Forem: Joel Kram

Whats next?

Joel Kram — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 19:15:19 +0000

So, it's the week after bootcamp. Week 14... what's next?

The last week of the Northcoders Software development bootcamp is focused on careers, interviews, resume writing and all the in's and out's of finding that first role on the software developer ladder.

With an overall decline in work for emerging and young people (in March 2025, unemployment amongst young people has risen by 14.8%, up from 13.8 the previous year) and the drastic state of film and television in the UK (my previous work/career)- a BECTU survey in 2023 noted the 73% of respondents (around 4000) were out of work with more than half stating they would not rejoin the industry... this is all to say that there feels like a general trend to not hire young talent. The economy here is in a great squeeze and the messaging is clear - we only want mid and senior devs with experience.

I'm feeling pretty realistic about my chances after finishing this bootcamp. After flubbing a call with a recruiter (he was very lovely) I realised that there is a long way to go still before landing that first role on the ladder. In that call, the recruiter asked me if the NC team had let me know what the industry was like, I said what I thought.. that it was a bit rough. He went on to tell me 650 people had applied for this junior role and he was interviewing 20...

I'm not sure how to be competitive in that market but I'm going to try a couple of things.

Keep making (and most importantly, finishing) projects
Learn new skills - or explore tech I'm interested in
Apply apply apply apply apply

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05871/
https://bectu.org.uk/news/bectu-calls-for-government-intervention-as-new-research-shows-uk-film-and-tv-industry-in-crisis

NC Bootcamp - The Tail End

Joel Kram — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 11:05:25 +0000

Here we are - week 10 out of 13? The course has flown by, and honestly I do feel a bit brain-dead. I want to try and recollect some of my reflections to look back on this time. Certainly it has been interesting, expanding, thoughtful, challenging and fulfilling.

Off the top of my head, here are some thoughts:

Is it enough to get a job? No way ... you will need to continue practicing and creating projects for sure. The content flies by so fast that you only skim the fundamentals and put into practice a little bit - which means your code is bloated and inefficient. An example of this is my front-end react project (I do have some critiques of how this block was structured).

The content on front end was blown by. Not only was each day a new concept, but it was (for me) certainly more difficult than back end as it introduced a new framework. While this is to be expected, it does mean that my portfolio piece does need a lot of extra help. For example, my state, use of useEffect, api calls and contexts are all over the shop and don't follow a design paradigm. Compared to back-end, where everything felt very structured and there was a comprehensive process, front-end felt like you were being 'rushed' through. I'm lucky i've had experience with CSS and HTML before hand, otherwise I can imagine someone being totally lost.

I am considering actually that most people have not interacted with the DOM or used vanilla JS to create a webpage - so in that sense, I did fly through that week. Perhaps also, it is the part of me that knew this was portfolio so I wanted every design pixel perfect -- which just isn't going to happen in this bootcamp. The great thing about these projects is that there is room to extend them and we are encouraged to do so.

I plan to neaten my front-end right up, make it actually look good and implement a few of the features that just are missing at the moment (a useless home button or post an article, just to name a couple).

Overall, the project isn't about completing a beatiful application - it's about learning how to build out a front-end that consumes an API, and for that, it's a success.

Needed?
In the end, it culminates with a front end news like web app that consumes your API backend created in the first half of the course.

Either way, out of front end and into the projects...

This is a chance to work on a group application project from start to end. It has to be full-stack, has to include some new tech and be complicated enough to be a challenge (but completable). The process follows closely the SDLC or software development life-cycle. We first come together as a group and pitch ideas. We talked about how they were CRUD applications, what was the use and most importantly for our group, how feasible it was to complete in a week. We landed on a Geography quiz game app that has a lootbox earning mechanic to make it silly.

This process does have a few growing pains... Group dynamics being one of them. It's difficult in any sense to get everyone on the same page, especially with competing ideas about how stuff should be completed. I found myself falling into a bit of a project manager role and trying to keep the group on track, as well as push people to make decisions. This is also considering everyone's experience and confidence with the project.

There is ample time to 'spike' and I do appreciate the real-life AGILE paradigm you follow. For me, it makes sense and it is a nice way to design software from start to finish. We are just about to enter the building stage of the project so... we shall see how it goes.

Back to - can I get a job?
It is clear to me at the moment, on looking at job postings and requirements, as well as discussions about bootcamp booms and what junior devs need at the moment, that the bootcamp is not enough to land you a role. You will have to continue creating projects. You will have to use new techs and get up to date on industry standards (depending where you want to work). I'm keenly interested in looking at PHP and TypeScript at the moment as there are lots of web dev/software jobs that seem to require these. I have a few fun project ideas to implement and I'm excited to keep the momentum going. Essentially, I need a job asap and I am super committed to making it happen.

