A Free Week of Coding Bootcamp? Impossible! Not at Sabio.

Sabio Coding Bootcamp
Sabio Coding Bootcamp
5 min readJun 27, 2018

Coding bootcamps, too expensive, right? What if there was a coding bootcamp that actually cared about your experience, that went beyond taking your money and churning you out, that gave you the resources needed to succeed? Sabio strides to be that coding bootcamp. The one that invests in each individual.

It’s Sabio’s mission to get you the training needed to get you a job and teach skills that will last you a lifetime. This outlook permeates throughout Sabio’s entire program, perhaps at most during Zero Week.

What is Zero week? To put it simply, it’s a 100% free week of coding instruction and experience that takes place between PreWork and Cohort. If this sounds foreign to you, you’re not alone. To break it down, I interviewed Sabio Junior Instructor, Hector Arias just before Zero Week to learn more about it.

S: First question, what is Zero week?

H: Zero week came to be over a year ago, many people who weren’t working or simply wanted some extra time before cohort asked if they could get just that. So we listened and put together a week where we basically prepare them for the cohort. It’s a little of ramping up from PreWork to get fully situated.

S: How does it separate itself from PreWork then?

H: Well you start with PreWork, and depending on how long it takes for you to get into cohort, meaning if you get in and finish your labs, literally before week one of the cohort, we have Week Zero, which is that preparation. The students are in one of the rooms they might eventually be in, and they’re in the environment of a cohort already. Danny, another Junior Instructor and I have materials that we lecture on and give out some work to accomplish during Zero Week.

Basically, they’re hands-on in the room exactly like the one they will be in for cohort from 9–5PM, and they’re working on their projects individually.

Whenever they have questions, they come to us and we help them out. It’s been very, very beneficial. We’ve seen big, drastic changes in how people are actually prepared for the cohort. They become much more prepared in that week, because obviously they get a whole week of just coding. That’s what they’re doing all day. You see a huge improvement in a great deal of people, and it helps them so much with their confidence. They’re just all around better when they get into the cohort.

S: But it’s free?

H: It’s free, and that’s the thing, one of the things we used to hear from almost every single person that graduates from the program is, “Oh, I wish I had another week or two.” This is that week, and it’s free. And I think there’s going to be extraordinary circumstance next week, when one of the senior instructors is going to be teaching Zero Week with his cohort. So essentially, they’re getting a week more for free with a senior instructor, which everyone would love to have.

S: You touched on this a bit, but what makes it different than cohort?

H: It’s totally different than cohort in the sense that we are not following the program. That’s a big difference. The other thing is, they’re not separated into grouped yet. If it’s a .NET or NODE that are going to start, we have them all together, so they’re not separated by the technology that they’re going to be learning.

S: That’s very cool.

H: Yeah, it’s great because they get to know each other a little better too. What is similar to cohort however, is the time that they’re in there and the actual setup of their workspace. This means there’s going to be some kind of queue, sometime for an individual to talk to the instructor, you know, a lecture during the day. But the reality is, it isn’t part of the cohort, but it helps a lot of people even figure out the basics, you know, how long it takes to commute, was the responsibilities are, etc. There are a lot of benefits from it.

S: So what would I learn at Zero week? Just the basics?

H: What you learn during Zero week is an extension of what you learned at PreWork. It’s going to be a great deal of javascript, because we’re not going to do something related specifically to .NET or NODE. It’s more advanced than PreWork, but it’s going to help you out so much when you start the cohort. It’s like a transition, you learn the stuff that’s in between. A little more intermediate to advanced javascript that you wouldn’t see in your regular PreWork.

S: So what is the most valuable thing about Zero Week?

H: Well, first off, it’s free. Free training. The other thing is switching to the mindset that this is going to be 24/7. “’m going to be doing this all day long,” right? With this it shifts a little earlier, “Okay, so this is what it’s going to be like.” It really helps in the sense that it takes away the jolt of doing this for long periods of time. Kind of like a warm-up or a dry-run.

S: And last question, do you have any interesting memories from any Zero Week in particular?

H: That I can tell? No, just kidding. What really comes to mind is people that started coming in and just spending the time coding. I remember one person in particular that we would whiteboard with, do exercises, about loops in particular. And they were having just some difficulty with it. And I remember this person took it to heart like, “Okay, I need to get this.” And they spent that week working incredibly hard, and by the time they got into the cohort, they had it. And it’s not just one person, I see it all the time, there’s leaps and bounds of progress during ZeroWeek. This is what makes it more rewarding for us. To see a huge improvement in just a week, that’s rewarding in itself. That once they get in the cohort they’re in a much better spot than they were before.

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Written by Sassy Mohen

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Written by Sabio Coding Bootcamp

Lead by the most senior coding bootcamp staff in the industry, we are the premier Software Engineering program in Southern California. #CodingBootcamp

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