Leveraging in-depth and non-technical knowledge.
How do I develop an app?
How do I monetize it?
How do I land a lucrative job in software development?
These are all questions asked by aspiring software developers.
And in turn, these three questions have brought rise to an entirely new breed of businesses aimed to equip you with the required knowledge to earn you a competitive advantage on two fronts, the software development career path, and the technical founder role.
Now, I will not go over the mundane specifics of how coding boot camps work, but how they intend to accomplish the aforementioned is apparently through research on trending technologies and market trends.
I know this because I have been a product of one and even managed to land my first job just a month after graduating.
Coding boot camps are great, better than your average CS degree or equivalent. Being extremely goal-oriented, the course has one thing in mind, teaching you the bare minimum to get started.
It’s not in any way the end all be all as projected in marketing campaigns, where they flash their cooked-up job placements statistics to get the next cohort hyped up.
This article aims to shine a light on the flaws associated with religiously and blindly following the notion that going through a boot camp guarantees a successful career or product launch.
Notice the latter statement, career and product launches are pretty hectic, especially for a software developer.
For job interviews, you are given rigorous questions that require you to have an in-depth understanding of a particular topic, not a high-level approach to problem-solving most boot camps teach.
Anyone who has gone through a boot camp and done technical interviews shortly after will tell you how oblivious they were to certain software development paradigms such as data structures and algorithms (which form the majority of coding interviews).
Also being extremely good at a BootCamp can potentially cause a student to believe in a false understanding of their abilities as a software developer, unaware that they were just scratching the surface.
I remember a statement made by one of my technical mentors — and now that I think of it I laugh — he advocated software development to build apps that students could publish and make big bank. Now, as a software developer, this might make sense, but as a startup founder, this is just ludicrous, to say the least.
Successful apps are made of so much more than lines of code, and while this might make up one of the most important facets, it's just not all there is.
Blockbuster apps are a combination of 3 things, understanding consumer needs, product development genius, and distribution channels that are not only cost-effective but effective on all fronts, not forgetting the business model, otherwise, you'll not make bank, will you?
Boot camps seem to lack most of the aforementioned requirements for my technical mentor to make such a bold statement. Credits to him though, he led me along the right path of Java development and OOP principles.
After all my rant, is there a solution, is there a way boot camps could ensure actual job placement and competence of technical founders? My answer is yes. This is how.
Under the constraint time, a boot camp course is under, course developers could test adding snippets of material that further expound on a particular topic, this has to be in line with the students desired path.
If a student wants to land a FAANG job and has learned about arrays and how to reverse them, add an extra snippet or two highlighting sorting algorithms or other data structures, this way they’ll have an understanding of real-world interview questions that they'd otherwise be oblivious to.
What if a student wants to be the next Jeff Bezos or Zuck? Simple, add material on market validation and distribution channels not forgetting customer success. In addition, you might even suggest that they go over my medium articles. I talk about startup founder problems in all facets, from customer acquisition to success.
In conclusion, boot camps offer way more value for less time but shouldn't be thought of as an alternative to other learning sources. Point to note, In-depth courses are also a good way to supplement boot camp knowledge, which might end up having more value for money than your average CS degree, who knows.
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