February 25, 2025 • 23 mins
Just finished your coding bootcamp and wondering what the heck to do next? Maybe you're a bit worried about the job market for coding bootcamp grads. If so, this one is for you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Don Hansen (00:00):
Did you just graduate a coding bootcamp and
now you're worried that you knowthe markets are off, you're not
going to get a job.
You've probably been hearingthings.
It's been increasing youranxiety.
I'm going to share some advicewith you and kind of a different
perspective with you that Ithink will help alleviate some
of those concerns.
But the very first piece ofadvice I'm going to give is stay
(00:20):
away from r slash codingbootcamp.
Stay away from r slash codingbootcamp.
It's just a black pilledcommunity of a bunch of people
saying like yep, shouldn't wentto a coding bootcamp and no one
should go to a coding bootcampand if you did, you're screwed.
I'm sorry, you got scammed.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's just a bunch of really badadvice where the blind is just
leading the blind.
Or like sore CS grads that arenot getting jobs.
(00:41):
Or like coming into r slashcoding boot camp shitting on
coding boot camp grads orstudents.
It's just, it's a mess.
I I always have to take anopportunity to shit on toxic
communities like that, but I'mbeing serious.
Just stay away from thatcommunity.
It is horrible and it's justgoing to discourage you.
It's not really going to giveyou a lot of practical advice or
(01:01):
there's going to be a lot ofconflicting advice.
So I know you think I'm joking.
Trust me with this, but I'mjust going to kind of rant about
, like, because I've beenhelping people that have been
coming out of coding boot campstrying to find jobs and you know
, quite frankly, a lot of codingboot camp grads.
They went through crappyprograms.
This is true a while back.
(01:21):
This is even true in 2021, whendevelopers were more easily
hired.
Like, there are a lot of badcoding bootcamps.
There are a lot of bad codingbootcamps but it doesn't matter.
It just doesn't matter.
Coding bootcamps should havealways just been kind of like a
piece of your journey.
Coding bootcamps are meant togive you some mentorship journey
(01:46):
.
Coding boot camps are meant togive you some mentorship.
It's meant to give you a bit ofa foundation to learning, to
becoming a better student, tokind of give you some sort of an
outline of what to learn andgive you some insight into the
industry so that you cover abunch of topics.
You don't really get a deepknowledge on a lot of these
topics and when you graduate,you really deepen that knowledge
and you build projects toreinforce everything that you're
(02:09):
learning.
That's the trick.
When you come out of it, thatis your opportunity to really
build a ton of stuff to, orbuild a deep, complex capstone
project to deepen that knowledge.
Your goal is to deepen thatknowledge.
At that point, right, you arestill like, if you have a
(02:29):
project to showcase, you'restill going to be applying to
jobs every week, but majority ofyour time until you get that
position is spent with projectwork.
It's still too early on for youto let the foot off the gas
with a ton of coding work.
Spend a ton of time codingafterwards.
Don't give yourself a longbreak after the program.
(02:51):
I see so many people give upbecause they take two weeks,
three weeks, four weeks and thenthey never really develop a
schedule, a consistent patternof growing as a software
engineer and some people willjust like latch on to lead code
problems and that's all they dothink and that's going to help
them grow and that's going tohelp them get a job.
It's a balance of things and Iwant to talk about that balance
(03:13):
right now.
So when you graduate, here'syour schedule Majority of your
time throughout your day or week.
Sometimes you only have like anhour to two to spend because
you have to go back to apart-time job or a full-time job
or whatever.
So look at this as a ratio, nothow many hours you should spend
(03:34):
on each thing, but majority ofyour time is spent on project
work.
You have to reinforce thoseskills and you've got to build
like project work is just goingto build you up as a software
engineer.
Once you're past the codingbootcamp, you've gone through
the majority of your courseworkphase and as you start diving
(03:56):
into project work, you're goingto realize there are things that
you don't know, you're notfamiliar with, and you look up
documentation, you look up veryspecific niche articles to learn
.
It's not heavy coursework atthis point.
Majority of your learning comesthrough project work and
looking specific things up to beable to progress through your
(04:16):
projects.
Majority of your time isproject work.
Please spend that amount oftime with project work.
A lot of people skip thisportion and they don't really
grow and they don't really haveanything to showcase, which is
another thing that you want toconsider.
When you get out of a codingbootcamp, maybe the curriculum
was so bad or rushed, or youwere rushed through it too much,
(04:38):
or you had bad mentorship,where you don't really remember
much.
That's where a variety of smallprojects to reinforce these
foundational concepts orlibraries or frameworks that
you've learned come into play.
You build a variety of projectsto reinforce these foundations
through differentimplementations, different
contexts, and you spend a lot oftime doing that.
(05:02):
After the coding bootcamp, ifyou feel, like your knowledge is
, you're a little bit better offwith your foundations, with
your knowledge, that's when youdive into a capstone project.
A capstone project is anin-depth project that solves a
problem that you want to gethired to solve.
It solves a problem in a moresimplistic way, maybe in the
(05:29):
industry In which you are goingto be applying To dev jobs in,
maybe you want to build dev.
