I'm no stranger to company culture. In my early twenties working for lululemon, I got a strong dose of manifestos, culture training, and accountability. The experience left me with mixed feelings about culture- on one hand, I learned to be more self-aware and enjoyed communicating with my peers and colleagues in the same language, but on the other, I occasionally felt like someone was switching our kombuchas for Kool-aid. So, naturally, I went on high alert when I first learned that culture was such an integral part of Dev Bootcamp.
Today I watched DBC's founder, Shereef Bishay, talk via webcam about contrasting mindsets going into this program and how they affect not only the individual experience, but the group as whole. He encouraged us to enter the program with a "kitchen" or "creator mindset" versus a "restaurant" or "consumer mindset". In the creator mindset, the student looks at the program as a big experiment, bringing their knowledge to the table and taking ownership of their personal experience. In contrast, a student in the consumer mindset will bring entitlement to the program, feeling as though they are owed a good experience because they paid tuition. By the end of the talk, my impression was that this is a guy who really cares about the ongoing health of Dev Bootcamp.
Personally, when making the decision to apply for DBC, I saw the experience as an investment. But not simply a financial transaction- an investment in myself and my future. It's easy to make the numbers work, but it's not as easy to convince yourself and truly believe you can pick up a new skill in nineteen weeks. When I got the news that I was accepted into DBC, I felt cautiously ecstatic about diving into a highly collaborative learning experience. I thrive in group atmospheres and love being challenged, especially in an immersive-type setting. But I knew before all the "fun" began, I would have to endure nine weeks of independent learning- my worst nightmare.
You can imagine my surprise when I log in Day 1 and see the curriculum heavily loaded with words like "meditation", "work life balance", and "tiny habits". With an open mindset, I take it all in. Let me tell you, by the time I was carpal-tunnel-deep in command line training, I was no longer pessimistic about culture training. I'm just counting my blessings that someone took the time to create a curriculum that offers tools that keep the challenges of learning a new skill in perspective.
To some, culture may just appear to be a marketing ploy, but according to the graduate students I've talked to personally, it's what makes Dev Bootcamp unique from other programs out there and its graduate students more effective engineers. Week 1 only further supported that conclusion. If you look at the graduate employment rates, it's undeniable that it's working. As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding, not the Kool-aid.