UT Austin Boot Camps

it is extremely difficult to articulate how bad this bootcamp actually is. it is not for a lack of words or vocabulary, but it is difficult to get past the feelings of being cheated, scammed and otherwise disappointed. i originally wrote an extremely long review but i have now condensed it to a critique of the 3 promises i was given before joining:

1. instruction & guidance : the main thing i wanted/expected from this course was instruction in what is modern web development and its best practices. what i got was a clueless instructor who clearly does not know what modern web development is. the curriculum is developed (and the course is run) by a company named trilogy. it really has nothing to do with UT Austin but rather is sold on UT Austin's reputation. do not be deceived. the instructor basically read powerpoint slides to us in class and made it excruciatingly clear that he did not prepare before class one bit. what made things worse is that the instructor fumbled through every single lecture and could not answer questions intelligently or accurately. it was frustrating and infuriating to say the least. i was hoping for someone to tell me more than what i could find on youtube or blogposts. what i got instead was a joke of an instructor reading slides… not teaching. want some examples of the poor instruction and guidance? gladly…

   • 3 weeks in i asked the instructor why we use parentheses on some javascript methods and not others, such as 'length.' he said i can add them to length, as in lenght(), and it will work. i was immediately given an error as length() is not valid.

   • i didn't get any of my javascript homework graded until about half-way through the course. so much for feedback. and when it was graded, my feedback consisted of "you should comment your code." but nothing in terms of actual javascript best practices, language proficiency, or content mastery. the last of my homework assignments that was graded (which was due oct. 29 2016) was graded on nov 26, 2016. there were 5 more assignments due after that, none of which were looked at by any instructor, TA, or employee of trilogy.

   • a couple weeks before our final project was due (which was a MERN project - mongodb, expressjs, reactjs, and nodejs) all instruction was over. we had not been instructed, however, in how to actually write a full MERN app or deploy it. in class, we used Heroku for deploying and hosting our apps. so one of my team members asked a TA (the resident ReactJS expert) how to successfuly deploy our app. the TA responded with “I don’t know. I don’t deploy to Heroku. If you get an error I would see what the problem is and just fix it." starting to see the picture? feels like nobody cared once they had my money.

2. career assistance: wow. this was the exact opposite of everything i was sold on. the majority of visits we had were from recruitment companies. anyone can get with these people. just join linkedin. they'll contact you like crazy. or fill out a form at any of their websites. it was an embarrassment that they had recruiters come to class. and it was insulting because, in essence, they (the recruiters) came to sell their services. i thought that was what i was paying for… for the course to actively help in career advice and search. what i was initially told was that they had a bunch of companies as partners who would come out to meet us and give us a chance to present ourselves to them. and that couldn't be further from the truth. our career assistance 'guru' was anything but. i found out last month that my family and i have to relocate out of state, so i asked our career assistance 'guru' if she knew if any of the companies coming to our 'demo day' hire remote workers. her response was for me to search craigslist. craigslist… that was the response. i have a screenshot of the slack conversation to prove it, if you really want to see it. craigslist. i paid money for this? you shouldn't.

3. curriculum: that was the only decent thing but it could use some updating. and it would be better if they hired actual web developers to teach it. otherwise, it's as good as codeacademy.

DO NOT waste your time and money on this awful program. i feel cheated and robbed so please learn from my mistake. if you really are interested in joining a bootcamp, my suggestion would be to seek out 'graduates' and instructors and talk to/email them; ask if you could sit in on a class to evaluate the program; join http://freecodecamp.com/ and follow it to the letter. you'll get as good, if not better, instruction than this terrible bootcamp.

please understand that i put a ridiculous amount of hours and a lot of hard work into the program. and i really did learn quite a bit. but i learned DESPITE this program. not because of it. they did let us know on the first day of class that we are expected to put in a lot of time outside of the program. so i was prepared to do just that. i just didn't expect to or think i'd have to teach myself everything.

the only two things that kept this experience from being 100% suck:

1. i met a few great people with whom i hope to continue coding and collaborating.

2. one TA, Alex Girodano. if trilogy wises up, they will hire him to be an instructor and possibly make themselves look good. because right now, i will tell everyone to steer clear of trilogy and the coding bootcamp at UT Austin. a total rip-off.

My biggest hesitation on recommending this course is the lack of qualified instructors. I was surprised to learn that the course actually has no connection to UT, it is designed and run by a company called Trilogy Education Services. So any associations you may want to attach to UT and it’s educational standards are misleading. The instructors for these courses have no education training so there is a complete lack of pedagogy, and when things get difficult to explain, which they do often, instructors are unable to break down the complexity and explain things in a way the class can understand. The curriculum is pre-written and instructors read off powerpoint slides word for word. Which results in the instructors not having a complete grasp on the concepts and lessons trying to be taught. The homework assignment are not real world examples, we had to make lots of games. Which can be difficult to code, but I was told I would learn real world examples of how to code. What I have told everyone who asked if they should take this course is NO. If I were to do it over, I would spend about 6 months learning HTML/CSS and as much Javascript as I could online or from books. After you have these fundamentals, I would take a course like this, but not a full-stack course. I would take a front-end course, or a back-end course and actually get good at something. If you are serious about your education and your investment, visit a class and sit through a teaching session, be critical, and try your best to talk to students and get their honest feedback. Sadly I feel like I wasted my money on this course. I expected a course UT would indorse to be better.