You want to, like buildapplications that are focused on
, like they're just commonapplications You're going to
find in the fitness industry.
Maybe it's going to be mobileapps.
I don't know if, like, you'regoing for mobile development,
maybe that's what you're codingboot camp was about.
(05:50):
If you're going for websites,like in that industry, what are
websites, um, in the fitnessindustry, going to look like?
What kind of tools are outthere?
What kind of dashboards are outthere?
What kind of analytics toolsare out there in the fitness
industry?
Study that and if you, forexample, are really passionate
(06:14):
about bodybuilding and fitness,like you know, apps that can be
built that can help you out,that could probably help other
people out, apps that would dothings differently than apps
that you currently have.
You're like, if you havethoughts of like I wish this did
this thing, I wish this hadthis feature.
That's a new opportunity tobuild an application that is
better than one of your favoriteapps, that does things very
differently and it's your ownkind of unique flavor of how to
(06:36):
solve this problem in thefitness industry.
That's what you're aiming to dowith a capstone project.
You build a landing page aroundit, you launch it.
You know, this is just anexample of kind of like a
mindset to have with thatcapstone project.
You're building something realthat you're going to use, that
other people are going to use,and you share it with other
people in that industry.
(06:56):
You share it on subreddits, youshare it in forums.
You get feedback.
You take that feedback and youcontinue building that capstone
project up and up and up and upuntil it becomes very complex
and you need.
Now it's like oh, I gotta manageuser authentication.
A lot of people want to savedata?
Um, now we you know like whathappens if there is a lot of
(07:19):
data coming through thisapplication.
Um, does my applicationaggregate a bunch of data every
single time someone loads thepage, like I did with an old
Twitch API app that I built thatcrashed Because it started out
like it would take 30 secondsbecause it aggregated a bunch of
data every single time someoneloaded the page until it crashed
(07:42):
and employers couldn't evenload it.
Every single time someoneloaded the page until it crashed
and employers could even loadit.
I made that mistake, but that'sa good learning mistake to make
, as I would flesh out anapplication that more people
used when I was trying to stillbecome a developer so you can do
this as an aspiring developerbut I kept building that up and
up and up and put it out infront of people until the
features got more complex and itbecame harder to manage and I
(08:04):
had to build better conventionsand build better organizational
patterns and I really knew myapp through and throughout and I
could talk about that in theinterview.
And because I had to scale it abit, because I had to keep
adding features, it created aninteresting conversation in the
interview that employers wantedto talk about, that showcased a
(08:26):
lot of skills that I had orskills that I lacked right and
that I needed to improve.
And that was where I couldidentify that stuff that came up
in the interviews where they'relike, oh they care about this
thing.
Huh, is there a feature that Icould develop that my users have
been asking for?
That would kind of like addauthentication to it Because,
(08:49):
like, if I'm applying to fullstack positions, a lot of these
positions might be asking likehow I implemented auth stuff,
how I implemented OAuth, whichis tricky for new developers to
implement.
Even just developing a customOAuth for aspiring backend
developers can kind of reallyset you apart from a lot of
other aspiring backenddevelopers.
But A variety of projects toreinforce shaky knowledge and a
(09:16):
larger, more complex projectthat you continue iterating on
to really deepen your knowledgeand build something that really
helps you stand out among somany other developers that are
just going to continue spittingout cookie cutter apps until
they eventually give up becauseno company cares about those
cookie cutter apps.
That's the mindset you have, nomatter where the coding boot
(09:38):
camp brought you to, skill-wiseand mindset-wise, you just use
that as a bit of a springboardto then be a better student,
learn how to learn, have alittle bit more of a solidified
path, have a little bit more ofa solidified path and you just
(09:58):
continue growing and growing andgrowing outside of your coding
bootcamp until you finally landthat dev job.
Oh, by the way, if you'retrying to become a front-end
developer, I highly recommendyou check out Scrimpa.
I'm specifically talking abouttheir front-end developer career
path.
They have a fun, interactiveway to learn how to code and
become a web developer, andwhile that's true, that's not
the main reason that I want topromote them.
(10:19):
Honestly.
The main reason is theircurriculum is solid.
There are a lot of curriculumsthat do not prepare people to
actually be competitive in themarket, and I've reviewed a ton
of programs and to this day, itis still one of my favorites and
one of the best front-endcurriculums out there for
self-taught developers, andthey're backed by MDN, a leading
(10:42):
and well respected resource inthe developer community, and I
actually personally run my ownmentees through the program to
prepare them for front-enddeveloper jobs.
And if you choose to sign upvia my affiliate link below in
the description, you actuallyget 30% off if you sign up for a
paid plan, but you have to signup by the end of February to
(11:03):
take advantage of that, becauseit expires after that.
Anyways, check it out foryourself.
What do you have to lose?
And let's get back to the topic.
That's it.
We're going to go into a fewother details, but that's really
the plan.
Is no matter where.
You ended up with a codingbootcamp, it's ton of project
work to reinforce your skillsand showcase what you could do
(11:23):
with those skills.
