“Hey, Melody. If you are a junior today and had to choose, which path would you take? Self-taught or bootcamp?”

Almost immediately, I would have answered the self-taught route. I think it’s no secret to my close circle and my readers that I really dislike bootcamps. Or any learn-shit-quick educational institute.

Not just because of the lack of ethics at play or because the financial burden it poses to its students, but also because I can’t learn in stifling, structured environments. I just don’t see how others can effectively do the same when it comes to creative skills.

I tried that in design school, and a decade prior in Singapore’s rigid education system. It just doesn’t yield results for me.

So am I naturally biased towards being self-taught? Yes. So if you’re reading to get a fair breakdown of which pathway is better, you’re not going to get that, sorry.

There are multiple pathways to enter the UX industry today, the two most prominent ones being joining a bootcamp, or being self-taught. Which one should you choose?

The short answer is that being self-taught is likely more advantageous. The long answer (or the explanation to that answer) is this entire article.

Everyone learns differently, but being self-taught shows me you’re self-motivated and (potentially) a stronger hire

Let’s be real here; Bootcamps are absolutely the easier way out for a lot of you out there. I always like to shit on people who go to bootcamps, especially famous or trending ones, because it definitely shows me that they did little to no research about the industry options and the general market.

The worst part of that is that one of the core skills to be in UX design is research. If you can’t even pick the right bootcamp to join or give a valid, objective reason why you chose this path, it’s a huge red flag.

People who are self-taught are usually the complete opposite of bootcamp-ers. They went the harder way to research free or cheaper resources to learn the craft and did it without putting themselves in financial pressure or much assistance from an educator. That, to me, shows amazing drive and independence, which is a soft-skill I definitely look out for.

A bootcamp-er, however, mostly thrives in structured environments. They can learn quickly with proper training. The downside is that they need to be trained. So this person is very unlikely to thrive in non-structured environments, aka 80% of UX jobs out there.

People’s learning preference actually do affect their career outlook in UX. No one openly admits it.

Of course, I have no proof*, but again, design is ambiguity. No structured learning process can teach you how to navigate that.

*Statistics from my mentoring: Most of my mentees who were from bootcamps usually struggle to get a job, while most of my self-taught mentees are employed fairly quickly after consulting me. You be the judge.

Those who are self-taught likely ask for more sustainable salaries.

Too many people make way too much for the shit that they design, and they feel entitled for the salary bump because they think they deserve the median market rate for their below average skills.

The industry’s salary expectations have gotten absolutely ridiculous. While I’m happy that we’re getting paid more for our work, we should pay people based on their skills and professional maturity, and not based on how much they invested learning the skill or the median salaries of industry leaders who worked hard to get the salary they have today.

Why should a company pay you more just because someone else in your network got more than you? Same titles doesn’t equate to the same job scope and thus, does not equate to you deserving the same salary.

While salary expectations play no part in my hiring decisions, I did notice that those who graduated from expensive programs ask for more than what they deserved, while those self-taught usually request for much less.

In the case of the former, a lower-than-expected package ends up in a disappointing shatter of reality. In the case of the latter, the surprise bump is always greatly appreciated.

And it’s no surprise which group stays longer or grow the most in the company after getting hired.

While I understand salary negotiation strategies, you don’t need to try to upsell your worth to your hiring managers in design. UX managers and talent acquisition teams worth their weight know exactly how much you’re worth, down to all the tiny details on your compensation packages. If you’re worth any bumps above your expectations, we’ll automatically give it to you.

This isn’t Shark Tank or The Price is Right, where we try to pull a fast one on you. Design isn’t a menial-enough job (yet) for acquisition teams to offer you the lowest end of the salary spectrum.

How hiring managers view self-taught vs bootcamp

I asked my small group of hiring network if they’ll hire bootcamp grads. This is a tiny sample size of 5 people*, all anonymous to avoid your mob mentality lynching.

*It’s important to note that they work in Tech companies.

If you’re a hiring manager that would like to contribute to a public poll, you can do so here.

I’ll let you in on a little secret I’ve never told publicly until today: When I was a junior designer, many leads and hiring managers I know blacklist bootcamp grads.

Yep, you heard me right. Blacklist. It’s such a strong word, but any mention of bootcamps in a person’s resume automatically gets them rejected.

Did we give bootcamp-ers a fair chance? Oh yeah, we definitely did. But out of the thousands we collectively interviewed, less than 1% of bootcamp graduates were actually worth our time. So with that statistic, it’s really no lost to companies if we just don’t hire anyone from such programs.

