Galvanize

I really enjoyed and gained a lot of knowledge partaking in the Introductory Web Development course at Galvanize. Prior to attending this class, I only knew the basic functions of HTML. By the end of the course, I learned in-depth knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript and how it functions into our web browsers. 

The instructor and teacher assistant were one of the best teachers I have ever worked with (Coming from someone who has a 4-year degree and military experience.). They made themselves available for additional help and assistance to every student in and out of class. I have seen the instructor and TA work carefully to ensure the students are successful, whether the students had little or vast experience in the topic. 

Galvanize hosted events with employers to network with prospective employees who are interested in tech careers. It’s a great way to get out and talk to employers to learn how the tech industry can improve by applying the skills and knowledge we learned from Galvanize.

The location of the schoolhouse was very convenient for commuters. I was commuting from the East Bay side of the Bay Area. I took BART and walked from the Montgomery Station which is about a 5-minute walk to the schoolhouse. From my experience, Galvanize is very accessible to anyone in the Bay Area.

I highly and would recommend Galvanize to anyone interested in the coding field to enhance their skills. It also a great network for anyone seeking jobs, as well and keeping up with the coding knowledge in today’s tech industry.

I'm a recent graduate of the Galvanize Web-Development immersive program (<3 months) and I will tell you to absolutely stay away from the program right now, at least the Denver campus.

For starters, I would be extremely leery of any data you see from Galvanize on their job placement rates.  The last data the website shows is from 2016.  In my cohort of 20 graduates, only 3 have solid paying jobs now three months after graduation (and one of them works for Galvanize, so that barely counts).  The only people who have jobs are people who showed up to the course already having strong coding backgrounds.

Their admissions process is a joke.  You solve a logic problem, submit "code" (which can be basically anything), and make a simple animation on a website that is designed for children.  The interview portion is hysterically easy.  Once the course actually starts it gets even more absurd.

Galvanize's whole idea now is that they aren't a traditional 'school' anymore.  They give you a bunch of various drills and projects you have to complete and throw you out there to go do them, with instructor help if need be.  There are no tests, no quizzes, no grades, no homework, essentially no real checks to make sure you actually understand anything.  While this might be ok for someone who already has a solid foundation in JS and coding, it's basically the equivalent of giving someone an essay written in a foreign language and telling them to go translate it when they don't speak a single word of the language.  Without the fundamentals, you may as well be trying to squeeze blood from a turnip.

This wouldn't be so bad if they were staffed well, but they aren't.  During my time in the course, I think we lost 5-6 different instructors.  On top of that, the vast majority of the instructors are people who just graduated from the course, and have never actually worked as Web or Software Devs.  They're so understaffed that half the time when you have a problem they tell you to go to other students to teach you.  Except I'm not paying those other students $21k for help, I'm paying you.

Because there are no exams or grades, it's pretty much impossible to fail the course.  If you can't figure out a coding drill, they'll eventually just walk you through it and then decide that you  "understand" it because you've seen it done one time.  If you tell them you have no idea what's going on and are falling behind (like I did nearly every day) they'll insist that you're doing fine.  Since there are no grades or tests or any real way of knowing how well you're doing, you take their word for it.  Then suddenly you're graduated and don't know anything.

The course organization is atrocious.  Ideas start (like remedial training, advisor groups, etc.) and then either get tossed aside or end up getting altered constantly because there's little to no planning.  There's no syllabus and the curriculum seems to change like the wind; it's just sort of chaos.  Ideas are also just sort of chucked in at random.  We didn't get a "breakout" (a lecture) on the basics of how the internet works until halfway through the course.  We didn't even touch basic computer science concepts until about a week prior to graduation.

The only real positive I can say is that Career Services is actually very good.  They clearly care a lot, work hard, help you improve your resume, LinkedIn, cover letters, etc.  The problem is that without strong coding skills to back it up, a good deal of that is just window dressing.

I don't think Galvanize is a scam: the people who work there are good people and clearly want you to succeed.  But just wanting something is meaningless without results, and right now the course feels disorganized and rudderless.  Stay away from G-School (at least the Denver campus) until some serious changes are made.

The insructors of the course were very knowledgeable and professional; I appreciated their insight and experiences as they taight the curriculum. I went into with next to no experience in Python but I'm very intrigued by the possibilites of the language, and feel like I got a good enough foundation to carry on my own learning. 

