Hey folks,
I’m considering enrolling in the Springboard Bootcamp to switch up my career. Has anyone here taken it? How was your experience? Did it help you land a job? Would love to hear some honest reviews before I dive in!
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I took a springboard course (even though I have a PhD) but didn’t finish the final project entirely before landing a job. The course was helpful because it taught me how to organize my GitHub portfolio, reframe my projects using “data science jargon,” and it was great to have someone checking in on me weekly to keep me on track.
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I am not very familiar with Springboard, but you should check the details about what counts as a “job offer.” From what I’ve heard about similar programs, the jobs they require don’t always need to be high-paying—some might be around $50,000, but it varies by program. I’ve also heard that if you don’t land a job in the industry, they might offer you a teaching position within the program and consider that a job offer.
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The data shows that the average and middle salaries for reported job offers fall between $80,000 and $90,000. The list of job titles revealed that around 35% were for ‘data scientist,’ 30% for ‘data analyst,’ and about 9% for ‘machine learning engineer.’ While getting a job offer seems promising, it’s important to note that securing one is still quite uncertain.
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During my last semester of university, I completed the Springboard program while pursuing my CS degree. The curriculum mainly consists of standard projects paired with DataCamp courses and requires you to create two Capstone projects on your own. You have a mentor who is supposed to meet with you weekly to discuss topics, but in my experience, most mentors (95% or more) were ineffective and indifferent. They are supposed to review your work and respond to questions you submit a day in advance, but they rarely engage with your questions or provide meaningful feedback. After switching mentors twice without improvement, I stopped relying on them. Career coaches are somewhat helpful but can come off as condescending, offering mostly basic advice. The first half of the curriculum covers the data science pipeline, while the last part focuses on deep learning, an area where I found the mentors to be lacking in knowledge. Overall, I would only recommend Springboard if you’re looking to enhance your resume. Most students, according to their Slack channel, struggle to find jobs and often end up as data analysts rather than data scientists. The additional content, such as a mediocre stats textbook and college lecture videos, does not add much value. In short, Springboard is more about adding a line to your resume than genuinely preparing you for a data science role. Self-learning and pursuing internships might be more effective for landing a data science job.