Navigating Coding Boot Camps: Insider Tips from a Former Instructor

Introduction

The decision to join a coding boot camp is a significant one. It requires considerable investment of time, money, and energy, and it’s crucial to find a boot camp that aligns with your lifestyle and goals. As a former boot camp instructor, I’ve seen both the triumphs of a well-matched boot camp experience and the pitfalls of an ill-fitting one. Interestingly, recent 2022 and 2023 surveys from Stack Overflow suggest a declining popularity of coding boot camps among younger developers, while the opposite is generally true for older devs. This underscores the importance of carefully considering your options before taking the leap.

In this article we’ll cover decision-making factors including:

1. Program structure and commitment
2. Cost and financial considerations
3. Job placement and career services

Program structure and commitment

Importance of understanding the time commitment

A standard in-class boot camp typically involves:

• At least 15 hours of independent study or homework each week.
• Additional time in class, which varies based on the type of program:
  • Part-time programs typically involve 12 to 15 hours of class time each week, allowing you to potentially maintain your day job.
  • Full-time programs involve more extensive class hours, making it challenging to balance with other full-time commitments.

Some students attempt to spend less time out of class, but the ones who really succeed in the course as well as being able to get jobs soon after are the ones who really take the time to learn the material well. The difference between what students have learned shows up very quickly from interview coding challenges.

Don’t forget to calculate how much time you need to spend with family to keep your relationships healthy and put that at the top of your list. No job or career is worth ending up lonely. In a similar vein don’t forget to balance some time to rest and recover, if you don’t give your body what it needs it will eventually crash and force you to give it the rest it needs.

After considering all these things, does the boot camp you’re looking at meet your needs? Do you have time to succeed in it? If not keep shopping around. Make sure you’re being realistic about the time you can give to each aspect of your life including the course.

Understanding prerequisites and preparedness

You need to be capable with a computer, whether that is a PC or Mac. Understanding how to install and remove software, configure settings in the operating system, and researching topics about your computer that you don’t currently understand, knowing where some of the best resources are for learning what you don’t already know.

When preparing yourself for the boot camp you should find some online tutorials related to beginning as a developer. As you take those you’ll likely notice areas of development that seem easier, and some that seem like they will be more difficult. This will give you a better idea of the types of questions you’ll need to spend more time on with your instructor.

Homework and project feedback

Any learning program you consider should be offering you projects to practice away from class, if it is really great your teaching assistants (TAs) and instructor will give you feedback on those assignments. Yes, this is typically called homework but good homework will make you a stronger developer. Find out what kinds of projects students do in and out of class. Ask about what kinds of group projects there are, if any. Then decide how ambitious those projects seem.

If you can, find some students of the program and ask them how good and useful the feedback is they receive related to their assignments. Does the feedback help them learn what they didn’t understand? When talking to these students also find out if they would attend office hours, request tutoring, and compare the differences between responses of those who took advantage of those offerings versus those who didn’t.

Availability and types of study support outside of class hours

On the note of feedback, you should put a lot of weight into considering a boot camp based on its outside of class resources available. If you get stuck on a problem where can you go for help when not in class?

A good program will offer extra tutoring if necessary, but they should also be encouraging and supporting study groups. A good study group can really make a difference in your success in class. They also make natural groups when group projects get assigned, and yours will already have a good system to figure things out and get things done.

Study groups are great, but sometimes you need extra documentation, examples that help you understand and solve homework, and lists of articles, videos, and other resources that will help bridge knowledge gaps. Your instructor can help there but the curriculum really ought to have plenty of documented help too.

Speaking of instructors, you should have access to your instructor. Office hours are critical, and you should use them if they are offered. A good program will give you access to the actual instructor, not just TAs. TAs can be great, and help a lot, but sometimes you really need to ask questions to someone with more experience. Some programs don’t make this easy but good ones will, again, through office hours and maybe more. Avoid programs that don’t give you this kind of access.

Cost and financial considerations

Typical costs of coding boot camps

Tuition

Tuition is of course the biggest cost you’re going to need to worry about here. How much does the boot camp cost? It is not uncommon for a boot camp to cost over 5,000 to 10,000 USD. Some offer discounts based on payment plans and payments up front. Typically an in-class boot camp with an instructor who has industry experience is going to be at least that expensive. There are some that are mostly online, learn-at-your-own-pace types that offer guidance but are not instructor-led and can cost less. Some programs even offer Income Share Agreements (ISAs) where you don’t pay anything until you get a job, then you pay a percentage of your income for a set period of time, which could be a benefit if you don’t have the money up front.

