My new husband and I got off the plane in
Bali, super excited to get our honeymoon started. Our driver picked us
up and drove us straight to the co-working space, Hubud. I was going to learn Ruby on Rails.
I had been accepted into the Ruby On The Beach
program in Ubud, Bali – and it started a few days after we got married.
After some I do and a quick kiss, we were on a plane to Indonesia.
The first day of class, I was pleasantly
surprised that out of the 10 students, 4 were women. Kintan from
Jakarta, Mona from Ubud, and Jenny from London. We had a great first day
getting to know each other and at lunch, I turned and asked Jenny to
tell me about herself. Jenny just graduated with her BA and MA in
History.
“History!?!” I said, I’m sure looking
shocked. “That’s awesome! What made you decide to learn coding with a
background in History?”
Jenny Ho went on to tell me that she was
hoping to bridge the gap between history and tech – she loved them both
and thinks that the field of history could use some tech updating. I
thought that was a great idea and we dug in a bit deeper. Why she chose
the boot camp route was what intrigued me most. “My dad really wanted me
to go into Computer Science, but it was such a heavily male-dominated
environment, that I decided to take another route.”
A self-proclaimed amateur programmer,
Jenny has been dabbling in building websites since she was 15, so her
interest in the subject matter is great.
“I
chose to go the boot camp route because it’s a better fit for me right
now. The short-term immersive experience helps me to actually learn and
retain information. If I had to do this in one year, I would probably
procrastinate for 9 months. The boot camp works out cheaper than a
degree. It’s easier to save for living expenses for 3 months rather than
to save for a year or more. I looked at quite a few boot camps before I
settled on Ruby on the Beach as my ideal boot camp.” she said.
Turns out, the rapid learning immersive environment is what appeals to most women.
Jessica Weinberg, graduate of Full Stack Academy
and now employed at Time Hop said, “It was the only alternative for me
after graduating with a 4 year degree in Communications. The first
computer science course I tried to take in college was very
intimidating. The teacher started the first day by saying that he was
going to skip over a lot of fundamentals because we probably already
knew them. I also wasn’t sure what I wanted to do in general so it felt
like a very big commitment to go through with a major without being
completely sure that it was something I wanted to do. It wasn’t until I
was able to start building things and felt comfortable that I really
felt like this was a career I wanted to pursue.”
Laura Mead, Dev Boot camp
graduate and now Twitter employee said “I knew I wasn’t wasting my
time. I’d been to a 4-year university, and while it wasn’t exactly a
walk in the park, I knew that not every class was applicable to an
English career. While I majored in a useful degree (there’s nothing
wrong with learning how to speak and write eloquently!), I don’t diagram
sentences ever. Which leaves me to believe that while CS degrees
are valuable, there are classes and concepts you’re just never going to
come across in real life. So why waste your time? With DBC, I knew I
was getting to the core of what I would be using every day as a
developer. And after a year and three months in the business, I can say
that I use my skills every day.”
Jenny Ho, Luca Spagnolo and Kintan Ayunda learn Ruby On Rails in Bali.
Not only is the
immersive environment an attractive attribute – the pay isn’t too shabby
either. From “I’ve now tripled my income” to “I never thought I would
be making a six figure salary after going to a boot camp.” The pay for
software engineers is staggering. With an immersive learning environment
and a potentially high earning potential at the end – women are
starting to flock to boot camps as a way to get started on a new career
path.
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