Are Coding Bootcamps Worth It in 2024? Part 2: What the Numbers Don’t Show

Our last post tackling this considered “worth” the way an economist might look at it. Average salaries, return on investment, future prospects — all that was covered there. If you’re looking for strict numbers when you’re asking "Are tech bootcamps worth it?” then that article’s ready and waiting.

Here, we’re going to take a less metric-driven view. After all, “worth it” is a slippery term. A rock-climbing trip where you end up meeting your life partner and a stock portfolio that grows 300% are both worth it, but for very different reasons.

So let’s dive into that first category. Here’re the ways that a coding bootcamp is worth it that the numbers don’t show.

You can get your life back

People decide to learn to code and make the switch to tech for myriad reasons. But one motivation we hear consistently from students is that their previous careers were draining them. And that takes numerous forms: burnout, long days, and mind-numbing tasks, for example. It’s a grind that takes a toll. By pivoting to tech, people reclaim their time and their mental health.

Just take AC Slamet_{A Producer Switches to Tech to Find Time for Life: AC Slamet’s TripleTen Story}. Working as a producer in unscripted TV, he was expected to put in long hours. “A normal shoot day for producers would be 15 hours,” AC said. “The toll it took on me health-wise — it can be a very stressful job and obviously physically taxing because of the long hours.”

And because of the nature of reality TV, prime footage would be captured during holidays. So instead of joining get-togethers with friends and family, he had to be on location. The reality stars were also hosting festivities, and because they needed to be filmed, they took priority. 

According to AC, as a reality TV producer, “you tend to miss a lot of important life things. You sometimes have to miss birthdays. You miss anniversaries. You miss people’s graduations. It’s tough.”

He’d had enough. He had an inkling of what tech offered, did his research, and enrolled in TripleTen. Three months after graduating from the program, he landed a job as a data analyst at an ad agency. Now, he has time for life. 

Gosh, it’s a stark difference. I work eight hours every day, Monday to Friday. I have my weekends off, which is amazing. AC Slamet, TripleTen graduate

But there are other ways a career can demand too much of you. Teachers like Jenny Doctor_{From Making Music to Making Commits: Jenny Doctor’s TripleTen Story} know this all too well.

She thought teaching music was going to be her whole life. She’d spent five years prepping for her teaching career, and landed her first job. “I thought that I would retire as a music teacher,” she said.

That was in August 2019. Less than a year later, the pandemic hit. “During quarantine, we had to go to teaching online. As you can probably imagine, trying to wrangle four year olds in a Google Meet and teaching the music was really difficult.”

Trying to teach in the new format started wearing her down. More was expected of her and she had fewer tools to see to her responsibilities. “I started to get a bit burnt out with teaching,” she said.

It even affected her ability to pursue music on her own terms. “When I was teaching, I really didn't make music for myself. I was focused on my students.”

So she started looking around and found TripleTen. She enrolled in the Software Engineering program and thrived. Then, as her time with the bootcamp wound down, she joined an externship, a job placement opportunity offered by the bootcamp in partnership with real companies. Specifically, she joined a project with a company tackling the problem of unrecyclable plastic.

All of it combined to land her a tech career at Booz Allen Hamilton. Now, she’s no longer burning out, and she’s rekindling her engagement in music. 

Now that I’m in tech and I'm at home and I have more free time for myself, I’ve found that I've been playing more music. Jenny Doctor, TripleTen graduate

See, when we talk about worth here, we’re really discussing something that fuels the core of cliches and holiday movies: the good life, contentment, fulfillment. After all, a good job is not just good because it pays well (which jobs in tech do_{The Top 18 Companies That Pay Software Engineers the Most in 2024}). A good job also treats you like a human being.

But we can go even further (and explore another feel-good plot). A coding bootcamp can be one way of helping new arrivals establish themselves in the US.

You can rebuild a career in a new country

Do coding bootcamps work? If you’re thinking about using them to establish a new career in the United States, then the answer is likely yes.

Often, when you go through a coding bootcamp, you’ll learn how to merge your existing skill set with new tech-focused know-how. This is exactly what attracts many immigrants to become bootcamp students. After all, they arrive with a wealth of knowledge that is harder to convert into job prospects simply because they’re new to the country.

Take Evgeniia Unzhakova_{How an Immigrant Landed a Career in the US: Evgeniia Unzhakova’s TripleTen Story}, for example. If she’d continued in her career teaching math at university for two more months, she would have reached a full decade in education. But in 2019, she and her family relocated to the United States from Cheboksary, Russia.

She was realistic about her career after her relocation. “I decided to choose another career path because I knew I couldn’t teach,” she said.

She had nearly 10 years in math behind her, and she wanted to take advantage of that expertise. Initially, she thought she might pursue programming like her husband, but she realized it wasn’t for her. So what should she do instead? She discovered data science. “It was what I was looking for. It’s a science between math and programming,” she said.

After finding the pace of learning too slow at the local community college, she enrolled in TripleTen. It was the right choice, especially because of the community she found. For someone still learning the language, giving presentations can be even more difficult. Not only is it public speaking — it’s public speaking in a foreign language.

But her coursemates were there supporting her. “My teammate helped me a lot. I was very nervous. I forgot all of the words. I was stressed. But my teammate said, ‘Calm down, relax. You’ll do a great job,’” she recalls.

And she did do a great job. After nailing her presentation, she used her new soft skills to ace an interview.

