Bootcamp Bullying: How I Paid $10K to Be Torn Down
By: Allana C
Tags: Coding, Ironhack, Bootcamp, Bullying, Women In Tech

In the summer of 2017, I was extremely excited to begin my journey to become a developer at Ironhack. I just knew that this was the salvation to my suffering.

Here is a little backstory of how I decided to pursue this career. I began coding when “BlackPlanet” was around. I lived in the housing projects and did not fit in there. I used proper grammar and made an effort to enunciate my words. I used to get into fights a lot, and the kids in the neighboorhood would try to steal my possessions to be mean. My mother put me on a severe lockdown, and I was not allowed to go outside. I found yahoo chatrooms, AOL instant messenger, and forums. I found my friends online and one I am still friends with to this day over 20+ years.

We were all creatives and learned paint shop pro as elementary and middle schoolers. One would purchase a domain and then if you were talented enough on a free website (before LiveJournal) someone would host you on their site, and you would have your page. We used Greymatter to journal (a .php plugin) with FTP transfers to upload photos and music to our subdomains. I got good at making graphics and the community we had gone on to SCAD and other art institutes.

My senior year I wanted to make websites but somehow was discouraged with the ever looming “GO TO COLLEGE” mentality embedded in me. I took FORTRAN/PASCAL and C in high school. In college, I took C++ and was a TA the next semester at a community college.

Fast forward to making decisions that did not pan out I was depressed and seeking a skill that no one could take away from me. My friend from high school (who passed calculus I-III, differential equations, and linear algebra before her senior year) suggested to me to learn Python and become a programmer for real.

I found Ironhack and said I was going to pay for it on my credit card and make something of myself. I did just that. I passed the coding exam and was on my way to becoming a developer.

August 2017 I was extremely excited! We had the most girls and most diverse cohort. I enjoyed this because I was a gifted student and am used to small classroom settings.

The second day of the cohort one of my peers came to me and boldly stated a comment disguised as a question “Are you confrontational, you seem like you get outraged.” I was appalled at this comment-question because I did not know her from a can of paint, nor did she know me. Anywho I just brushed it off as her insecurities with melanin-rich women.

The second incident came with me, and another peer who I was once very cool with and after the outreach director heard us having a Gemini-playful debate she wanted to intervene and again I was the aggressor and the one with the bad attitude, not the other party also involved. Now shortly after this little mental/verbal banter, I was then hurt by what was on the screen during a lesson on API …

Screenshot 2017–09–22 @ 12:56pm

Wow, posted on the projector and sent ten times to the API. Nizar our instructor ( and the only person who believed in me), quickly deleted the data sent to the API and turned the projector off. He came over to me and said to forget about it but how could I? A cohort of 10 people?

When graduation came around, there were Superlatives for each of us in the cohort. The only person I can think who suggested this was our TA. My superlative was “Most likely to punch Mayweather in the face and live to tell about it.”

Last time I checked a superlative is a fact about an individual then you make it funny. The truth is laughable, bullying and purposefully tearing someone down is not. We had a friendly reception and party afterward, and our TA told me, “You are not a designer you are a backend developer.” How encouraging. (sarcasm)

I want to mention the woman on the second day who told me how confrontational I was, became such great friends with the Placements director and even made one of her apps in honor of him. Also, our TA and the placements director were also great cronies. I searched for a good three months after graduation and was not able to land a job. I then got scammed out of $20k that I will save for another medium post.

I do not know how much of this I brought onto myself however Bootcamp Bullying is very real. It is such a shame as I have since lost three jobs since Bootcamp and have forgotten how to code. I am sure that this is what they intended for me. I hope they are happy in their tech careers as I continue to figure my life out.