Choosing a coding bootcamp can be a challenge. Not only are you weighing significant decisions about your future, but selecting a reputable bootcamp among a great deal of options can be overwhelming. “What’s the best coding bootcamp?” is too broad of a place to start with so many coding courses at your disposal. Realistically in order to answer that question, you need to consider the costs, benefits, and what outcomes are the most attractive to you: Job placement, core competencies of the coding bootcamp (data science, web development, UI/UX, cyber security), and what eventual jobs the bootcamp will prepare you for in both San Jose and beyond.

As we begin this guide to choosing the best coding bootcamp in San Jose, you have to start with questions that that will put you on the right coding journey for your career:

• What’s driving your interest in coding? What are some of the projects or problems you hope to solve personally and professionally with the skills that a full or a part-time bootcamp can teach?
• What’s your current coding proficiency? Coding bootcamps offer programs to different abilities, and the introductory courses in San Jose-based coding bootcamps can help prepare you to succeed once the term kicks off.
• Consider your budget. Depending on the bootcamp you choose, this may become a factor. While The average bootcamp in San Jose has varying costs, most have several financing options for their students. We’ll discuss this in more detail later in this article.

Consider these questions as you plan for a career in the tech industry in the heart of Silicon Valley. There are several benefits to choosing a coding school in the five boroughs, so let’s explore the advantages of the valley and discuss the type of coding skills you want to learn.

The Benefits of Attending Coding Bootcamps in San Jose

Only a twenty-minute drive from both Cupertino and Mountain View, San Jose is one of the most talent-rich coding cities in the world. The city boasts a rich history of entrepreneurship. It’s the home of companies like Cisco, Hewlett Packard, and Paypal, and continues to incubate and grow startups. The demand for talent post-graduation in the Bay Area is extraordinarily high, so students do well to both learn and work in San Jose.

San Jose’s attraction is more than professional. Those who have San Jose on their short list for their coding education have a positive perception of “the capital of Silicon Valley” and the type of talent the city attracts. There are several other reasons why San Jose is an attractive option for the aspiring software engineer:

• Coding professionals are in high demand. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the employment for software developers will grow 21% through 2028. This is four times higher than the average industry. Software developers earn a median six-figure salary, essentially a requirement for a single-income household in San Jose, and why many bootcamps are transparent about their job placement numbers and the benefits to their students.
  
  Coupled with HackerRank's findings that full-stack developers are among the toughest jobs to find qualified candidates for, selecting an immersive bootcamp with a program that specializes in your area of interest can be invaluable in the marketplace.
• Lots of opportunity to build products that can contribute directly to business challenges. After the housing costs and lush natural wonder of the California coastline, San Jose’s ability to scale technology companies is undeniably a part of its reputation. The same is true for its bootcamps. The coding bootcamps in San Jose attract personalities of all types that share a common thread: they are hyper-focused on addressing big and small challenges in areas like web development, data science, and UX design that unlock potential for enterprising companies in competitive verticals.
  
  The coding bootcamps in San Jose facilitate the type of coding coursework where students can code, collaborate on, and deploy projects that prepare them for real-world development teams. Demonstrating coding expertise and fundamentals is a pivotal interview step at tech startups and in increasingly competitive software engineering roles in corporations.
  
  Choosing the right bootcamp will offer more than just a foundational coding class. It will create an opportunity to learn to position yourself as a respected programmer, work collaboratively with a team, and ideally be a catalyst for building solutions that change the world -- no matter the programming language that solution is built in.
• The epicenter of creative and transformative technology. Choosing one of San Jose’s coding bootcamps not only means having access to the alumni network, but also being strategically positioned within a few miles of world-class creative companies that build scalable, global software. Networking is a lot easier when the drive to meet for coffee or a drink is a stone’s throw from the city. It’s worth having informational meetings with companies based in the San Jose area like Adobe and Cisco about what type of coding skills they look for when hiring from coding bootcamps.

What makes San Jose a desirable place to attend a coding bootcamp?

Silicon Valley remains the powerhouse of global software development, a home to companies that commanded the most venture capital investment in the country.

With that level of capital being invested in startups in the Bay Area, along with the existing Big Four tech companies, at a premium for talent, San Jose and its surrounding suburbs are a recruiting target for companies looking for full stack web developers and other web development roles. Students gravitating more toward careers in data science also have opportunities to network with companies looking for expertise in Python, SQL, Knack, and more.

Lifestyle.

Located in the center of the Santa Clara valley, San Jose is an ideal city to live for those who want to work hard and play hard, but who also want to cut their commute from the more popular San Francisco/Oakland area. While the city does have a bustling downtown, older millennials tend to move with their families just outside to the suburbs. Though homes are pricey (the median cost of a home in San Jose is $1.3 million), salaries are commensurate with the cost of living. San Jose has the 2nd highest GDP per capita in the country. Despite the cost of living, it would be difficult to find a better city to learn coding languages. In recent years, San Jose’s infrastructure benefited from partnering with tech companies to improve connectivity and overall quality of life. The city is a rich network for the coding community with its most famous annual event, Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, typically held in the San Jose Convention Center.

