The Firehose Project

I am currently wrapping up my agile group project with Firehose. It has been an amazing experience, and this was a huge reason why I chose this program. I am on the job hunt, and many job ads mention that they prefer someone with experience in an Agile group project. This also means that you have experience using Slack, Trello, and collaborating with Git, which is also mentioned in many job ads. With all the many things out there in tech world that I still don't have experience with, every one I can "check off" is a win for me. We covered a lot lot of skills in the program, including algorithms and complicated math stuff. I am not a natural in this arena, so Firehose's mentor project sold me here. I was paired with a mentor, which has been seriously valuable. He is very skilled with alogrithms and teaching math stuff to me, and he breaks it up into understandable chunks. He gives me advice as I enter the job hunt, and I am so sad to be finished with him and with the program. Highly recommended! I did work full time and I completed the part time. If you can, I say do the full time accelerated because being in it 24/7 is hard, but also makes it stick.

I spent a lot of time researching bootcamps, and I almost started at an in-person bootcamp. I liked the Firehose Project's honesty in their blog: The Definitive Guide to Choosing a Bootcamp, the 2 week bootcamp prep content, and how responsive Marco (one of the founders) was when I had questions. Doing an online bootcamp required more discipline and a lot more effort in networking, but for me it was worth it. Now I'm a software engineer!

What The Firehose Project did well:

• Weekly mentor meetings: Having these scheduled with someone there personally for me was useful in motivating me to keep going even when things were challenging, and of course I had someone to ask all my questions.
• Algorithms & data structures: This really differentiated this bootcamp from others I had researched. I'm glad they made me struggle through these because it was absolutely helpful in learning the core of programming by thinking in a way to break things down and problem solve better. Ultimately I use this in my daily work as a software engineer.
• Career Prep: There's a TON of content on preparing your resume, social media presence, networking which I found to be pretty important. Also I liked that during the career prep track you're also supposed to continue working on technical problems to keep your coding/problem solving skills sharp.
• Interesting Web Development Projects: I liked the variety of technologies and tools used to build the applications throughout the bootcamp. It was nice having them build up incrementally in difficulty and amount of tools needed to learn as you gained more experience. Compared to other bootcamp students I talked to, some of the Firehose Project's applications were more challenging.
• Cost: At the time I paid $6500 for almost 6 months, which was way cheaper than courses I saw of the same caliber.

What could have improved:

• More Concrete Resources during Mentorship: My mentor was really smart and kind, but I wish that I could have had more direction in what we did during our meetings. I appreciated that he left a lot of it up to me but I had a hard time knowing what I didn't know and what to focus on. 
• Emphasis on Networking only toward the end: At least when I was at the Firehose Project, they encouraged going to networking events during the career prep section at the end. I started going to tech meetups from the beginning of the 6 months and this was incredibly beneficial for me, even though I had no idea what anyone was talking about most of the time. It was key to talk to people, make connections, and learn new things in tech.

Overall, I had a good experience with the Firehose Project. If I would do it over again I would make the same choice.

I started looking into coding as a possible career change roughly 10 months ago.  I have a son and a full time job, so doing a full time immersive bootcamp wasn't an option.  After finishing most of the courses on Codecademy and completing Watch and Code I decided to apply to Hack Reactor.  I finished most of their prep course and structured study program, but ultimately didn't find much actual teaching and didn't feel comfortable with what I was doing.  

I started looking around for a different option and found The Firehose Project.  Most of the reviews that I found were positive and the price was far better than most other options, so I decided to sign up for the prep course.  Their method of teaching is a little hand-holdy compared to Hack Reactor, but so far in my experience it's been really effective and covers a wider range of front end development right from the start (instead of making you solely solve Javascript challenges).  

Several times in the prep course you are required to submit your solutions to different problems using Ruby, and those solutions are checked by their staff (sometimes by the co-founder - Ken Mazaika), where they review your code and offer you hints on how to make it more concise if needed.  You also build an entire working portfolio / website before you even start the bootcamp.  Initially, I thought that I would need to be in an actual classroom to learn anything, but this course has felt way more personal than anything that I've tried so far. 

