College-educated women in the workforce are discovering a latent interest in and aptitude for computing motivated by the prevalence of computing as an integral part of jobs in many fields as well as continued headlines about the number of unfilled, highly paid computing jobs. One of these women's choices for retraining are the so-called coding boot camps that teach programming skills through intensive multi-week courses. This article reports on a qualitative research study focused on the Silicon Valley area of California. We used social cognitive career theory (SCCT) to investigate the larger context surrounding women entering computing professions through boot camp learning sites, including: the environment of a booming technology workforce, boot camps as learning settings, the characteristics of women who attend boot camps, how retraining at a coding boot camp influence women's computing self-efficacy and outcome expectations, and the performance attainments of women at boot camps. Interview data was collected from 14 women who had attended boot camps-first before graduating from the boot camp and again after six months in the workforce. To contextualize the computing ecosystem, we conducted single interviews with 6 boot camp organizers/curriculum developers, 7 industry hiring managers, and 14 university computer science faculty. To provide a contrast with women at boot camps, we interviewed 5 women who majored in computer science at the university and with 17 men who had attended boot camps. Structural data coding and analysis was done focused on the SCCT mechanisms of environment, person inputs, learning experiences, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and performance attainments. Findings here demonstrate that training at a boot camp can be the catalyst for college-educated women to attain computing jobs and careers, although these entry-level jobs may be a compromise to the goal of a software development job and are unlikely to lead to a job at large, well-known, established technology companies.

Background and Context: Non-traditional training grounds such as coding boot camps that attract a higher proportion of women are important sites for understanding how to broaden participation in computing. Objective: This work aims to help us better understand the women choosing boot camps and their pathways through these camps and into the computing workforce. Method: This paper reports on a longitudinal, qualitative study investigating female boot camp attendees. Findings: Findings show that women attending boot camps are career changers that develop an interest in software development too late to major in CS, discovering a post-college enjoyment of programming undertaken to support work goals at a current job or an aspirational job. Implications: Women at boot camps illustrate a missed opportunity to diversify postsecondary CS classrooms when not recruited early, not given interdisciplinary options, not exposed to enjoyable programming tasks, and not exposed to the array and number of job prospects.

Investigating student knowledge transfer and metacognitive activities at college CS departments and at coding bootcamps. © 2020 ACM.

The underrepresentation of women along the entire computer science (CS) pipeline has been an intractable problem. The relatively high proportion of women attending coding boot camps-35%, as compared to 14% in CS university programs-would suggest that CS is of interest in the postsecondary female population. Yet little is known about the profile of women attending these camps and the type of expertise they are learning in the setting. This qualitative work attempts to address this gap by investigating the backgrounds of nine women in two boot camp settings. The research focuses on what they are learning in each environment and how these skills align with the routine to adaptive expertise continuum. Findings from this study may indicate ways in which women may be recruited into public postsecondary institutions to study or major in CS.