Develop Yourself
To change careers and land your first job as a Software Engineer, you need more than just great software development skills - you need to develop yourself.
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Develop Yourself
#225 - The 3-Month Coding Bootcamp Myth: 4 Things You Actually Need to Get Hired
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Thinking about joining a coding bootcamp to land a job in three months?
Let’s get real.
I’ve been coding professionally for over a decade, and while a bootcamp kick-started my career, it didn’t teach me everything I needed to stay hired.
In this episode, I’ll share four critical skills that most bootcamps overlook—but that you’ll absolutely need if you’re serious about making coding your career.
We’ll cover why bootcamps fall short, what skills really get you hired, and how to ensure you’re not just another bootcamp grad struggling to land a job.
Shameless Plugs
🧠 (NEW) Parsity's The Inner Circle Program - a highly customized roadmap to take you from 0 to hired. For career changers who want to pivot into software.
💼 Zubin's LinkedIn (ex-lawyer, former Google, Brian-look-a-like)
👂🏻Easier Said Than Done Podcast
Already a developer? Check out 👉 Not Another Course
Serious about joining Parsity? Schedule a call with me ☎️
Welcome to the Develop Yourself Podcast, where we teach you everything you need to land your first job as a software developer by learning to develop yourself, your skills, your network and more. I'm Brian, your host. So this guy in one of my YouTube videos asked a really good question. Actually, he said what qualifies you basically to talk about coding or give advice at all, and I thought you know that's a really good question and more people should really ask that, because there's a lot of influencers out there and people that are trying to sell you stuff, me included. Let me be completely honest with you. I do sell stuff.
Speaker 1:I'm also a software engineer. I've been doing this 10 years. Before that, I was doing other stuff illegal types of stuff and then I switched into software, learned how to code. I switched into software, learned how to code. I did go to a coding boot camp. I went to more and more types of programs to teach me data structures and algorithms, to learn how to manage people, basically to make myself a presentable and effective software engineer. Wasn't a short path, wasn't exactly long either, and I've had a 10-year career and I continue to write code for a living small startups all the way to Fortune 500s and everything in between, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area, as a full-stack JavaScript developer, use TypeScript C, sharp SQL, node, all sorts of stuff mostly on the front end of things, but I've definitely done quite a lot of work on the back end as well. So now that you know some of my qualifications, you can look this up on LinkedIn. You can find people. You can find videos of me doing technical stuff. I might look like I don't know what I'm talking about, but I kind of do just a tad, and I also own a coding mentorship program called Parsity.
Speaker 1:Now what I want to talk to you about is why most boot camps fall short, and if you're thinking about going to a coding boot camp, I don't necessarily think that's a bad idea, but I think you need to have your expectations set. And if you are gonna go to one, I wanna talk about four things that they're likely not going to teach you, or teach you very well, that you're gonna need to do 100% in order to be a hireable software developer. I have three kids. I would tell them this exact same information if they wanted to become software developers. Unfortunately, they wanna become like TikTok stars or YouTube. My daughter said she wants to work at the DMV Very strange, but she's eight, so I'll give her some time. Maybe she'll come around and learn some of this stuff that I'm trying to give you out here for free.
Speaker 1:So bootcamps kind of have this flawed premise and most of them come at you with this guarantee of we're going to get you to a job in three months, 12 weeks, and that's all you're going to need. And I actually spoke to a dude, aaron Cordova. You should check him out. He's a senior front-end engineer at Docker. He's also worked at Meta and a few other really big companies and he did go to a 12-week boot camp and got out and got a job this was about five, six years ago, no-transcript and that's it and get a job. And people would give you a job and you'd probably have multiple offers.
Speaker 1:Because the internet was ablaze. We had a little pandemic going on and people were just throwing money at the web. Like it was the biggest thing since sliced bread, and it kind of was, because we were all home on the web constantly. So the internet was the place to throw money at. We had e-commerce blowing up. We had all these things going on and then layoffs happened and we kind of recorrected, and now people say the tech is the worst place to be, which is super naive and just kind of dumb, if I'm being completely honest with you.