I'm really excited to be starting the bootcamp this coming Monday.  

After learning on my own through websites and YouTube videos, I even tried another bootcamp, I have learned so much more in the first 6 weeks I have been through this program then I ever did on my own or with the other bootcamp I tried and decided to quit.  Extremely happy with the cirriculum and mentor.  Mentor really pushes me to think like a developer instead of just going through the motions.  

The ciriculum is easy to read and follow, showing exactly what to code and what to expect to happen from your code.  And if any errors develop and you get stuck, current and former students discussions are right there to help you out.  I have never felt alone in this program and am very pleased with the support in the Firehose community.

I have done weeks and weeks of research on which bootcamp would be best for me.  And with Firehose going sticking on mainly one MVC rather than a little of everything approach, focusing on algorithims, and Agile you really cannot go wrong with what they off for the price.

i will head this review off by saying that this was written as part of a competition to win a prize by ekaving feedback. There that is off my chest, now onto the review.

I have not yet completed the on boarding but I have been bow,ed over by the whole positivity and encouragement as I attempt to muddle my way through the Ruby on Rails set of lessons.

Articles for each lesson are descriptive and easy to read, I found that some of the code excerpts could be a little misleading at times, but if you reread it then everything should make sense. If not you can always ask a question in the forum.

One of the best parts of the whole experience. The team are ultra responsive and helpful, they always reply within a few hours to upto 48 hours and with full descriptive answer to your code related queries. Top notch!

I cannot reinstate it enough, the onboarding is so worth doing!

I started by taking the free 2 week course, thinking it would be boring like other free courses. I was surprised to learn it was fun and well structured. I created ruby programs and the first part of my portfolio during the free portion. 

What impressed me the most during the free period was the ability to get help.  If i had a problem, i would post it to the discussion board and I usually got a response within 1 hour or 2 at the most. Unless it was after 9 pm at night.  

The lessons are well structured with a variety of challenges, quizz's, and videos to do throughout the entire course on top of the lessons.  The timeline can be a bit confusing as you are going through it. I found myself rushing at times because I am part of the accelerated program. I learned to slow down to better absorb the material.  They are always improving the courses so I have seen better information on my dashboard in regards to timelines.  Your mentor can also tell you if you are on track or not. 

My computer wouldnt work with vagrant so I ended up using cloud9 for my dev environment.  This made it challenging sometimes to initially setup the applications. I saved the initial instructions so I could easily do it myself. 

I ended up going through 2 mentors until I found one I really clicked with.  This was important because they help you with the challenges.  Mentors can assign additional work. I was overwhelmed with the addiitional work from my first mentor and wanted to quit.  I contacted customer service and they quickly helped me find a new mentor who didnt really mesh with me at all.  Finally, I was matched up with Rose, who is a fabulous mentor! I also found a local ruby on rails meetup, i highly reccommend going to meetups for additional help and learning.  

The office hours are good. The topics vary. Both Marco and Ken (founders of the firehose project) host these. It was very cool to see them interacting with everyone (they use Zoom). 

I am currently starting the group project which is to build a chess game app.  I was a bit overwhemled by my first task which was to chose and integrate a CI. I went with Travis CI. I was able to get it done and now I have another skill I can add to my resume.  

I signed up for this bootcamp because of the ability to get help, mentoring, algorythims, and the group project at the end. 

I can't answer anything about job prep because iam not on that section yet.  

Firehose project's free bootcamp prep course has been an awesome experience.

It is exceptionally well structured, with a great UI and user experience. The content is top notch and project based so you'll get you into building mode quickly. While building a Portfolio website from the ground up to deploy, you are introduced to fundamental concepts in HTML and CSS and then an to Ruby with some challenges/ algorithms to brainstorm over.

