Hey,
I’m new posting here but I have been living in Japan a few years now and working here has been tough. I have been looking at going to a code boot camp in Tokyo, I have been wondering if it is worth it though and which one. I have visited both Le wagon and Code chrysalis which both have up’s and down sides to them and wanted to ask if recruiters in Japan have a preference towards either one?
Many thanks,
Snow
My approach for evaluating different bootcamps would be to start by asking them for statistics. In particular, I’d ask for students in similar circumstances (international resident of Japan), what percentage of their graduates get a job as a software developer within three months of graduation. An answer to this will demonstrate that at the very least they’re tracking this, which implies they care about it.
You could also ask previous students about their experiences. Both programmes have public demo days, and so it shouldn’t be hard to find graduates and contact them directly.
Regardless of the coding school, I think attendance alone won’t be enough to guarantee a job. Companies aren’t lining up to hire graduates, as most have a strong preference for experienced developers, so it will take a fair effort on your part to get a job.
If you have more time, there’s the school 42 opening in Tokyo. It’s free but it takes few years to do the whole curriculum.
It come from France and exists in California for few years already.
Hey pwim,
I did ask both Le wagon and Code chrysalis, while Le Wagon was able to come up with so figures Code chrysalis on both occasions have said they do not have any data.
Again yeah I contacted a few graduates of Le Wagon and managed to chat to them but Code chrysalis has smaller cohorts at the time of writing having only 26 listed graduates.
Well I hope I can stand out as I have until January to find a job!
thank you for the reply!
Hey Damax,
I mean if its free its always worth doing! but I do not have a few years unfortunately… Since they are full this year also I dont think its something i can do this year but thank you!
Hi snow,
I looked into boot camps in Tokyo a few years back, and Le Wagon was the one that stood out for me. Mainly because at that point I’d been experimenting with Ruby and JS for a few months and knew I wanted to focus on Ruby/Rails. I ended up going to General Assembly back in my own country, and was fortunate to land a job quite quickly after completing the 3 month course.
My take away from my experience, and talking to other graduates, is that you will only get out what you put in. So it pays to focus on learning outside the classroom and using your teachers as your own personal tutors/stack overflow. It’ll pay off a lot more than just doing the course work provided.
To do this, you should think about the kind of company you want to work at. Once you have a pretty good picture of your ideal company, start focussing on the skills that would be useful there. i.e. My ideal is a product company/start-up that uses Rails/Ruby, writes tests, and cares about clean, maintainable code. JS(React) in the front end is nice too. Currently I’m not so interested in DevOps or designing UI, so I only learn enough to get by.
Having a solid image of what you want to be helps you understand what is important to focus on during the bootcamp, and how to sell yourself when you come out at the other end.
Thank you mhbh,
That helps a lot although it sounds simple when you are trying to make these kind of choices it can be hard in the moment. I have decided to put it on hold for now as all the courses are running remote due to the virus.
I do not believe we want the same job but I am going to try and match my boot-camp to the requirements being asked for in the job I want.
Thank you,
Snow