S2E5: Leaving College to Attend a Coding Bootcamp with Daniel Thorne

Laurence:
Hey, it's Laurence Bradford. Welcome to Season 2 of the Learn to Code With Me podcast, where I'm chatting with people who taught themselves how to code and are now doing amazing things with their newly found skills.

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Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Learn to Code With Me podcast. I am your host, Laurence Bradford. In today's episode, I talk with Daniel Thorne. Daniel is a 20 year old developer currently working as a software engineering apprentice at Common Living. He dropped out of Brandeis University where he was studying computer science to learn to program in a more hands on approach at Fullstack Academy, a coding bootcamp.

If you're thinking about leaving college, or attending a coding bootcamp, this episode is for you. Remember, you can get Show Notes plus a full transcript at learntocodewith.me/podcast. Enjoy!

Hey Daniel, thanks so much for talking with me today.

Daniel:
Hey Laurence, thanks for having me.

Laurence:
So could we just get things going by having you introduce yourself to the audience?

Daniel:
Sure, my name's Daniel Thorne. I am a 20 year old software engineer currently working at Common Co-Living, a co-living startup based out of New York. I dropped out of school about two years ago at this point, or about a year ago, sorry. After spending a year studying computer science and economics and kind of came to the realization at that point that I was less interested in computer science and more interested in getting into the nitty gritty and programming.

Laurence:
Yeah, wow. Kind of going a little further back than in college, I guess in high school, did you always have a fascination with computers? Or how did you end up studying computer science in college?

Daniel:
Yeah, so I think it actually probably goes back a little further than that. When I think I was probably 8 or 9, my dad bought me a Lego Mindstorm's programmable brick, which allowed you to build little, simple contraptions. Then you would program it with a drag and drop programming interface. That's what really got me into it. I like to credit myself with building the original Rumba. I built a very, very early prototype which had basically the same functionality using that Lego Mindstorm’s kit about a year before they released theirs. So that really got me excited about the potential for building, the potential for doing meaningful things with code. I was always very techy, very interested in building computers and phones when they became more popular.

Finally my senior year of high school, they offered, for the first time, a computer science course, which was really just like an intro to Python with some computer science. A little bit maybe. So I took that intro to Python. That was amazing. It was just like exactly what I needed it to be. It was showing me at a basic level what was possible. Then I went to college thinking that I wanted to be a CS major and then I took the intro CS class which was amazing. Took a second CS class which was probably a little less amazing. It was more focused on data structures, less on actually building.

After that I did a summer program at Brandeis, which was, it was in the computer science department but it wasn't computer science, I would say. It was called Voice Web and Mobile Applications. What it was was a three-course program where the first four weeks, it was an eight week program, the first four weeks were essentially a combination of learning web development and then a little bit of an intro to computational linguistics. And then the second half, the final four weeks were, you create a team, you decide on a project, and you just built for about eight hours a day.

That's when I knew I did not want to be studying computer science, I didn't want to be in a classroom listening to lectures and watching power points. I wanted to be building and I wanted to be creating. So kind of like last minute, like the last possible day in August, I declared that I would be taking a leave of absence without really a clear goal of what I was going to be doing in that leave of absence. But ultimately, I left. I found a programming bootcamp that I really liked, Fullstack Academy of Code, and enrolled there. That's when I would say I really began to code, is during that.

Laurence:
Yeah, wow, that's such an interesting story. So I have to ask, what did your parents think when you told them that you were going to be taking a leave of absence the day before the semester started?

Daniel:
Right, so I guess it wasn't like that much of a last minute decision. It had kind of been like, there had been conversations about it for months prior. I think they were very, very skeptical, but they supported me. I've been very lucky to have parents who have always been my number one fans and they believed in me. I don't know why they did.

Laurence:
That's good. You didn't have a plan, but it sounds like you always were very industrious growing up and you made a bunch of these different things and you obviously made good decisions since you went on a good path. So you decided to not go back to school. What was the time frame between when you made that decision and then started at Fullstack?

