Want to chuck the day job and make the next billion dollar mobile app? You gots to have coding skills! We’ve got tips on how to pick the coding bootcamp that’s going to help you rise to the top of the app store. Watch for free!
If you’re looking to break into the tech industry and land a lucrative job as a coder, learning the necessary skills to achieve your goal can be a lengthy (and costly) marathon of college courses filled with numerous instructors, lectures, labs, and textbooks. Indeed, that’s the path Dave Paola took to get his college degree
However, Paola’s university experience told him that there’s a better way — that you can get yourself a coding gig after more of a sprint — which is why in 2012 he co-founded Bloc, a company he calls the “first online developer bootcamp.”
Paola, Bloc’s CTO, says that he went to a top college, took the necessary classes, and put his nose to the grindstone to get to the finish line. However, looking back, he feels he learned more by digging in and actually doing the work.
“I gained a lot more experience that translated into real-world skills, not by paying attention and being disciplined in the classroom,” Paola says, “but actually by working with a group of smart people on real projects, over and over again. It taught me all sorts of skills that the classroom didn’t teach, like working with other people, collaborating, communicating, and all of the soft skills that come along with that.”
With that in mind, Bloc operates under the thinking that people learn better through one-on-one mentorship than in a less-personal one-to-many classroom. When you start in one of Bloc’s bootcamps, you’re paired with one of the company’s 150-plus mentors, all of whom have deep experience in the field you’ll be studying. Paola stated that the mentor also has the freedom to tailor the coursework to the student’s abilities and skills, and emphasized that the mentor/student relationship often outlasts the Bloc bootcamp.
“Everything at Bloc is in support of the student/mentor relationship,” Paola says. “We give folks internally here a lot of leeway to make sure that the mentor does what’s right for the student. In many cases, the mentor is the one who ends up placing the student, which is a really great thing.”
To that end, when a course ends, each student is readied for the job market with resume-writing assistance, help in putting together a portfolio, and even job-interview prep. They leave the bootcamp with the necessary skills and practical experience to handle a coding job, but also an understanding of what they need to do to land that job.
Perhaps the biggest motivation for choosing a bootcamp is that you don’t have to quit your day job and move to a different city to take the course. And Bloc’s course materials are updated regularly, with new tech developments being integrated into the course immediately, so you know that you’re getting the most up-to-date training on what you’re interested in, whether it’s learning Ruby, user-interface study, or platform-specific mobile-app instruction.
This webinar will cover all of the essentials you need to know about programming bootcamps, how to go about choosing one (Paola acknowledges Bloc is a good fit for some and not others), and answer any questions you might have about the process.
Don’t miss out!
In this webinar, you’ll:
- Gain insight into what skills you’ll need to get ahead in the tech field
- Learn how to leverage your great idea into the next billion dollar project
- Research the next step for your future in coding, whether you want to build apps, games or mobile-driven on-demand services.
Speakers:
Dave Paola, Cofounder & CTO, Bloc
Prasid Pathak, Director of Marketing, Bloc
Moderator:
Wendy Schuchart, Analyst, VentureBeat
This webinar is sponsored by Bloc.