Right now, the average rate of coding job openings around the world is growing at 12% faster than the average market rate. Coding bootcamps provide individuals with the means to pursue coding without the 4-year college degree. It’s less time spent in school, less money spent on school, and promises to land comparable jobs to students that spent years acquiring a Bachelor’s Degree. By next year, the Wall Street Journal estimates more than 1-million test automation engineering, coding, and software quality assurance engineering jobs will go unfilled in the U.S.
Therefore, the demand for these kinds of skilled workers is higher than the supply, which is why more people are turning to the benefits of coding boot camps as opposed to traditional tech colleges.
Let’s look at the breakdown of this new kind of tech education, as well as why you should be paying attention.
What Are Coding Bootcamps?
Coding bootcamps are shorter, more intense sprints of academic and technology training for participants today. These boot camps are hyper-focused on teaching practical, applicable, and up-to-date skills to students, considering that the world of technology is ever-changing. As opposed to traditional college, which is concerned with prerequisites, and often-times course topics that do not apply to jobs today, coding boot camps provide career coaching to position all attendees favorably.
A few notable coding boot camp features include:
- 3-6-month long programs
- An average cost of $11,906
- Guaranteed job securement 3-months post-boot camp completion
- Average starting salary of $70,698
When compared to traditional collegiate education, boot camps are shorter, cheaper, and more real-world focused on guaranteeing jobs in software product management, test automation engineering, and quality assurance engineering today.
How Does It Stack Up Against Tech Colleges?
Although there are plenty of high-quality tech colleges that position students favorably today, there is no cost comparison when stacked against a boot camp. The average CS degree can cost up to $20,000 per semester, which means students walk away with hundreds of thousands in educational debt.
Additionally, it takes 4-years for students to complete a relatively competitive degree when compared to a boot camp certificate, guaranteeing an average salary of $60,000-$70,000. In total, students with an MIT degree enter the real world, making the same as their boot camp counterparts, except they are shouldering impossible student loan debt. Not to mention, they are 3-4 years behind the boot camp counterparts that were able to secure their education in months (sometimes weeks).
Things to Consider
The curriculum can vary based on boot camp, which is why it’s wise to do background research and attend the boot camp that is right for you and your interests. If you generally benefit from hands-on learning, project-based learning, and real-world application, boot camps are more based on this kind of education.
Traditional colleges, on the other hand, are based on lectures, note-taking, and testing abilities. In the end, boot camps are more in-line with what students will actually be doing on their own, in the boot camp and tech career field one day, which is why boot camps are growing in popularity among students, parents, educators, and employers today.
Don’t bear the burden of a $200,000 student loan bill when a viable alternative is available at your disposal.
So many coding bootcamps are popping up, it’s important to consider weeding out the good from the bad if you are planning to join any bootcamps. How can you make such a determination? Well, there are no correct answers. It does come down to your comfort level with the program, as well as the background research you put into the search.
Here are 5 hacks to separate quality coding bootcamps from their fewer quality counterparts:
- Are You Being Pressured?
Many times, coding bootcamps will use recruiters to go out and find students. There’s nothing wrong with that; however, there is a fine line between regular recruitment and pressure. If you see that this person is pressuring you daily to take part in their program, it means they are short on students. Why are they short on students? Potentially, their program is no good.
- What is Their Job Placement Rate?
Entities like the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting provides you with information, like job placement rates, following bootcamps. It’s essential to look over this data and identify how many graduates are actually out in the field right now, earning an income. Sometimes these bootcamps will provide stats that reflect employment, as opposed to the number of their students that actually received a placement at a job they wanted.
- What Are They Offering?
Any solid coding boot camp should, at the very least, offer the following: immediate work placement following graduation; monetary growth potential and lucrative salaries; and mastery of the subject matter (or to the best of your ability). Now, no program can promise all of these things with a total guarantee – a lot of it is up to you. But, do some digging and check out other people who have graduated from the program on social media, etc. What do you see?
- How Long Have They Been Around?
Naturally, the very first coding boot camp offered by a company is probably going to have some speed bumps. It’s wise to choose a program that has been around for at least a few cycles before you dive into a brand new one.
- What Are People Saying Online?
It’s crucial to Google the coding boot camp and read about the internet currents on Reddit, blogs, etc. See what other people are saying. Have they been reviewed by platforms? What is their review average? Tie it together here and get in your final research before you make your decision.
We’ve done the heavy lifting for you and identified the very best UX design courses, product management training courses, web development bootcamps, and QA automation with selenium training courses available in coding bootcamps today. Check out Flatiron School, Hack Reactor, Technosoft Academy, Thinkful, and DevMountain, selecting the quality coding boot camp that is right for you.
