People are not Robots

And other unexpected lessons from attending Dev Bootcamp

A year and a half I decided to make a career change, and by career change I mean changing from a non-career, no growth office job to something that had long term growth potential: Software Engineering.

I did my due diligence, and took an intro to computer science class at a local community college before I took the plunge, but by half way through the semester I knew this thing called programming was for me. I applied for, interviewed and was accepted to DevBootcamp in November, and in June of 2015 I started Phase 0.

Though I was being challenged in the programming tasks that I was given in the 9 week long intro to ruby programming Phase 0, the thing that I found most difficult was giving A.S.K. feedback. What is A.S.K. feedback you ask?

• A: Actionable - the person knows what they can do differently or the same
• S: Specific - the person knows who the other felt when “x” was done
• K: Kind - the giver of feedback is being honest, accepting, and unbiased (as much as is possible)

Sounds pretty tough doesn’t it? Especially when a pairing session to which this feedback was given might be an hour long, over a Google hangout with someone whom you’ve never met. I struggled with the fear of upsetting my future cohort mates, and the fear of not providing good quality feedback, or if the pairing session went well, I struggled with not having much to say about it, not being actionable.

But with practice and finally in Phase 1, I began seeing the faces of the people whom I’d been virtually working with not as pixels whose movements were glitchy due to limited bandwidth, but as people with whom I could be empathetic and lean on in times of need.

Throughout the 9 weeks on site at the San Francisco campus, I became closer with a group of 28 people at a faster rate than I’ve ever been before. We were professional. We were friends. And most importantly, we were an inclusive group of people that struggled, strived, and succeeded together.

For 9 straight weeks with the exception of a single day off, I spent everyday, 12 hours a day on a single floor of a single building in San Francisco writing, reading, or talking about code. As I learned languages and frameworks, code written the hard way followed by syntactic sugar, I discovered what had been missing in my life. No, it wasn’t that feeling when you find where the missing ‘end’ was supposed to be, nor even was it the moment when I knew I was employable as a developer. It was that feeling of toeing the edge, pushing the edge, and even at points floundering as I’ve gone too far, and knowing that it’s all okay.

I’ve pushed myself to and over the edge before, the most memorable instance was while Ironman training for a Hail Mary attempt at a Kona qualification when really my body needed a break. But falling over that edge was devastating. I saw myself in terms of nuts and bolts, and the screws just all fell out when my more human nature overpowered my robotic sense of training.

Ironic isn’t it, that at a programming bootcamp, where STDIN/STDOUT is coffee and code respectively, I discovered that in order to be on that edge and over that edge, taking care of your human self is imperative? I like working as hard as I did during bootcamp. I love learning and growing and pushing the limit and have continued to do so since graduating, only now I know how to and how not to. In truth, I didn’t come up with this revelation on my own, many a bootcampers before me would and have said the same thing, in fact DevBootcamp’s whole philosophy revolves around taking care of and bringing the whole self. But knowing something, and embodying something are two completely different things.