Coding bootcamp 2 years later: reflections & advice

I can't believe it's been two years since I graduated from coding boot camp back in 2022 so I thought I would make this video just to provide an update on what I'm doing now how things are going and just reflect on the past 2 years what I've learned and hopefully provide some takeaways for those who are embarking on a similar Journey maybe you've been following my channel for a little bit and um and yeah just kind of reflect on how things have been so where am I now I am currently working as a software engineer I'm working in the same job that I got right after boot camp I think I got the job about like a month or two after I graduated so I'm coming up on my 2-year anniversary at my current company which would be in June I'm still headed towards the same career path like I want to continue being a software engineer I recently got promoted so now I am more midlevel so at my company it's like software engineer 1 software engineer 2 which is where I'm at now and then Senior and then it just kind of progresses from there and so it took me a couple of years almost a couple of years to get to this promotion but I really do feel like I've learned so much over the past two years I've grown so much and I don't know how long it usually takes for people to get to the the promotion I'm sure some people do it faster maybe some people take some a little while and it probably varies depending on which company you work for but yeah I do feel like I'm not a baby engineer anymore definitely feel like like not a different person but like a lot more comfortable in what I'm doing compared to when I graduated from coding boot camp but before I get into all of that all the things I've learned and kind of like the reflection part of it you might be wondering do I still believe that coding boot camps are worth it do I still recommend them I know I talked a lot very highly of coding boot camps in many of the videos I've made you might be wondering how my thoughts changed has like the state of things changed to the point where I wouldn't recommend them anymore and the answer is kind of like yes and no um I still think that coding boot camps provide or can provide a lot of knowledge and Direction and organization to your learning and they can be beneficial for a lot of people but they're definitely not for everyone and they are not necessarily a guarantee that you're going to get a job and not all programs are the same like some of them are I mean all of them are trying to make money and some of them are not the best and there are programs that are better so it kind of just depends I guess my short answer is yes coding boot camps can be worth it if you pick a good one but also if you have potential and you have a willingness to work really hard and to learn I think if you meet all of those three things then excuse me then I think it's definitely worth it for me it did work out I'm so so grateful and I will say that I do my company uh we do hire a lot of boot camp grads I don't think my company um really discriminates between people who have degrees in CS people who graduated from a boot camp you know like so many people are boot camp grads but then there's also a lot of people that I work with who did like the more traditional degree route um I don't know if there are people who have no degree at all and are totally self-taught but I'm sure that there are as well I have no notic that um in the hiring that we do and I was recently a part of um you know a group a committee my team was hiring a new person so I got to like interview people and kind of see how the process works it's more just about finding the person who's the best fit who you know is going to mesh really well with the team who has the kind of alignment like culturally and kind of like personality wise to do really well on our team and in the company and then and then just somebody who like has the technical skills so I said I was going to do some reflecting um so how have the past two years been it's been very interesting um I feel like I've talked about this before especially like in a video I made about like impostor syndrome where you just you kind of like a lot of software Engineers go through this period of feeling like I don't know if I'm going to do this long term like I don't know if I can make it and maybe that's kind of dramatic um and in the in the moment I mean now looking back you're just like well of course you're going to make it all you just have to do is like learn and grow and get better and then you're going to progress but I think when you're when you're first starting out it's really hard to see things that way and I feel like in the first year of my job I had so many moments where I was just like I just can't imagine myself getting to this next level getting to the next stage and like feeling comfortable I was always just feeling like man there are just so many things I don't understand I feel like I'm just trying to get by like just trying to get my code to work even if I don't understand you know everything and that can be kind of uncomfortable especially if you're the type of person who has always been good at stuff I guess I feel like when you're new and you're just starting out you just don't know anything I don't think it's just something that boot camp grads go through like we learn how to code in three four sometimes 6 months and I think for me I always thought like oh if I got a degree in this and I spent like four years of college coding like this would just be so much easier that's not true actually um talking to some of my co-workers um I think this kind of period where you're kind of new