It’s About Community: What Sets TripleTen Apart

Some things are just better done with others, be it traveling, cooking, playing sports — and, perhaps most crucially, studying. 

Having someone around helps you stay focused and productive when learning, and it also tends to make the overall experience more enjoyable. Remember how much more fun it was to quiz your friends before a test or attend study hall in school, compared to say, sitting in the library alone?

It’s for these reasons and more that TripleTen puts community at the forefront of its bootcamps. And what we’ve discovered is that, by making education collaborative and group-oriented, we’re able to ensure a high success rates for our students. (After all, not everyone can boast a grad employment rate of 87%!)

No one learns alone

Community isn’t just about surrounding yourself with bodies — you know the saying about feeling alone in a crowded room? The best communities, rather, encourage individuals to interact and socialize, swap knowledge and skills, provide mutual support, and be their true selves among others.

TripleTen’s programming embodies this kind of atmosphere through a variety of channels and approaches. On Discord, participants can regularly message with colleagues, former students, and tech leaders about anything, whether it’s a sprint or code review or a funny meme worth sharing. One-on-one and group coaching sessions with career experts and tutors are also readily available via video and chat. Finally, externships place groups of learners in real-world tech scenarios, allowing novices to ask questions, take part in important work conversations, and get a feel for the collaborative nature of tech.

“When I reach a roadblock, I have an extensive support system I can ask for help,” says Amy Maldonado_{From Baking to Bytes: My Journey into Business Intelligence}, a former bakery manager and student in TripleTen’s Business Intelligence Analytics bootcamp.

The in-depth information I’ve received on career success has also significantly improved my job search strategies. Amy Maldonado, TripleTen grad

‍Kyle Kolodziej_{In QA and Never Looking Back: Kyle Kolodziej’s TripleTen Story}, previously a project manager, used the Discord channel and access to TripleTen’s large alumni pool to help him solve a code issue on one of his QA Engineering assignments. “With their help, I figured out it was my computer that was the problem,” he says. Later, he leveraged the assistance of a career coach to rework his resume for the right positions — which quickly landed him a gig at a small fintech company upon graduation.

Other students have found comfort and confidence through group projects. Evgeniia Unzhakova_{How an Immigrant Landed a Career in the US: Evgeniia Unzhakova’s TripleTen Story}, a former teacher who moved to the US in 2019, says her Data Science cohort was pivotal in helping her overcome nervousness and get through her final project. Pedro Fierros_{Refashioning a Career in IT: Pedro Fierros’s TripleTen Story}, too, says having a community behind him made the challenging parts of learning to code less intimidating and more manageable.

We all just kind of got together and said to each other, ‘I’m struggling in this area, I’m struggling with these concepts here,’ and although we couldn’t solve each other’s difficulties, there was that extra sense of community there. Pedro Fierros, TripleTen grad

Ian Dizney_{3 Things That Made TripleTen's Software Engineering Program Exceptional}, who studied software engineering with TripleTen, calls his externship experience a “defining moment.” “Collaborating with fellow engineers in a professional environment provided insights into the importance of effective communication, teamwork, and project management — skills that are indispensable in the software engineering industry,” he says.

Ultimately, adds Francis Flanagan_{The Three Most Underrated Things About Bootcamps}, a graduate of the Software Engineering program, TripleTen’s robust community “gave me the feeling of having a shared experience with people who are going through the same thing.”

Why we emphasize collaborative learning

As we mentioned, collaborative learning offers a myriad of benefits for learners of all backgrounds and personalities (yes, even introverts!). When we work together to discuss and solve problems, studies have shown, we’re better able to understand and relay complex topics, retain information, and think critically. 

More importantly, collaborative learning mimics the real world, forcing us to develop expertise that’s prevalent and ultimately necessary in the jobs we pursue once we leave the classroom. Tech is a highly cooperative field: engineers have to work alongside product managers, data scientists, designers, marketing teams, and potential clients and customers to create products that sell, function properly, and drive engagement. All those soft skills that come with collaboration aren’t just useful, but in high demand for today’s employers_{What Employers Want From Bootcamp Grads}.

What this has meant for our grads

Our students, thanks to the community they gain access to and cultivate at TripleTen, can achieve amazing outcomes for themselves. An immigrant such as Unzhakova can launch a new and thriving career in a foreign country with little of the headache and anxiety that comes with starting over. “When I was learning, it was 50% men and 50% women, and there were all different ages and different people,” she says of her experience. “We helped each other. We had a great discussion group and shared some interesting links. It was a great time for me.” Now, she’s a research analyst at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she’s able to combine her background with newfound data acumen.

Others, like Sheldon Kinsler_{From Sales to Tech: How Sheldon Kinsler Found a New Career and Community}, can get themselves out of an unfilling career trajectory. TripleTen’s Business Intelligence Analytics program not only allowed him to break free from his siloed and unstable sales job, but also gave him the confidence boost to pursue a different field. “I was able to get through it just thanks to the tutors and the community. Everyone’s super helpful and will answer pretty much any question you have,” he says, adding, “If I would get an assignment correct or one of my pieces of code would go through, I would actually take a screenshot of it and share it with the community or share it with my success manager. Like, ‘Guys! look at this! This is awesome!’ And pretty much everyone would be like ‘Yo, that’s so sick!’”

Discover the right career for you

There are plenty of places to find community, but we hope you’ll consider ours on your journey to a more rewarding and lucrative professional path.

We also know signing up for a bootcamp isn’t a simple decision, which is why we’ve created a free, handy career quiz for evaluating what tech jobs most suit your needs and interests. It only takes two minutes to complete — give it a shot today.