Daniel:
Sure. So the time frame, I started Fullstack November 2nd, so that's like two full months of having nothing to do. So the first month was just a lot of applications. I talked to a friend and found out about Hack Reactor out in San Francisco, which sounded amazing. I immediately interviewed there, I immediately got rejected because I literally had no idea what I was doing.

Then I kind of hunkered down a little bit, took studying for those assessments more seriously. Then interviewed at a couple other places, ultimately Fullstack was the favorite of the places I got in. I think I heard back from them beginning of October. And then the month prior to the beginning of the program start is doing prep work. So that's what I occupied myself with and also bothered my friends at the University of Maryland. I went up there a lot and made their lives more annoying, probably.

Laurence:
Wait, so you were living, where are you from originally?

Daniel:
Oh sorry, I'm from D.C.

Laurence:
Oh, okay, I was thinking you were up in Boston going to the University, I was like, wow, that's quite the drive to go see your friends. But okay, if you're from D.C. going there, that makes sense then.

Daniel:
Yeah, so I was living at home at the time and when I didn't have work to do I would just go up to Maryland and just bother them.

Laurence:
So basically you were in college anyway, except your weren't going to classes. You still were hanging out around that end. So you started the Fullstack November 2nd you said. So you've just relocated to New York, I assume?

Daniel:
Yeah, so relocating to New York was my biggest fear. Relocating anywhere, whether it was like San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Austin, I had no idea what I was doing. Still don't. I was in touch with the admissions office at Fullstack and they put me in touch with the admissions rep at Common, which is now where I work. So they set that up. I toured a co-living space via FaceTime, signed a lease, and that was it. I've been there since.

Laurence:
So you've been where you're interning or working now, since November 2nd of, what was that, 2015?

Daniel:
Yeah.

Laurence:
Oh wow, so you live still where you work. Is that the office that you go to?

Daniel:
No, so the office is right next to Grand Central. But I live in the first house that opened up. Common opened its doors November 1st, I moved in November 1st. So it was all very coincidental, everything that happened after that, I guess.

Laurence:
No, that's so awesome. I didn't realize that where you worked was also where you lived and that you moved there right when you moved to New York. Wow, that's really, that's such a crazy story, that's amazing. So how long did it take you to find a place to live? As the listeners know I moved to New York in July of 2016. That was a huge fear of mine too, was finding a place to live. Because literally, if you are watching a sitcom or something or a movie, they make fun, it's a joke, how hard it is to find an apartment in New York, right? So I was freaking out. You found one pretty quickly? You found a place?

Daniel:
Yeah, my issue was not finding a place, it was finding a place that I was pretty certain I would not be living with crazy roommates. I found a couple places, I was in touch with a couple people for like two weeks and finally the connection came through with Common and that all happened over like three days I think, the process of seeing the place and being approved and then joining.

Laurence:
Yeah, I'm just so fascinated by the fact that, were you 19 at the time?

Daniel:
Yeah.

Laurence:
Okay, it always just amazes me when I talk to the people who are a bit younger than I am. When I was 19 I feel like I was not that organized. Like finding a place?

Daniel:
Oh, I'm not. This was, I had my hand held through the entire process by Fullstack and by Common. I don't think I could have done it more easily.

Laurence:
So Fullstack also helped you find a place as well?

Daniel:
Yeah, Fullstack linked me up with Common and I think they partnered with a couple housing places so they also had a founder house and, when it was around, Crash, but it has since closed its doors, I believe.

Laurence:
Okay, got it. Back to the story. So you moved to New York, November 2nd, you start Fullstack. How was that? How was the coding bootcamp experience, especially compared to college? That's something that people ask me all the time, is if they should go to college or if they should go to a coding bootcamp. So I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

Daniel:
I don't know if one is necessarily a substitute for the other. Personally I found the coding bootcamp experience just to be absolutely incredible and eye opening as a learning experience. The environment at the bootcamp was what I expected college to be. Like people were there because they wanted to be there. People who left, most of them well paying jobs, comfortable, secure, did not need to be there, to come here to learn. It was such an exciting atmosphere to be in and it was so eye opening because that is what I wanted and that is what college did not give me.

