've been here for a while, so you get people that have been on the job search that probably, like you have so many variables that affect people that come out of a coding boot camp Like, do they let their foot off the gas? Most people do. They let their foot off the gas. You can't do that anymore. You have to do heavy project work afterwards. You have to continue learning and growing significantly. You cannot let your foot off the gas. People will take like like a month break. That is crazy. You have no idea how unsolidified that information is in your head when you are rushing it through a coding boot camp, which it can work when you do heavy project work afterwards and you can reinforce everything.
Don Hansen:
A lot of people are burned out and they don't A lot of these people. They don't work on their soft skills, they don't network, they don't build up meaningful connections and build projects with other people and look at other people's code and to look at better conventions, or maybe they just dive back into a lot of foundations and fundamental work because they feel like the coding bootcamp failed them with that, but then they get stuck in tutorial hell. I see so many people graduating a coding bootcamp. I see people that are like you know what Coding bootcamp didn't work, I'm going to go to. I'm going to get like a two year associates in some computer science like degree. Or I see people chasing a bunch of traditional education afterwards and not building anything.
Don Hansen:
The trick is, after you graduate at coding bootcamp, you need to build and you need to build with purpose. Most people will not do that. They do all of these other things and they focus on the wrong things or they'll just die deep into leak code type problems because they're under the illusion that they are. They just need to grind those out to get a dev job in a non-fang like company. I don't know who the fuck gave you that advice, but that is terrible advice, and they do no project work to reinforce what they're doing. So many people fuck up coming out of a coding boot camp and those people are on Reddit. Those people are in r slash coding bootcamp or it's people that are paying a lot of money for a CS degree and they it's a bit of arrogance and elitism from some of these posts, but they feel like their education is superior and now they're coming out with a CS degree without practical, marketable knowledge and they're having a really hard time too.
Don Hansen:
Companies want you to hit the ground running. If you can do that and you can prove that to them, I don't care if you went through the self-taught path, I don't care if you went through the coding bootcamp path, I don't care if you went the traditional route with a CS degree, you will be successful. Now there are a lot of other factors. We talked about improving soft skills and networking and getting warm leads. There's an entire job search strategy on top of that. You have to continue learning, you have to continue building projects, but as long as you do heavy project work with a solid foundation, you continue pushing forward, you will eventually get that job.
Don Hansen:
But I think a lot of you need to hear this and I'm going to remind you one more time Extend the amount of time it takes to get a dev job. Don't quit your job to become a developer right now or to learn to code. Do not quit to learn to code. This idea of quitting your job to then learn to code full time, unless you have years worth of financial runway where you don't need any sort of job to pay the bills, you don't have those responsibilities Quitting your job in this market is a terrible idea, an absolute terrible idea. Extend that runway, and I often say with self-taught developers now I'm pushing, it's probably going to take you about if you're doing it full-time as a self-taught developer. Two years and six months and with a coding boot camp about one year and four months, not including the self-taught you did before that. Give yourself at least that amount of financial runway and now you start. No matter what path you choose in terms of the alternatives paths, you can. You can make that work now.
Don Hansen:
Keep in mind a lot of people are just jumping to a cs degree and this is also another reason I want to create this video. These cs degrees are not automatically landing people dev jobs and they are not coming out with marketable skills, because a lot of people going for a CS degree are trying to become web developers and it doesn't line up as well as you think it does. It just doesn't. And a lot of people struggle because they're not taking advantage of internships and these CS degrees. They are not doing the project work and learning the marketable technologies that companies are hiring near them for. They're not spending time supplementing their CS degree with what they need to. They're doing a lot of the wrong things.
Don Hansen:
You're not going to just go through a path and then you're going to get a job. You have to do a lot of the wrong things. You're not going to just go through a path and then you're going to get a job. You have to do a lot of the right things to be very successful and stand out in today's market. But I think a lot of people will be much more successful if you extend that path, especially with the alternative education.
Don Hansen:
Coding bootcamps are still very much a viable option. People are just completely fucking up the way they are approaching coding bootcamps. That is the problem. So don't think you need a CS degree, you need to dump a bunch of money into it because a lot of self-taught developers are failing to get jobs because they're just not getting the depth of knowledge they need, right? I'm just, I'm trying to make this like cheaper alternative work as much as I can for you guys, but I see a lot of you just running out of steam and I think it's because you've given yourself false expectations that it was going to happen at a very short duration. And to those that are struggling with the market, I truly am sorry. It is very tough out there and I will continue to be as candid as possible and piss off as many people as I need to to stress what you actually need to do to land that job. So I'll see you in the next one.