So a little bit of time shouldbe spent towards coding
challenges.
Dsa problems I don't think youhave to go heavy into leak code
problems and it depends on youknow what you're aiming for.
You know front end is going tobe much lighter on the DSA stuff
than backend positions are.
You have to study that.
You have to research like whatare common questions or types of
(11:46):
questions that are going to bein backend issues versus front
end?
What do mobile care like?
What does mobile care about?
What kind of problems are theygoing to test you over?
These things differ dependingon the type of deposition that
you go into, which is anotherthing you need to think about.
You're not going to be thatdeveloper just spamming your
resume out to every deposition,hoping for the best.
No, everyone else is doing that.
(12:07):
There's nothing that makes youunique with that.
You have a tailored projectplan.
You have a tailored job searchstrategy that aligns with more
specific positions.
That's what's going to make youstand out.
So it's going to be majorityproject work, a little bit of
DSA challenges and thennetworking and then.
(12:28):
So networking doesn't mean justsending random connection
requests on LinkedIn.
It means like going to meetupsin your local area and talking
to other people.
You don't just go and leave.
That's a waste of your time.
You talk with other people.
Just make human connections,you believe it or not.
You don't even have to talk devstuff to other people.
Um, you just like connect withthem.
You notice a sticker on theirlaptop, you spark up a
(12:50):
conversation and then eventuallysay hey, let's stay in touch.
Uh, phone number.
Say hey, let's stay in touch,phone number.
Linkedin, linkedin's reallygood, but let's stay connected
on LinkedIn.
What is your LinkedIn?
Because you should be talkingabout your journey, the things
that you learn, the things thatyou're struggling with, the
things that you create on yourLinkedIn profile.
You should be engaging withother developers and aspiring
(13:11):
developers on your LinkedIn toorganically build up those
meaningful connections of peoplethat can stand you, that want
to hear what you have to say.
That like how you lift them up,that like how you challenge
them in certain ways, inconstructive, positive ways.
Linkedin is like that onesocial platform and listen, I
(13:31):
got to say it every time.
I know it's cringe, right,you're always going to have
posts with people putting theirdog down the well, taking a
video and rescuing that dog andturning it into business advice.
I know that kind of advice orthat those kind of posts exist
on LinkedIn.
I know it's cringe.
You need to just bite your lip,bite your tongue and get
through it.
(13:51):
There are going to be otherpeople that you can connect with
that are saying things that youcare to engage with.
You engage with the things thatyou want to see, and it's going
to teach LinkedIn's algorithmthat you want to engage with
this type of content, just likewhen they engage with your
content, what you have to say,even if it's posts on other
(14:11):
people's feeds, it's teachingLinkedIn that this type of
person likes to engage with yourcontent.
This is the content strategy onLinkedIn You're engaging with
people that you want to talkwith, that you want to interact
with and people that engage withyou that like you.
It teaches LinkedIn what kindof people to push your post out
(14:34):
to and that's how youorganically build connections
and your network in meaningfulconnections people that want to
engage with you on the bestplatform that you can do it as
an aspiring developer, andthat's LinkedIn as a
professional developer ingeneral.
So bite your tongue with acringe.
Focus on engaging with thecontent that you actually like
(14:54):
and if people are posting toomuch cringe content, you just
unfollow them or just remove theconnection entirely.
You could do that.
It's okay, it's not a big dealif you remove a connection
because you met someone at um ameetup, and all they talk about
is politics on their linkedin.
It's like I don't want to hearthis anymore.
I'm just gonna delete thatconnection and I I got, like you
know, a dozen others that I gotthis week.
(15:22):
So networking is about buildingrelationships in the dev
industry and you never knowwhere those are going to lead.
Again, when you buildrelationships in the dev
industry, you make humanconnections.
You companies will often askthe team like who do we want to
hire?
Who do we want to bring in aninterview before we even make
the job posting right, becausethey kind of vet you a little
bit and they make your resumepop to the top.
If you've like bullshittedabout how you know how Cursor or
(15:47):
Copilot is just makingdevelopers bad, which is an
awesome take you have that take.
That's a win, at least in mybook.
Maybe some people disagree withit.
You're not going to connectwith people.
If you have that opinion, Idon't care.
You shouldn't care, right?
But you're just speaking yourmind and making connections with
people that vibe with you andwhen they vibe with you, they
(16:08):
want to help you, they want tolift you up.
That's how you network.
That's how you buildconnections.
It doesn't have to be thischeesy thing where you go to
like these stuffy networkingevents and sell yourself like,
just don't do that, just connectwith them like another human
being, spark up a conversationafter a lecture.
Sometimes meetups will have ummoments.
At the end of the meetup oreven before.
(16:29):
You can kind of talk to peopleagain.
Sticker on the laptop isperfect, um, so you could
participate in hackathons.
Hackathons are really good.
You can participate in onlinehackathons and you go to online
discords and make friends andbuild connections.
This is what you do.
This is what you should havebeen doing all along and
hopefully you have cause.
(16:49):
It's a long-term strategy tobuild up your network, but you
know, better late than never.
Start connecting with otherdevelopers as a human being that
they can stand being around andtalking with.
