Dev Bootcamp

Curriculum: I’ve got a Masters in education, secondary education. Coming from a teaching perspective and knowing that they don’t have the teaching background, there’s room for improvement. They’ve been really receptive to changes they could make to the curriculum or how it’s being taught. If you’re not sure you understand something, and there are gaps because everybody’s coming from a different place than I know that I can go to pretty much anyone and ask them to explain it to me.

 

Instructors: I think they’ve been pretty good after the fact of incorporating improvements or suggestions. I’ve written a lot of feedback and they’ve listened to it. They’re all pretty knowledgeable. If they don’t know something, they’re not afraid to say “I’ll look into it and get back to you.” They’re all nice people, too.

 

Job Assistance: Engineering Empathy has been good. It makes sense for people who don’t have as much of a reflective background. I’ve talked in a general manner with the careers people about the tech scene in DC where I’m from. We just got a new careers person and she’s talked to me informally about what I was expecting from her.

 

Overall: It hasn’t been perfect, but nothing is ever perfect. A big reason why I chose DBC was that they might not have all the answers, but they’re asking the right questions. Maybe something went wrong or we didn’t cover something enough, but they’re genuinely interested in your feedback and making it work for you. They might have an explanation for the way that they’re doing it, but they’ll explain it to you. It’s not some big secret. You have to ask the question. As much as I want to go home back to DC to my house and my comfortable bed, I’m going to miss being here. I think that’s pretty indicative of the great experience here.

 

It’s very much a sink-or-swim environment. There’s a lot of structure here that will support you, but you have to get over the fear of asking questions. That’s what initially held me back here. I didn’t want to be the person asking the dumb question. Don’t be afraid to ask for support. There’s not formal office hours, but don’t let it linger if you’re struggling. Get over your fear of asking questions early. 

Curriculum: If you were being realistic about what you’ll learn in 9 weeks, I’d say the only downside is that the javascript stuff is a little bit rushed. The way that they present all the other stuff is about as good of a grasp as you can get. Javascript is very popular now and required in some places, and I think that’s why they put it in, but it doesn’t necessarily fit with the rest of the curriculum. Depending on your interest you can do more javascript stuff on the side. When you get to the final project you pretty much do either a javascript project or a ruby project, but there’s only so much you can really grasp if you’re learning it in a week.

Job Assistance: The job assistance is really good. It’s even better than I expected it to be. You wait to do things like interview prep and resume building until after the program is over. There’s a thing called career week right after the 9 weeks.

Overall: The atmosphere can be completely different between programs, so you have to kind of figure it out when you get there. The students really determine the atmosphere. I would absolutely recommend it.

Aside from coding, I think Dev Bootcamp did a great job in teaching me about compassion and being aware of myself and others. That’s a really great skill to have when pairing with different people and being aware of things that they’re going through and being conscious of that. That can be with things like meditating or yoga. Those are great things that people don’t really think about when they think about coding. Coding is a side part, and awareness is the networking part. It’s about being a good person and a good teammate.

I didn’t give other bootcamps a hard look. I knew Dev Bootcamp did yoga and stuff like that and I’m really into physical fitness and sports and dancing, so when I saw yoga I thought that was cool.

Come with an open mind. Be prepared to not know a lot. They really emphasize that. You’re going to have your mind blown for the next 9 weeks that you’re here. Be prepared for that and open to changes because a lot of stuff you’re doing here you haven’t done before.

Instructors: It can be very hit or miss with instructors. My cohort got very lucky, but I knew people who repeated phases and told us that we lucked out not having a couple of instructors. Everyone that we got was great, but some of them have a style of teaching that may not work for everyone.

 

Job Assistance: I feel like the job assistance would be good preparation, but I can’t say for sure. It seems like they’re teaching us everything the right way and it seems like people are getting jobs. I don’t necessarily have a frame of reference right now. I enjoyed the extra-curricular stuff. Some of my friends didn’t like it as much because they were here to just code. That’s the thing, a lot of things here are feedback based, so whatever you want if you ask for it enough they’ll give it to you. Some people don’t like Engineering Empathy, but I think it’s unique to DBC and I think it’s very useful. It makes you more comfortable with the other people you work with. It makes a lot of sense to me.

 

Overall: I liked that they tried to build a soft skillset here. I think the progression of the curriculum was really good. They asked us to build a basic version of Active Record, which is a dev database, before even using it. We actually understood the basics behind it. Same thing happened before we used rails. I really liked the multiple step approach. The stuff they threw at us we had to struggle with, but they made sure we understood it.

Even though things are constantly changing, some things are set in stone. Everything is ruby-based, even with the move towards java-script. We ended up working with it while we were here, but half or two thirds of the course was still ruby. The other portion is just how they manage students. Our cohort was pretty cool. There are just very different dynamics between the cohorts. The rolling admissions thing works out well here because you can talk to people who have been here for different amounts of time.

They give you the resources and the opportunity, but the rest of it is up to you.

