Is it worth it?

My non-scientific analysis of life after coding bootcamp

Becca Bailey
4 min readMar 25, 2017

A year ago yesterday, I got a job offer.

Actually it was an apprenticeship, but I’ll get more into that later.

In the days since then, I’ve had quite a few people ask me about my experiences at coding bootcamp. I graduated from Dev Bootcamp in Chicago in January of last year, and I had a job by the end of March.

I’ve talked to a few people who are in the same place I was—dissatisfied with their career prospects and unsure of what to do next. Their question is always the same—is it worth it?

My answer is yes, but also maybe.

Yes, it worked for me. Yes, Dev Bootcamp was a great experience. I went though it with a great group of people, and it was the type of place where I learned life skills as well as job skills. More than anything else, it was a way to build confidence in myself, and I came out of it prepared to go to job interviews and say “Yes! I can do this job!”. Or actually, it was something more like, “Yes! With a commitment to ongoing training on your part, I can continue to build the skills necessary for this job!”

A year later, I am legitimately happier, more financially solvent, and feeling better about the future. But I sometimes hesitate to say this.

I hesitate, because the second part of my answer is maybe. Even though Dev Bootcamp was the right choice for me, I won’t sell it as a one-size-fits-all solution to the general uncertainty that so many of us are facing.

A career counselor in college told me that finding a job is like dating.

I have sometimes said that there are two kinds of dating prospects—people who I want to date, and people who want to date me. If we get lucky, there are people who fall into both categories. If you’re not so lucky, see image below.

The Non-Intersecting Venn Diagram of Sadness

I know, I should have been an artist.

In the same way, every job seeker has two lists of jobs—jobs we want, and the jobs that want us. While I cannot speak for everyone, I can say that at the times in my life when I have found my career prospects lacking, what I am actually talking about is a lack of overlap between these two categories.

For most of us, coding bootcamp won’t completely solve this problem.

As bootcamps have been becoming more popular, there has been a huge influx of junior-level developers looking for work. Depending on the bootcamp program you choose, there will be a good amount of jobs added to both of these categories. They might intersect, but they might not.

As more time goes by, I think bootcamp graduates will have to look for more creative ways to solve this problem. For many of us that are career changers, I think that adding tech skills to our résumé gives us a unique combination of skill sets that is desirable to employers if we know where to look.

When do we settle, and what does that look like?

I should note that by this point, I am no longer talking about dating.

For some, this means accepting job offers from companies we don’t love in order to get experience in the industry. For others, it means taking internships or building up a better freelance portfolio. For me, it meant accepting an apprenticeship instead of a junior development position.

I spent the first seven months of my development career completing non-billable development projects for less than half of my current salary, with no guarantee that I would be offered a permanent position in the end.

In the end, I know a lot of stuff, I have worked with a lot of great people, and I landed a job at one of the best software companies in Chicago. I hesitate to even call this a compromise, because it was absolutely the right decision. But I won’t deny that it was challenging.

In the end, the answer is complicated.

I can tell my own story, but I know we all have to figure it out for ourselves. I hope that we all are able to find a life and a career that’s exciting and fulfilling, but I recognize that it will look different for each of us.

If you’re asking these questions, what’s your story? Let’s talk about it.

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Becca Bailey

Writer, musician, computer nerd. Frontend engineer. Controversial opinions are my own.