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SALT LAKE CITY — The first company in the new, local Church and State building is a rapidly growing Web-development boot camp, with a record of 85-95 percent job placement for the students who graduate.
DevPoint Labs was founded by Ty Diamse and Nhi Doan, two friends and Web developers who saw a need for people who want to gain coding and development experience without going through the lengthier college route.
“We saw there was a market out there for people who wanted to accelerate their learning. … Compared to getting a degree, a boot camp can be so much better on the return to investment,” Doan said.
A person can begin the boot camp with no coding or development experience, and after 11 short weeks be a junior developer. Students endure an intense 11 weeks, taking classes from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with additional studying in the evening. But for the dedicated, the payoff can be significant.
DevPoint Labs has a staff and instructors who not only have an abundance of coding or programming experience, but also have the ability to relate that knowledge in a way that beginners can learn.
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Following the Golden Rule, Thomas Lee and Ron Heffernan are starting a business incubator, called Church and State, which will promote altruism and selfless serving.“We have great instructors. Our last instructor worked for Google. … But it’s one thing to be knowledgeable in your field, and it’s another thing to be able to teach it to people in a way that they are going to understand. That’s something that we really value in our instructors,” Doan said.
With each cohort holding an average of 13-14 students, and a maximum of 18 students, DevPoint Labs is forced to be particularly selective with the students it accepts into its program. Because of this, it is looking for certain types of people.
“Having the soft skills, such as being punctual and having solid work ethic are so important. As well, we see a lot of students who get midway through the boot camp and just hit this breaking point and want to give up, so being able to persevere and stay motivated is key,” Diamse said.
Their history of 85-95 percent job placement after graduation may say it is all for the quality of the program, as well as DevPoint Labs' ability to network with the local companies.
“A big thing we do here is promoting the community and trying to get our students to go to meetups, so they can network and meet people and build a good rapport with companies,” Diamse said.
The statistics show how important these Web development boot camps have become, and it is no wonder that so many have opened across the nation over the last year, DevPoint Labs being one of the first in Utah. Others include Coding Campus and DevMounta.in.