Laptop

Don’t forget the cost of a good laptop, which can be another big expense. If your only reason for considering a Windows computer is because you found one at the store for 400 USD then you’re picking the wrong computer. A good development machine should have at least 8 GB of RAM, but preferably 16 or more. Then you should target a minimum of 500 GB of storage, and these days that should be Solid State (SSD) not the older Hard Disk Drives (HDD) with spinning disks. Then for processors you should be at a minimum getting an Intel i5 (or equivalent) or better.

At the time of this writing you can find a new 13-inch MacBook Air with an M1 chip (not the newer M2, both are fine), 16 GB of memory (RAM), and 512 GB SSD storage for about 1,400 USD. A laptop with a 13 inch screen is very portable, but you may end up wishing you had a 15 inch screen for in class screen real estate. The 15-inch with the M2 and same specs as the M1 just mentioned at time of writing runs near 1,700 USD. Quality windows machines can be less, but they have premium brands too. In the Windows world consider Dell’s XPS lineup, HP’s Envy, and then Microsoft directly offers their Surface lineup usually doing a great job at combining power and portability. Whatever you decide here, a new reliable development computer is going to be an investment you need to plan on.

Policies and options if the program isn’t a good fit

Hopefully if you pulled the trigger on a program it is because you found one that is actually a good fit for you, and for which you are a good fit. Unfortunately that isn’t always the case and as can happen after you start, life might throw you a curve ball which requires you to defer your studies or abandon them entirely.

If such a thing occurs what options do students have from the programs you’re considering? Is there any refund? Can you defer to join a later cohort? If it is a self-paced program will a break of focus and progress disqualify you from the program or run you into a deadline requiring you to pay for the same course again? These are things to consider, especially with how much of an investment these boot camps can be, and even more so if you have to step away from a fast-paced program.

Job placement and career services

Understanding and assessing job placement rates

More likely than not, you’re considering a boot camp so that you can get a job in development, so one of the main questions you should be asking the boot camp is their job placement rate. Many boot camps will have low rates here, maybe not even be willing to share this information with you. To be fair, this isn’t entirely their fault, but the way most of them market their programs you’d think there are unlimited jobs for anyone who can say the word software. The sad truth to this is that there is a high demand, but it is typically for experienced developers, not entry-level. Some companies realize there is great talent out there who can quickly get up-to-speed and will offer entry-level and intern positions, but there just aren’t as many.

Knowing that job placement rates for boot camps are going to be low you have something to compare. Even still, ask them how they calculate their placement rate. Does any job after graduation count, even in an unrelated field, even if it is a minimum-wage job? Some programs may count that, good ones won’t. Again, the rate won’t be high at most boot camps. Some boot camps also have a great marketing program, maybe too great, and get too many students who aren’t a good fit for the program, which can drop the rates even lower.

For a typical coding boot camp the jobs you’ll likely apply for can include:

• Entry Level Software Engineer
• Junior Developer
• Junior Software Engineer
• Software Engineer, Intern

The pay is highly dependent on a number of factors including the location, the company, and the industry. But in the US you can expect to make around 87,000 USD per year. Some companies will pay more, some less, but that is a good national average to expect.

Overview of career services

The more expensive programs should offer some form of career services to help students prepare for interviews, write their resumes, organize networking events, establish alumni connections, and more. Find out how long students and graduates have access to these resources.

One tip to consider when it comes to writing resumes. I’ve seen literally hundreds of resumes for entry-level candidates and it looks like most of them use the same career services guidance in writing resumes. What does their career services program do to help you stand out, not just from other school’s students, but even the others in your cohort?

Conclusion

To recap, don’t forget to ask about the boot camp’s learning structure and what commitment will be expected of you, not just to pass, but to really succeed. Make sure that you can actually afford the program and that you get a good value from the investment because it is often a large investment. Then, keeping your eye on the ultimate prize, make sure you understand the boot camp’s success rate at getting graduates hired and how that compares to other programs. Which program, if any, did you end up deciding on? Let me know.

About Coding Captain (the author)

Hi, I’m Jason, your Coding Captain. With over 16 years of software development experience, including 5 years managing teams and 2 years teaching, I’ve journeyed through coding’s challenging waters and am here to guide you on your own voyage.

Beyond coding, my thirst for adventure extends to my family life and epic games like Sea of Thieves and D&D. These cherished roles – as a husband, father, and gamer – not only shape who I am but also inform my teaching style, fostering a warm and nurturing learning environment.

Join me, your Coding Captain, as we embark on thrilling learning adventures in the ever-evolving world of technology problem-solving.