Speaker 1:But I can confidently tell you this what bootcamps are currently selling doesn't match the market reality. They're telling you that some magical mix of technologies is the key to employment, and I kind of fell into this trap myself. I was thinking what are the most hireable skills I can teach somebody. Now I think there's some wrong answers, like you can't learn COBOL or FORTRAN and expect that you can land a job. So I don't think that you can just learn anything and be hireable. But I also know that obsessively chasing after frameworks or trying to find some mix of technology that's going to get you employed is just not a great way to become a professional software developer, and we're going to get into those reasons really shortly. So here are the four things that bootcamps do not teach you and what you need to do instead.
Speaker 1:Based on my opinion and what I've seen from working with hundreds of people and having literally a thousand conversations or more with developers from all around the world, the most important skill you're going to need to know as a developer is learning how to learn. Boot camps push memorization. In school you were taught to memorize stuff, so you watch quick tutorials and maybe you think that professional coding is about memorization. It's not at all. It's about how quickly can you understand and apply new information. Tech moves really, really fast. What we were doing two years ago is not the same thing as we're doing right now With AI, new tools.
Speaker 1:The front end landscape meaning things like JavaScript and React are constantly evolving and changing and if you're not keeping up, you're gonna have a very, very tough time staying hireable in this industry. I've seen people that have 10 years experience that basically haven't kept up with basic trends that have happened and they're now almost unemployable. This is an industry where you have to know how to learn on your own, so if you're expecting somebody to hand feed you or spoon feed you information, you're just in the wrong business. I've switched jobs about eight times now and at every single job I've had to either pick up a new framework, a new language. Times now, and at every single job, I've had to either pick up a new framework, a new language or some sort of new technology that I've had to learn on my own on the job without any formal training. This is not unique. This is, in fact, representative of what most software developers will encounter and what you're going to find when you get your first job. So how do you do this One? Just set a consistent schedule. You would be shocked how many people just don't do this. They're just like I'm going to study on Saturday for eight hours or 12 hours. I've never seen this work ever.
Speaker 1:Failing to plan is the single biggest reason that I've seen new coders fail Bar none. So make a plan, make a time and stick to it. For me, it was the mornings. I used to have two jobs, when I had a little kid and a not-so-little kid, and I was driving Lyft and working an office job while I was transitioning out of a pretty negative lifestyle and I didn't really have any time. So I would set aside 30 minutes in the morning, I would write down what I was going to do the night before and then I'd wake up and do that thing. For example, I was making a website about the city of Oakland, california, where I'm from, and I would have different sections and I'm like, okay, tomorrow I'm gonna do this section. I'm gonna now add jQuery which tells you a little bit about the time period when I was learning how to do this stuff. Now I'm gonna transfer this to use AngularJS Again kind of dating myself. But I had a plan, but I had a plan. So that way when I'd wake up I'm like I'm going to do this one thing and that's it, and then I would get up, no thinking, 30 minutes on there during my lunch break, another 30 minutes doing that. Then on the weekends I'd spend more time.
Speaker 1:Consistency will always beat intensity. Next, always opt for hands-on keyboard learning. That means don't go for the watching tutorials or watching me talk about how you shouldn't watch tutorials. You need to have your hands clicking and clacking on a keyboard, because that is the only way to actually learn how to become a coder and not a typist. And lastly, read books about first principles in software, basically the rules that you can apply across frameworks and languages that aren't really going to go anywhere. These rules can be applied to all sorts of stuff, from the little pieces of code you write to larger systems in architecture and design. Clean Code is a really good book for you to start with, but ideally, start being practical and writing code that just works and does something, and once you can do that, then start applying conceptual things like books on top of your practical skills and you'll be ahead of most people that are self-taught.
Speaker 1:Number two Now this one has saved my career the art of professional communication. Now you see me speaking into a mic here, into a camera, talking. I've done this as an engineering manager. I've done this as a senior engineer at multiple companies now and I realize that this is one of those skills which has helped me stand out. I've never really been the best coder in any organization I've been in and I don't really intend to. In fact, if I was the best coder, I'd probably be in the wrong organization. I don't really ever want to be the best in the room. Technically, I know I have a lot of room to grow and a lot of things I want to learn. I've been the second best. I've been actually maybe the best at a company, but you don't learn a lot like that. But the way that I've really learned to stand out is being effective with communication.
