Student views.

Boot camps bolster tech market

Launching his career on the "peripheries of programming," Joe Baumberger got his start in consulting roles for cloud software companies and working on oil field technologies. He began looking forward to the next step in his career after the global energy market collapsed.

The 27-year-old looked at a multitude of options, from traditional graduate school programs to certifications.

"A lot of those, the price tag is higher and it kind of takes you out of the game a little longer. They're less singularly focused. I was thinking, 'What gets you a job or on a career path?"' Baumberger recalls.

Everything he found indicated that if he went down the programming route, Java was the framework to learn in order to land back in a corporate setting. In mid-September, Baumberger started at Skill Distillery, a Greenwood Village-based coding boot camp. The immersive training takes place over 19 weeks and is broken into four chunks--ranging from the fundamentals of programming to HTML, CSS and JavaScript - to prepare students to be full-stack application developers.

"I would say you have to treat it as it's a full-time job," he says, noting the full days of coursework and homework-filled evenings. The program provides individual instruction, financing opportunities, and is certified by the VA to accept Gl Bill benefits. Baumberger says roughly 40 percent of his classmates are veterans.

When he explains to former colleagues, family and friends what brought him to Skill Distillery, he admits he gets mixed reviews.

"For friends that are outside of tech, it takes a little more explaining," he says. "I get positive feedback once I explain it, but I had a lot of friends who went to grad school or law school, just because they weren't sure what they wanted to do. I explain this alternative route is more cost-effective and laser-focused on a skill. That is very marketable today, and people get that."

Baumberger says after the program he hopes to get a job as a junior developer, preferably in Denver, although he's willing to go where the job takes him.

"That's the beautiful thing about this," he says. "It's such a transferable skill, I could apply in any major city or any major Fortune 500 company."

"My wife and I were both members of the very first MBA cohort at Adams State University. The skills, knowledge and connections I gained throughout the program continue to help me be successful in my career. I'm very glad I made the...