Choosing a coding bootcamp in 2021 (and beyond)

hey guys it's john welcome back i wanted to talk about choosing a coding bootcamp in 2021 and beyond which sounds like infinity and beyond which is pretty cool but i've gotten this question on linkedin and anytime i get a question multiple times on linkedin i am going to try to answer it here so that way i can just point people to resource make things more efficient helpful and so i wanted to dive into this a little bit um so i'm going to kind of describe my thought process as if i was taking out a friend for a beer and he was thinking about or she was thinking about getting into a coding boot camp i've actually had a couple of friends like this so this is how i would think about it um and i was in this position by the way about a year and a half ago so like june july of 2019 i think it was i signed up for i started app academy uh and then a few months before that i was like researching boot camp so i've gone through this process very recently uh went from a boot camp landed at a big tech company and so this is how i would think about it um and then at the end i'll mention a few specific ones but i'll also mention why it might not really be that helpful to mention specifics but um thought process i think is the most important so let's dive into that um the first thing that i would think about if i was starting from scratch is what are the outcomes of the boot camp to me that's by far the most important is is this boot camp going to get you where you want to go because honestly like it doesn't really matter a lot of people argue and they get they get all caught up on you know boot camp is the only way or boot camps suck and and you can just do this for free online i don't really think it matters what what path you take if it gets you to the outcome that you want so if you want to work at a i don't know a smaller like consulting or an agency or something as an engineer and you have a very specific stack that you need to know to get that job maybe you don't need a boot camp maybe you already have enough experience it just depends on so many things so the main thing here is do you does this boot camp have a track record of trustworthy outcomes that you want um here's how here's how i would figure that out um so one of the ways is you can use one of these i mean you can do a simple google i just did a google search before i started this video best coding bootcamps 2021 you're probably going to find like course report switch up career karma those are all pretty good i would say resources i found when i was looking at those course reports seemed to click more with what i would expect as far as the boot camps go but switch hub i think had some like a ton that i didn't recognize doesn't mean that they're not good but those lists um a lot of times like have been tracking kind of reported outcomes and or at least ranking the boot camps on reported outcomes so that's a decent starting point um but you know honestly the best way to do this is uh i would encourage you to do a linkedin search so go on linkedin you can do a search uh say that you want to work at google the cliche um or microsoft you know um but say you want to work at a certain company or a certain type of company you want to work at fang which a lot of people watching this video might be wanting to work at fang um do a linkedin search for google people who currently work at google facebook uh i'll just throw microsoft in there because i have to uh i work in microsoft um but uh do a google search for people who currently work at those companies and whose education uh was at a boot camp that appears on one of these lists just to narrow your options down so like look at these lists on course report switch up and career karma whatever list you're looking at and then like do some google searches and see how many results that you find um i found especially when i was going through like this networking phase of like talking to engineers as i was going through the job search uh i found that there was a lot of alumni at like google and similar companies that i wanted to work at uh that graduated from my bootcamp app academy so i thought you know that was that was definitely uh encouraging and that was like a data point of okay people have taken this path they've gone from where i am to where i want to go i i've ran into a lot of people from hack reactor at those are similar companies um i think flat iron maybe um rhythm some other ones but the whole point here is like you might be watching this video in like three years and there might be like five new boot camps that i've never heard of and so it's not really worth getting caught up on the individual boot camp but it is getting it is worth really getting serious of like will this give me the outcome that i want so that's the first thing and the biggest thing so you can just like turn off the video now if you want and just do that and i think you'd be in pretty damn good shape um but let's let's go a little bit deeper um so besides outcomes the other thing is obviously cost like do you have like the reason part partly the reason i narrowed down boot camps to basically two options which was app academy and lambda school was because those are the only ones at the time i think that had income share agreements where you didn't have to pay until after you graduated and after you got a job because i couldn't afford to drop 10 grand nevertheless 20 grand for some of these boot camps so um can you afford it and i i don't really think it's worth necessarily getting into debt to go to a boot camp um uh personally i wouldn't i wouldn't judge anybody that did i understand like you can make the argument that it's a pretty good investment but um you know uh there's a wide range of costs and the thing that to consider sometimes about these income share agreements is sometimes your incentives are aligned in that sense because the bootcamp doesn't get paid like lambda school or app academy don't get money unless you get a job if you choose that option so so that that's one thing i would consider is like researching the cost of tuition of these boot camps um i won't say that there's a certain number that makes sense or doesn't make sense app academy was fairly pricey but it was totally worth it for me um and i'm not going to go into the specifics of the price because i think it always changes and it's not really important i think the important thing is is that the price works for you so that the price isn't really correlated to the quality of the boot camp per se but um obviously that look that's something that's gonna be very relevant to you and i think that there are plenty of if you if you can't afford to like drop a bunch of money you don't have to anymore there's there's a lot of more there's a lot more options with income share agreements okay so beyond price what else matters in a boot camp um i think one of the things that matters is also the alumni networks which which kind of correlates to number one uh as far as like searching for engineers who have the outcomes that you want but like for app academy it's not it's not that the alumni network is currently giving me any value other than the people that i graduated with but first of all it it does show you it does help you feel connected to the industry too and then