Life after a web dev bootcamp (part 1 of 2)

It has been about 10 months since I finished a web dev boot camp with Coding Dojo in Mountain View, CA. It was awesome and quite a 3 month experience.  Life after the boot camp has become quite interesting. 

The interesting part of it was I thought I knew all about coding but in reality, I knew only a part of it. 3 months is just enough to be introduced to coding and for the student to pick up what they think it fits best for their life and of course if they have some back ground in coding, coding will be easy.  For people like me that don't have experience it can be challenging and is still challenging for me.

 The challenge reveled itself when I began looking for a job. 100% of the time minimum requirements for a Jr web dev is 2 years of experience. I always thought that what I built while at the bootcamp was going to be good and enough since there were so many projects (you are told at the boot camp that you can use your school work as part of your portfolio but in my case was not enough and most prospective employers want real life experience "coding") I began to feel a little disappointed and frustrated, wondering if I did the right thing going to a bootcamp. Doubts began to cross my mind and my financial situation became difficult, I was broke. I think there are so many different points of view and the tech field is always changing. So I needed a new strategy and to forget what people had said while at the boot camp and make my own choices and my own research. 

While conducting my research I found that what I need it was a real coding experience - I mean in a real life situation. Not just from a classroom standpoint.  So I decided to start as a freelance  helping some of my friends who needed updates on their sites. That it seemed to help somewhat. It gave me a bit more experience talking to clients and prospective employers. That did not last long since I still needed it more experience deeper that just updating websites. So an internship crossed my mind. I remember when I worked at the Arts department at Cal State San Marcos and I used a lot of students to help with the department. That always works. 

So I started looking for internships. Found a couple of them.  Interning, I think, was the best decision I made after graduating from the bootcamp. Interning with Socos and Committing helped me to get my confidence and feel more secure of the decision made to go to a dev web boot camp. 

To be continue...