Is a coding bootcamp right for you?

People go through a coding bootcamp for several reasons, but undoubtedly the three most common reasons why people learn how to code are career-changes, launch their own idea, and directly driving technical innovation at their current job.

Since we learned in Chapter 1 that coding bootcamps focus heavily on the latest technologies and enable anyone to build and launch applications fast, we can understand why they are so popular.

But you're probably asking yourself the next question:

Who exactly are those people going through coding bootcamps and what’s their motivation?

Understanding what type of person coding bootcamps typically attract is a great way of figuring out if a coding bootcamp is right for you.

Coding bootcamps typically attract 3 types of people - job-seekers, entrepreneurs and workplace innovators. Let's look at them in detail.

Get a Job

Job Seeker at a Startup or Tech Company

The amount of available development and coding jobs at startups and tech companies is mind blowing, and only growing. Seeing this demand for people with real-world technical coding skills and the willingness to pay above average salaries for those skills, leads many people to switch careers and become a professional web developer for a tech company.

People who are seeking a job immediately after the coding bootcamp is over, need to focus on learning additional skills like algorithms, database structures and whiteboard interview exercises next to the core curriculum that the coding bootcamp teaches.

Launch an Idea

Entrepreneurs in need of technical skills

Having an idea for a great app but lacking the skills to make the idea a reality is what propels many entrepreneurs to join a coding bootcamp. Often times those same entrepreneurs searched for the mystical technical co-founder (a person who can code their idea for them) for an extended period of time. After many failed attempts of convincing somebody else to build their own dream, they realized that learning how to code will increase their chances of success tremendously.

Entrepreneurs want to change the world by building and launching their own idea.

Add efficiencies to a company

Workplace Innovators

Workplace innovators are “intrapreneurs” who see the opportunity to solve big problems at their current profession with technology. Rather than hiring an outside consultant to build a solution to their own problem, they join coding bootcamps (often on a part-time basis) to gain the necessary technical coding skills to build a solution themselves.

Examples range from architects who realize that there is a better way of delivering outcomes on a given project to container shipping specialists who realize how to reduce overall costs by optimizing container loading times.

Do any of the personas resonate with you?

We'll go in a lot more depth about your identifying and refining your personal coding goals in chapter 5.

Chapter 2Alec Babala