3 Pros and Cons of Engineering Bootcamps
By: Derek Hutson
Tags: Programming, Software Engineering, Opinion, Software Development, Bootcamp

Let’s start with the negatives, beginning with the obvious one:

Boot camps are not cheap

Many of them will cost you 10–20k over a period of 3–6 months (see here). That can be a lot to stomach, especially if you are looking to do an immersive where you will potentially be without income for an extended period of time. Additionally, it is highly unlikely that you will get a job immediately after completing your bootcamp.

I was admittedly too optimistic in thinking that if I started applying a month before I graduated, I would find something very shortly after graduation. Unfortunately, it took me another 2 months to find a job (albeit a perfect one).

I remember sitting in a Starbucks down the street from my house every day, for 4–5 hours a day during that 2 months, devoting the majority of that time to applying to most every software engineer job I could find. It wasn’t until I branched out and started applying to different niches (more on that later) that I really started to find success.

I believe the reason why it took so long is because…

The job market for new software engineers is very saturated

You are going to have a lot of competition when you apply for jobs, especially at any desirable company that has a nice work schedule, competitive pay, great perks/benefits, etc.

Many companies unfortunately see boot camp graduates as unqualified or not having enough experience. I’m not a fan of this perception either, but that’s just the way it is with this amount of bootcamp graduates every year. And that’s not including the 4–6 year college graduates applying for some of the same jobs bootcamp grads are seeking.

In order to standout, not only must you commit 30–50 hours a week with your dedicated coursework, you need to be spending another 10–30 building side projects, going to local meetups and networking, learning new things outside of your standardized curriculum, and doing homework assignments so you can actually graduate from your bootcamp. Finally, let’s talk about one more overlooked point to working as a developer that is often overlooked:

Being a developer is EXTREMELY challenging

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

Every single day you will be humbled by having to figure out something you have never seen or heard of before, and at first is not going to make a lot of sense (hello React components and call stack order of operations!).

It is amazing how much goes on behind the scenes of a simple google search, and the thousands of things that must go right within a second in order to get millions of users (also per second) the information they need takes an army of engineers. Depending on what kind of job you end up with, you will be expected to know more or less, in a greater or less amount of time.

For example, at a fresh start up, you will most likely be handed more full stack responsibilities, or you may have to learn about systems and networking architecture. Even better, what happens when Taylor Swift tweets about your company and the amount of traffic from that crashes your servers and your website?

On the other hand, at a larger corporation you may only deal with a niche area, such as AWS infrastructure or working on only one small component of a much larger project, so you may have more time to learn and more room for error. A drawback to larger companies is that there may be limited room for growth as opposed to a startup.

It is clear that there are a few things you need to take into consideration before going all-in into a bootcamp. However, I would like to present you with a few reasons why going through a bootcamp could be the best decision you will ever make.