How I choose my Data Analytics Bootcamp

Dear friends,

At the beginning of the year, I decided to leave my job and pursue data analysis. I have talked about this choice in another post. (Why I left the best job I ever had.) This gives a more strategic overview of why I made the choice, but the actual technical aspects I left out. Today, I want to talk about those aspects and how I actually did it.

Finding Boot Camps

How do you find data boot camps? The all-powerful monopoly is Google.com a good enough place to start as any. Using those exact words will lead to a litany of results that become too much to handle. Thousands of results that might even include articles such as this one, come into the webpage.

How to make sense of thousands of results?

I didn’t. I relied on the reviews and aggregators. These are people who make a living or a least a partial income from reviewing and surveying the land. The reputation and validity of these reviewers is certainly a question that must be taken. Due diligence and skepticism are needed.

Signals of professionalism are different across a variety of fields. A suit and tie have shown honorability. But, on a website, it’s impossible to know who is behind the screen, which has its place, but a well-designed website is as good as a signal of a reputation as we have in this modern world.

I am a fan of curators, they are what I am aiming to do in some regard. What is the best frying pan, the best new album? People who know what to look for, look for the things that I could not find. Searching on Google for the curator of coding and programming boot camps, lead me to a website called Coursereport.com

They would be my holy savior as I began my search. I knew I wanted to do something with data, what it was exactly I had not come to a conclusion. I had run tests during the proceeding months with DataQuest, and their Data Analysis with Python. Two key findings from those experiments were I had shown positive results in aptitude and excitement for myself.

Course Report has plenty of different sections and blog posts comparing and contrasting everything under the sun, but for someone to read through every page, would require a full-time job. I decided to use course reports matching feature. Called “get matched.”

The get-matched service comes at a cost of information. A squeeze page.

A squeeze page is a place where they get your information, they want an email, and a phone number.

After paying my fee I was given a list of four options. Four applications down from the hundred or so boot camps that exist in the world. A healthy and good first step.

But it would be where I left CourseReport and redirected to the actual websites, and here is where the rubber hits the road. These websites have applications to all of their bootcamps. Not just anyone would be accepted. So, it’s important to answer the questions on these applications with intent, and clarity.

Applications and Interviews

Every website likes to believe they have a unique application that only they developed. Yet, after visiting all four the application questions begin to blur together and many of them have overlapping questions, and thematics.

I answered these questions my own way, and I’d like to share those answers.

Why do you want to work with data?

The future of humanity it appears to me will be in the applications, and developments that are created within the next 50 years. Nick Bostrom's work on surveying the field of Ai experts estimate it to be about this much. Which makes the field of machine learning, and artificial intelligence the most exciting thing that can possibly be imagined for a young person.

How familiar are you with data

When the pandemic of 2020 happening in March of last year, I was put out of work. I took this as an opportunity to learn about this exciting field. I started by learning Python. I played around with an artificial intelligence course finding original papers by Richard Bellman and Richard Sutton fascinating. Turning away from abstraction I took the course Automate the boring stuff in full steam. A perfect fit, for learning and applying my elementary python skills. Furthering my reading with O'Reilly python. Over the next few months, I would program every day. Creating scripts to accomplish things, and learning many of the basic programming skills that became applicable.

With other personal information put into the applications, I pressed the submit button; over the course of a few days I sent off all four of the applications and then began a waiting game.

Waiting, and waiting until I got a phone call.

It was from one of the programs asking if I had a few minutes to speak about my application. I did and repeated a lot of the same answers that I had given in the written application. These are what my father used to call sanity tests. The company on the other side is making sure, you are who you say you are and didn’t fake your application.

The conversations on median took about twenty minutes. Which I don’t believe is the stressful part of all of this experience. The real stress comes from telling your parents you are leaving your job. Telling your girlfriend you won’t be earning income for the future, and finally leaving your co-workers of three years.

But as I hung up the phone after they said they would love to have me, it washed over me that this was indeed happening. Over the next few days, I would get calls from two other boot camps of which I was both accepted.

Now came time for the choice, and decision of which one to go with. The ultimate choice came down to this:

1) A cohort based group. Giving both accountability and friendship throughout the whole course.

2) Proper time-zone usage. I would be call 10am to 5pm. A perfect middle of the day section for me.

3) Cost, the price of the course was lowered due to COVID, but I could pay it all up front, and have enough in my savings to last me until I could get a job.

One thing that I did not consider in my selection was the mentor meetings. I knew this was part of the course, and did not know what to expect which is likely a good thing. Mentors paired up are at odds of working out together. I however feel fortunate to have gotten the one I did. And did not appreciate when selecting a school how important it was to have this conversation. I have spent 30 minutes once a week talking with a mentor who has guided and talked with me as I have gone through the course. Something I am truly thankful to have had.

I am writing this a few months removed from the process of selecting a boot camp, yet I still remember how important that decision felt, and how much it changed my life.

So to all looking to make the choice,

Be fair, be bold, and stay within reason.

Life is so rich,

Greg.