A Lesson In Failure — Falling From and Into A Coding Bootcamp
By: Gabriel Gutierrez
Tags: Hack Reactor, Software Engineering, Codingbootcamp, Failure To Success, Career Change

Five years ago, I was introduced to programming for the first time. I had never bothered to look at code or understand it. My knowledge of the subject consisted of stereotypical images in my head that resembled something like the Matrix, or with people hacking away in basements and creating what I knew as the internet. Shortly after graduating, I had a made a decision to no longer pursue a career in my originally intended field of industrial and organization psychology. I didn’t want to pursue a PhD, and to be honest, I was burned out from schooling. I wanted to work and earn an income, but I was conflicted with what I wanted to do for a career.

My entire life’s formal education, I had spent checking off the boxes that I was told would lead to success. Grades were straight A’s almost every year from elementary school all the way through college, with the exception of a couple classes. I was viewed as the ideal student, praised by teachers, and my work was obviously reflected in my grades. It was important to me and was the expectation of my family that I did well. I studied for tests, I wrote my papers, and always did my homework. Looking back at my time, I can’t deny that I did well in academics and because of it, I graduated from one of the best universities in the country (GO BEARS!). But at the end of it all, I felt lost. Through all my learning, I did what I needed to achieve the grades I wanted, but never sought to push myself. In fact, at points I shied away from the classes that would push me. The classes that even though I would learn more and would find more interest in them, wouldn’t give me the grade I desired. To me at the time, that was failure.

This is indicative of what’s known as a fixed mindset and although I had never intentionally done so, I had hurt my own educational growth. Now here I was, post college, feeling lost. I took a moment to reflect on the subjects that I had truly enjoyed growing up. Math immediately popped into mind since I had spent countless hours doing workbooks and learning more advanced topics with my grandpa as a kid. Problem solving was fun, whether it was a game of chess or collaborating with others to achieve some common goal. As I pieced together these memories, I had a epiphany that I had wanted to return to my math roots. This realization plus my newly achieved degree led me to researching a career in quantitative psychology. However, as stated before, I was burned out from traditional schooling and I didn’t want to put myself deep into debt for something I wasn’t excited about.

“When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail. Both are equally important.” — Ellen

As I researched other alternatives for a career, I stumbled upon something called coding bootcamps. They were still very young at the time, and weren’t widely known. The programs ensured you could go from minimal coding experience to an employable software engineer in the span of three months. That fact alone removed the fear of being in school for an extended period of time — I could squeeze three months out even though I was burned out. The idea of making a career change in only three months time was intriguing enough that I began researching the various coding bootcamps available. That is when I stumbled across App Academy, which was one of the leading bootcamps at the time. They only required that you make a downpayment of 2000 dollars and then after you found a job as an engineer, they would take 20% of your first year’s salary. And that just checked off the affordability aspect. What was there to lose?

Long story short, I studied Ruby (an object oriented programming language) for a short period of time before enrolling in the next pre-course for their program. This was a class designed to give you a foundation prior to taking a technical assessment to determine if you were eligible for the program. As I had always done, I did what I needed to do and passed the exam. I had made it into the program! I was about as excited as when I had first been accepted to Cal.

For the next month, I studied for hours each day and exercised the small bits of coding knowledge I had up until the official start date. It was go time! As I entered class for the first time, and looked around, I began to hype myself up for this new chapter of my life. I was ready for a change and ready to take on this challenge… and challenging it was. I have never worked so hard to keep my head above water for anything. Each day was 8–10 hours of work plus my commute back to the East Bay. Topics came and went far before you would feel comfortable with them. It felt like trying to constantly cram the night before an exam, except in some hellish purgatory where it never ended. There was a lot of ground to cover in a short period of time and they weren’t waiting for you to catch up. The first exam finally came, and I scored 80%. In college — not terrible, for this particular bootcamp, that was strike one of two for having to exit the program. I was shook but also determined to do better, and I busted my ass for the next week to comprehend the topics, watch extra lectures, and complete as many problems as possible. It was exam day again for recursion and other toy problems, and after taking it, I knew it was going to be close. After receiving my score, I read the numbers of another failure: 80%.

I tried not to think about it too much and continued my daily work. We had already begun a new topic on databases using SQLite, and it gave me something to distract myself with. After beginning pair programming for a short while, I heard my name called by one of the lead instructors. I knew what it was for and could feel a pit form in the bottom of my stomach. As I made my way to the office, I could feel my skin getting hot and nervousness began to set in as I awaited the inevitable. The exchange was short, maybe a a couple minutes. He hadn’t spoken with me before, so his demeanor wasn’t particularly sympathetic as he informed me that I was being dropped from the program. I sort of zoned out as the words hit me, thinking about how hard I had worked to be here, and more importantly that I wanted to be here. I had made a few friends that I commuted with, and others that I spoke to on breaks. I had learned a lot of new things that I hadn’t even touched the surface of prior to starting. But that didn’t matter. This was strike two and as stated in the student handbook, I had to leave.

