An immersive coding bootcamp for friendly, ambitious nerds.
Bootcamp Overview:
Fractal Bootcamp is a 3-month, immersive coding bootcamp in NYC, built by founders and engineering managers to quickly launch your Software Engineering career.
- Location: New York City
- Program: Full Stack TypeScript, focused on rapid product development and engineering fundamentals; full-time, complete cultural & technological immersion
- Time Commitment: 56 hours per week. 12 weeks. Monday → Friday, 9am → 7pm. Saturdays 10am → 4pm.
- When: September 23rd → December 20th
- Class Size: 25 students
- Requirements: A macOS computer (we need a single, stable environment for students)
Why should I learn to code?
💸 Maybe you want to earn 6-figures doing creative thinking, design, and problem-solving.
🎨 Maybe you want to make your own games? Generative art? EDM concerts? Light shows? Robotic Arms? Data visualization & knowledge tools? Startups? Administrative software (lol)?
If so, then you will love software engineering.
We can’t teach everything, but we can give you 1. a skillset, 2. a community, and 3. a career.
Why did Priya learn to code?
In short: it’s enjoyable work for great pay.
In 2018, Priya was making $50k doing market research consulting she didn't like.
She quit, enrolled in a 3-month bootcamp for $18k, and found a $100k/yr entry-level software job immediately after.
The next year, she became the first engineering hire at AirGarage, an early-stage A16Z and Founders Fund backed startup.
In 2019, she wrote about her bootcamp experience in "should I go to bootcamp or self study?". Fractal Bootcamp is designed closely with Priya to exceed the experience she had, with more hands-on projects, new AI tools, and a more tight-knit community.
What can I make with code?
Everything you have ever seen or used on a computer was built with code.
Nearly every modern creative discipline uses software, that’s why coding is so valuable:
Are there any jobs for me?
You may be wondering,
“If I take this path, will I be okay? Can I trust the universe… can I trust myself to figure it out?”
I’m here to tell you: you can relax.
If we accept you into the program, you will join a hard-working, passionate community. You will be on a path which we and many of our friends have walked already. You will be okay, as long as you do the work. And we will TELL YOU if you aren’t doing the work. You won’t fail silently.
But how can we know? Well, we’ve done it before, and we’ve done it recently:
Case Studies from 2023
Aiden
Aiden dropped out of college to pursue a career in software engineering, with no prior experience.
He studied under Jake for 3 months, then landed his first job. While it was nice to be employed, he grew frustrated that the company didn’t ship. So he quit and joined Tenet.
Now he makes 6-figures, and continues to do side projects in his free time; he dreams of being an indie founder.
Jordon
Jordon studied mechanical engineering at USC. After graduating he realized that mechanical engineering jobs don’t pay as much as writing code, so he spent 3 months of intense study under Jake.
Soon after, he landed his first software engineering job making 110k. Now he makes 150k.
But what about AI?
You might worry that AI tools will invalidate software engineering. We think this is like worrying that more powerful wands will invalidate becoming a wizard. Powerful tools are a GOOD thing, if you learn to use them (and we will teach you how!). Jake explains this in depth here. See also this piece from Shesh Babu.
AI is increasingly part of a good developer’s workflow. We incorporate several AI tools as a core part of our student workflow, including coding assistants, pull request review agents, and AI-native IDEs.
Is Coding boring, soulless, and life-sucking?
No, that’s a Skill Issue. We don’t work with soulless people, and neither should you.
David Bowie said that coders “carry the flag of subversion and rebellion” once held by rockstars. Had he been born in the 90s, he’d be a coder, not a musician (seriously, he said that).
Should I go to bootcamp or self-study?
Q: Why shouldn’t I just teach myself for free? A:
How long have you been intending to self study coding?
I’ve been having conversations with friends for years who never get around to it.
Very few people actually self-study. The odds here are really low. I know you think you are disciplined. But are you disciplined enough to put in 60 hours a week, rain or shine, even when it’s hard, for the next 3 months?
In a bootcamp community, you and everyone around you codes for 600+ hours in 3 months, and somehow, everyone has fun! You can relax and put your “self-discipline” away.
Do you have an air-tight course of study which has your full confidence?
Some friends who opt to self-study second guess their approach every few weeks, starting over on a new course, a new language, a new web framework… Cut that shit out!
It’s literally our job to update curriculum with industry best practices, which we know are good enough to get you an entry-level job. When you constantly switch approaches, you continually learn basic coding skills, over and over again. To become a strong software engineer, you need to go deep into a course of study. Once you’ve gone deep, it’ll be much easier to learn lateral skills in other languages and frameworks.
Do you have a community of colleagues and mentors in the software industry who will have your back and introduce you to employers, co-founders and investors?
Our friends who self-study often study alone; internet communities can be a cold comfort on the hard days, when you need care and companionship.
Bootcamp is an intense adventure with ambitious friends. It’s not just an economic tradeoff, it’s a whole era of your life!
How much do you enjoy self-studying?
Realistically, most people just don’t enjoy learning alone, and that’s okay!
We’ve designed this bootcamp to make us happy; we think it will make you happy too.
Will self-study actually save you money?
To answer this, we recommend checking out Priya’s 2021 piece, “Should I go to bootcamp?”
An excerpt -
“For me, my main goal was to get a job in tech. After researching bootcamps, I was very confident that if I went to a good bootcamp, I’d come out with a six figure job (in San Francisco). Bootcamp was going to cost me $15k, which meant that if bootcamp enabled me to get a job two and a half months earlier than I would otherwise, it’d be worth the cost.