Exceptional people from there are basically unicorns. So it makes total sense for us to chuck a group out in order to optimise our screening process. This is just reality.

The struggles of being self-taught

I think I threw enough shade on bootcamps for the time being. That said, being self-taught is also not a walk in the park, and there are pitfalls that you will have to avoid to be successful.

You will have no support system

Being self-taught is a very lonely journey. You don’t have anyone to consult other than your resources and the mentors you seek out (if you even manage to fine genuine ones that even care about you).

You’re not going to be making any new friends like you would if you signed up for a class, and the only person that will constantly be there for you is yourself.

How I dealt with this was by networking with other professionals. It really eases the loneliness that you’ll develop, even if temporary.

The good thing about having no support system though, is that you are less likely to be blinded or misguided. So I think it’s a fair trade-off to being lonely.

Your discipline will be tested to the limits

Consistency is not really a guarantee when you learn in a structured environment, so it’s definitely less of a thing when you’re learning by yourself.

Some days you’ll work hard and get a lot of results, other days are not going to be as productive. Your passion for the topic might fade when things get difficult.

That’s why passion is unreliable. At the end of the day, your success in learning the skills of UX will rely solely on your discipline to be focused enough to keep at it until you passed all the basic milestones.

You might pick up bad habits

With no one to correct you, you’re likely to design in a way you think is correct. Unable to ask anyone to check your work, you will end up repeating your flawed workflow and risk it being a bad habit.

I have been there: I didn’t arrange my files properly, I didn’t follow 8-pt grid systems faithfully, and I made a bunch of mistakes when it comes to visual UI.

The only way to avoid this is to check your work with best practices and constantly ask for feedback whenever possible. Let people roast you, but constructively. It sure doesn’t feel good, but it will help in the long-run.

Keep designing, because employable designers constantly ship products.

My story as a semi-self-taught professional

I went to design school, that’s something I try to be very transparent about as much as possible.

UX design was introduced to me when I was working on my industrial design diploma. And no offense to my lecturers, it was very badly taught. (They have since drastically improved on the program, so thank the gods for that.)

Despite the mess of facts and experimentation that was thrown to us, I saw so much potential in this industry. I left the classroom with more questions than answers, and my dearest teacher Erik hooked me up with a design agency that did UX for my internship.

Up to this point, I would argue that I wasn’t self-taught, because I was literally being fed information by industry professionals who were also figuring things out. I absorbed information like a sponge though, and picked up the skills (and confidence) that allowed me to truly start being self-taught.

Then, I went to the library

This was a time before I could afford design books on Human-Computer Interaction or Design Thinking. This was also a time before Medium was mainstream enough to have good writers and thought leaders on design.

Having no other reference points, I read whatever recommended design book there is on UX that is available in the public libraries of Singapore. I learned design terminology, design processes and the history of HCI after months of flipping through a dozen different books.

The reading material provided me with design theory that too little designers today care to equip themselves with. And while it didn’t help me that much on hands-on design work, it was a huge saviour when it came down to interviews.

More designers should read. And I strongly encourage you to invest in design books if you have the cash and space for it.

I begrudgingly networked at events

I really hated networking and it’s still my least favourite activity to do professionally. But through networking, I found like-minded people who knew the value of UX work, and that was a strong motivator for me to continue in the industry because I knew I wasn’t crazy.

Networking was how I found out that there was a market for different types of UX design. I met companies who were interested in only specific skillsets of UX, and not the entire package. Some potential collaborators would only like research, some would look into quantitative tracking, some just wanted wireframes and others wanted UI.

Start-up founders or small business owners were constantly looking for someone to redesign something in their services (for cheap), and I was all too happy to oblige and put my skills to the test.

I freelanced to get experience in real-life scenarios

Equipped with knowledge and people to experiment with, I started freelancing in UX. The pressure was on because businesses and founders were paying me for something, and I am obliged to give them professional standard work as much as possible.

This was a time where I had to learn a lot of things from scratch: How to setup freelancer contracts, how to design in industries I have no experience in, how to deliver on a huge time-crunch… These are things that weren’t taught to me in school.

I’ve had shitty people not pay me, I’ve done work I’m absolutely embarrassed to call mine, but I was given the opportunity to learn and make some money from it. For that I’ll always be thankful to the early adopters that put their faith in me.

And that was it. A very short journey of how I taught myself UX design. TLDR; I read books in the library, networked a little bit and then applied my skills in real life job scenarios by freelancing.