It was a lonely walk to the car. A cool fall day, with the gray San Francisco skies above, with nothing but the sound of my thoughts filling the world around me. I was mad at myself, and mad at the program for forcing me to leave for scoring 80% on my first two exams. When I finally made it to the car, I cried. I cried like I had never cried before. The mixture of emotions I felt as I sat there was overwhelming. I felt like I was right back where I started, or even worse. I felt like a failure.

For the next five years, I didn’t write a line of code. I wanted nothing to do with it. It had left a scar in my mind that I wasn’t good enough, or smart enough, and it wasn’t for me. And yet, when telling other people about my experience, I couldn’t help but acknowledge that the program was a period of my life that I had worked incredibly hard for. It had pushed me and I had pushed myself. It took some time, but I no longer viewed it as a failure. In fact, it was anything but. It was a period of growth for me as an individual to really push myself to learn something I really wanted to learn despite knowing the inherent difficulty that came with it. I may not have succeeded on paper, but mentally I had grown.

In 2019, I co-founded a business with several friends and set out to revolutionize the age-old racket stringing service business. We each poured extra hours of our time into building our new business and ultimately we began to grow in demand. The excitement of complete strangers using our service was fueling our motivation to do more and be more. Eventually however, it became clear that our model needed to change, and that we needed to be more profitable per transaction. While we weren’t losing money, we certainly weren’t making enough to justify the time spent. Contractor laws change, which hindered the model even more, and in a difficult decision, we decided to stop our services in 2020. Striingr was closed and the company was done. There wasn’t a grade to attach to this, but it was one of the more fruitful experiences in my life. The experience I gained, the people I built connections with and the challenges I overcame were more than worth it. Not everyone tries to bring an idea to life, but I was apart of a team that did, and that means more to me than money.

Additionally, it had indirectly exposed me to coding once again. I didn’t actually code any part of it, but I saw the power of being able to bring a project to life through the means of technology. My good friend, and now mentor, was a seasoned software engineer who built our website from the ground up. It was one thing to code toy problems, it was another to watch something you had envisioned suddenly become a reality. I began thinking to myself, maybe I should learn to code again. I was in a different place: I had motivation, an amazing group of supportive friends, my job was steady and I had some money saved up. Maybe I could give it another shot.

My other good friend and I began discussing options. Ways you could self teach and what the job market looked like. He knew that I had dabbled in code before and pushed me to look into it again. I thought about going back to school, or maybe trying to self start through the Odin Project. The thoughts were mainly just that: thoughts. And then coronavirus hit, and places began to shut down. My work, as a tennis director was among those effected by the shutdowns as governments officials scrambled to establish safety protocols for various businesses. The moment of ambiguity actually made some things much more clear to me, and as a result I made the decision to finish what I had once started.

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” — Henry Ford

I browsed through coding bootcamps once more, which had clearly evolved since I had initially applied five years earlier. There were exponentially more of them, which seemed promising, and several I had seen in 2015 were still around. I glanced through the various programs, but leaned towards more established programs that had been around the block and had numerous reviews and testimonies from past students. I landed on a unique program that would allow me to work full time and still learn to code: Hack Reactor’s RPT program. I quickly submitted my application and began preparing for my second time through a coding bootcamp.

This time it was in javascript, but I noticed that despite the language difference, problems were still logically the same. My prior exposure made learning this time around much easier. Concepts made more sense and I was able to build a solid foundation from the start. After a few weeks, I was given a technical assessment to enter the program — this time no prep course, just self-study — and I passed! I was thrilled to start again and finish what I had once set out to do. I had a growth mindset this time around, and that was distinctly different from the last time I had embarked on this journey.

I’m happy to say that I am nearly through the program and absolutely thriving. Hack Reactor has done a wonderful job with the curriculum, and my classmates are fantastic individuals. I enjoy learning new technologies, the problem solving, working and collaborating with others, I enjoy creating a full-stack app, and even though things are difficult from time to time (working 60–70 hours a week, sacrificing my social life, finding the extra finances, working through difficult bugs), it’s easier to push forward when you understand your overall goal is growth. No poor academic performance, or rejected job application, or closed business is a failure; instead those “failures” are just another step on the road to success.