The team prepares you to show that you’re positive and involved. Evgeniia Unzhakova, TripleTen graduate

Now, she’s a research analyst at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and thriving in the new environment. “It’s easy to show my skills,” she said.

But not all bootcamp graduates are alike. For example, when you come to the US, you might realize that you need a full career revamp. After all, your job in your home country might have been inherently tied to that location. That was the case for Hulya Karakaya_{Mastering a New Syntax and a New Vocation: Hulya Karakaya’s TripleTen Story}.

She was gearing up for a career as an English teacher in her native Turkey. She even honed her skills in a teaching internship. But her trajectory suddenly changed when she decided to move. “After graduating, I moved to the US. So after that, my plans changed. I cannot be an English teacher here,” she said.

Like Evgeniia, she spent time honestly evaluating her prospects in the US. And she was in a tech hub, which helped her choose a new path. “I was living in Seattle, Washington, and there are so many Amazon offices there. Everyone was working in tech, so I got interested.”

She started learning on her own. But, as she said, “When I was studying by myself, the material was not connected. I’d forget a subject.” She needed something else to help her land a new job among her community of fellow software developers.

That brought her to TripleTen’s Software Engineering Bootcamp. It was exactly the thing she had been looking for.

Everything was connected. At TripleTen, you combine all your skills. Hulya Karakaya, TripleTen graduate

Now, she’s working at PSPDFKit, a company making it easy to display, edit, and annotate PDFs. “I'm doing front-end, and I am working with engineers. I have mentors. Then I'm also doing technical writing about how you can use our products.” 

It’s been the shift she hoped for. “I like it because you can always improve yourself. If I were a teacher, I think I would be so bored. Every year, teaching the same thing to kids, and every hour saying the same things. I love working in tech.”

It’s the sort of transformation that’s hard to express in numbers without being callous — what is the value of finding a fulfilling job as a new US resident? There is a sense of embeddedness, cohesion, and belonging that comes with making it in a new country by landing a rewarding job — like one you can find in tech.

What’s that worth? If you’re here, you likely know its value is immeasurable. 

Just like getting extra time with your loved ones.

You get more time with your family

This is one motivation that we hear about often when we talk to members of the TripleTen community — graduates and current students alike. When family enters the picture, perspectives change. Grinding at a time-intensive job to make money to support a family you’re thus separated from starts seeming less and less attractive. In fact, this is what led one TripleTen bootcamp graduate, Jeremy Laurange_{Switching to Tech for His Family: Jeremy Laurange’s TripleTen Story}, to enroll.

‍

For him, switching to tech had one simple motive. “I really want to work remotely just because I want to spend more time with my children,” he said.

And he had some technical expertise, but he realized it wasn’t enough to satisfy his ambitions.

I craved something a little bit more in order to hone my skills to be able to move on to something more. Jeremy Laurange, TripleTen graduate

That’s when he came across programming bootcamps — TripleTen’s Business Intelligence Analytics program, specifically. When he started, he realized how much he’d have to digest. “I thought I was good at spreadsheets until I took the course. And then I realized, there's a whole ‘nother world that I didn't know.”

But with TripleTen’s robust support system, he never felt stuck for long. “TripleTen support was proactive, and that made me feel like I was a part of something as opposed to doing it all on my own.”

And because bootcamps offer part-time study schedules, he didn’t have to sacrifice time with his kids to put in the hours to upgrade his knowledge. Instead, he’d sneak in studying while his kids were asleep. 

His dedication has paid off. Thanks to his new know-how, he landed a new position at his current company: Director of Retail Operations and Enterprise Development. But he’s still looking for what comes next, and he has confidence that his new skills will help him as he decides where to go. 

“If I wanted to, I could make a pivot to healthcare. Or I could make a pivot to marketing. I think that's really cool.”

This transition is now realistic for him. In fact, Rachelle Perez_{From Tourism Sales to Data Science at Spotify: TripleTen Grad Rachelle Perez Lands a Career in Tech} is a prime example of this. 

She had been in her tourism job for almost five years when she was laid off. Curious about other career options that would still make use of the talents she had acquired, she began poking around. 

“I started going on Indeed and putting in vague searches to see what happened: operations, sales reports, etc. And that's when I started seeing data analytics jobs, and I was like, ‘Oh, that's the kind of thing that I want to do,’” she said.

That brought her to a data analytics bootcamp sponsored by the New York City government. It gave her enough expertise to land an entry-level job, but she quickly realized she needed more advanced skills. Discovering TripleTen, she enrolled in our Data Science program. It was a surprise to her.

“I was under the perception that I would do really well because I had just done another bootcamp. So, that was my first wake up call. I was like, ‘Oh, I definitely need this because this is not as easy as I thought it would be.’”

But she was supported by professional code reviewers the whole way through. And when she graduated, she sent her resume to Spotify. After two interviews and a take-home assignment, she landed the job. And it’s given her the freedom to focus on her family.

I actually probably put in less hours now than I ever did in my older jobs. I spend much more time with my son now. Rachelle Perez, TripleTen graduate

It’s a calculus parents do too often — make the money to secure a better future for their children or spend time with them before they’re older and independent? With a job in tech, you might not have to choose either/or. You might just get both/and. And that’s worth more than numbers can say.

Is a coding bootcamp right for you?

Do these success stories sound like something you’d like to emulate? Then a bootcamp might be right for you — especially if you want to upgrade your career without getting a college degree in computer science. Take our quiz to see if a bootcamp is right for you.