Tammi Caprio knew she needed to make a change in her career. She’d recently began to dabble with coding and knew it was something she got joy out of, but looking at the coding bootcamps around her, she wasn’t sure that she could become a software engineer in just 12 weeks.
That’s when she discovered Sabio. “Some of these other schools you get the sense that they get you in, get you out and then you don’t have any contact with them. Sabio provides on-going development,” Caprio said. “It was miles away from what the competition was offering.”
Caprio, 35 of Orange County, was drawn to Sabio for what it offers beyond its 12-week intensive program.
Sabio, based in Culver City, Los Angeles County, goes above and beyond 99.99% of coding bootcamps.
Indeed, Sabio offers a 12-week bootcamp, but prior to that, we ease students into coding by giving them a three-month, part-time PreWork instruction. Then, after the bootcamp, Sabio follows through with our students by offering them a minimum five-year commitment toward their professional development.
“My goal is to keep learning and growing as I continue my career, and the fact Sabio offers that support was a big plus,” said Caprio, who graduated from our Orange County campus in late March.
“You know that you’re not alone in the world after Sabio.”
Across the coding bootcamp market this trend of catering beyond a few weeks is beginning to take hold, said Jonathan Lau, co-founder of SwitchUp, an independent directory of boot-camp reviews and rankings. Since 2014, the average length of in-person coding bootcamps in the U.S. has increased from 10 weeks to 11 weeks in 2015, and it is expected to grow once again for 2016, according to SwitchUp.
“A lot of coding bootcamps are realizing that eight to 10 weeks is not enough, and even 12 weeks is cutting it short. They want to give more in-depth training,” Lau said.
Sabio, the premier coding bootcamp in Southern California, offers this extended support in a variety of ways. First is Sabio’s PreWork. This three-month, part-time program allows students to come in on their own free time for about 20 hours a week to learn the fundamentals they will need for the career switch they are looking to do. Sabio is not the only coding bootcamp to offer or require a pre-work, but it is among the few that offers PreWork in-person with the same instructors who will teach the students once the coding bootcamp begins. Many other schools simply ask students to complete pre-programs online and on their own.
“That really helped me and others in my cohort hit the ground running when it came time to start the full-fledged intensive program,” Caprio said. “That was a really good foundation.”
Next up is the Intensive Bootcamp where students are put into cohorts of no more than 10 students so they can begin their coding education. Here students put in 40 hours of work with their instructor and an additional 30 hours on their own each week as they learn how to become full stack software engineers. At the end, Sabio instructors give their students career training so they can secure jobs swiftly.
But the learning doesn’t end there. Every month, Sabio holds professional development sessions that are open to all its students and graduates. These multi-hour-long programs dive deep into the latest developments of software engineering, making sure Sabio graduates remain on the cutting edge of their trade. These sessions cover a variety of topics, such as design, algorithms, data structures or the latest coding languages announced by major companies like Apple or Google.
“There are a lot of students who say ‘A three-month course is not the way that I learn. I need something a little bit longer,’” said Liz Eggleston, co-founder of Course Report, which offers student reviews on coding bootcamps around the country.
Beyond development sessions, Sabio also hosts and participates in a variety of hackathons throughout the year, giving graduates the opportunity to strut their skills and compete against others in the field. For Sabio graduates, these hackathons can give a boost of confidence and work wonders for their resumes.
“Hiring managers and clients are looking for developers who don’t just go to work and do their job,” said Kaylee Tucker, an account manager at Outsource Technical, a tech consulting and direct-hire firm. “They want folks who are outside of work learning and challenging themselves to be involved in other projects, pushing themselves to learn new technologies and be involved with hackathons.”
Finally, at Sabio we make sure to build a community for our students by hosting a variety of networking events and by maintaining a group on Slack. There, graduates pass along job opportunities to one another and offer help whenever a Sabio alum runs into a challenge at work, whether it be of a technical or professional variety. Graduates also know that they can reach out to their instructors whenever something truly complex should arise, no matter the time of day.
“I can pick up the phone any time day or night and call,” said Julia Wells, a Sabio graduate. Wells was among Sabio’s first graduating class back in 2014. She has continued participating in Sabio’s hackathons and professional development sessions since then, and over that time she has seen her salary rise from $57,000 a year prior to Sabio to $96,000 in her job as a software engineer now.
Sabio Co-founder Gregorio Rojas “will get up at 2 in the morning and answer your code question, and without even seeing your computer, he’ll be able to diagnose your issue,” Wells, 32, said. “For the rest of my life I will have access to that support.”
Any 12-week coding bootcamp can help career switchers land a job, but Sabio instructors believe it takes more than that to help someone build a career.
If we’re really going to be genuine about saying that we want to create awesome tech talent in Southern California, we have to be honest and say we can’t do that in three months.
The only way to accomplish that is to have a long-term relationship with our students, and that is exactly what we have done from day one, and will continue to do going forward.
