School of Applied Technology (SALT)

After completing the bootcamp and graduating as a Java developer, I am now employed as a software engineer and my career has begun!

The courses offered at Salt are intense, make no mistake or misjudgement. They will ease you into the coding mindset and then when you are 2-3 weeks into the bootcamp, the really pressure begins. Honestly, you need to really commit to the program: in my case I put my social life on hold for the duration, and said goodbye to my summer weekends as that when they test what you've learned during the week. During this training I've gone from a hobby front end coder to a logical back end and databasing nerd, and I love it! Salt taught us all how to learn, and how to learn fast. 

After graduating, you enter the Post Graduate Program where you will now be paid to continue learning. In the meantime, the sales team work hard to put you in front of big clients from huge markets. It's then up to you to nail the interview.

Salt also have to move with the market and so we've been told from the beginning that not all of us will be placed with clients immediately. Since the start 2023 the Sales team has come under new management with some exciting team members added. This means a lot of new leads for clients are appearing compared to the previous years, making the prospects of work in NL look really good as the industry can shift quickly.

Overall, intense and amazing! I would recommend Salt to anyone who really feels they have what it takes to learn fast and a learn a lot! But it's not going to be easy to change your life in 13 weeks.

I completed a JavaScript Full Stack course last year , and I must say it exceeded all my expectations. The course provided a comprehensive and in-depth coverage of various full stack development concepts and technologies. It was an invaluable learning experience that significantly enhanced my skills in web development. I would 100% recomment this course .I'm truly grateful for the knowledge and skills I gained from this course. It is one  of the toughest thing I have ever done. The course is intense but it is worth it. 

Salt is offering very unbalanced curriculum and learning plan. On the one hand they aim at people with no programming experience at all. Simultaneously, they lack approaches for teaching such people and getting them to understand the basics. The curriculum is just a rush trough some technologies that one is supposed to apply without the comprehension.
On the other hand, more or less experienced students are unlikely to learn anything new.
Furthermore, the curriculum is mostly a copy-paste from help documentation available on the net. It's not even adjusted to particular needs and aims. Thus, you are not getting anything special in terms of theoretical learning.

The instructors are mostly Salt's own 'post graduates' with no practical experience or any sort of profound knowledge of the subject matter. So, you are not getting any experienced based coaching or good answers to your questions. The primary job of the instructors is to check progress tests and just oversee the auditorium.

There is a primary focus on mob-programming in Salt. Students work in groups. The groups are composed in such a way that there are 1-2 persons that have some experience in programming and are supposed to help and teach other group members. While Salt employees just steer away from providing any assistance to weak group members.

To top things up. In practice, very few students get their job through Salt.

As the bottom line, if you have any formal IT education, you are not going to learn anything of value.
If you have no experience in IT, think carefully before you embark on the program. You are likely to get more out of a Coursera subscription.

Firstly, I want to assure you that I understand your frustration. At Salt, you can enroll in an accelerated course that prepares you to become a JAVA, .NET, or JavaScript full-stack developer. The facilities are good. However, in my group, there were approximately 30 students with one senior and one junior instructor. The junior instructor comes from the previous semester, and their experience is practically nonexistent.




Throughout the course, there is minimal instructor guidance. You are assessed through weekly assignments. If you encounter difficulties, it's uncertain if a mentor can assist you due to the high number of fellow students.




They promise to assist you in finding employment at the end of the program, and this commitment is documented in a contract. However, Salt fails to fulfill this promise. Everyone was dismissed before completing the course, although we were allowed to take a group photo with our diplomas. Nice for LinkedIn. Additionally, there was a significant turnover of instructors, with some already finding new jobs in sales and recruitment. The person responsible for the curriculum has also left for another employer. In short, it's a chaotic situation.




What makes it even more painful is that many students came from abroad to participate in the three-month program without financial support. The accommodation costs also fell on the students. While I believe the organization has good intentions and aims to fill the gap in the job market, I can't help but conclude that you feel deceived. It comes across as a start-up that accumulates a lot of money with good intentions but ultimately fails to deliver on its promises. It would be beneficial if the government monitored such organizations because they make many people deeply unhappy. This is not the way to treat people.

The marketing of salt is very strong. The execution however is less good. The instructors don't really teach, and often don't know the answers to questions. Some of them only recently the bootcamp themselves. They state that 15% of the students dont complete the program, in reality this is much lower. Less than 50% completed the program. People move from other countries to attend the bootcamp, they spend their resources, time (the bootcamp is unpaid) and end up being released right before the completion of the program. It seems that it's all about money for SALT, placements with clients, and if they dont have those clients, they let you go without a valid reason. It's not right to treat people this way.