The outstanding feature in this prep course is the code review and feedback. I am not talking test suite and clever errors logs. Even at that stage you are assigned a mentor that will provide timely and constructive feedback on your code submission. How to name variable, refactor your code, alternative way of resolving an algorithm...the real deal. 

Thanks a lot for providing the free bootcamp prep and getting me started, I shall join you on the full software Engineering and web development track. Let's drink from the firehose :) 

Having a job coding hadn’t always been a dream of mine. I wasn’t really aware of all the possibilities or paths you could take and never really knew anyone that had much knowledge about it. Once graduating high school I found out that my cousin had become a programmer. After talking to him for a bit I decided that is what I was going to go to college for, programming. After getting an Associates’ in Computer Science I attempted to find jobs where I could develop my skills and expand. Sadly, I was unable to find a job, internship, or anything and this discouraged me so I stopped school and went on a different career path.

Five years later, now having a wife, 10 week old child, and a job working upwards to 16 hours a day multiple times a week, it was time for a change. Going back to the cousin I talked to previously, I asked him what I can do. His reply, “Anything in web development. Seriously, it is booming and where the world is moving. There are a bunch of coding bootcamps out there that teach people how to code for the fraction of schooling costs.” I had not even heard of the term bootcamp before, so I started my research. I was quickly flooded with bootcamps and apprenticeships and training schools and started getting excited.

I talked it over with my wife, weighed the books to make sure we could afford the risk, and decided we would use our tax returns to invest in a better future. Before making a rash decision I told myself I would wait a minimum of two weeks before making a decision. Being stuck between two options at the end of the two weeks, I decided to reach out to them and try to have a 1-on-1 discussion with them on “why I should choose them.” The first option I received what seem to be a populated generic response with a tiny bit of customization added to it. This put me off quite a bit… So, onto the second option, Firehose. I received a very prompt response pertaining specifically to the questions I asked along with an offer to jump on a call and talk about my concerns. My decision was made right there, I was seen as a person and not a number. After the call my decision was solidified and I signed up for their prep course.

After completing the prep and being accepted to Firehose Project, I started in the middle of March. I honestly don’t know where to start when pointing out the amazing things they have to offer. I think the best part for me was that it was 100% virtual. With my crazy schedule and time constraints, there was no possible way for me to attend an in-person training program.

Alongside the course being entirely online, there are weekly 1-on-1 mentor sessions with senior web developers, algorithms and coding challenges to build up your skills on programming logic, multiple applications that you build and publish to the web, and forums at the end of each lesson to ask questions when you get stuck. On top of that, their amazing Team Project gives you the skills of working on an agile development team. Did I mention the job preparation resources you get access to, and having lifetime access to the materials in the course?

Fast-forward through the course and I don’t have a single negative about the course. Yes it was hard-work and yes I had quite a few nights with little sleep, but this didn’t have to do with the course, it had to deal with my crazy schedule and life. The Firehose has since developed options for different paces since I graduated to account for students like myself. I am now employed by Firehose as a Web Developer. Looking back now at what I thought was a risk is really one of the easiest and smartest decision I’ve ever made.

I was 2 months in the bootcamp and due to personal issues I had to leave, but looking foraward to come back. The program was amazing, for someone that had no experience in coding like me was really great to start getting all the knowledge from scratch. I was able to learn the basics of MVC, how to browser communicates with the server, ruby language, and many other stuff. The lessons are well explained - very detailed - and if you have any question you can ask your mentor and he kindly will help you. I did the first two projects, Splurty and Nomster and both were really great to learn the basics until something more complex.

The management team was always in contact with you for any particular issue you have, they are really supporting and giving you any advice on how to take the best advantage of the program. 

My mentor has great experience in rails framework and he was always giving some advice on how to have good practices and teaching new stuff that was not in the program.

Overall, the experience was really great and I will recommend it to anyone that want to get into the programming world.  I didn´t take the job prep so I can not comment about it.

Regards,

Ivan