A Work in Progress

What’s it like after having graduated General Assembly?

Here I am, a week after my bootcamp ended, trying to navigate post-graduation waters; I’ve been so busy preparing for technical interviews, teaching myself Java, and attending meetups that it feels like I haven’t had any time to work on my coding challenge: one full-stack web application a week. My deadline to complete the app that I’m working on — an improved version of my Atlanta Pop Ups site — is Monday so I’m doubling down on that and working on setting up my back-end now.

In my last article, I looked back on what I had accomplished during my course and the steps I aimed to take in the future. Now I want to share what I’ve learned for other people just entering (or thinking about entering) the Software Engineering Immersive.

Global lessons

These are general lessons that will better help you take advantage of the bootcamp. After all, you get in what you put in.

1. Take advantage of your cohort. Working with your classmates is a taste of what working on a team will be like. Rely on each other. Ask each other questions when you need help, take advantage of the debugging channel on Slack, teach each other where you can. For many companies, it’s more important to have developers that shine in team environments than having lone wolf all-stars. And General Assembly mimics that Agile development feel in the design of their space so get used to that as well. A lot of companies are trying to take advantage of open floor plans to facilitate interaction between employees and the sparks of inspiration that can result from that, so if you’re always isolating yourself, you might get a culture shock.
2. Keep learning outside of the course. Use your network. Ask for extra resources. You’re surrounded by other developers and one of them is bound to have a few recommendations for extra learning. That’s how I learned about the educational resources I’m using — Head First Java, the Syntax podcast, Cracking the Coding Interview, Eloquent Javascript, and Grokking Algorithms; the languages I’m interested in learning — Java, Go, Angular, Xamarin, and React Native; and the meetups I go to: Technologists of Color, Women Who Code, Code for Atlanta, and React ATL. You’ll pick up a lot of things that will leave a good impression at your next interview.
3. Read ahead in the curriculum. Sometimes class moves fast and you don’t get to write down all the notes you wanted to. Or maybe you did get to write everything down, but it didn’t sink in completely and now you have additional questions you’re afraid of asking because you’re worried you’re slowing others down. First off, never be afraid to ask questions. But secondly, a good way of combating that issue is to read the lessons for the next day and take notes then. That way your writing will be more organized and you can take note of any questions that occur to you so you can ask them in class while the instructor’s going over the material. I’ve found that it really helps to give you a bird’s eye view of the material so you can better establish connections between different lessons as well.
4. Work on side projects. General Assembly gave us a lot of freedom to design our projects, but it’s important that you have things you worked on outside of the course as well. I’ve found that projects help me learn new languages and libraries more quickly because it adds an element of interest and creativity that I might not get through online courses, but they can also help cement knowledge that you’ve already learned.
5. Stay after. Class doesn’t end when the instructor dismisses you. It’s tempting to leave as soon as the bell rings but if it’s possible for you to stick around afterwards, do it. You can learn a lot from people farther ahead in the course than you are, and you might run into someone with helpful advice. I’ve gotten tips that have definitely helped me leave a good impression in my interviews (scroll down to interview tips for some prime examples). You don’t have to stay every night but, at the very least, try to stay behind whenever you hit a unit, language, or framework that you’re struggling with. And that applies after you graduate too.
6. Keep your original goal in mind. Whether it’s getting a job, expanding your skill set, or building your network, you need to have a goal when attending a bootcamp and keep it in mind throughout the course. It’s okay if your goal changes but be aware of the progress you’re making and where you might be slipping up or losing focus. I broke down my goal into micro-tasks and created a goal tracker specifically for keeping track of which tasks I had accomplished or was struggling on. (And if you want ideas for what to include in your tracker, take a look at these goal planners and recreate their templates.) Progress is a daily habit!
7. Document the lessons you’ve learned. Everybody takes away different lessons from the same experience and this is no different. There are things you may have picked up that I didn’t mention — if so, I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

Local lessons

When it comes to something like this, I find that having specific tips and problems to be aware of can be really useful. So here are a couple specific lessons that I’ve learned:

1. Interview tips: There are tons more than the ones I’ve listed below but I think these are the tips that helped me the most — look at Cracking the Coding Interview and ask full-time developers for additional advice. And if you have advice of your own, leave it in the comments!

• If you’re nervous in an interview, acknowledge it so you can laugh about it and move on. They’ve probably been through the exact same thing.
• When your interviewer asks if you have questions, have questions! Ask about their experience in the company, what their policy on ongoing learning is, what the team environment is like — anything! It shows that you’re interested.
• The technical interview is nerve-wracking but the best way for me to combat that anxiety is to keep preparing. Tackle two or three coding problems a day at the least — Edabit, Codesignal, Leetcode, and Hackerrank are all good resources — and practice voicing your thought process. If you’re not completely crystal clear on the problem, ask for clarification.
• Repeatedly test yourself on the jargon and concepts you’re learning — I love Quizlet for this and made a study set you can check out here — and make sure you understand where they fit in the big picture.
• Stalk the company that you’re applying for — look at their website, their social media, any mentions of them in the news — and write that information down. This post has great tips on how to research a company.
• Ask for feedback from each interview and use it to prep for the next one.
• Look for interview questions that company has asked before on Glassdoor.
• If you’re asked about how you deal with challenges or problems, make sure you show that you seek outside help whenever you get stuck, whether that be from your team or Stack Overflow.

2. Improve on your projects. You’re going to have a talent showcase. Make sure the projects that you present are the best work you have to offer.

• If you have a MEHN-stack project, try swapping out Handlebars for React.
• If you didn’t get around to integrating a third-party API, do it this time around.
• Ask others to use your web application and get their thoughts on the layout. (A good nugget of wisdom to keep in mind, though: Only take critique from people you would go to for advice.)
• If you deployed using Heroku, you might want to change your projects so that they make timed get requests to each other to keep your servers from going to sleep (otherwise people might click the link to your deployed app and think that your site’s broken because it’s taking too long to load). And be aware of the cache because it can interfere with requests you make as a client if you visit that site a lot. There are ways you can get around it — Heroku’s documentation suggests an add-on MemCachier that I plan on using.
• Look at other General Assembly alumni projects for ideas. Or, better yet, look for apps similar to what you created to see what layouts or features they have. Not all of us have the UX eye but you don’t need it to find inspiration. UI Garage and Mobbin are great resources to use.

3. Stay active on your Github. This goes hand in hand with having side projects, but it’s important that you show initiative as a developer. That means continuously adding to your portfolio. It can be hard to decide what to create though so I recommend taking inspiration from problems you’ve experienced. If you’ve noticed there aren’t any apps dedicated to finding basketball meetups, make it. If you feel like the Atlanta event site layout sucks, recreate it with your own design in mind. Solving problems that you run into lends a bit more personality to your work than just tackling the app ideas other people list on their Medium blogs (though those can be good places to start too!)

I hope my experiences help provide some insight on how to get the most out of General Assembly (or any bootcamp.) I’m constantly learning so I’m sure I will have more to add as the weeks progress. Please don’t hesitate to share your own lessons and experience in the comments — you never know how your advice could help someone else!

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.