That being said, I don't think what I learned at Fullstack necessarily replaces what I would have gotten from college. I think I would have gotten more comprehensive computer science understanding. I still lack a lot of understanding about more CS fundamentals, more basic data structures and algorithms. I think that at some point I'm going to need to go back, because I don't think that it's wise to try to progress forever without having those understandings.

But I don't know, it's not my primary concern right now. Right now I'm just very focused on learning as much as I can. If that's computer science, great, if it's just programming languages, that's also great. With regard to what the atmosphere was like, I can't emphasize enough how much fun it was to be in a place like that, like excited to be learning.

Laurence:
Yeah, wow. So how many weeks or months was the program?

Daniel:
The program was 12 weeks but it was a little bit weird because we had about three weeks off for Christmas break and New Year's. We started in November, we ended at the end of February.

Laurence:
So when the program wrapped up, can you just talk a bit about what you did after?

Daniel:
I had a little bit of a unique scenario in that I didn't have to look for a job. The Fullstack offers a fellowship program that they select, it depends on the size of the next incoming class, but somewhere between six and ten students from the previous class to be kind of like TAs/software engineers at Fullstack for the duration of the next cohort that's starting. So I very lucky to be chosen as one of those so that kind of took the pressure off finding a job and more just continuing to look. So I haven't had to look for a job yet, which is very lucky. So I don't really have too much experience in that domain.

Laurence:
So then how, but now, you're no longer doing the fellowship, you have the internship so how did you kind of end up interning there?

Daniel:
Living at Common, I befriended, at that point, the only software engineer at Common. Towards the end of my fellowship he reached out to me and said, "Hey, what are you up to this summer? Interested in interning at Common?" And I was like, "Hell yes." Instead of having to look for a job I just get handed one? That was great. So I went in and I did a very quick, very brief technical interview. That was it. The fellowship ended, I went home for a week just to decompress for a little bit and the internship started right back up.

Laurence:
Wow. So is your internship done? It's September now that we're recording this. Are you still interning there?

Daniel:
So the internship technically ended on Friday, this past Friday. But I was offered an extension, it's not really clear, but at this point my official title is software engineer apprentice and that's my title for the next three months and then it could go full-time after that, it could not. The future's a little bit murky but I hope I will find out soon.

Laurence:
Yeah, you have definitely quite the different story. For the people listening last season, Becca Refford, I'll make sure we put her episode in the Show Notes, she had a similar story where she left college, studying computer science, to work full-time and she had about three different internships and it was really interesting. I love you story because you moved to New York, which is scary. It's not the easiest thing to do. And then you've just been kind of, you've had a pretty wild ride since. At the same time, you haven't really interviewed yet.

Daniel:
Yeah, I haven't interviewed at all.

Laurence:
That's actually, it just kind of shows that you're legit enough that they don't even feel the need to interview you. That's what I think.

Daniel:
I don't know about that. I think I've had, I've made some very good connections over the past few months, or over the past 10 months I guess at this point, and that has just really, they've all been there for me when I really needed it.

Laurence:
That's gold, yes. Who you know is so much more than what you know.

Daniel:
Oh my god, yes. It's all based on connections out there.

Laurence:
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So how did you befriend the only software engineer at the place where you were living? How are you making these connections?

Daniel:
He lived on the floor above me, so we all hung out. It was never, we had joked about me working for him one day but it was never a serious conversation. We would always just talk, hang out, our conversations would lead to tech so we would talk about what we were working on, about what we're seeing in the industry, and I guess that gave him the sense that I knew what I was doing. When the company allocated him some sort of budget to get an intern, he thought of me, which is very nice.

Laurence:
Yeah, and you're still working with him today, right?

