FINAL POST!

Hey everyone thank you all for following my blog.

It's been officially 2 weeks since the end of the bootcamp and I am proud to say that I am employed full-time as a Full Stack Software Engineer.

I have my first official day tomorrow.

I couldn't be happier with the result of Coding Dojo's bootcamp experience.

3 months ago I took a dive into the world of coding without being fully certain as to whether I'll be employable as a developer in a matter of 3 months.

Now I am very proud of myself and many of my classmates who received job offers.

As of now, I believe about half of my classmates have received job offers and the other half are still working on getting their skills up to par. That's really the beauty of coding dojo. If you work a little slower than the pace of the class or if concepts take a little longer, you are more than welcome to stick around and make sure you are ready to enter the workforce.

On the other hand, there were some students that ended up voluntarily dropping out of the program for various reasons. Some thought that the curriculum didn't fit their learning style and some simply could not keep up with the concepts and new information. Coding Dojo definitely works hard at making sure that their curriculum is updated, however there will always be some students that don't do as well in any academic setting.


My best advice for anyone considering Coding Dojo are the following:
1. This bootcamp is not a joke. Expect to dedicate 70 hours a week to coding.
2. Notify your other priorities that you are not as available. Whether its parents, significant other, etc it's important that you set reasonable expectations for them.
3. The people that learn the quickest are the ones that have had the most exposure to coding. Do as much self-study as possible before coming for your first day. You don't have to know a lot, but it's important to be exposed to the topics and concepts.
4. Don't try to learn everything on the first try. Whenever I learned a new topic, I never tried to understand every little aspect of it on the first time around. Coding Dojo's curriculum is made so that you are to learn through repetition. With each iteration, you get better and better.
5. Take care of your body. The bootcamp is a marathon, you gotta stay healthy. Don't go out drinking or put your body in harm's way. Each day that you miss is a huge loss and you gotta dedicate some time over the weekend to catch up.
6. If you're not behind the curriculum, relax as much as you can on the weekends.


I have gotten everything I wished for in this bootcamp.

I have entered an exciting industry, I am getting a much better salary, and I have acquired many skills that are so valuable.


If you guys have any personal questions feel free to email me at twhang.dev@gmail.com

Day 60: Last day (Presentations)

Today I had some more phone interviews all morning in which I did much better than my previous ones.

But other than that I brushed up my application and got it ready for my Demo Day.

Here is a picture of me presenting my fitness application to my class.

Here's a game that one my classmates made. It's a multiplayer game where multiple users can log onto the node server.

It feels surreal that the Dojo is all done. My learning will continue as I stick around for the residency program. I am pretty optimistic about my career. Now my focus is 100% on finding a job!

Day 59: More layouts of TrainerExpress and more contacts from hiring managers

Boy it's hard to get "plugged in" to my project when I'm constantly getting emails and phone calls from recruiters and hiring managers.

Tomorrow I have a phone interview with a fitness app startup in Seattle for a full-stack Rails dev. I hope they don't ask too many theoretical technical questions and instead ask me to do code challenges. I'm not quite up to par with all these different tech vocab words and need to brush up on it well. My first tech interview screen kicked my butt as I didn't know a lot of these terms. This is actually the type of company I do work for so I hope I do well!

Other than that I've been just doing some last steps making sure that my project will be good for Demo Day. Tomorrow is the last day and we're just going to show each other the projects that we've been working on. I'll still be around for the "residency program" where you can stick around the dojo and keep working on your project, assignments or whatever it is you're working on. I think about 4 more students in my cohort are doing the same.

These last 3 months have gone a lot quicker than expected. I've learned so much and am ready to enter the workforce. I just gotta make sure I can convey that to recruiters and hiring managers!