Fail Safe - Reflections on DBC Culture

I shouldn't eat at Checkers.

I can eat better, and cheaper, if I cook at home. And home is a whole lot closer than Checkers. But I still eat there. Because I know what I'm getting, and it's not messy.

I have a low mess tolerance. I get uncomfortable with uncertainty. I loathe extra steps. And that's all undercut by a mile-wide perfectionist streak. Checkers is predictable. Prep time is zero, cleanup is minimal. The burgers are never burnt. The fries always cause heartburn. I get what I pay for. It's not close to what my body actually needs, but the convenience makes it feel close enough. And that is what I think Shereef is cautioning against when he talks about the restaurant mindset. It's not about what you can be guaranteed to receive. It's about what the possibilities are when you're willing to work in a messy kitchen with a chance of failing to make a good dish.

Dev Bootcamp seems willing to let the struggle speak for itself. Setbacks in the creative process are not seen as signs of weakness but as opportunities to grow, and a humble learner can use those opportunities to accelerate themselves in an atmosphere full of constructive feedback. This, to me, is the key to the kitchen mindset, this idea that each real-life slip-up can embed a lesson deeper than ten in-theory test questions.

The goal seems to be to make people uncomfortable with not being awesome, but in a way that shields them from any really dangerous consequences of failure. At Dev Bootcamp, you're starting out at your first dev job with zero knowledge, and they're throwing you so many projects, too many projects, but you know that if you can figure out how to handle the stress you'll learn enough about yourself to learn well at your next job, and the one after that. Everyone I talked to about DBC said that most of the work of a young dev happens in the months after DBC, when boots use their accelerated learning habits to scoop up the broad strokes of a new language or refine their understanding of a known one in pursuit of their dream careers. Having practiced how to function in a high-stress environment with a high tolerance for self-instruction through failure, graduating boots feel capable and proactive about attaining the skills they'll need to move on to the next level.

I'm excited to be a part of this culture. Because Checkers gives me heartburn. And the thing of it is, I'm a decent cook. I'm just not surrounded by other capable cooks, egging each other on and tolerating creative screwups on the path to the perfect dish. If I had a setup like that, I'd be pretty confident that I'd learn enough to build on in a very short time.