Most coding bootcamps on the West Coast are operating in the same manner as one of theNowIn a world where remote-first experiences are naturally top of mind, San Jose’s individual success at creating a safe reopening provides more options for students to attend a boot camp in person. Students interested in coding (physically) alongside other members of their cohort are communicating their desire to learn and interact with one another in person, and both options will be available once bootcamps can reasonably accommodate the safety of all of its students.

Bootcamps that fit your style. While we’re seeing some positive indicators following the pandemic, future software engineers and developers naturally have different work styles and levels of comfort getting back into the office. Some would like to learn coding outside a home they’ve been confined to for multiple months. Others are moving into homes that have a second bedroom they’ll use as a dedicated workspace.

Immediate Accessibility. On-ground and remote boot camp instructors have the ability to provide quick feedback on questions or projects, whether it be questions on coding challenges, specific information about the curriculum of a coding course, or their advice for applying to that dream data science or web development job you’ve been researching.

Reputation & Prestige San Jose’s startups are competitive and its bootcamps are no different. The city also has reputable on-ground programs including Coding Dojo Silicon Valley Campus between North San Jose and Japantown. Additionally, famously selective and highly desirable bootcamps like The Flatiron School and Fullstack Academy offer online coding bootcamps that can be completed at home or in San Jose’s many coworking spaces. The city also has reputable on-ground programs including Coding Dojo between North San Jose and Japantown.

San Jose is one of the few cities that don't really need a tourism board. No matter where you live, the city’s reputation for unparalleled history, art, fashion, technology, and opportunity precedes it.

Before Attending a Coding Bootcamp in San Jose: Prepare, Prepare, Prepare

Coding bootcamps in San Jose offer several to students. Depending on the chosen programming language, data science immersion, and/or design tracks you choose, curriculums will vary both on content, breadth, and on length. A “typical” bootcamp curriculum will have several paths that require a base knowledge of the concepts. Let’s explore what skills an aspiring software engineer, full stack web developer, or data science professional will need prior to entering the bootcamp.

Prior to enrolling in most bootcamps, you’ll usually need to complete a short assessment on your coding ability. However, San Jose-based programs like Coding Dojo Silicon Valley Campus don’t require a coding challenge for admission. Even so, we recommend that all students brush up on coding fundamentals. Highly reputable online programs like HackReactor will offer free tutorials and support for less experienced, aspiring software engineers. allows each student to dive into the basics of coding in some of the most commonly used programming languages: HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Ruby.

One of the benefits of this important step before applying and then enrolling in the boot camp is that it allows you to assess your current skill level, and choose the programming course that best suits your budget and proficiency. Perhaps more importantly, preparing for your boot camp allows you to understand the nuances of coding languages and engage in introductory projects with other students.

Preparing for the coding bootcamp and the evaluations you’ll complete will help ensure that you receive a return on investment from the time and money you put toward your coding education.

Cost of Coding Bootcamps in San Jose

The cost of a full stack coding bootcamp in San Jose isn’t that different from the national average. According to Nerd Wallet, the average cost for a bootcamp is nearly $13,500, but several different payment options are available should you be exploring different ways to pay for coding school.

If you’re considering paying for a coding boot camp upfront with a credit card, you can consider opening a travel card to meet the minimum benefits of a bonus card while earning miles. However, several other options exist. Many students use third-party financing options like Meritize or Ascent, two popular bootcamp loan options that provide a loan and feature grace periods for repayment. This may not be a bad option for a student projecting to earn a software engineer salary and budgeting after the course is completed.

Considering the high cost of living in San Jose, there’s belt-tightening opportunities for all bootcamp students. Here are three great tricks to funding your coding bootcamp enrollment:

• Apply for every coding scholarship. Several coding bootcamps offer scholarships geared toward increasing the amount of underrepresented coding professionals in the tech sector. Coding Dojo - a bootcamp offering remote and on-ground bootcamps in San Jose (returning to campus once the pandemic variants are under control - offers scholarships incentivizing LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and military veterans to apply and attend the boot camps. Several need-based scholarships are also popping up across different coding schools in the five boroughs.
• Research income-share agreements. Some bootcamp graduates pay for their tuition using income-share agreements (ISAs). An income share agreement is a written agreement between you and a bootcamp provider that says you’ll commit to paying the provider a percentage of your income for an agreed amount of time.
• Project your salary earnings. Carefully evaluate the tech job you can realistically land and the median salary of your desired position. Is that desired position going to be paying you significantly more than your current role? Will it earn you a higher multiple several times over than the cost of the bootcamp itself? For example, if you want to be a full stack developer and or are also seriously considering data science roles, know the market rates for each of those positions.

Deciding to Attend a Coding Bootcamp in San Jose

San Jose’s reputation precedes it. The city that produced Steve Wozniakl is known for its innovation, and a community of top-tier web developers and tech companies awaits bootcamp graduates seeking a personal and professional network. Despite the pandemic, major tech companies like Cisco, HP and Adobe, are planning a safe return to office with an intact roster of full stack developers, data scientists, and software engineers at highly competitive market rates. The potential for career growth as a developer in San Jose is certainly there.

If you’ve been thoughtful about what drives your interest in coding, analyzed the benefits of attending a bootcamp in San Jose, properly budgeted for a life during and after becoming a bootcamp grad, and have a strong sense of what you want to pursue, we can match you with the right program. Click here to match to your future bootcamp in San Jose.