Speaker 1:Now, knowing a solution is one thing. Being able to explain it or convince people that it's the right solution this is where most coders will fail. So one way I developed this skill from being a shy kind of person that didn't want to talk at all, like I didn't get into this to talk. I didn't get in this for the politics, I got into this to code. That's not the reality if you want to move up as a coder.
Speaker 1:So how did I gain this skill? I don't really like to speak in public, but I had to. I had to go to conferences, had to go meet people that were in the executive teams and talk about what I was doing and make my team's work make sense to them. So I learned how to do this from watching videos and how to give presentations, but also just doing what I'm doing now. I made hundreds of videos explaining technical concepts into a camera, just like this, using Loom who I'm not sponsored by, by the way and I use Loom to record videos of me talking about things like binary search closure, prototypical inheritance system design, different things at work that I wanted to explain to a non-technical audience. I'd watch them back, I would look at them and be really embarrassed, and I got better and better and better and I got more used to hearing my voice and understanding how to come across more confident on camera, which is an incredibly important skill, because guess what your interview is gonna be? It's gonna be on camera talking to somebody, probably like me, that's gonna be asking you to code in front of them, while you're at your keyboard clacking away and freaking out. This is probably the most important exercise you'll ever do. If you can get used to speaking on a camera talking about technical concepts, you're going to be more prepared for your technical interview, team meetings and those kind of conversations, which are difficult to have, than most people out there, including CS grads or people that are further along in their career. This can be a real game changer for most people.
Speaker 1:So don't sleep on this one. Number three people hate this word, and I kind of do too. Networking let's just call it something else. Make friends, I don't know. Make connections. But this old advice of just polish your resume I did a video on resumes and people really kind of eat that stuff up and I did the video. Then I kind of regretted it because I thought you know, is this really good advice? Should I be telling people to worry about their resume? I don't really think so anymore, to be completely honest with you. I mean your resume can't be trash, but it's not going to get you a job. It's more like give me a resume after I already know I want to talk to you and make sure it doesn't suck. But the old advice of just make sure your resume has all the keywords and use AI to put a bunch of keywords, that's just not really gonna work. It could if you send out 10,000 resumes and just spam the universe with your resume.
Speaker 1:But bootcamps especially neglect this importance of genuine relationships. They just can't because it's not a scalable thing, it's not a repeatable process that they can just tell you to do, so it's difficult to build genuine relationships. So here's one way you can do this really practically and methodically is write down a list of people that you know from previous jobs, schools, social connections. Make a list of ones. You're kind of like okay, this person might be worth hitting up Like are they normal, are they alive, are they breathing? Do they not hate you?
Speaker 1:Put them on the list, you know, get like a list of 20 people and then go through that list and just hit them up and say hey, you know, I'm learning how to build software and I want to transition careers and I'm wondering if you know anybody that might be able to help me out. Do you know any people that are in the software field or work in a technical position that will be willing to talk to me for like five to 10 minutes on the phone? If so, do you mind just passing me their information or giving me their email and I'm happy to reach out. Thanks a lot. I hope you're doing really well. See you, you do this enough times. You're going to get a few leads.
Speaker 1:Now you do the same thing with those people until you get a few warm leads, a list of people that may actually be able to offer you employment or just give you some good advice that you won't find on YouTube or something from a real person, because too often I could be anybody right. Who's to say you should trust me? I could be just some jerk wearing a beanie and a stupid black shirt in his room somewhere and never have worked as a coder in my life. So don't just take what you see on the internet as the truth here. There's a lot of people that I know in real life that are giving you advice that actually haven't worked much as software engineers at all. In fact, I've met a couple that barely worked as software engineers but have made a career talking about software engineering, go figure. Now here's the last one, and here's one that I really think is important. In fact, I see most of the people that I work with at Parsity, which is the coding mentorship program that I own. This is how they have gotten their jobs Real world experience.
Speaker 1:This is one of those chicken egg situations Nobody will hire me because I don't have experience. I don't have experience, so nobody will hire me. Here's the deal You're going to have to. That's just what it is. If you don't want to work for free, then don't. If you want to get hired faster, then maybe consider working for free. I've done this. I continue to do this.