Did the risk pay off? Yes. Because I was employed full-time at a literal dream job less than a year after.

The pitfalls of bootcamps

Look, I don’t like bootcamps. I hate it with every fiber of my being. I can’t list my hatred for them in a single article, so I’ll just pick my top 3 reasons why I highly do not reccomend the bootcamp route.

Bootcamps are freaking cults

The biggest backlash I get is always coming from bootcamp grads that refuse to admit that they have problems after graduation. Mob mentality aside, the entire system of some resembles a ponzi scheme.

How can a designer who just graduated become a UX instructor or UX mentor? How can a designer who just graduated become a senior?

It objectively doesn’t make any sense. The whole bootcamp culture is just the blind leading the blind. The worst part of it is that they make the most noise on social media, and they get to mislead a lot of people because no one has the time to correct them.

They sell you this idea, this dream, that you need to follow that single UX path because you took that one course with them. But the truth is, your career has a lot more to offer than the single pathway bootcamps sell to you, you just need to sit down and plan it.

I really can’t respect bootcamps because they consistently blindside people to their professional execution chamber.

Sure, some of my readers and mentees came from bootcamps and are employed, but please know that they are the literal minority of bootcamp graduates and they had to break away from the cult mentality to start succeeding.

A lot of you from bootcamps aren’t going to make it, and that’s just reality many do not want to accept.

The industry (secretly, but not really) hates bootcamp grads*

*This section is anecdotal.

I am connected to other mentors and hiring managers in the field, let me take the heat on this one: We don’t like you guys. Like really don’t like you guys.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise since we have established that too little bootcamp grads are worth our time, but that’s not the only reason we avoid them. The next reason is that a bulk of these people have such inflated egos that they expect too much from an industry that gave everything and has literally nothing else to give.

There’s so many UX job boards, UX communities and UX content available at no cost to you guys. And you can still complain about the industry being difficult to break into.

Is it really that difficult or are you just simply not the right fit in the first place?

To further justify our dislike for bootcamp grads: You people expect higher salaries but can barely do the work. Look guys, UX isn’t a refugee camp or recycling bin for people want to be in tech but suck ass.

It feels freaking terrible to be prejudiced. While we want to be inclusive and open-minded, the bootcamp system makes it extremely difficult for us to gatekeep and manage sinking industry expectations.

So no, we don’t feel guilty for not liking you. It’s kinda justified.

Bootcamps just don’t produce work-ready professionals

I remember having to digitally sign some certificates to award some students who completed the bootcamp I was co-teaching in. A drop of sweat rolled over my face, and my fingers were shaking on the track pad; I simply couldn’t do it.

I cannot endorse people who are not good enough. And that’s what bootcamps are very good at doing; producing people who aren’t good enough at rapid rates.

While my own design lecturers didn’t do the best job teaching UX design, they at least planned a pretty good curriculum for our design diploma. I’m equipped with diverse knowledge in design, but most of all I’m equipped with the balls to experiment with design and explore the unknown. Bootcamps don’t do the former or the latter.

I have seen classmates who weren’t good enough literally expelled from design school. So it’s safe to say I graduated because I was good enough to graduate.

Tell me one bootcamp that gatekeeps and expel students. That’s right, there is none. And there will never be one because these vultures can’t afford failing grades and cancelling crappy students.

Closing thoughts

While not mentioned anywhere else in this article, please don’t forget formal education exists and that can also be a viable option for some of you.

In many realities, hiring managers prefer those with formal education, and then those who are self-taught, over someone who graduated from a trashy bootcamp. Always.

The only way to bypass this prejudice is to have a smashing portfolio to prove that you can do decent work.

It might seem like we’re unfair and biased, but this is the reality of hiring the best talent to work on amazing products. This is natural gatekeeping (or natural selection) for our industry. We don’t give chances to those who aren’t good enough.

I’m not here to dictate what you can or cannot do, I’m merely stating my observations after mentoring and hiring people from diverse backgrounds. If you still decide to go for the bootcamp route, be my guest, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.

You can be mad at me, but what I say does have some truth to it. It’s just up to you if you want to accept it. Bootcamps might seem like the easier path now, but it will make threading your future in this industry a lot more difficult.

In mandarin we have this saying, “先苦后甜” (Xiān kǔ hòu tián), which means “First bitter, then sweet”. You can’t truly taste the honey unless you’ve worked hard for it.

Going to bootcamps isn’t what I call working hard for it.

A haiku to summarise this article

Self-taught or bootcamp?
The answer from me will be
the former always.