to the job is something that everybody goes through like one of my co-worker said that he you know was like looking into being a PM or like a QA engineer cuz he's like I don't think I could be a developer like I don't know what I'm doing and I think he just stuck with it and then eventually things clicked figured it out and now he's like he's a senior developer now and very very smart like somebody that I always turn to for you know whenever I have questions about things the same thing happened to me I feel like it just happens to everyone where you're just like man that first year I guess what I'm trying to say in this ramble right now is that first year is really hard and um you know I think in previous videos I've talked about how like oh when I first started my job it was like so nice because um I got the time to like learn angular and just kind of get my feet wet and work on really easy tickets and stuff yeah that lasted for like I don't know the first month or the first week few weeks but then then it gets really hard after that and it's like now you're expected to just like you know already be at this other level or maybe it wasn't that I was expected to be at this other level but I was putting a lot of pressure on myself cuz I'm like man I'm spending too long working on this ticket and just like the work just gets harder right it's really easy to compare yourself to other people like well well they're finishing this type of ticket in like 2 days and I'm spending like a week on it or two weeks or even a month and it's just like oh my gosh am I going to get fired I'm just not working fast enough it was kind of like that for the first year and then all of a sudden things just clicked and I was like oh I get this now I I am working faster at things but I'm also not stressed if I take a long time to to do something and that's okay so I guess if I would kind of like broad overview of how things went it was like I first started my job and there was this like honeymoon phase of like I love this job I just so passionate like I can't wait to just dive into it like so excited and then after the honeymoon phase ended it was like okay I don't know if I can do this this is really hard how am I going to get through it and like almost borderline um what do you call it burnout because I was just like working a lot of really long hours and putting a lot of pressure on myself and then I got to the point where I was like I don't need to do that I just need to treat this as like a regular job and somehow that because I like set boundaries and you know I was like taking more breaks and kind of having a more healthier approach to things around that time is when things started to click and and like I let the the stuff i' learned kind of like soak in because if you're constantly just trying to like learn everything really fast but you don't allow yourself time to actually let it marinate it's it's really hard to retain that information and knowledge and then I think this was like around 6 months ago maybe 6 to 9 months ago where things really did click for me and the job just got easier I guess like I still feel challenged very challenged at work but I'm not like in a position where I feel stressed out like it's it's a challenge but it's not like too much like it was in like the first year I think the main thing that helped me get to this next level was just taking the time to actually learn things that were important for me to know um and I'm talking about conceptual things so I think I think in the first year I was just all survival mode like I just need to get my code to work you know maybe I don't understand this and this and that but that's fine cuz now this thing works I thought I think that that approach in the beginning was fine because it allowed me to get things done faster but once I stopped um worrying about how long I was spending getting tasks done and took the time to actually learn things like look things up that I didn't know that's when I started to like get better so instead of just focusing on like let me just get this thing to work or you know like looking at patterns that was one kind of approach I would take like look at patterns in our existing code base and kind of copy them and um things would work but not fully understanding why once I took the time to like sit down and figure out why does this work and how does it fit into this bigger picture that's when I started to see like a lot of improvement in my technical skills and then I the next time I you know approached a similar thing it I could get it done faster because I actually understood it rather than you know just trying to like guess or find existing patterns to get something to work also what was really helpful for me was on my team we read the book clean code together and I'll put a link in it in the description of this video but that VI I mean not not that video that book was really helpful for me for understanding um Concepts like bigger Concepts and we would have discussions about things um as a group where I could ask questions and just like spending time like thinking about how we organize code and how to keep our code dry where you're not repeating yourself and you know I think it really help help me understand um objectoriented programming and you know other other kind of basic concepts I guess which i' had heard these words before but not really like seeing it with examples and in practice and thinking about how it applied to our code base like I thought that was really helpful so if you haven't read that book I highly recommend it I think another thing that helped me get to the next level was mastering the technology that we work with