I would say the pace of the course felt uneven at times; the first half of the course felt very thorough (programming basics, working with dataframe, visualizations), while parts of the second half felt rushed. 

Overall I'm glad I took the course and am looking forward to carrying on my education in the subject. 

I'm really glad I chose Galvanize in San Francisco over General Assembly, Hack Reactor, App Academy and Learner's Guild. I first discovered the Galvanize community in Seattle and their focus on entrepreneurship, project based learning, and diversity of student and teacher backgrounds really caught my attention. When I visited the San Francisco campus, I found very much the same culture. Having six months, compared to just three months at other schools, to learn and absorb and practice such a vast amount of information and skills, also grabbed me as a much more sustainable and healthy way to learn. Luckily all my instincts ended up leading me toward the right decision. All the teachers, students, staff, coworking space users, and event throwers that the Galvanize community brings into their circle fit with their ethos. My expectations have been continually exceeded. I have met countless new friends and collegues with the same goals and worldview, I have been gifted complete control over what I want to learn and how I want to learn it, and I have been constantly challenged to challenge myself more than I thought possible and I have consisently achieved those goals with support and guidance from everyone around me. Even as I am graduating I am being pushed to try bigger and fail harder, and learn faster. This is everything I've ever dreamed of from a school, and that is coming from 7+ years of traditional college (one technical degree and one Bachelor's). As a prospective student, I think it helped me greatly that I had a very clear picture of my goals and what I wanted to get out of the program. For others without such clarity, I would definitely recommend some deep thought about why you are choosing web development and what you want to get out of it and who you want to become by the end of the program. However, if that is not the case and you are just feeling drawn to it, if the culture fit feels right, go for it and ask for all the help and all the questions you can and Galvanize peeps will be there to help you figure it out. Because the culture fit coming out of Galvanize and into the workforce feels like an effortless extension of why I chose Galvanize in the first place.

I went to Galvanize to change my career path and the staff helped me every inch of the way. Including before I got in! The instructors take the time to sit down with you every day and make sure you don't get lost in the intimidating ammount of work. Most of the instructors went through the program, so they know how difficult it is and they empathize with the struggling students(literally every student will struggle). The course is always evolving to adapt to the best and newest technologies that are current in the workforce. The course sets the students up for success and being comfortable in high pressure situations in the real world because Galvanize is non-stop. What an incredible experience!

Galvanize granted me contacts and the technical edge necessary to land a data science job within a week of graduation.

Galvanize has a very jobs oriented approach towards their data science immersive. The curriculum is structured such that if you follow it well and apply yourself, sometimes going beyond what is simply required, you can develop a functional understanding of the language of data science, targetting knowledge relevant to employment. This grants the toolset necessary to converse and work in almost any context where data science is used, from classification and regression algorithms to natural language processing and recommendation systems, and everything inbetween. Due to the sheer volume of material covered, the course moves quickly. If you keep up with the pace, likely through either hard work or prior knowledge, you can gain significant insight into the various fields of data science. That said, their curriculum is tailored towards employment rather than pure knowledge, for better and worse. For instance, in the Phoenix Galvanize Data Science immersive I took, neural networks were not explained in the coursework (though the instructors were happy to teach me about them when I asked anyways) because local employers don't use neural nets much. In this way, Galvanize's coursework provides a tool custom built to grant the skills necessary for employment in the local job space.

As a personal example, Galvanize granted a large scale overview of the various concepts of data science such that I could hold a conversation with people at any level of experience on them. The was relevant towards impressing people while networking that I was knowledgeable, and having intelligent conversations in interviews.

In addition to its coursework, Galvanize has projects purposefully built to teach employable skills and make connections. Every student does a capstone project which is done with real world data, and often real world connections. This provides an excellent opportunity to develop skills for a resume, and also to develop connections and leads on jobs. They also provide interview preparation, resume building assistance, mock technical and personal interviews, networking events, and personalized job search assistance.

As a personal example, after a guest speaker came to talk about data science in their field, the instructors mentioned that they were looking for capstone projects. The speaker gave them ideas for projects that he was interested in based on data their company had, and I ultimately chose one of those projects as my capstone. This put me directly in contact with a potential employer, doing data science for them. Using the tools Galvanize had equiped me with, especially those related towards data manipulation and visualization, I was able to impress them such that they hired me prior to my graduation. In addition to getting an opportunity to become a data scientist, I've found that the toolset that Galvanize equiped me with allows me to use bleeding edge technology to manipulate data, providing assistance to data scientists decades my senior.