That's it Build meaningfulconnections.
A lot of coding bootcamp gradsdo not do that.
They kind of just stick totheir local alumni network,
which you can take advantage of.
(17:10):
Right, if you do see alumnifrom your coding bootcamp, you
can reach out to those alumniand say, hey, you know, say no
kind of what program you camefrom.
They.
The business has alreadyvalidated that.
You know that coding bootcampgrad from this coding bootcamp
is a good developer, which youhope they are Like.
(17:33):
If they've been there for liketwo years, they better be a good
developer.
You know, if they're juststarting, you hope they're not a
bad developer, giving you a badreputation already.
But you don't know that.
But what you can do is reachout to that alumni saying, hey,
I actually put my application in, would you mind?
Kind of just like making surethat my resume gets looked at?
You could do stuff like withyour close alumni network.
(17:53):
There's so many other coolrelationships you can build in
the dev industry.
Focus on that.
What else?
I think the thing that holdscoding bootcamp graduates back?
In reality, they just getdiscouraged.
They don't continue growing.
(18:15):
They don't really followthrough with a capstone project,
which is eventually what youwant to do, and they continue
just throwing, just splitting uptheir attention between a bunch
of different things and notreally doubling down on anything
.
Again, you are doubling down onproject work and eventually, a
capstone project.
Most coding boot camps aren'twilling to spend six months to a
(18:35):
year on a capstone project.
Most coding bootcamps aren'twilling to spend six months to a
year on a capstone project.
When I talk about a capstoneproject, it gets more impressive
the more you dive into it.
When you provide documentation,if you're going for a back-end
position or full stack, youprovide API documentation.
No matter what position you'regoing for, you have a proper
readme, you have a landing page.
(18:58):
This is a real thing thatpeople are using and when you
spend six months to a year on aproject like this, it starts
becoming a more impressiveproject to showcase than like
95% of other people.
Most people are not willing todo this.
You want to stand out as aCoding Bootcamp graduate.
You need to deepen yourknowledge, spend a lot more time
(19:21):
learning after the CodingBootcamp and showcase that you
aren't just a Coding Bootcampgraduate.
You didn't come out with somerandom templated project that
the Coding Boot had you build.
You are a developer that lovescoding.
You're interested in this.
You kept growing afterwards.
(19:43):
Coding bootcamp was just astepping stone.
You kept going and going andgoing and you dove deep and
eventually because you'reapplying for jobs right after
you start graduating.
But eventually this project,this capstone project, the
self-branding you project, theself branding you're building
for yourself as you'reconnecting with other developers
it just it starts finallygetting noticed.
(20:05):
And you don't know when you'refinally going to get noticed.
But you have to continue movingforward without long breaks, to
continue growing untildevelopers start reaching back
out.
To start with that phonescreening and technical
screenings and when you startgetting a pattern of these.
Now you know you're moving inthe right direction.
You've revised your resume inthe right format.
(20:27):
The cover letters are finallyhitting you.
Following up with employers isfine Like.
Your messages are finally like,humanized and they're getting
people to want to respond to you.
Your capstone project is gettingto an impressive state, um, and
you could provide, you know,like, user analytics and usage.
Uh, you could provide like real, tangible data from your
(20:48):
capstone project on your resumewhich looks way better than some
random e-commerce app that wasbuilt in a coding bootcamp that
didn't.
That is just a graveyardproject right now.
It's just a basic, crude-commerce app that you kind of
didn't really spend a lot oftime with and do anything with.
Do you see my point?
I know I'm kind of like I'mreally being verbose with this,
(21:12):
but do you see my point?
The coding boot camp is astepping stone and you just
continue to grow from there.
Use it as a bit of a foundation, even if it's a flaky
foundation, to then buildyourself into a curious, good
software engineers.
That now starts to get noticed,because most people will give
up and they'll get discouragedand they'll go to r slash coding
(21:34):
boot camp and just completelyquit coding.
I'm gonna take everyopportunity I can to bring that
community up.
It's fun, um, but seriously,like, not just r slash coding
boot camp.
A lot of subreddits will be verydiscouraging.
They'll be very discouraging.
A lot of blackpilled people onreddit.
You you want to like find thesocial media platform that is
(21:56):
like the biggest aggregate fordepressed people that are just
victims and never encourage eachother to take action to improve
their situation.
That's Reddit.
That is so many programmingsubreddits.
I bash r slash coding bootcampall the time because I think
they're particularly bad, butthere are a ton of other
subreddits in the programmingspace within Reddit that are
just so discouraging.
(22:18):
You can get bits and pieces ofuseful advice and information,
but if you are someone that'shighly influenced and gets
discouraged easily by what otherpeople are saying, just stay
off of Reddit entirely.
There's so many other platformsthat are going to be better
than that LinkedIn, for example.
But yeah, I think that's all Ihave.
Hopefully that gave you abetter mindset to go into the
(22:43):
job search with, because I knowa lot of you can get discouraged
and you know the rates forplacements are going down with
coding boot camps and they'relengthening.
It's taking coding boot campgraduates longer to get a job.
