As I’ve explored ways to make money on the road, the general conclusion I’ve reached is that the most ‘realistic’ (achievable within a reasonable amount of time) way to make a steady income while traveling is to learn a skill that you can use to work remotely. This could be a lot of different things and you should start by looking at the skillset you already possess. That said one of the most in demand skillsets in the economy today, remote and otherwise, is coding. Computer code powers nearly everything in the digital age, so it’s a skillset that continues to be highly in demand.

Because there continues to be a shortage of qualified computer programmers, bootcamps have sprung up all around the country. If they aren’t on your radar, the basic premise is: teach people everything they need to know for an entry level coding job in a super condescend period of time– anywhere from a few weeks to a few months.

I’d been toying with the idea of going to a bootcamp myself for a while and earlier this year I decided to finally go for it. I’d previously done a little self guided learning through sites like Treehouse and CodeCademy, but I’d done barely any JavaScript before, so I was basically starting from square one.

UNC Chapel Hill Coding Bootcamp

There were several bootcamps in my area, but I decided to go with UNC Chapel Hill mostly because it was part of a well respected university and all else the same I figured I’d rather have them on my resume. Also because it’s a prestigious brand, I figured the quality of the class may be better than some of the small for-profit entities I’d never heard of (that don’t have a long standing brand to protect).

The class is actually run by a company called Trilogy which partners with Universities around the world to setup technology bootcamps. Other schools that have Trilogy bootcamps include Northwestern, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Rutgers, University of Central Florida (UCF), UT Austin, CaseWestern Reserve, Technologico de Monterrey and the University of Toronto, so if you’re considering attending one of those schools, this review will likely be applicable

Short version: 

It’s a six month program. You’ll learn web development, IE– coding that powers websites. Specifically you’ll learn JavaScript, Node, Express, React, HTML, CSS, MySQL, MongoDB, jQuery, and Firebase (or something close to that list). You’ll come out of it with a portfolio of full stack web apps and if you go into it not knowing much, like I did, you’ll learn a whole heck of a lot.

I’ll go more into detail below regarding what I liked and didn’t like about this bootcamp, but if you just want to TL;DR: I liked it, I got a lot out of it, and I would indeed recommend it. 

Trilogy

My feelings on Trilogy as a larger organization were more mixed. I’ve got to give credit where it’s due: they did ultimately create and facilitate a system for learning to code that I found to be both highly effective and also a lot of fun. That said, it was a new program and they still had some kinks to work out.

For example, grading, submitting assignments, attendance tracking, etc were all handled through an apparently proprietary web app called BootcampSpot. It became a running joke in our class because the platform was just so darn buggy. Sometimes we couldn’t register attendance, sometimes students would be randomly moved to another campus. The irony of a coding program that couldn’t get their own site working properly wasn’t lost on us, but ultimately it didn’t impede our learning particularly and wasn’t really that big a deal in the scheme of things.

More serious was that the non-local Trilogy staff seemed at times out of touch with our class and the industry at large. This was most evident when dealing with career services, which was widely agreed to be the weak part of the program.

From what I’ve heard, each Trilogy class used to have their own assigned, on location career councilor but as a cost cutting measure Trilogy restructured career services prior to the start of our cohort. Now career services councilors are shared across multiple campus and support is far less personal. The most we got in the way of official career support was a few video chat sessions and some notes on our resume. The interactions I did have with their career support councilors were generally frustrating and unhelpful. These people had never been developers before and didn’t seem to know terribly much about the industry.

In one meeting I was told that Amazon was opening a second headquarters in my area and I should try to get a job there. (Had she actually read any of the numerous articles on the subject, as I already had, she would have known that cities all over the country are competing for the second headquarters and even if we were picked, they’d be a ways from opening.) A few minutes later, I was told to cram and learn an additional programming language outside of class, in the final weeks of the program, while doing my final project and applying for jobs. When I got second, third and fourth opinions on the additional programming language from people actually working in the industry, everyone told me that suggestion was crazy and I was better off getting hired first and then learning whatever stack that company uses (and focusing on my existing skillset in the short term).

Resume advice was even more perplexing, and to the extent we got more one-on-one advice, it tended to come across as condescending. I have fairly thick skin, but one of my good friends in the program said she cried after her first one-on-one career services meeting. There’s a time and a place for tough love, but this seemed more like career services just being oblivious to how their words would come across to people.

