Stumbled on a stat that 70% of coding bootcamp grads don't finish a side project

I was reading a report from Course Report the other day, and it said around 70% of bootcamp graduates never actually complete a personal project after finishing. That surprised me because I thought most people just jumped straight into building apps or portfolios. I've been stuck on my own little weather app for about 3 weeks now, just tweaking the CSS over and over again. It made me feel a bit better about my own slow progress honestly. Has anyone else run into that wall where you just can't seem to ship something simple?

2 comments

2 Comments

skylerg171mo ago

That 70% number from Course Report feels like one of those stats that sounds bad but actually makes PERFECT sense to me. I graduated from Hack Reactor two years ago and honestly, I've started maybe eight side projects and finished exactly zero. The thing people don't talk about is how bootcamps teach you to build things with training wheels on - you have a spec, deadlines, and a curriculum telling you exactly what to do. Real life coding is totally different, you're just staring at a blank screen trying to figure out where to even begin. I think the people who DO finish side projects are usually the ones who already had some coding experience before bootcamp, or they're just wired differently than the rest of us. So yeah, taking three weeks on a weather app sounds pretty normal to me, I've spent a month on a todo list app just because I kept adding new features that I never actually needed.

claireg811mo ago

Oh man, I totally get this! What finally helped me was picking something super tiny that I actually needed for myself. I stopped trying to make impressive portfolio stuff and just built a dumb little tool to track how many customers came in during my shifts at the hardware store - took me like two evenings and it's ugly as sin but it works! The secret for me was starting with something boring that solved a real problem I had, not trying to copy some cool app tutorial. Once I finished that one little thing, it made me feel way more confident to start another. Now I just focus on small wins that take a weekend instead of dreaming up these huge projects that overwhelm me.