But I can tell you for certainyou stand a better chance if you
don't quit than self taughtdevs.
Did you just graduate a coding bootcamp and
now you're worried that you knowthe markets are off, you're not
going to get a job.
You've probably been hearingthings.
It's been increasing youranxiety.
I'm going to share some advicewith you and kind of a different
perspective with you that Ithink will help alleviate some
of those concerns.
But the very first piece ofadvice I'm going to give is stay
(00:20):
away from r slash codingbootcamp.
Stay away from r slash codingbootcamp.
It's just a black pilledcommunity of a bunch of people
saying like yep, shouldn't wentto a coding bootcamp and no one
should go to a coding bootcampand if you did, you're screwed.
I'm sorry, you got scammed.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's just a bunch of really badadvice where the blind is just
leading the blind.
Or like sore CS grads that arenot getting jobs.
(00:41):
Or like coming into r slashcoding boot camp shitting on
coding boot camp grads orstudents.
It's just, it's a mess.
I I always have to take anopportunity to shit on toxic
communities like that, but I'mbeing serious.
Just stay away from thatcommunity.
It is horrible and it's justgoing to discourage you.
It's not really going to giveyou a lot of practical advice or
(01:01):
there's going to be a lot ofconflicting advice.
So I know you think I'm joking.
Trust me with this, but I'mjust going to kind of rant about
, like, because I've beenhelping people that have been
coming out of coding boot campstrying to find jobs and you know
, quite frankly, a lot of codingboot camp grads.
They went through crappyprograms.
This is true a while back.
(01:21):
This is even true in 2021, whendevelopers were more easily
hired.
Like, there are a lot of badcoding bootcamps.
There are a lot of bad codingbootcamps but it doesn't matter.
It just doesn't matter.
Coding bootcamps should havealways just been kind of like a
piece of your journey.
Coding bootcamps are meant togive you some mentorship journey
(01:46):
.
Coding boot camps are meant togive you some mentorship.
It's meant to give you a bit ofa foundation to learning, to
becoming a better student, tokind of give you some sort of an
outline of what to learn andgive you some insight into the
industry so that you cover abunch of topics.
You don't really get a deepknowledge on a lot of these
topics and when you graduate,you really deepen that knowledge
and you build projects toreinforce everything that you're
(02:09):
learning.
That's the trick.
When you come out of it, thatis your opportunity to really
build a ton of stuff to, orbuild a deep, complex capstone
project to deepen that knowledge.
Your goal is to deepen thatknowledge.
At that point, right, you arestill like, if you have a
(02:29):
project to showcase, you'restill going to be applying to
jobs every week, but majority ofyour time until you get that
position is spent with projectwork.
It's still too early on for youto let the foot off the gas
with a ton of coding work.
Spend a ton of time codingafterwards.
Don't give yourself a longbreak after the program.
(02:51):
I see so many people give upbecause they take two weeks,
three weeks, four weeks and thenthey never really develop a
schedule, a consistent patternof growing as a software
engineer and some people willjust like latch on to lead code
problems and that's all they dothink and that's going to help
them grow and that's going tohelp them get a job.
It's a balance of things and Iwant to talk about that balance
(03:13):
right now.
So when you graduate, here'syour schedule Majority of your
time throughout your day or week.
Sometimes you only have like anhour to two to spend because
you have to go back to apart-time job or a full-time job
or whatever.
So look at this as a ratio, nothow many hours you should spend
(03:34):
on each thing, but majority ofyour time is spent on project
work.
You have to reinforce thoseskills and you've got to build
like project work is just goingto build you up as a software
engineer.
Once you're past the codingbootcamp, you've gone through
the majority of your courseworkphase and as you start diving
(03:56):
into project work, you're goingto realize there are things that
you don't know, you're notfamiliar with, and you look up
documentation, you look up veryspecific niche articles to learn
.
It's not heavy coursework atthis point.
Majority of your learning comesthrough project work and
looking specific things up to beable to progress through your
(04:16):
projects.
Majority of your time isproject work.
Please spend that amount oftime with project work.
A lot of people skip thisportion and they don't really
grow and they don't really haveanything to showcase, which is
another thing that you want toconsider.
When you get out of a codingbootcamp, maybe the curriculum
was so bad or rushed, or youwere rushed through it too much,
(04:38):
or you had bad mentorship,where you don't really remember
much.
That's where a variety of smallprojects to reinforce these
foundational concepts orlibraries or frameworks that
you've learned come into play.
You build a variety of projectsto reinforce these foundations
through differentimplementations, different
contexts, and you spend a lot oftime doing that.
(05:02):
After the coding bootcamp, ifyou feel, like your knowledge is
, you're a little bit better offwith your foundations, with
your knowledge, that's when youdive into a capstone project.
A capstone project is anin-depth project that solves a
problem that you want to gethired to solve.
It solves a problem in a moresimplistic way, maybe in the
(05:29):
industry In which you are goingto be applying To dev jobs in,
maybe you want to build dev.
You want to, like buildapplications that are focused on
, like they're just commonapplications You're going to
find in the fitness industry.
