Routes to Tech

For this report, Tech Talent Charter conducted a survey in the UK in collaboration with Attest on 16 February 2023. The total sample size was 500 people working in digital, IT or tech roles, consisting of 100 women and 400 men, to represent average proportions of gender diversity in the tech industry. Within the digital, IT and tech categories, 39.0% of respondents worked in IT operations, 30.4% were in software engineering/development roles, and 10.4% were in data roles.

For the purposes of this report, we consider government-funded tech skills bootcamps and alternative tech skills bootcamps to be non-traditional routes to tech, and all other routes we consider traditional. Whichever training route they used, most respondents (78%) reported that they would not have been able to secure their current role without tech training, emphasising the importance of such training in the UKs digital skills strategy.

Our findings show that nearly 1 in 6 tech workers gained their skills through a non-traditional tech bootcamp. Just over half of them used a bootcamp funded by the Department for Education. We also found nearly twice as many tech workers now obtain their skills through non-traditional tech skills programmes than they do through apprenticeships. This means that non-traditional learning routes into tech careers are now the third most common skill pathway to a tech job after University study (41.2%) and Learning on the job (20.2%).

To understand more about learner sentiment towards their tech training experiences, we asked respondents to what extent they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements on how they feel about their tech training, and combined the ‘agree’ and ‘strongly agree’ options to understand the overall positive sentiment.

Our research also sought to uncover insights on how significant learner’s feel their tech training experience was in helping them achieve a career in tech.

Though the majority of all respondents felt that tech training was important in enabling them to achieve a tech career, a higher percentage of respondents who predominantly gain their tech skills through a bootcamp believed they would have been able to get their current role without tech training (32.9%) compared to those who did predominantly gain their tech skills through traditional routes (20.2%). When asked if they felt like the training they received enabled them to take a positive career step in tech, a higher percentage of respondents who gained their tech skills through a bootcamp also strongly agreed (55.7%) compared to respondents who gained their tech skills through other means (46.5%).

More research is needed into this specific area to find out more about the types of people who take non-traditional training routes. One hypothesis is that there is self-selection bias at play. The fact that bootcamps are a relatively new and lesser known learning experience could mean that they attract people who are also more ‘non-traditional’ in their approach to work and education in general. By taking a new and less mainstream approach to acquiring skills, they’ve already demonstrated that they might have a higher degree of independence in their career decision-making, more of an “early adopter” profile and risk appetite, and higher self-reliance on achieving their desired career outcomes.

To better understand how tech workers feel toward the idea of tech training programmes in the present, having undertaken training in the past, we asked whether they would do anything differently if they had their chance to do things again.

A third (33.3%) of respondents who gained their tech skills via a non-traditional skill programme answered that they would retrain with the same training provider. This compares to just 18.1% of respondents who gained their skills though traditional pathways. This suggests that respondents who gained their tech skills via a bootcamp experience higher satisfaction with their training provider and training choices than those who took traditional routes, once final outcomes have been established. This finding underlines that bootcamps are a successful way for people to learn tech skills, and that people from non-traditional routes are more confident in the effectiveness of their training programme.

Overall, the data suggests that respondents who gained their tech skills predominantly through a bootcamp or non-traditional learning pathway had a higher level of satisfaction with their training provider, their learning choices and were more confident in the effectiveness of their training program. They regard their decision to train through non-traditional routes to tech as a lasting investment that played a significant role in their tech career outcomes. And crucially, non-traditional routes to tech were reported to provide key career advantages that are not seen in traditional learning pathways, such as relevant career networks.

Our research shows that people are very satisfied with their tech training through non-traditional routes, so we can infer that the quality of this training generally isn’t in issue. The results also show that this group (non-traditional route learners) still feel they’d have been able to get their role without this tech training (to a greater extent than the overall sample). Our hypothesis is that people who take part in non-traditional training, such as bootcamps, are more keen to take risks with things like training (i.e. take a non-traditional route), leading them to feel less tied to a single training route, and so they have more confidence in their ability to get a tech job through other means. 

Future research should assess how specific group preferences for certain learning models emerge and how that might affect training and career choice trends amongst specific demographic groups. With new insights into these preferences, training providers should use these learnings to ensure their programmes and economic models are as inclusively appealing to as many different groups as possible. In improving the supply and diversity of talent in the tech talent pipeline, bringing more entrants to the UK tech talent market through non-traditional routes to tech appears to be a high-quality pathway that delivers positive career outcomes for their participants many years into the future.