Even though you’re technically entering your GA bootcamp as an army of one, it is far from a solo journey—a few days is all it takes to realize how heavily you come to depend on your classmates and the rest of the GA support system. Whether it’s working together to complete a homework assignment or needing a quick pep talk, your peers help lift your skill level and your spirits when you need it most.
About halfway through your cohort, you’ll reach an inflection point. You’ve made it far enough where you can hold your own. You’ve probably developed some sense of independence and how to break through a coding problem using the resources around you. Heck, you’re even a GitHub aficionado at this stage.
But then your instructors lay the news on you—Project 3: The Group Project.
Enter the Group Project
Some of us grew up loving group projects. Others—not so much.
In theory, a group project provides the opportunity to help lighten the load, and also offers the enjoyment of collaborating alongside peers, which makes for a more engaging and fulfilling journey. However, there’s also the reality—about accountability and alignment. Who will be responsible for keeping the team on task to meet deadlines? How will it all come together? Will everyone participate equally and carry their weight?
For aspiring software developers, this gets even scarier when you consider the thought of having to merge branches of code and managing time-sensitive tasks that others are counting on you to complete.
The Quest for Common Ground
For me and my group, we started off on the wrong foot. Despite being a well-rounded mix of four budding technologists, we couldn’t agree on anything.
One person wanted to do only backend stuff. The next person wanted to do the same. Then another person wanted to use a different API he’d just found. The backend guy switched to wanting to do frontend, but we already had someone assigned to that. Then someone had a “better” idea of what to build and we scrapped the original plan altogether. It was an endless merry-go-round of disagreement and shifting responsibility.
I took the initiative to become the mediator and help us find common ground. We mapped out each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and agreed where we could all add the most value in the quickest amount of time. Finally, after much negotiation and compromise, we agreed on each other’s assignments and got cracking on coding things up.
Coming Together and Crushing Challenges
The next problem came just before Christmas break—we all lived in very different physical locations (this was well before the days of regular Zooming), and we were under a tight deadline to get ~90% complete by New Year’s Day, per our instructor’s suggestion.
As the group’s designated Git commander and scrum master, I offered up my apartment in Stamford, CT as our holiday headquarters. My team agreed to take the train in from Queens, New Jersey, and Manhattan during a snowstorm. We set up shop with folding card tables in my living room.
For two straight days, we leaned on each other to break through problems, delegate tasks, and work through the painstaking complications of merging code branches for the first time. I recall one problem, where we needed a piece of code to fire on one page type, but not on others. We ended up discovering Regex for the first time and found a useful tool, regex101.com, to help us build the logic to fire our JavaScript at the right time.
We banged our heads against the wall trying to figure out the nuances of escaping characters and building basic conditional logic, but we figured it out and rejoiced in the fruits of our labors by finishing the day with a cold beer. A fitting trophy in the midst of a nor’easter.
By New Year’s Eve, we were hovering around 75% complete, but we needed one more session to lock in our goal of 90%. Instead of going back to my place, we agreed to meet at a coffee shop near GA’s NYC campus.
For some reason, we picked a Starbucks with no heat and an unbelievably cold draft that would whip us in the face whenever someone new entered the building.
I’ll never forget the four of us wearing full winter garb as we broke through the last remaining roadblocks before heading out for our respective New Year’s celebrations. I remember leaving that Starbucks with my feet feeling numb, as though I’d just trudged through a snowbank barefoot. But it felt damn good to know the hardest part was behind us.
Achieving a Common Goal—Together
When we went back to class shortly after New Year’s, our group was by far the most on-track and the closest to being complete. We were proud of the way we came together as a team, worked through our differences, and made sacrifices of our personal time during the holiday break to achieve a common goal.
This war story may seem trivial, but to anyone who’s gone through GA or a similar type of immersive bootcamp, this narrative may bring about some PTSD. There’ll definitely be times when a task or deadline seem insurmountable. And there’ll also certainly be times when personalities or people’s schedules will clash. But just like any good coding challenge, one must break the problem down into smaller, more digestible chunks in order to find the optimal solution. Take a breath—this too shall pass.
Ready to take the first step toward having your own war story to share? Sign up for an info session today.
BOUT TIM BRUNS
A few years after graduating college, Tim realized his lifelong dream of becoming a sales trader. But after reaching the summit, he quickly realized his dream career was the wrong fit — for a litany of reasons. So at 27 years young, he had a “eureka” moment, quit his supposed dream job, and attended a General Assembly coding bootcamp. It was both the most radical and important decision he’d ever made. With help from General Assembly, he re-learned how to learn immersively, acquired domain expertise, and landed as an early employee at a scrappy tech startup — where he still works today as a Team Lead & Sr. Solutions Engineer. Check out Tim’s blog for everything from advice on choosing a coding bootcamp to no-nonsense LA restaurant reviews.