The Decision

It’s disappointing, but the folks at Dev Bootcamp decided that I was not a good fit for the program. I’m not completely surprised considering what I had learned of their expectations after the 9 weeks of training.

A good chunk of my interview with Karim Bishay was spent discussing what was to be expected after Dev Bootcamp. After thorough questioning, it became clear to me that Dev Bootcamp was more than a 9 week commitment. Boots are expected to hit the ground running into their careers.

My plans were a bit different, since my goals at Dev Bootcamp had more to do with supplementing the education and training that I already had in place for myself. Moving and working in San Francisco would have been a dream come true but I wasn’t willing to make that decision right now as a commited student at Full Sail University.

What Now?

It’s easy to speculate the reasons for why things happen, but I don’t want to fall into the trap of dwelling on my failed interview. Right now, the best thing for me to do is to focus on improving my interviewing skills. Apparently, I don’t interview well, so I should be working on that right away. To prepare for future interviews, I’ll be focusing on practicing the main thing I believe that’s important to master for scoring developer positions, solving puzzles.

Puzzles

As a developer, you’ll be expected to solve several problems in your career. By sharing the way you solve problems through interview puzzles, employers are better able to gauge your critical thinking ablities. It isn’t enough that you get the right answer. What matters is your ability to communicate what you’re doing to solve the problem and why you’re doing it. The only way to get better at this is to practice.

Project Euler is a great site for sharpening your problem solving skills. Taking the time to work through these puzzles will help tremendously for developer interviews. I’ve already created an account for myself, so by the time I get to my next interview, I’ll be ready for anything.

What I’ve Learned

What I’ve learned is that this isn’t going to be an easy career field to get into. It’s going to take a lot of work. I’m going to have to rely on dedication and perserverance to get what I want out of this. There’ll be plenty of fail along the way, but it’s okay because there’s more to learn from our failures than from our small successes along the way.