Speaker 1:When I wanted to learn sales, I caught up a buddy and I did 100 sales calls for free when I was making like 150K plus in my software engineering role. I didn't like need the money, but I also had a full-time job and I'm like well, here I am on like my mornings, calling people up on the East Coast at 6 am, trying to learn the art of sales, which I still kind of suck at, by the way. So if you're ever on a sales call with me, I'm not going to sell you jack. Either you want the program or you don't. I'm not trying to sell you on anything at all. Anyway, forget all that. What you need to teach you a lot about the software development lifecycle, which is something that will almost certainly come up in your interviews when you deploy an app out to the cloud. It's going to teach you so much more than building some janky thing for your portfolio on GitHub pages.
Speaker 1:A mentee at Parsity was recently doing this and I was working with him on a deployment. He had the app working great locally. As soon as he deployed it, everything blew up. And I was working with him on a deployment. He had the app working great locally. As soon as he deployed it, everything blew up. And I'm like, oh yeah, this is all the fun stuff Environment, variables, server-side stuff, cores issues, all these things that will never really come up in your local environment.
Speaker 1:And I can already hear people saying, well, you should have done this. I hate when people say that If we knew what we should have done, we would never make mistakes in the first place. So that's why we do things right we learn from mistakes. That's how you learn. If you didn't make the mistakes, you would know everything already. You dang idiot.
Speaker 1:Anyway, this is the kind of real-world experience that will set you apart from most people, and you can do things like walk down Main Street. There have been mentees that have gone to like local barbecue shops for one guy that was working like in a Jamba Juice type of a company or something like that, and he made them an inventory app Really really smart idea and actually was really interesting and led to employment. We're currently having some mentees work for a startup, which may translate into a job when and if they get funded. So, yeah, you can work for free, but you're getting experience. You're getting some validation. My big criteria, though, is that the company has an LLC and that they have a logo. So are they on LinkedIn with a logo? This is important because if not, it's really hard to show that as verifiable experience.
Speaker 1:So if you're just working for, like your cousin or something like that, I probably wouldn't do that. I'd be a little bit more discerning and a little more like I want to work for a place that I can actually put their logo next to my name to show that I have worked for some kind of company. That way, you're going to build up some validation, some credibility, some trust. So if you do these things, I 100% guarantee you nothing. I'm not going to guarantee you anything. You could do all these things and still have a really tough time.
Speaker 1:There's no magical recipe to get you some outcome. The only magical recipe there is is you do these things, you don't stop, you recalibrate, you keep learning, you become good. You will get hired. That I can basically promise you. It's like when people want to lose weight and they say I want you to guarantee me I'm going to lose weight. And I'm like if I come to your house and I watch what you eat every single meal of the day and you let me weigh out your food and I take away all variables Basically, I live with you 24-7 for the rest of your life I can guarantee you you're going to lose weight. I can't guarantee you anything's going to work. There's too many variables out there.
Speaker 1:I know what's more likely to work than what is not, and these exact same strategies that I told you are what we practice and teach at our program. It's why we have an incredibly high success rate. I'm not here to sell you a pipe dream. I work as a software developer. I know this is not a career for everybody, but if you are actually dedicated and want to become a professional developer with professional grade skills and you know it's gonna take deliberate practice and the right approach, you should definitely talk to me and my buddy Zubin, who's an ex-engineer at Google and a former lawyer.
Speaker 1:He's also the better looking version of me. It's kind of funny. We're two different ethnicities but we look almost like brothers. Even my own mother said we look like brothers. Anyway, check him out If you're curious about joining. We take about 50 to 60 people per year. I hope this is helpful and whether you decide to work with us or not, you know that's your business, but I know if you take this advice, you're going to be much further along and have a healthier, more positive career than the majority of people that are looking for a get-rich-quick scheme at some fly-by-night boot camp. See you around. That'll do it for today's episode of the Develop Yourself Podcast. If you're serious about switching careers and becoming a software developer and building complex software and want to work directly with me and my team, go to parsityio. And if you want more information, feel free to schedule a chat by just clicking the link in the show.