Maybe it's going to be mobileapps.
I don't know if, like, you'regoing for mobile development,
maybe that's what you're codingboot camp was about.
(05:50):
If you're going for websites,like in that industry, what are
websites, um, in the fitnessindustry, going to look like?
What kind of tools are outthere?
What kind of dashboards are outthere?
What kind of analytics toolsare out there in the fitness
industry?
Study that and if you, forexample, are really passionate
(06:14):
about bodybuilding and fitness,like you know, apps that can be
built that can help you out,that could probably help other
people out, apps that would dothings differently than apps
that you currently have.
You're like, if you havethoughts of like I wish this did
this thing, I wish this hadthis feature.
That's a new opportunity tobuild an application that is
better than one of your favoriteapps, that does things very
differently and it's your ownkind of unique flavor of how to
(06:36):
solve this problem in thefitness industry.
That's what you're aiming to dowith a capstone project.
You build a landing page aroundit, you launch it.
You know, this is just anexample of kind of like a
mindset to have with thatcapstone project.
You're building something realthat you're going to use, that
other people are going to use,and you share it with other
people in that industry.
(06:56):
You share it on subreddits, youshare it in forums.
You get feedback.
You take that feedback and youcontinue building that capstone
project up and up and up and upuntil it becomes very complex
and you need.
Now it's like oh, I gotta manageuser authentication.
A lot of people want to savedata?
Um, now we you know like whathappens if there is a lot of
(07:19):
data coming through thisapplication.
Um, does my applicationaggregate a bunch of data every
single time someone loads thepage, like I did with an old
Twitch API app that I built thatcrashed Because it started out
like it would take 30 secondsbecause it aggregated a bunch of
data every single time someoneloaded the page until it crashed
(07:42):
and employers couldn't evenload it.
Every single time someoneloaded the page until it crashed
and employers could even loadit.
I made that mistake, but that'sa good learning mistake to make
, as I would flesh out anapplication that more people
used when I was trying to stillbecome a developer so you can do
this as an aspiring developerbut I kept building that up and
up and up and put it out infront of people until the
features got more complex and itbecame harder to manage and I
(08:04):
had to build better conventionsand build better organizational
patterns and I really knew myapp through and throughout and I
could talk about that in theinterview.
And because I had to scale it abit, because I had to keep
adding features, it created aninteresting conversation in the
interview that employers wantedto talk about, that showcased a
(08:26):
lot of skills that I had orskills that I lacked right and
that I needed to improve.
And that was where I couldidentify that stuff that came up
in the interviews where they'relike, oh they care about this
thing.
Huh, is there a feature that Icould develop that my users have
been asking for?
That would kind of like addauthentication to it Because,
(08:49):
like, if I'm applying to fullstack positions, a lot of these
positions might be asking likehow I implemented auth stuff,
how I implemented OAuth, whichis tricky for new developers to
implement.
Even just developing a customOAuth for aspiring backend
developers can kind of reallyset you apart from a lot of
other aspiring backenddevelopers.
But A variety of projects toreinforce shaky knowledge and a
(09:16):
larger, more complex projectthat you continue iterating on
to really deepen your knowledgeand build something that really
helps you stand out among somany other developers that are
just going to continue spittingout cookie cutter apps until
they eventually give up becauseno company cares about those
cookie cutter apps.
That's the mindset you have, nomatter where the coding boot
(09:38):
camp brought you to, skill-wiseand mindset-wise, you just use
that as a bit of a springboardto then be a better student,
learn how to learn, have alittle bit more of a solidified
path, have a little bit more ofa solidified path and you just
(09:58):
continue growing and growing andgrowing outside of your coding
bootcamp until you finally landthat dev job.
Oh, by the way, if you'retrying to become a front-end
developer, I highly recommendyou check out Scrimpa.
I'm specifically talking abouttheir front-end developer career
path.
They have a fun, interactiveway to learn how to code and
become a web developer, andwhile that's true, that's not
the main reason that I want topromote them.
(10:19):
Honestly.
The main reason is theircurriculum is solid.
There are a lot of curriculumsthat do not prepare people to
actually be competitive in themarket, and I've reviewed a ton
of programs and to this day, itis still one of my favorites and
one of the best front-endcurriculums out there for
self-taught developers, andthey're backed by MDN, a leading
(10:42):
and well respected resource inthe developer community, and I
actually personally run my ownmentees through the program to
prepare them for front-enddeveloper jobs.
And if you choose to sign upvia my affiliate link below in
the description, you actuallyget 30% off if you sign up for a
paid plan, but you have to signup by the end of February to
(11:03):
take advantage of that, becauseit expires after that.
Anyways, check it out foryourself.
What do you have to lose?
And let's get back to the topic.
That's it.
We're going to go into a fewother details, but that's really
the plan.
Is no matter where.
You ended up with a codingbootcamp, it's ton of project
work to reinforce your skillsand showcase what you could do
(11:23):
with those skills.
So a little bit of time shouldbe spent towards coding
challenges.
Dsa problems I don't think youhave to go heavy into leak code
problems and it depends on youknow what you're aiming for.