Daniel:
Yeah.

Laurence:
Okay, is it just you too now or is there anyone else at the company?

Daniel:
When I first started it was me, him, and one other intern. But we've since on-boarded three full-time engineers and a product manager. So it's like a very powerful department at this point. Very smart people working in it.

Laurence:
And how many people, just out of curiosity, work at the company total?

Daniel:
That's a good question. I would say around 35 maybe? But we're spread across the Midwest, the East Coast, the West Coast, so I don't know exactly how many people work here total.

Laurence:
So what do you do in your day to day? What do you build? What does your job there sort of entail?

Daniel:
Yeah, sure. When I first started, we were launching a new version of our external facing website, so the majority of my job was just being handed a mock up and saying 'build this.' So it was a lot of frontend work. A lot of jQuery. We don't use a frontend framework for our external site, which I think is actually a very good idea.

So I spent the first probably three months just building out that website and helping in any way I could. And then over the past month-ish I've been transitioning into more of a backend role, helping to build out features for our admin facing website, which helps them kind of control admissions. So our backend is in Ruby on Rails, so it's been very much a learning experience for me, because my bootamp taught fullstack JavaScript, so it was Node on the backend. So Ruby and Rails are both very new concepts that I'm still learning every day.

Laurence:
Do you think it was easier to pick up Ruby on Rails because you had the experience doing the fullstack JavaScript at the bootcamp?

Daniel:
Totally, I think that a lot of my problems with understanding Ruby on Rails come from the amount of magic that kind of happens for you. And it's really not as much the magic that is occurring in the background, but kind of where the magic ends and where you have to pick up. So with Node, I'm used to having to manually build out every route that I want to have available on the server. With Rails you can just generate them immediately and it just kind of does it. But definitely coming from a web development background-ish, it certainly helped. But I, again, I still have not come anywhere close to any level of mastery. So I'm still learning.

Laurence:
Right, everyone's always still learning though.

Daniel:
No definitely, I wasn't saying it's a bad thing. Just that I can't speak too intelligently on it.

Laurence:
Yeah, no worries. I think that's really interesting or just awesome that you kind of went from building the external client facing site, or user facing I guess you could say, to now you're building the internal sort of admin area, right?

Daniel:
Yeah, it's definitely been a shift because with the external site everything has to be polished, has to be 100% ready to go, there can't be any UI bugs. There's a little bit of slack that can be cut for the internal tooling. It's like there's a different workflow. Some things can't break, like our billing cannot break because if our billing breaks people, it's very bad. But there's other slack that can be cut. It's just it's a very, even within the same engineering team, working on one product vs. another, it's a very different experience.

Laurence:
Yeah, so it's a small company, I work at a small company as well and there's, I think you said there's a handful of your engineers, how does that look like? Do you do code reviews, are you working with other people, how does that sort of play out day to day?

Daniel:
I think it really depends on the situation. As an intern, I work probably more closely with every individual person than anyone else just because I'm always asking for help and always trying to learn from their expertise.

So my day to day is mainly just like I'm handed a task at the beginning of a two week sprint and I work on that until I'm done and that usually involves building a preliminary version and then meeting with one of the people on my engineering team and like pass everything by them, make sure they thought it was a good idea, good implementation, etc. Once I feel comfortable with the quality of my code, the quality of my implementation, I'll submit a request and have a code review. At that point it's just like a back and forth between me and whoever's code reviewing it. That could be code style, code quality, it could be just like the entire implementation they might not like. But it's a very good feedback loop.

Laurence:
Yeah, that's awesome. I think that's something that a lot of college programs, to my knowledge, don't talk about as much.

Daniel:
Totally.

Laurence:
Yeah, could you maybe speak on that? I know you mentioned sprints so I'm assuming you probably use Agile or something?

Daniel:
Yes.

Laurence:
Talk about some things that you never learned in school or things you know your friends aren't learning that you got to learn on the job.