Ultimately, if you're looking to get into the data science field, I am hard pressed to imagine a better opportunity than what Galvanize has with it's Data Science Immersive program. It provides the technical skills relevant to success, the contacts to impress people, and the assistance to help you along the way there.

A big believer in the idea that instruction, mentorship, community, and focused study can take one much further, much faster than studying on one's own a few hours a week from various online, spotty, online resources, I began researching data science immersive programs. At the end of extensive research on the different "bootcamps", I concluded that Galvanize was the best fit for me and would get me where I wanted to be.

Instruction. The core group of instructors that taught my cohort were intelligent and passionate about teaching. Our lead instructor went above and beyond with his preparation and giving of his time to make sure we succeeded, and all of our instructors were generally always happy to stop and chat or help with anything we needed. For the capstone project (the culminating experience of the entire program), my cohort was split into several groups of 5-6 students and we had an instructor who we were able to consult with about our project and any difficulties we encountered throughout the process. Overall, I always felt supported and felt comfortable to ask questions (and learned a ton!).

Career. The career team (James and Mary Ann) are very talented and good at what they do. For myself and my peers, I know that they helped drastically in making connections, understanding your background and where you want to go, all the way to salary negotiation. The career team was generous with their time, meeting one-on-one with students and giving us their attention and care. Even after Galvanize, after getting a job, I felt comfortable asking the James and Mary Ann for career advice, and they were always so supportive and helpful.

Wellbeing and success. Bootcamps are stressful. Yes, you learn a ton, but some days you will also cry, wonder if you're working hard enough, doing enough, being enough. In addition to the instruction staff who will give you pep talks, there is designated staff (Jenny, for my cohort) who ensure students are succeeding in the program as well as maintaining wellbeing, emotionally, physically, and mentally. Jenny led sessions on skills and tools to be successful, such as prioritizing, timeboxing, growth mindset, and overcoming imposter syndrome. We also had regular check-ins and were asked how we were doing and asked about our feedback into the program. Jenny always listened attentively and with empathy.

Community. Galvanize is an education program, but it is also a coworking space. Because of this, there is pretty much one (or, usually, more) event(s) that take place every night throughout the week. This fosters a great sense of community and is really positive for networking. In addition, Galvanize does a good job in their admissions to make sure that all of your peers are persons who will contribute to a positive community throughout the duration of the program and far beyond. I made some very close friends from my program, who I still regularly keep in touch with.

Overall, I really enjoyed my experience at Galvanize and am excited to have gone through it in my data science journey. Through the program, my expectations were, overall, met and often exceeded, and I'm happy to belong to a network with so many smart and talented people.

Intro 

I used to work as a principal software engineer at a big software company for many years doing full stack Java web development. I wanted a new job but everything in web development has changed from Java/php/Ruby to JavaScript frameworks. I looked at a few bootcamps (Coding Dojo, Hack Reactor, Dev Mountain and Dev League in Hawaii - nice but no time to surf) and was accepted by them all. They are all good schools but Galvanize was 6 months (24 weeks), not 3 months to help us learn more and one of their instructors, Josh, used to teach at Hack Reactor and gave us a free Saturday course in JavaScript. 

Precourse

I was accepted at all the schools. Hack Reactor had a one month prep course, other schools were easier to get in and Galvanize had an online test with an instructor, Oli. Josh gave me some last minute tips and I passed with flying colors but I would recommend people learn JavaScript first. They also like us to have a pre course project making a web page. I reached out to a few grads who helped me with Galvanize.

Quarters

The course was taught by Nestor and the resident was Michael (a recent graduate). Both were very knowledgeable in the materials. 

The first quarter was web (HTML, CSS) and JavaScript. We created an image scraper JavaScript web application. Each quarter we get about one week to work on a final project and between quarters we get a break week.

Second quarter was on React. This was the first cohort to learn React in the second quarter and probably the first to really deep dive on Redux, Thunk middleware and JS testing! We all made React web and React Native mobile apps projects for second quarter!