You know front end is going tobe much lighter on the DSA stuff
than backend positions are.
You have to study that.
You have to research like whatare common questions or types of
(11:46):
questions that are going to bein backend issues versus front
end?
What do mobile care like?
What does mobile care about?
What kind of problems are theygoing to test you over?
These things differ dependingon the type of deposition that
you go into, which is anotherthing you need to think about.
You're not going to be thatdeveloper just spamming your
resume out to every deposition,hoping for the best.
No, everyone else is doing that.
(12:07):
There's nothing that makes youunique with that.
You have a tailored projectplan.
You have a tailored job searchstrategy that aligns with more
specific positions.
That's what's going to make youstand out.
So it's going to be majorityproject work, a little bit of
DSA challenges and thennetworking and then.
(12:28):
So networking doesn't mean justsending random connection
requests on LinkedIn.
It means like going to meetupsin your local area and talking
to other people.
You don't just go and leave.
That's a waste of your time.
You talk with other people.
Just make human connections,you believe it or not.
You don't even have to talk devstuff to other people.
Um, you just like connect withthem.
You notice a sticker on theirlaptop, you spark up a
(12:50):
conversation and then eventuallysay hey, let's stay in touch.
Uh, phone number.
Say hey, let's stay in touch,phone number.
Linkedin, linkedin's reallygood, but let's stay connected
on LinkedIn.
What is your LinkedIn?
Because you should be talkingabout your journey, the things
that you learn, the things thatyou're struggling with, the
things that you create on yourLinkedIn profile.
You should be engaging withother developers and aspiring
(13:11):
developers on your LinkedIn toorganically build up those
meaningful connections of peoplethat can stand you, that want
to hear what you have to say.
That like how you lift them up,that like how you challenge
them in certain ways, inconstructive, positive ways.
Linkedin is like that onesocial platform and listen, I
(13:31):
got to say it every time.
I know it's cringe, right,you're always going to have
posts with people putting theirdog down the well, taking a
video and rescuing that dog andturning it into business advice.
I know that kind of advice orthat those kind of posts exist
on LinkedIn.
I know it's cringe.
You need to just bite your lip,bite your tongue and get
through it.
(13:51):
There are going to be otherpeople that you can connect with
that are saying things that youcare to engage with.
You engage with the things thatyou want to see, and it's going
to teach LinkedIn's algorithmthat you want to engage with
this type of content, just likewhen they engage with your
content, what you have to say,even if it's posts on other
(14:11):
people's feeds, it's teachingLinkedIn that this type of
person likes to engage with yourcontent.
This is the content strategy onLinkedIn You're engaging with
people that you want to talkwith, that you want to interact
with and people that engage withyou that like you.
It teaches LinkedIn what kindof people to push your post out
(14:34):
to and that's how youorganically build connections
and your network in meaningfulconnections people that want to
engage with you on the bestplatform that you can do it as
an aspiring developer, andthat's LinkedIn as a
professional developer ingeneral.
So bite your tongue with acringe.
Focus on engaging with thecontent that you actually like
(14:54):
and if people are posting toomuch cringe content, you just
unfollow them or just remove theconnection entirely.
You could do that.
It's okay, it's not a big dealif you remove a connection
because you met someone at um ameetup, and all they talk about
is politics on their linkedin.
It's like I don't want to hearthis anymore.
I'm just gonna delete thatconnection and I I got, like you
know, a dozen others that I gotthis week.
(15:22):
So networking is about buildingrelationships in the dev
industry and you never knowwhere those are going to lead.
Again, when you buildrelationships in the dev
industry, you make humanconnections.
You companies will often askthe team like who do we want to
hire?
Who do we want to bring in aninterview before we even make
the job posting right, becausethey kind of vet you a little
bit and they make your resumepop to the top.
If you've like bullshittedabout how you know how Cursor or
(15:47):
Copilot is just makingdevelopers bad, which is an
awesome take you have that take.
That's a win, at least in mybook.
Maybe some people disagree withit.
You're not going to connectwith people.
If you have that opinion, Idon't care.
You shouldn't care, right?
But you're just speaking yourmind and making connections with
people that vibe with you andwhen they vibe with you, they
(16:08):
want to help you, they want tolift you up.
That's how you network.
That's how you buildconnections.
It doesn't have to be thischeesy thing where you go to
like these stuffy networkingevents and sell yourself like,
just don't do that, just connectwith them like another human
being, spark up a conversationafter a lecture.
Sometimes meetups will have ummoments.
At the end of the meetup oreven before.
(16:29):
You can kind of talk to peopleagain.
Sticker on the laptop isperfect, um, so you could
participate in hackathons.
Hackathons are really good.
You can participate in onlinehackathons and you go to online
discords and make friends andbuild connections.
This is what you do.
This is what you should havebeen doing all along and
hopefully you have cause.
(16:49):
It's a long-term strategy tobuild up your network, but you
know, better late than never.
Start connecting with otherdevelopers as a human being that
they can stand being around andtalking with.
That's it Build meaningfulconnections.
A lot of coding bootcamp gradsdo not do that.