My Northcoders Experience

Joel Kram — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 18:42:17 +0000

My Northcoders Experience

2024: Post-Pandemic London

I'm writing this to document my experiences in the Northcoders bootcamp. I'm currently in week 6 out of 13 (just starting the second week of backend) so it is pretty goddamn intense! However, I really found other blogs about bootcamp experience useful when researching what to do with my life. I'll be honest, it's tricky thinking about whether to commit to a 3-month stint of maybe not earning an income, spending all day every day thinking about code and rushing through a curriculum at breakneck speed, but so far - it's worth it?

I came into the big career switch after moving to London three years ago to work in television. I say big career switch, but really I've barely started a career. It was going well in TV until the actors strikes in 2023, since then, I (and many others) have been out of work. I really struggled with instability and low wages (HIGH stress) for a couple of years, which really propelled me into a switch to a tech career. I'm looking for stability, longevity and something that is challenging and fulfilling.

My interest in coding has grown over the years. In my uni studies as a fine art student with photography, I became interested in coding for making visual designs that were interactive. I began to follow artists
like Ryoji Ikeda

and Take Shimurata ( )

and would try (and fail) to make versions of these crazy glitchy visuals for my own. Coming from a background in design, these works really appealed to me as they felt so abstracted from physically making work, but also so completely non-human — impossible to create with traditional tools.

Eventually, after a lot of research and vetting the good bootcamps from the bad, I found Northcoders - a 13 week intensive software bootcamp focusing on Javascript.

There is a small entry test into the bootcamp, and Northcoders do provide some free JS learning tools before you take it on. I would also recommend joining a drop in session prior to your test as the test isn't so much about your JS ability but almost as much about your ability to discuss and reason the decisions behind your code. I had prior experience with some of the famous self-taught courses (The classics: The Odin Project, Udemy etc) and I would highly recommend giving some of these a go before the test, just so you are familiar with the kinds of questions you will be asked.

Northcoders‘s bootcamp (a.k.a. The Developer Pathway) is a 4 x 3 weeks course (13 in total with careers week) with 4 separate blocks:

Fundamentals
Back End
Front End
Project Phase

Is it difficult?

Short answer: Yes
Long Answer: Not entirely

Like any institutional study, you get out what you put in. What I mean by this is that you will not understand the concepts in the first day, and that is okay! It might even be on purpose. The content is designed to give you sort of the fundamental context behind Javascript and developing. If you want to look into any of the concepts on the course in more detail, you will have to do it yourself (an essential developer skill you might say). There are, of course, some absolute geniuses in your cohort who have that kind of logical brain that just 'gets' it all. I would implore anyone who is like me and can't help but compare yourself to others, to try and realise that the only person you are competing with is yourself... as lame as that sounds. This is mentioned multiple times on the course, but I will say as someone who has a major hang up about failing, or imposter syndrome, it is actually useful to realise that these peers are amazing for learning from, rather than competing against.

Very unfortunately, just as my cohort started, it looked like some funding had been cut from Northcoders, which meant resources were a little tighter. While there is not a noticeable major difference in quality of the teaching, it is a huge shame to see some of the tutors dropping off over the course.

As far as the course material - I would say it is pretty comprehensive. Through the fundamentals block you are hit with 'katas' to strengthen up your vanilla JS skills (it's actually mostly problem-solving skills). In this block I would usually end the day feeling extremely drained and brain-foggy, I expect mostly as this was a muscle I hadn't really stretched in years. You are also taught industry tools and frameworks, including Node.Js, TDD (jest and supertest), MVC, express.js and mostly are working in pair programming.

I actually found this to be incredibly useful, as my cohort are really friendly, respectful and much more logical than me. It might seem like a chore at first and you really do slow down on the katas, but it does expose you to many different problem-solving approaches and avenues you just wouldn't comprehend otherwise.

Shoutout to Simon for all the soundtracks to code to!
https://jorgkuning.bandcamp.com/album/elvers-pass

Most of the material in the fundamentals block you will not finish... And this is by design. You are taught a concept in the morning, have the afternoon to practice, and by the next day you are onto something entirely new. I do feel that this means the concepts aren't entirely locked in, but I think a large part of developing isn't knowing how to expressly do something, or to be able to memorise algorithms, but to know where to look when you want to solve a problem, and maybe more importantly, how to recognise what KIND of problem you need to solve.

When you get up to the backend block, the style of teaching shifts from day-by-day, fly by your pants concept learning to more of a building on the knowledge from yesterday. You begin to work on databases, building a seed function all the way to a fully tested server and RESTful api. This is where some of these concepts you learned in fundamentals really shine. I've actually just finished deploying and hosting my first back-end (server and API). It feels good to finally finish something, even though it is still a massive WIP. I'm looking forward to polishing up and adding a front-end soon.

I'll definitely keep writing about this course as I get through it :), this is kinda fun!

Thanks so much
JK

https://github.com/pooch1e
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-kram/