Pursuit

My experience was overall a very pleasant one at Pursuit. From the application process to the interview and all the way through covid and finally through to post-graduation, I've always felt that I've had the support that I needed from staff and instructors. I was working full time while going to Pursuit nights and weekends, and while this was probably one of the most challenging times in my career, I always had help and guidance from the program manager and the class instructor when I wasn't doing as well as I had liked. They provided me with the resources and care I needed to get ahead and make things work for myself. It's really up to you how far you want to take this. I decided to take it all the way. In the end, I was the first to land a job in my class, and right before graduating too, which is nice, but I couldn't have done it without the entirety of the Pursuit staff. I am ever-grateful to them for all of the support and encouragement along the way.

This program was great for me! I learned enough about iOS to land an apprentice position. Along with this, the program helped me prepare for interviews by giving me resume and cover letter assistance, mock interviews, and DSA practice. That being said, they can only bring you so far. If you are expecting them to hand you a job (which they get as close as possible to doing with their company partnerships) then you will have a hard time getting out of your own way. If you are committed to doing your best, remembering that you are surrounded by people that want you to succeed, then you increase your chances of finding a job. If you are of the mindset that you deserve things that you have not put effort into, I suggest you look into another route to success.

I started in October of 2018 as a full stack web days fellow. The program was well paced technically with lots of behavioral and other non-technical skills practice (resumes, cover letters, linkedIn etc).

There was a lot of technical support from instructors, TAs, volunteers and alums. I would say there was more than enough support. The program managers really helped push a lot of fellows to stay on top of their technical and non-technical tasks. The program managers were really awesome and worked really hard to give you all the support you needed to be successful.

There were a few team projects with one big capstone project that we presented towards the end. During this project we got to implement all the technologies were learned in the program (react, redux, express, postgress, passport etc) and we learned some more specifically for this project (Google maps api, Stripe payment processing, Websockets). We also got to practice public speaking quite a bit and learned a lot of presentational skills. The project culminated with a tech leaders from big companies.

There was A LOT of whiteboarding practice from early on. You can never have enough whiteboarding practice but I think we came pretty close. The job process was very well structured. We practiced dsa in the morning, worked on job applications before and after lunch and worked on white boading in the afternoon. You could always schedule a mock interview with a staff member or a volunteer engineer. I fully took advantage of mock interviews with engineers from Uber, Google, Twitter, Q (managed by Q) and others. And it paid off. 

Pursuit also has a lot of partnerships with major companies which hire Pursuit fellows through these partnerships. These companies include Citi Bank, Twitter, Uber, Sinequa, Republic and others. I got an internship position at Uber through this kind of partnership. Pursuit also has a lot of other initiatives with companies and local organizations to place Pursuit fellows in companies looking to hire diverse candidates with non-traditional background. 

Overall, it was a great experience for me. The sense of community is really strong. Everyone is really welcoming, kind, sweet and generous. I feel very lucky to be part of this community.

I did a lot of research before getting into the program and no other such program comes close. This place really believes in its mission and staff work really hard to give people with high need and potential a real shot at making it in the tech world. 

There are much better bootcamps. Your time could be spent gaining a paycheck or going to a real school. This training program puts you in a room and tells you to google things to make your code work.

Yes, people have success with this bootcamp but there are many problems from leadership to organization to curriculum all the way down to the smallest details (disorganized off-hour tutoring, forcing the fellows to take out the trash, ect.)

The only saving grace are the students who are in the trenches with you and the instructors. Those instructors and students that are there for all the right reasons are good people. The rest of the program really isn't worth it. GO SOMEWHERE ELSE!