How a Coding Bootcamp Can Change Your Life
If you’re thinking of joining a coding bootcamp, first, visualize what you want your life to be like in the future. What kind of job do you want to get? How do you want to use your skills in that job? How will your new education change your life?
The numbers don’t lie — enrolling in a coding bootcamp can be life-altering, especially if you come from a low-income background. The hands-on education alone is enough to create a whole new career for yourself, and the major bump in salary is the cherry on top (an average of 49%, according to Course Report).
Need some help envisioning how graduating from a coding program can change your life? Read these anecdotes from bootcamp alums:
You can transform your career
Many people are stuck in low-paying jobs that they don’t actually enjoy. This happens for a variety of reasons, but often it’s because there’s a lack of training to get the job they truly want. A coding bootcamp can help you develop the tools you need to make the big shift.
“The coding bootcamp experience gave me the true push that I needed to change careers. [Over the course of] nine months, I had built my own applications, had an incredible internship, and landed my first full time as a web developer,” Liana Schapiro, web developer at Wondersauce, told Forbes. “Bootcamp gave me my foundation and most importantly, showed me the possibility of what was out there.”
You can work for some of the biggest websites
Reddit user thephilthe, from the website’s mobile web team, joined a bootcamp in San Francisco after he began to teach himself Ruby. (Several of Reddit’s engineers have actually come from coding bootcamps.) On the final day of the program he asked for an interview with his mentor’s company, which he says he bombed, but after follow up with his interview answers written in Python, he was given his first break.
“For the most part, being a programmer is a lot of fun. It’s new challenges all the time and generally speaking your work is more immediately impactful to your users, which I love. Downsides are there too. It can be hard! Overall though, following this path has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made,” he wrote in a Reddit AMA.
You can start your own company
Samantha Radocchia, co-founder and chief product officer at Chronicled, launched her own startup, doing everything “from writing some code and getting my hands dirty building prototypes to spending weeks on end with customers defining requirements,” she told Forbes. But joining a coding bootcamp gave her the tools she needed to really grow her business.
“As my engineering team grew, I joined [a coding bootcamp] to learn a new skill — Ruby on Rails — and learn about dynamics in early engineering teams. It was a great experience and really shaped me to feel confident building and scaling teams, work closely with engineers, and learn to understand specific skill sets.”
Zoe Koulouris and Kseniya Lifanova, two of the four co-founders of Upstate Interactive, also went through coding bootcamps before starting their own company.
“Zoe and I knew each other from our first coding class and had worked on several projects together. We decided that rather than working in our own silos, let’s join forces and start Upstate Interactive. We came from different backgrounds, brought different skills to the table, and all had the same desire to grow our local community,” said Lifanova.
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