Daniel:
Really just like the higher level idea of collaboration. It was never apparent to me at school that the majority of the program I'm going to be doing is working in a team. It's like explicitly against the rules in college to work on a project or on a programming assignment with another person. You can get kicked out of school for that.

But there's not a single thing that I've worked on as a developer that I have not gotten help from someone, that I've not worked directly with someone. I think it's totally misleading to prepare people to be completely independent and to make people think that they're never going to be able to ask for help and never be able to work with someone. That's what school does. They don't give you a good idea of what you're actually going to hit as a real software developer once you're out there in the industry.

Laurence:
Yeah. I feel like it's the opposite in the real world. If you can't work with other people well, that could really hurt your chances of getting a job or staying at a job. You have to be easy to work with.

Daniel:
Yeah, definitely. And every engineer who's been hired at Common, actually every employee who's been hired at Common, goes through both a technical interview, to make sure they're up to snuff in terms whatever expertise they're going to be working with, but they also go through a..

Laurence:
A behavioral?

Daniel:
Yeah, behavioral, that's what I was going for. Just to make sure they fit in with the teams.

Laurence:
Yeah, so important. Definitely.

Daniel:
Another thing you also don't realize in college is how important it is to work with other people to learn. When you're working by yourself you have this one idea and you don't have anyone to question why you're going to go down that route. You don't have anyone to say, "Is there a better way to do it? Why are you doing it this way?" When you work with someone, those are the questions that are asked most frequently. Like, "Does this make sense? Is there a better way to do it? Is there a more efficient way to do it? Is there a cleaner way to do it?" And I think that's probably where you learn the most.

Laurence:
So do you have any advice for people that could be listening that are in college right now, maybe they're in a CS program, maybe they're not. Maybe they're in another technical program or what have you. Any insights from what you've learned so far, on how to prepare yourself for the "real world." I know, I'm kind of laughing myself because you're 20 years old and I'm asking for real world. But really on your own you've made it quite far in the last year since you decided to leave college. You moved to New York, you have an internship, you're surviving. What would you give your peers? Any insights?

Daniel:
I think the best thing you can do if you want to learn is pick up a project with a friend and commit to doing it two times a week. Just working on it for a couple hours two times a week. Work together, pair program, just build. That's on a personal level. On a more social, more professional level I guess, is just go to meetups. I'm not good at it myself. I'm not a big fan of just going out in public and meeting random people. For me, what I found most effective, the most effective way of meeting other people is going to hackathons. I've been to seven or eight now. They're a fantastic way to meet people, to meet recruiters, to meet other engineers working on similar problems that you are. To meet other interesting people. I think that's a phenomenal way to grow as a professional.

Laurence:
Definitely. As we said earlier in this conversation, it's all about who you know, not what you know.

Daniel:
Yes.

Laurence:
Whatever works for you. Hackathons, meetups, cocktails, not cocktails, but when you meet up at happy hour.

Daniel:
That's a little tough for me, I can't go to bars yet.

Laurence:
Oh right, right. No happy hours for you yet.

Daniel:
No happy hours for me, just sad hours.

Laurence:
That's really it Daniel. Do you have any other advice that you could give to people, whether they're college age or not, just about transitioning into tech?

Daniel:
Not beyond just build. That's the best way to learn.

Laurence:
And meet people, right?

Daniel:
Build and meet people. You gotta build to impress the people you meet. But building is most important.

Laurence:
Very true. Thank you so much Daniel. Where can people find you online?

Daniel:
Great question. You can email me, I'm ldthorne96@gmail.com. Yeah, I think that's probably the best way to get in touch with me.

Laurence:
Awesome, thanks so much.

Daniel:
Thank you.

Laurence:
I hope you enjoyed the interview with Daniel. Again, the Show Notes for this episode plus a full transcript can be found at learntocodewith.me/podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe on whichever podcast player you're listening on. I would also be so appreciative if you could leave a rating and review. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll see you next week.

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