The combination of unpleasant and completely unhelpful lead me and others to stop using career services prior to the end of the program. If you decide to sign up for UNC Chapel Hill’s coding bootcamp, just be aware that you’ll be pretty much on your own as far as career stuff goes. I’d recommend seeking career advice, as well as resume/portfolio feedback, from your teacher and your TAs rather than from the designated career services. The academic staff is made up of actual developers who’ve gotten, and in many cases hired for, actual jobs in the tech industry. In my experience they were very willing to give feedback/advice and were infinitely more helpful than the designated career services staff.

The Academic Staff

There were two classes in our cohort. A Monday/Wednesday class and a Tuesday/Thursday class. Each class had a primary teacher and about two TAs. My classes primary teacher was Randy Mellow, who continues to each at UNC Chapel Hill’s coding bootcamp. The TAs we had have since moved on to other positions.

I really have nothing but positive things to say about the academic staff my class had. To the extent the program was a good experience, and for me it certainly was, I give most of the credit to Randy and our TAs who were so enthusiastic and helpful. They kept the class moving at a fast pace, but also made it downright fun. Throughout the six months I always looked forward to going to class and I truly learned all I’d hoped to and more from the program.

It was downright sad to say goodbye to them when the program ended.

The Format of the Bootcamp

Trilogy supplied lesson plans for every class. These ranged from detailed power points, especially at the beginning, to more general outlines, particularly later in the program as we got more into project work. Overall I felt this format worked well. It kept us on track through a highly condensed program and presumably allowed the academic staff to spend less time preparing lesson plans. Most classes also came with in class exercises, which were essential to actually learning the concepts we talked about. In some cases we’d code a simple app from scratch, other times the exercise would be more fill in the blank. Usually we’d work individually for a short period, then talked through them as a class. We didn’t have a lot of time for each exercise, which was sometimes stressful, but ultimately I think it taught me to code efficiently and helped keep things moving a long.

On Saturdays Randy and the Tuesday/Thursday teacher took turns leading alternating weeks. The downside of this was that there was sometimes redundancy if the classes had proceeded at different paces. The pro was that you could benefit from an additional teacher and get to know, and work with, people in the other class.

There were three big multi-week projects spread throughout the program. These were fairly ambitious and were done in groups of 2-5, with 3-4 being typical. When we weren’t actively working on one of the big projects we had a weekly assignment related to whatever we were learning that week. These were graded, but the grades were really just for your own information and don’t seem to matter for anything. Usually the TAs would also give notes on what you did well and where you could improve, which was very helpful.

Everyone does their own work for the weekly assignments, but helping each other was encouraged. Some of us would meet up outside of class to do work together, which was both fun and academically beneficial.

Jobs After Coding Bootcamp

Many people, myself included, go into coding bootcamp with inflated senses of their employability after the program. There’s a tendency to think that you’ll be so in demand that you’ll have ten companies fighting to hire you into high paying jobs the week after you graduate. This type of thinking is encouraged by many economic studies on the shortages of software engineers and by the bootcamps themselves.

It is true that there is great demand for experienced software engineers at present, and likely will be for the foreseeable future. But as a recent bootcamp grad, you’re not yet experienced. If anything there is a stigma against recent bootcamp grads. The perception is you quickly learned a few cheap tricks but don’t know much beyond the surface, especially regarding algorithms and other more abstract computer science concepts.

It’s been about two months now since I graduated. Part of that time I was polishing my portfolio and not actively applying for jobs. I’ve had some interviews and remain optimistic about ultimately landing a job in tech, but it’s not been the cake walk that bootcamp marketing material will lead you to believe.

Even if you’re top of your class, if you don’t have any prior experience, it’ll be a bit of an uphill battle to get your foot in the door. Once you get that first job, you’ll likely have a bright career ahead of you. But as with a lot of industries, especially desirable ones, starting out can be hard.

Ultimately I think it’s a mistake to think of coding bootcamp as an all-in-one entry to the tech industry. Really it’s just an opportunity to pickup skills. Combine bootcamp skills with other skills you have, or other skills you’ll gain in the future, and you’ll make yourself valuable, to a company, as a freelancer, or as an entrepreneur.

Check out my Finding a Job After Coding Bootcamp post for more details, including specific hire rates for the UNC Chapel Hill coding bootcamp.

Conclusion

Coding bootcamp won’t guarantee you a high paying job straight out of the program. Trilogy bootcamps, such as the one hosted by UNC Chapel Hill, particularly leave room for improvement in the career services department. That said, it’s ultimately you who has to find a job anyway, and if your immediate goal is to learn, UNC Chapel Hill’s coding bootcamp is a good option. I wholeheartedly endorse the academic staff I got to work with there and have a generally positive impression of the the structure of the class more generally. If you want to learn full stack web development quickly and efficiently in a structured environment, I would recommend Trilogy’s program at UNC Chapel Hill.