The first time I really thought about coding bootcamps as an alternative education method, was when I moved from Lisbon to London to expand Landing.Jobs’ internationals sales in the UK. While there, I stumbled upon Makers Academy and General Assembly. This was back in 2015 when the Brexit vote was still around the corner and possible reality.
For the record, first impressions do count. Part of me was impressed with this new way of teaching and learning how to code, but overall I was suspicious about the whole thing.
Looking back, the very first concept of bootcamps that I found questionable was the large impact it has in such little time. I believed you can’t take someone who’s an artist or a historian and teach them a craft within 9–12 weeks and then call them a developer! Deep down, I genuinely felt this process had to be crooked… I mean, it took me 5 years to get a Computer Science (CS) masters and, please take my word for it, that wasn’t an easy task. At the time I wasn’t very vocal about my opinion though. Some folks I knew back home were about to start a similar venture called Academia de Código and Le Wagon, and I didn’t really want to put them off.
Nevertheless, I knew deep down that formal education wasn’t the only channel to get into programming, I personally know a bunch of tech professionals who are self-taught and very good at what they do. There were several coding bootcamps popping up then, so, I thought to myself, it was indeed worth exploring! That’s when my curious side took over and I had to know more about these coding bootcamps.
Through a friend of mine, I got introduced to someone working at Makers Academy in London and got myself in their doors to get a feel of how the whole thing worked.
I walked in and I could sense the community and camaraderie in the room. The students were hooked on a JS course. Some students were sitting on chairs, some others on the floor, others were just standing against the wall. Hello? This is not how you learn! Or so I had been told 🙂 I also met Dana who’s the Chief Joy Office at Makers Academy and a great Yoga teacher — I later invited her to come to Landing Festival to pitch in some mindfulness into our attendees.
Overall, I was impressed with the classroom energy but still sceptical about the end results…
How good are bootcamp graduates, really?
On the one hand, most of my network had a formal CS education (even though several of them were “dropouts”) and when chatting with them about coding bootcamps, well, they’d foster my scepticism…
On the other hand, I was really involved in the local tech startups scene both in Lisbon and London, and I could see an opening and a lot of good-will towards coding bootcamps!
Enter Catarina Campino and Shannon Graybill…
I met Catarina C. a few years ago, she’s the mother of a powerful marketer (André C.) who interned with Landing.jobs — that’s how I met her. She jumped over from the Artist world (!) and took over the Tech world, by force. She’s in charge of Academia de Código’s community and helped hundreds of developers land new jobs in Portugal.
I also met Shannon G. a few years ago, we grabbed coffee at the Startup Lisboa coffeeshop and she shared that she was going to kickstart Le Wagon Lisbon chapter. A few months later, I found out my good friend and university colleague, Carlos Mendes, had joined her in this new adventure as co-founder. Coincidence?
Both Catarina C. and Shannon G. are forces of nature and bootstrapped Academia de Código and Le Wagon, respectively, in Lisbon. Both bootcamps are teaching grounds for soon-to-be-developers to learn all the essential traits of programming.
I guess being on both of these girls’ social bubbles helped me take things to the next level, challenge myself and hire someone with a non-standard CS background to join our Product team. After pitching this idea to our Product team members and answering a few of their legitimate questions, we got aligned that we needed to challenge our beliefs! Because we “eat our own dog food” we posted a job opening on Landing.jobs and waited to see what kind of organic leads landed in our employer inbox.
And then… magic happened.
Meet Manuel Reis, he joined Landing.jobs in November 2017.
“Before the [Le Wagon] bootcamp, I knew nothing about coding and was looking for opportunities in economics. Now I’m actually a programmer learning more at a great company and with the tools to explore the world of programming.”
Meet Miguel Tavares, joined Landing.jobs in July 2018.
“My main goal for doing a bootcamp was to accelerate my learning process and move into a career as a software developer. After finishing the [Le Wagon] bootcamp, I feel much more confident as a developer and even though there’s still a lot to learn, I know I’m able to find the solution for any issue I might encounter.”
Featuring our very own Luis P. (center), Manuel R. (left) and Miguel T. (right)
In less than 3 years I was able to utterly change my mind about coding bootcamps. They work. But can bootcampers really get the job done? Yes, they can. How do I know this? I’ve seen it with my own eyes: we recently had a security breach (don’t worry, your data is safe!) that caused a DDoS on a Saturday early morning, and one of the bootcamp developers working with us immediately went online to diagnose the issue, understood where the loophole was coming from and fixed it!
On a more personal note, in mid-2017, my wife and I decided to return from London to Lisbon. She’s a civil engineer graduate with a love for math and wanted to have a more fulfilling career. That’s when she really started considering making a move into tech. After joining a Le Wagon coding bootcamp in April 2018, she recently started working in Amsterdam as a junior developer, and she’s loving her brand new career! Proud husband here 🙂
What are we doing to push the jobs marketplace forward? Landing.Jobs is putting great content out there to push for a mentality shift. I think that’s going to happen soon but we need to speed this process up because hiring junior tech talent from coding bootcamps doesn’t really work until it really does.
Landing.Jobs is going to keep partnering up with several bootcamps because we believe this new way of teaching is a viable and strong alternative to traditional teaching!
Pedro Oliveira
Co-founder @ Future.Works
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