I actually ended up doing 12 weeks at Dev Bootcamp. At the end of phase 1 and phase 2 they do an evaluation of your skills. They do a coding test and stuff like that and based on how you perform in those they tell you whether you’re on track to repeat. Whether you should repeat, or whether you have a few things that you need to tighten up but you should be fine. Or green light you’re good to go. I got that middle one so it’s “like you have a few things that you could tighten up over the weekend, but we think you might benefit if you repeat.”

I didn’t have anything to lose. I don’t have kids or anything. So I was like “you know what, three more weeks of free instruction. I get a better grasp of all these concepts. So why not? It’s not going to cost me any extra.” So it was kind of an easy decision really, and it was the best decision. I got to really grasp a lot of things that I missed the first time around. The second time I was doing it, I knew a lot of things so I was teaching a lot of the new students.

Right now I’m a part-time coach. I’m coaching new students. I’m also doing the job search. Some weeks go by with no action, and some weeks it’s one after another getting calls. It’s definitely picking up. 

Curriculum: I felt like there were some parts where the instruction could have been a bit clearer. I wasn’t sure if they had done this on purpose because in the technical world you have to learn specifications that aren’t always clear. Maybe they just wanted us to be in the confused state where you have to figure things out. There were some parts where I felt like the instructions could have been a little bit clearer.

Instructors: The instructors were definitely awesome. They flew in an instructor from San Francisco for all of my phases. The instructor for phase 1 was Sharif Abushadi. He is very opinionated on how things should be done. He’s very methodical about things. It was great to learn from him especially like in the first phase where you’re building your foundation, to have an instructor like that.

Phase 2 was Nate from Chicago. He was good. I think what tripped me up a little bit was maybe his teaching style. Sometimes he would do a lot of coding and I would lose him. He was a very laid-back soft-spoken person and sometimes I would end up tuning him out during the lecture. I was also tired from staying up and pulling all nighters and stuff like that.

The second time, when I repeated phase 2, there was an awesome guy, Tanner, who actually doesn’t work here anymore, but he was really great. He was very lively, jumping around and using his hands a lot. It was definitely easier to follow during lectures.

The last phase we had Steven Harms who also flew in from San Fran. Again, just like Sharif, he’s a veteran from the industry. He’s very methodical about things.

Job Preparation: I think it’s really different based on which interview you go to. I’ve had some interviews where they’ve thrown like computer science. They knew that I didn’t have a computer science degree. Some of them I struggled with, but some of them I was able to figure out. Then there’s other ones where I felt like Dev Bootcamp prepared me for the interview.

During the phases they didn’t really bug us about any job preparation because they didn’t want us to get distracted. As far as preparing for them, they taught us how to solve problems and even if you didn’t get the answer immediately, how to work through it.Even if you don’t end up getting the right answer, in the interview they’re looking at how you solve the problem, they’re looking for how you approach the problem, and not necessarily getting the right answer all the time. Just getting the idea and your frame of mind that’s what they focused on.

Afterwards, I mean they do have the employer network and I’ve had some hits with that, but I’ve seen a lot more action outside that network. I know they’re still working on getting people on board with that. I’ve just had better luck with people outside their network.

Erin the career advisor is awesome. As far as reviewing my resume, giving pointers, helping me prepare for interviews, I’d give her a 5. I give her a 6 really. As far as getting interviews out of the network they have, I can’t really rate it so highly. I’m not sure if that’s me or if I’m being unfair from my perspective. From my perspective I’d give it like 2.5 stars. I’ve gotten interviews out of it, but nothing solid. I’ve actually had better luck on my own.

Other Thoughts:

I would say definitely before you make a commitment to go to the bootcamp or put down any kind of money, the first thing I would do is take some time to see if this is something you enjoy doing. So, for example, I tried to learn how to code about three or four times on my own and I got stuck, I got frustrated. I never came back to it for a while, and I thought maybe coding isn’t for me. Maybe I don’t like it. I just left it like that. Then the 5th time around, I was following some video tutorials. The instruction made a difference, having someone guide you through it, at least in the beginning. That’s when I was like “This is great. I love it. I’m getting it finally.” If people can just try it on their own for a little while. Maybe do something like Code Academy, just to see if this is something that they find to be fun. If you don’t find it fun, you’re not going to want to do it. You can’t expect Dev Bootcamp to hand you these things. You can’t go in without a passion for it.

Having some kind of a pre-work basically. I think that’s really helpful. I think the biggest thing that helped was being comfortable being confused. It was almost like a buzzword in the beginning, but it became reality towards the end. It became clearer towards the end. You’re going to be confused all the time. It’s fine. I think not knowing that the first few times is why I gave up. Maybe I’m not meant to be a programmer, but being told that it’s okay to be confused. That helped.

Curriculum: They just give you so much stuff. I couldn’t even get through it all. At the beginning of each phase actually we had the entire 3 weeks of curriculum. Rarely did I go too much further ahead of time than that week, but you could if you wanted to. The content is almost all original, if not all of it. Some of them you can tell were a little dated like written by the original people who started it. Jesse Farmer is one of the ones who started it and you’ll see his name on a lot of the different challenges or integrated into it.