They kind of just stick totheir local alumni network,
which you can take advantage of.
(17:10):
Right, if you do see alumnifrom your coding bootcamp, you
can reach out to those alumniand say, hey, you know, say no
kind of what program you camefrom.
They.
The business has alreadyvalidated that.
You know that coding bootcampgrad from this coding bootcamp
is a good developer, which youhope they are Like.
(17:33):
If they've been there for liketwo years, they better be a good
developer.
You know, if they're juststarting, you hope they're not a
bad developer, giving you a badreputation already.
But you don't know that.
But what you can do is reachout to that alumni saying, hey,
I actually put my application in, would you mind?
Kind of just like making surethat my resume gets looked at?
You could do stuff like withyour close alumni network.
(17:53):
There's so many other coolrelationships you can build in
the dev industry.
Focus on that.
What else?
I think the thing that holdscoding bootcamp graduates back?
In reality, they just getdiscouraged.
They don't continue growing.
(18:15):
They don't really followthrough with a capstone project,
which is eventually what youwant to do, and they continue
just throwing, just splitting uptheir attention between a bunch
of different things and notreally doubling down on anything
.
Again, you are doubling down onproject work and eventually, a
capstone project.
Most coding boot camps aren'twilling to spend six months to a
(18:35):
year on a capstone project.
Most coding bootcamps aren'twilling to spend six months to a
year on a capstone project.
When I talk about a capstoneproject, it gets more impressive
the more you dive into it.
When you provide documentation,if you're going for a back-end
position or full stack, youprovide API documentation.
No matter what position you'regoing for, you have a proper
readme, you have a landing page.
(18:58):
This is a real thing thatpeople are using and when you
spend six months to a year on aproject like this, it starts
becoming a more impressiveproject to showcase than like
95% of other people.
Most people are not willing todo this.
You want to stand out as aCoding Bootcamp graduate.
You need to deepen yourknowledge, spend a lot more time
(19:21):
learning after the CodingBootcamp and showcase that you
aren't just a Coding Bootcampgraduate.
You didn't come out with somerandom templated project that
the Coding Boot had you build.
You are a developer that lovescoding.
You're interested in this.
You kept growing afterwards.
(19:43):
Coding bootcamp was just astepping stone.
You kept going and going andgoing and you dove deep and
eventually because you'reapplying for jobs right after
you start graduating.
But eventually this project,this capstone project, the
self-branding you project, theself branding you're building
for yourself as you'reconnecting with other developers
it just it starts finallygetting noticed.
(20:05):
And you don't know when you'refinally going to get noticed.
But you have to continue movingforward without long breaks, to
continue growing untildevelopers start reaching back
out.
To start with that phonescreening and technical
screenings and when you startgetting a pattern of these.
Now you know you're moving inthe right direction.
You've revised your resume inthe right format.
(20:27):
The cover letters are finallyhitting you.
Following up with employers isfine Like.
Your messages are finally like,humanized and they're getting
people to want to respond to you.
Your capstone project is gettingto an impressive state, um, and
you could provide, you know,like, user analytics and usage.
Uh, you could provide like real, tangible data from your
(20:48):
capstone project on your resumewhich looks way better than some
random e-commerce app that wasbuilt in a coding bootcamp that
didn't.
That is just a graveyardproject right now.
It's just a basic, crude-commerce app that you kind of
didn't really spend a lot oftime with and do anything with.
Do you see my point?
I know I'm kind of like I'mreally being verbose with this,
(21:12):
but do you see my point?
The coding boot camp is astepping stone and you just
continue to grow from there.
Use it as a bit of a foundation, even if it's a flaky
foundation, to then buildyourself into a curious, good
software engineers.
That now starts to get noticed,because most people will give
up and they'll get discouragedand they'll go to r slash coding
(21:34):
boot camp and just completelyquit coding.
I'm gonna take everyopportunity I can to bring that
community up.
It's fun, um, but seriously,like, not just r slash coding
boot camp.
A lot of subreddits will be verydiscouraging.
They'll be very discouraging.
A lot of blackpilled people onreddit.
You you want to like find thesocial media platform that is
(21:56):
like the biggest aggregate fordepressed people that are just
victims and never encourage eachother to take action to improve
their situation.
That's Reddit.
That is so many programmingsubreddits.
I bash r slash coding bootcampall the time because I think
they're particularly bad, butthere are a ton of other
subreddits in the programmingspace within Reddit that are
just so discouraging.
(22:18):
You can get bits and pieces ofuseful advice and information,
but if you are someone that'shighly influenced and gets
discouraged easily by what otherpeople are saying, just stay
off of Reddit entirely.
There's so many other platformsthat are going to be better
than that LinkedIn, for example.
But yeah, I think that's all Ihave.
Hopefully that gave you abetter mindset to go into the
(22:43):
job search with, because I knowa lot of you can get discouraged
and you know the rates forplacements are going down with
coding boot camps and they'relengthening.
It's taking coding boot campgraduates longer to get a job.
But I can tell you for certainyou stand a better chance if you
don't quit than self taughtdevs.
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