$100k after taxes in California is $69,540
$15k / $69,540k * 100 = 21% of a year’s salary
.21 * 12 months = 2.6 months“Another way a bootcamp would be worth the cost is if a bootcamp could help me get a job that paid $15k more than if I had tried to self-study. Many bootcamps help you negotiate offers, so this seemed plausible.”
How hard will it be?
Well, in short, your work matters.
We can launch your career in software, but this bootcamp will be the hardest you’ve ever worked.
So let’s set expectations:
- Tell your friends and family you’ll see them in 3 months, because you’re in monk mode.
- You can’t work on side projects, write your book, or work a part-time job.
- You won’t have much social life, aside from the 10-15 people you are struggling with every day.
- If you’re absent 3 times, you’re out. If you’re late 3 times, that counts as an absence. The program only works through complete immersion. Absences and tardiness are a serious distraction.*
On the other hand, if you commit to this, you’ll speak a new language, have several public portfolio projects under your belt, earn several life-long colleagues, and land a job working with people as ambitious as you.
Don’t worry, we’ll be working as hard as you; we can all relax once you’ve landed your job.
[*] Our official policy is that if you’re absent 3 days, you’re kicked out of the program. We’ll refund half your tuition if you are kicked out before the six week mark. 3 tardies count as an absence. Being even one minute late counts as a tardy. We believe that early is on time, and on time is late 😎
What if I’m still feeling uncertain?
That’s okay! We made a shorter, introductory course just for you. It’s still in-person, in New York, but it’s only a 3-hour per week time commitment, rather than full-time.
It will prepare you for bootcamp, but it’s not enough to prepare you for an industry job.
You can sign up and read more here:
Event CalendarINTRO: Learn to CodeA Skillset
The tech industry is constantly changing, but three core skills will always be valuable:
- Adopting new technologies
- Rapidly shipping products into the hands of users
- Project management and teamwork
We’ll teach you CS fundamentals and we’ll give you experience in a wide range of cutting-edge tools, but most importantly we’ll teach you how to run through walls and get work done.
Projects you will ship:
- Personal portfolio site
- Social media site
- Generative art
- Open AI integration
- Stripe Payments integration
- Admin dashboards
- Open Source Software contributions
- Basic game development
Technologies You Will Learn:
- React, Remix, Vercel
- Nodejs
- Fullstack Typescript
- AWS/SST
- Exposure to Python & Go
Iyana’s Story — Fractal Bootcamp for Upskilling, Salary, & Job Placement
In 2021, Iyana was working as a lab assistant.
She enrolled in General Assembly in 2022 and it covered the basics -- enough for her to land a $60k/yr QA engineer job at Tenet, a Series-A startup.
Now she's enrolling in Fractal Bootcamp to upskill from a QA engineer to a full-stack typescript developer making a six-figure salary.
A Community
You shouldn’t have to go through massive career change alone; we certainly didn’t.
In our free time, we build communities with an exceptional density of playfulness, curiosity, and ambition — including Fractal and Fractal University. This bootcamp will be another extension (though more intense) of that playful, ambitious culture. You can read more below:
Who Are We?Bootcamp is an intentionally intense three months; the benefit of this intensity is that it creates lifelong friends, collaborators, and dense, high-trust networks. You will share a bond with the others who complete this program, because it won’t be easy.
Immersion in a joyful coding culture will focus and empower your progress.
A Career
You’ll become a Software Engineer, or perhaps, if it’s right for you, a founder or game developer.
To understand what that’s like, here are some recommended readings:
- You’re not writing code, you’re solving problems
- (More humorously) What is code?
- What is a Founding Engineer?
FAQs
How much does it cost?
We offer discounted early bird pricing and scholarships for some students. Book a call now, or fill out an interest form to explore your options.
How do I pay?
We use Stripe for payment, which includes flexible payment options, including buy-now pay-later with Affirm.
If you’re having trouble paying the full tuition, reach out to Andrew or Jake and we can help guide you through getting a loan or exploring alternative financing options.
What does a typical day look like?
Details on the class structure can be found here.
Class Structure and ScheduleWhat If I’m Bad at Math?
It’s a common misconception that programming is about “math skills” — in reality, most industry programming demands linguistic and systems thinking skills. If you like design, you’ll like code.
Programming is challenging, fun, and personally rewarding. You are literally conducting matter to perform meaningful operations over 3 BILLION times per second. This might as well be a magic wand. We believe programming is a basic liberal art, like storytelling, drawing, or linguistics.
Why Fractal Bootcamp?
Upon reflection, the most valuable thing we have done in our careers is level up our friends and raise their aspirations. If that sounds like something you’re interested in (and if you are hungry and ambitious), Fractal Bootcamp might be the place for you.
How can I help Fractal succeed?
This is a ridiculously generous offer, and I’m deeply touched that I’ve heard it asked from so many of you already. ❤️
We put together a little page to honor the request, here:
How You Can HelpWhat is your refund policy?
The tuition deposit is always non-refundable — it covers processing fees and acts as a down payment to reserve your spot in the program.
You may be refunded the remainder of your payment up to 2 weeks before the bootcamp starts. For instance, if you paid $10,000 for tuition, and the tuition deposit was $1,000 you would receive a $9,000 refund.
Starting 15 days before the program begins, you may only be refunded 50% of any tuition paid.
After the program begins, there are no refunds, except at our discretion.
The Team
Founder, Fractal + Fractal University
Previously: Founder of Qrono, founding engineer at Culdesac, and Interim Head of School at Guidepost Montessori at Museum Mile
Jake Zegil (github)
Previously: Founding Engineer, Director of Engineering at Tenet
Priya Rose (twitter)
Advisor, Fractal Bootcamp
Founder, Fractal + Fractal University
