My First Week: A New Series from Tech in Policy
The editors of Tech in Policy (Eda, Nora, Danielle, myself) met as students at Fullstack Academy’s Grace Hopper program. Although our paths to the program were all different, the intent of our decision to attend was the same: we wanted to transition into careers as professional software engineers.
Thousands of other professionals share this goal. The US Department of Labor Statistics maintains an Occupational Outlook Handbook, which outlines statistics of various professions and how their employment numbers are expected to grow or decline. The number of software engineering jobs is expected to grow 22% between now and 2029 compared to around 5% for all other industries.
The most traditional route directly into software development is through a Bachelor’s degree in computer science or another similarly technical field like engineering. Increasingly, though, many professionals in their early and mid-career years are deciding to transition from their current field into software development by attending a bootcamp or undertaking diligent self-study.
Traditional Undergraduate and Graduate Degrees in Computer Science
There are plenty of benefits for young college students taking this route. Employers are often hesitant to hire graduates from coding bootcamps, believing that candidates with a traditional degree not only have practical coding skills, but also a better understanding of fundamental computer science principles. Additionally, four or even two-year programs are longer in duration than most bootcamps, which enables a focus on peripheral yet important subject matter like ethics and technical communication that bootcamps often lack.
The potential downside to traditional degrees is cost, though I will say that this speaks to the larger issue of the cost of higher education in the United States, and crippling debt students often undertake to obtain it. If a student plans to earn a traditional degree one way or the other, this may be the way to go.
Coding Bootcamps
In an ideal world, we would all know for certain what profession we want to pursue as soon as we get to college, and we would love and remain committed to that career path. Many of us know the reality of this to be very different. I excelled at my computer science classes, but my overall GPA wasn’t high enough to select it as a major and I still wonder if there isn’t a parallel universe in which I started on this path earlier.
Statistics show that many people have taken similar steps to transition into software engineering, with one study estimating that over 23,000 students were anticipated to graduate from coding bootcamps in 2019. Coding bootcamps offer inroads to software engineering that students might not have been able (or even known they wanted) to pursue in their degree program. They provide intensive instruction over the course of 12–16 weeks in full-time programs, or several months in part-time programs that are aimed at those who want to maintain their jobs.
Above, I mentioned that companies often prefer candidates with computer science degrees. Occasionally, though, companies are looking for a candidate with a non-traditional development background who, along with coding ability, has developed other skills in the years they worked prior to learning how to code. Many bootcamps also teach skills outside actual development, from pair programming and collaboration to networking. Bootcamp graduates also graduate with a portfolio of projects, boosting their employment prospects. Additionally, deferred tuition or tuition-share models that many bootcamp programs offer ensure a mutual investment in a student’s career opportunities, as bootcamps don’t receive tuition until the student has been hired.
Of course, bootcamps have their own share of downsides. Coding bootcamps entered the market not even 10 years ago and since then, several high-profile ones have closed, potentially diminishing the accomplishment for graduates as they continue to seek employment. Additionally, there have been cases of lawsuits filed against bootcamps for a range of complaints from a less-than-thorough curriculum, false marketing around placement statistics. If this is something you are considering, it’s very much worth a thorough review of the bootcamp you plan to attend.
One challenge that bootcamp students face is a lack of the same type of federal aid that’s available for traditional degree programs. In 2016, the Obama administration started the EQUIP program, which was intended to pilot federal aid for nontraditional educational programs like bootcamps. It has floundered a bit in recent years, with program approvals moving slowly and several original participants backing out, but we are optimistic that it will eventually be a boon for students looking for financial aid for their bootcamp educations.
There are several examples of programs (See: Slack’s Experiment Hiring Formerly Incarcerated People, Code Tenderloin, and Formerly Incarcerated Individuals Learn to Code) aiming to train the incarcerated or disenfranchised, which are examples of how the tech industry can work toward greater equity.
Self Study
There are plenty of examples of developers who stayed diligent and motivated and continuously developed their skills outside a degree program or bootcamp. Arguably, it’s the lowest-cost option since students aren’t obligated to pay tuition outside any fees paid for educational resources like self-paced, online courses or premium access to sites like Leetcode or AlgoExpert.
The downside to this approach is that it takes a lot of discipline and, often, more time. New developers who choose this path are often juggling their coding aspirations with full-time jobs and/or families. Where a bootcamp student might be able to decide to transition to engineering, attend a bootcamp, and get a dev job in the span of a year, self-taught developers often spend several years transitioning. This is an anecdotal observation, but looking through posts on the r/learnprogramming subreddit (“Got my programming first job, $40/hr, 12 years self trained”, “How I got my first job offer after 2.5 years of programming”, “It might take you longer than a few months to get your first job. Let’s talk about the success stories here.”) gives some sense of this.
Introducing: My First Week
Tech in Policy will be publishing a new blog series called My First Week, in which new developers document their path into software engineering and experiences as they begin their first development job. Anyone is encouraged to submit a My First Week post, utilizing our submission guidelines. Please submit! We look forward to hearing about and publishing your journey.