on at my job we use angular and rubyan rails and in like the first I feel like 6 to n months of my job I only did the front end cuz I was just like really uncomfortable with Ruby because I didn't learn Ruby in my boot camp I only learned JavaScript that was the only language we learned and we actually learned react so it was an easier transition for me to just work on front end and just work in angular but then um I don't know know I don't know when it was probably like 9 months or so in my manager was like you if you want to be a full stack developer you really need to pick up backend tickets you know you don't have to do it all the time but just pick up one every once in a while and I think I worked on my first backend ticket it was kind of a big one and I was like oh I really I really think I like this a lot so then I just started picking up more and more and then kind of slowly started to develop my knowledge of Ruby and Ruby on Rails and then I don't know how it happened but slowly I was like I like this a lot better than working on the front end so then I started to like specialize or focus more on backend and I think mastering the technology but doing so where you're focusing on one thing and not trying to do everything it can help you um or it really helped me to to grow and like learn things I think faster than I would have otherwise so we're reflecting on the preparation that I got from coding boot camp I would definitely say that coding boot camps get you in the door they allow you to have just just enough foundational knowledge that you can begin your job but they don't prepare you enough for what all the things that you need to know in the job so you still have to continue learning and put in the work in that first year um when you get your first job as a software engineer so they're good for getting the job but you you can't think of it like I've done the boot camp I've graduated now I know the things and now I can apply them it's more like I've learned enough to where I can continue to learn so what advice do I have for those who are you know maybe just starting out maybe you just graduated from your coding Boot Camp or you're trying to start one and are on a similar Journey I would say my biggest advice is to take the time to learn things properly like learn things deeply don't just follow patterns don't just um you know kind of copy other code cuz that's is a way for you to get things to work but actually take to time to understand what it what everything means if you understand most of you know a code block but there's this one thing that you don't understand take the time to look that up read about it sometimes you're like okay I'll look it up later just make sure that you make a note to come back to it so that you understand how things work if you do that I think that you will get a lot further faster other advice that I have is to pick an area of focus uh when I kind of embarked on this journey I was like I just want to be full stack I want to do front end and back end I want to do everything why would I limit myself and it's not a bad plan if that's really what you want but I think if you are able to pick a focus like only front end or only back end that will help you learn a lot faster as well and probably probably learn technical skills faster to where you can get promoted faster as well so that's something to think about um I kind of like the approach that I took though where I was like okay I'm I mean how I'm doing it right now which is that I primarily do backend and then every now and then I'll pick up a front-end thing so I don't lose those skills but I'm still focusing on one area that's something I would definitely recommend and then the third advice that I have for you is to avoid burnout like it's kind of hard to to not like constantly be in this boot camp mode when you graduate and you first start your job you're just like you you're trying to like maintain that same level of intensity but you really shouldn't because I don't think it's sustainable long term try to find ways to have balance between work and life and I've definitely had the problem I still have this issue where it's 5 p.m. and I feel like I'm like so close to figuring out a problem so I'll just like okay just 10 more minutes just 10 more minutes I'll just keep working till I figure it out and then I'm like oh crap it's like 8:00 p.m. no you just have to be strict about like setting boundaries when you can because if you don't you will get burnt out and yeah that's pretty much it that's those are my reflections over the past two years since I graduated from coding boot camp those are my key advice and takeaways hope this was helpful um if you're embarking on a similar journey and um and yeah I hope you stick around I I know I haven't made a video in a while but um I think I'm going to continue making videos I can't promise that I'm going to make them every week but if you want to stick around subscribe to my channel if not that's okay too um hope this video was helpful and hope to see you in the next one or not bye

Channel: stephf

Views: 899

Keywords: coding bootcamp, coding bootcamp experience, software engineer, women in tech, women who code, coding bootcamp graduate, programming, computer programmer, software developer, how to get promoted as a software engineer, how to become a software developer, are coding bootcamps worth it, should i do a coding bootcamp, how to survive coding bootcamp, software engineer experience, software developer experience, junior software developer, junior developer, developer

Id: xm44US8NDuM

Length: 18min 50sec (1130 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2024