Opinion
Now that we can finally see the light at the other side of the pandemic tunnel, I have a request for METIS and Galvanize.
Please bring back the in person data science bootcamp.
I know that going remote was your only choice last year. But I was shocked and sad when you all went permanently remote.
I’m a Metis alum – I loved the experience. Some of my best friends were my fellow Bootcamp students, and I got a ton out of the experience. Would I have gone to a fully remote bootcamp? No way, I’m not paying 17 grand for days upon days of Zoom classes.
I’m sure I’m not the only one with Zoom fatigue. After more than a year of Zoom meetings and Zoom pair coding, I saw my team for the first time in person at the office last week. It was great! We had a normal meeting, we white boarded, we ate lunch out. If I wanted to ask a question, I just turned around and asked. In person was always better than Zoom, but after 15 months of forced Zoom, in person feels even better than normal.
Bootcamp
Full time bootcamp is a big step. You need to quit your job, fork over a big chunk of change, and spend at least a few months post boot camp job hunting where many employers will regard your bootcamp Education with skepticism. On top of that, the supply and demand situation for data scientists is not as great as it was a few years ago – as usual, when a job is hot (and high paying), supply (of data scientists) increases a lot faster than demand.
It’s a big risk, but for many it’s also the only way to pivot into a data career (spending 2 years out of the workforce to get a masters is just too long). Bootcamps owe it to their students to go all in and provide as much value as possible. And part of that is by giving them a space where they can learn together, code together, play together, and bond together.
The biggest thing I got out of my bootcamp experience was my cohort. They made learning more fun, my projects more interesting, job hunting less stressful, and became part of both my social network as well as my professional one. You can try to force it over Zoom, but you just can’t replicate the social experience. In my opinion, a single hearty game of ping pong is better than playing a dozen games of Among Us, and it’s not even close.
So METIS, Galvanize, and other bootcamps, don’t use the pandemic as an excuse to pad your profit margins. Your students are making a big commitment to you, so you should do whatever you can to give them the best experience possible.