when you're going to your first job search you have all these people you can reach out to and it was awesome for me like people at my favorite companies i could do a linkedin search and i could find them that went to app academy and get advice from somebody who did exactly what i want to do from where i was so the alumni network i think is is an important factor when you're choosing a boot camp um and also just it's like a social proof it's like a stamp of credibility um which leads me to the next point like there's a lot of new boot camps that seem to be popping up because obviously a ton of people want to learn to code right now and there's a lot of people that are wanting to monetize that trend and i would be wary of brand new boot camps um i wouldn't say don't do them but i would just say be more cautious because they it's gonna go along with everything else i said they don't have like a long track record of outcomes they don't have um they just don't have the the credibility yet they're still building it so um but i would look at kind of like long-standing fully reputable boot camps and um in like i said i'll mention some of these at the end um that that pop up to my mind but they're not the only ones at all okay so alumni network as well uh your your track record your your basic basically you're looking at like which ones have been established and kind of proven themselves over time um trying to think what else would i consider if i was if i was going to to choose a boot camp today i think the other thing would would would probably be like going into the curriculum in this is also correlated with the outcome the very first one but like if you know you want to be a back-end engineer and the boot camp that you're looking at is like all front-end like job javascript and like web framework stuff html css then obviously like don't do that like make sure that make sure that you're getting as much out of the boot camp that aligns with like your target job so that way you don't have to like learn all this extra like you don't have to learn a new stack during your job search and um like i would prefer a bootcamp that taught me personally with my goal of working in a big tech company i'd like one that that kind of taught me more about like computer science fundamentals um so all that to say like i think the outcome thing the first thing that i said go after that do linkedin search see how many people are working the boot camp you want to look at go on these review sites um pick pick like like click around on some of these boot camps and then look at like their their their average outcome that are published like their average starting salary look at like how long it takes to get a job on average um obviously do all the obvious research like look at reddit look at youtube videos um just like look at all the ratings and stuff but but honestly this is the other point so uh so let me let me mention the the boot camps that come to mind just because i know people want some concrete stuff and then i'm going to tell you why it's not really important to go off of those recommendations but i went to app academy i know for a fact app academy is a great boot camp and i would definitely recommend them i think their their admissions bar you know when i applied it was it was high and so they only let in a small percentage of people um because it was a very challenging program so i liked it i picked it for that reason is that it was there was a high bar to stay in the program and to get in and so it made me think that it was preparing me for um a skill set that was more valuable and difficult to obtain which makes it more valuable so app academy i've seen a lot of people have success from hack reactor i've been hearing really good things about rhythm i've seen people land some at some really good companies from rhythm codesmith i really like i forget his name i think it's will sentence at codesmith he has a really great perspective on um on the job search too uh but the curriculum is really solid as well so code smith's good too i think flatiron's good um lambda school i want it to be good and i i feel like it just it's getting better but i've heard just mixed reviews on it so i'm like hesitant to recommend it but i really like the founder like i really like austin and i think that they're like i like their vision it seems like they're focusing a lot on computer science fundamentals too which is kind of unique for a boot camp which i really like i think it's really important so i would check out lambda school um but here's the thing don't get caught up on like if you pick a good one if you just kind of like narrow down five by common sense on the factors that i talked about um good starting salary lots of placement a high placement rate the kinds of companies that you want to work for a good alumni network social proof talking to engineers of these companies getting their first hand opinion that's super valuable um but once you've done all that and you have like five to ten on your list just pick one because the boot camp isn't what's gonna get you the job um and i think it's kind of weird for people to understand um they think that it's like you go to boot camp and then you just get a job because you went to the boot camp no the boot camp is is an avenue it's a launch like kind of a launching pad for getting a job but it's not fully sufficient and in what your success is going to come down to your work your focus your determination your practice and um and it's not like you can pick any of the good boot camps and land at whatever company that you wanna that you wanna land at um as a function of of the holistic way that you approach your studying and the concepts that you learn um not purely as a function of the boot camp that you go to so plus like like i mentioned like there's boot camps changing all the time some are getting worse some are getting better some are just now popping up and i'm sure there's going to be some that like are no longer around in a couple years so don't get caught up on like it's make it or break i gotta get into this one boot camp no like pick one learn everything you can focus on the real like things that you need to learn and uh and don't just also get stuck on don't just base your knowledge on the boot camp curriculum like i was studying things outside of boot camp too and then in my job search i really went deep on data structures and algorithms and computer science topics that we didn't cover as much so all that to say um these are some you know this is some food for thought if you were my friend here at a dinner table this would kind of be the advice that i'd give you so i hope this is somewhat helpful in helping to kind of guide your thoughts around this the main thing is that you pick a place helps you get where you want to go and and also realize that any gaps that you might find in a boot camp you can fill by yourself um so anyway uh let me know if you have any follow-ups here in the comments let me know if you like this video and if you want to keep up with the next one hit subscribe i'd appreciate it and i'll see you next time bye guys

Channel: John Steen

Views: 11,755

Rating: 4.9044776 out of 5

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Id: L0bB_tnBDR4

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 10 2021