Instructors: It’s an interesting thing since I’ve been here. They’ve gone through some instructors and I guess were short staffed for a little bit of my time while I was here. The ones that were here were amazing. All of them are so great. They’re inspiring. I found out one of my favorite instructors was a year younger than me. They’re all really good at what they do and really good at communicating ideas. They don’t look down on you. They know how to be a peer.

That said, one of the downsides of being short staffed is that our cohort actually didn’t have a cohort lead. Usually they have an instructor who goes through the cohort through the entire thing along with the people who teach each phase. We didn’t get that this time because two went onto do other things while I was in the first phase. They’ve been trying to hire people on in the meantime, but the time was still ticking. 

Job Assistance: They’re really trying to step things up because I’ve seen some of the other people in cohorts above me and some of them are getting jobs really quickly. Some of them it’s taking a while. I know a few people, a couple cohorts above, who still haven’t found a job. That was worrying me at first, coming into career week, but they brought everybody from all the locations out here. They’re doing this new thing called DevConnect. It’s specific to Dev Bootcamp with other companies. We’re getting to try that.

The things that we did throughout the program that would help the most with job prep would be things called EEs. Engineering empathy sessions. In phase 1 we did one every week and then we did one in each of the other phases. It’s bringing up difficult topics and making people talk about them. People drop any front they’re putting up. They just be real for a little while and understand how other people think.

Overall Experience: The reason I chose Dev Bootcamp was just because I thought that it was better known or in the news, so I thought it would be a better network. I had no idea about any of the intricacies of it. I just saw the numbers that they put on their site about the percentage of people who get jobs or average salary. It was a lot more than just learning to code. It did serve its purpose for that, but I got to meet a bunch of cool people. I feel better for going through something that I didn’t think I was going to be able to do. Going through that I think made me a better person in general. There’s a lot more to it than just learning to code. It’s fun. I was originally only looking at startups. I wanted to learn to code to get into the startup scene. I didn’t want to work at a big corporation. I think I just didn’t like what I was doing in terms of the job. Now I’m more open, as long as I’m getting something from my work rather than just a paycheck every two weeks.

They stress culture just as much as coding. I was expecting to get here and just work for like 12-15 hours straight at the computer. Everyone told us to chill out. You’re here for 9 weeks. Don’t burn out. You want to meet people and have a good time too. That would be something. I could see how if someone only wanted to learn to code that that could be a put-off.

The Wagon experience was intense and challenging, in only 2 months, we made a giant step in the tech universe. A lot of work was done, a lot of work remain, but it was an amazing experience and very useful. The teachers in Nice (south France) are basically awesome, mostly former students, very helpfull. The others students have become like army companions, we developped our skills but also our friendship. I highly recommend this very short course, intense and amazing, stressful but so enriching.

I chose this bootcamp based on the atmosphere and values that it promotes - Inclusion, continuous learning at any rate/age/speed, etc., empathy, friendships, working together, and creativity. You could go to any place to learn the skills, but paying to learn anywhere else I felt was cutting myself short. DBC not only teaches you the skills, but teaches you how to teach yourself new skills moving forward. It has become my home in terms of where I go to find comfort and hang out with people in my free time. I could not be more happy or proud from graduating from somewhere that genuinely cares.

       Almost one year later and I still don't have a job as a developer. The market is flooded with junior developers and even as I build up my skill set, learn new frameworks and libraries, do more projects, actively attend meetups and apply online, it just seems as though I'm not making any progress from the lack of responses I receive. Dev Bootcamp is very good at soliciting feedback from the small percentage of students who do get jobs as developers. They'll magnify their successes on social media, but the bigger picture is most of their cohort members still don't have jobs. The careers team genuinely cares about your success, but they seem powerless to do anything about it. They're able to give you general career advice, but they're not specialized in understanding how to break into the software industry as a developer. They've always kept sending me potential jobs I could've got without spending 14k attending Dev Bootcamp. It feels less about the students success post graduation and more about pumping and dumping students as a business. 

     Dev Bootcamp was a great option from 2012-2014, when recruiters were desperate for developers, but in 2017, it's not worth 14k to spend on.  I DON'T RECOMMEND DEV BOOTCAMP. Choose a bootcamp such as App Academy or Flatiron because they'll put their business on the line for your success. At least you'll have the insurance of receiving your money back if you don't get a job as a developer. I've attended a meetup where I met someone from App Academy who received a full refund of their deposit and no deduction of their annual salary after a year of being unemployed and unable to get a job as a developer. Dev Bootcamp will just shrug their shoulders and treat you as more of a statistic as they're piling up more unemployed graduates to support without any insurance of giving their money back. No bootcamp can guarantee you a job with the a saturated market of junior developers, but they can guarantee your money back if you put in the work and still didn't get a job as a developer. I will update this review once I land a job as a developer. If I don't, just know I'm still unemployed or gave up and took a different route.