Third quarter was on Node and database development with the project to be integrated with our React projects to be hosted on AWS (Amazon Web Services). We all worked together and got everything done right before the Thanksgiving holiday break week.

Fourth quarter was our final project (3 weeks) and prep work, CS concepts for interviews. I worked on a React Native mobile app and our cohort had the most diverse set of applications throughout the program (5 mobile apps, e-commerce apps, video game for 2 players) and technologies (React, React Native, GraphQL, Python, Socket IO, and many more)! The limited amount of time the students had (1 to 3 weeks) to build full stack applications was truly amazing and inspirational!

As for career services, James encouraged us to go to informational interviews (I met with 18 tech professionals and wrote a blog about it http://siliconvalleycoffeetalk.blogspot.com/2018/03/interested-in-silicon-valley-coffee-talk.html), set us up to interview with many companies and even had follow up interview preps to help us months after graduation. This was free to graduates and we also get six months access to Galvanize workspace and lifetime use of the Alumni lounge. 

After graduation, there weren't that many companies hiring and we went to Galvanize interview prep with help from Galvanize director Sherif. He gave me a few pointers which I tried at an interview and it got me an offer from a start-up. Overall I received multiple offers two months after graduation, had interviews with big companies (had to cancel a few due to the job offers) such as Apple, Sony PlayStation, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Netflix, Amazon, IBM and many more.

Thank you Galvanize. Even though I graduated and got a job, I still go there to help with the new students and go to meet ups as it encouraged me to pay it forward with people new to tech. I highly recommend this school!

Intro 

I used to work as a principal software engineer at a big software company for many years doing full stack Java web development. I wanted a new job but everything in web development has changed from Java/php/Ruby to JavaScript frameworks. I looked at a few bootcamps (Coding Dojo, Hack Reactor, Dev Mountain and Dev League in Hawaii - nice but no time to surf) and was accepted by them all. They are all good schools but Galvanize was 6 months (24 weeks), not 3 months to help us learn more and one of their instructor Josh used to teach at Hack Reactor and gave us a free Saturday course in JavaScript. 

Precourse

I was accepted at all the schools. Hack Reactor had a one month prep course, other schools were easier to get in and Galvanize had an online test with an instructor, Oli. Josh gave me some last minute tips and I passed with flying colors but I would recommend people learn JavaScript first. They also like us to have a pre course project making a web page. I reached out to a few grads who helped me with Galvanize.

Quarters

The course was taught by Nestor and the resident was Michael (a recent graduate). Both were very knowledgeable in the materials. 

The first quarter was web (HTML, CSS) and JavaScript. We created an image scraper JavaScript web application. Each quarter we get about one week to work on a final project and etween quarters we get a break week.

Second quarter was on React. This was the first cohort to learn React in the second quarter and probably the first to really deep dive on Redux, Think middleware and JS testing! We all made React web and React Native mobile apps projects for second quarter!

Third quarter was on Node and database development with the project to be integrated with our React projects to be hosted on AWS (Amazon Web Services). We all worked together and got everything done right before the Thanksgiving holiday break week.

Fourth quarter was our final project (3 weeks) and prep work, CS concepts for interviews. I worked on a React Native mobile app and our cohort had the most diverse set of applications throughout the program (5 mobile apps, e-commerce apps, video game for 2 players) and technologies (React, React Native, GraphQL, Python, Socket IO, and many more)! The limited amount of time the students had (1 to 3 weeks) to build full stack applications was truly amazing and inspirational!

As for career services, James encouraged us to go to informational interviews (I met with 18 tech professionals and wrote a blog about it http://siliconvalleycoffeetalk.blogspot.com/2018/03/interested-in-silicon-valley-coffee-talk.html), set us up to interview with many companies and even had follow up interview preps to help us months after graduation. This was free to graduates and we also get six months access to Galvanize workspace and lifetime use of the Alumni lounge. 

After graduation, there weren't that many companies hiring and I went to Galvanize interview prep with help from their director Sherif. He gave me a few pointers which I tried at an interview and it got me an offer from a start-up. Overall I received multiple offers two months after graduation, had interviews with big companies (had to cancel a few due to the job offers) such as Apple, Sony PlayStation, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Netflix, Amazon, IBM and many more.

Thank you Galvanize. Even though I graduated and got a job, I still go there to help with the new students and go to meet ups as it encouraged me to pay it forward with people new to tech. I highly recommend this school!