Coder Camps

I enrolled in the camp last year right out of college. To begin the recruiter was very pushy and persistent (Bill) and even though I expressed being very apprehensive about the program I  was constantly called and encouraged to enroll being told that it was for people like myself that had no computer science background. Onece I was in the program I could clearly see it was for more advanced programmers. I wasn’t able to keep up and wasn’t able to recieve much help due to the time difference of the coaches. I tried leaving the program but was never able to reach the person that I spoke with about signing up... long story short I’m paying back 10,000 for a month and a half worth of class. JUST DONT DO IT! 

       I began studying Ruby so that I could apply to another camp; and about a year and several more self-taught skills later, I found myself on the phone with Coder Camps, since they were one of the only in-person camps in the Houston area. I talked to Christine, who made a very good connection with me and frankly made me regret not joining a bootcamp earlier. I looked them up, and mostly good reviews! She followed up at all the right times, we did more phone interviews, and within a couple of days I took the leap and signed up for a online(commute drains hours and money, especially in Houston) cohort beginning in November 2016. She told me we would talk once a week at least, to make sure the experience is good for me. (She never called once til it was time to ask for referrals to the program.)

       The quality of the pre-work was encouraging. I felt challenged to get it all completed, I got good feedback on some of the projects I needed to fix, and I felt really good about the stuff that I built. Eventually the time to start was upon me! The hours were from 9AM central to a break for an hour, and then we ended the day around 4PM.

       I was not impressed by the cohort size, as there was one in-person student, and two online. Four or five total. That was the first red flag. Stephen Walther was our main instructor, and he was very knowledgeable. The first few weeks were great. We learned Typescript, which I had never seen, I believe some Bootstrap as well, and of course HTML, CSS, etc. I excelled at anything we did because I was familiar with these basic technologies. I felt like a kid waiting for the first lick of a spanking because I knew that things would be picking up soon. Then it did! I was terrified of Angular (1.5), Node and Express when I was first presented with the app that we would be building our apps on, but that's when I really learned to break down new technologies and get an understanding for how they work. I got so good that the instructors thought I was cheating when I would "drive" the other students in front of the class. 

       That's actually the closest we came to pair programming, one student telling the other what to do while the other students watched. I found it extremely hard to pay attention when I was not directly engaged in producing the code. I didn't like how we would be introduced to new concepts with a walk-along, and THEN go practice. I found much more use when I introduced the concept to myself through reading the curriculum and Youtube the night before, and then implementing the concepts in the presence of a teacher, where I could ask any question I needed, and that way keep my momentum and really get the most of my time. Instead, I would be forced to follow along while someone else codes on the screen. I cannot fault them for their teaching style, but personally, I did not find it the most effective. 

       The first real blow came when our main instructor, Stephen, dipped off to go and teach a .NET course. He left us to Johnathon, who I believe was nothing more than a TA, and would occasionally come and check on us. This made me angry, because while John was helpful and had a great attitude, he simply didn't have the experience that Stephen did and therefore could not help us on the same level. Soon after, Stephen abruptly left Coder Camps. The next guy that came in, Brandon, was in between John and Stephen, but closer to John in terms of experience, and he honestly didn't have the best communication skills. 

       Brandon coming in introduced another level of complication to the cohort since I believe it was Stephen who wrote the curriculum in the first place. He didn't like Stephen's curriculum, and for good reason: component-based architecture was completely missing from it. This didn't bother me until I graduated and realized that EVERYTHING is headed that way. I started behind the race because I was taught to use an old version of Angular, and at that we didn't learn the industry-preferred style of app structure, even though Angular 1.5 supports it.

      While I'm on the subject of what I didn't learn, I barely know how to use Webpack, (only because I taught myself at that) and only know of SystemJs due to my own reading on Angular. We never learned any bundling technology. To me, that is one of the hardest concepts to grasp, and it's def something we should have learned under the supervision of a seasoned coder. 

     As for the projects, I built many quick one-day projects to demonstrate understanding of different features of Angular or Express, but only one personal capstone and one group project. My capstone was not much of a success in my opinion, and I blame the fact that I aimed a little too high. Definitely would go simple if I could again. It was just too data-intensive. I spent a lot of time trying to acquire data, find ways to manipulate it, and finally gave up on that and tried to produce my own. 

      The small cohort really hurt the group project, since there were only three of us by the time it rolled around. One of my classmates was too far behind to participate, so our group project was done with only two. I just wish I collaborated on more than one project. We struggled with authentication since nobody could provide a working version of Passport. How can I learn to use it if you don't even have a working example to show me? Brandon actually did it for us, and he had a hard time with it, adding several more technologies to make it work for some reason. He really did his best to help us, but still nobody was impressed when it came time to show it off. 

     The job services is a big joke. I won't lie, I missed the day that the career services rep supposedly talked to our cohort, but I did make sure I got the materials from our slack channel and reached out to them after that. I got a pdf and a power point telling me basic things like make a resume and make a LinkedIn, which I already had. I wish they actually took the time to introduce us to some companies. That was a big reason for me going to a bootcamp, I thought they would have connections to leverage and help us in the door. The rep could have at least replied to me. 

     I graduated at the end of January, and it is August now. I held my tongue for a while because I didn't realize how bad of an experience I had had, and I wanted to give them the chance to make it right, because things happen sometimes. They don't plan on helping (aside from me taking ANOTHER THREE MONTHS not being able to earn a living), and I feel that I will not get a job without going through more schooling. I am looking at different options, but I will not be returning there. You should not get the same amount of money from me because you messed up the first time and now I have to spend double the projected time in school. Even when I was teaching myself things like component-based architecture or webpack after graduation, the instructors on the slack channel didn't give a single f*** about me. No support. Except for Brandon. He took time to video chat with me when I was no longer his student and help me teach myself.

      I banked a lot on that bootcamp, and I feel extremely let down. It makes me angry and depressed when I realize that I am in the same situation as a year ago. It's really hard to put into words how discouraging this last year (including bootcamp time) has been for me. I am at a loss as far as what to do sometimes. 

While I knew this 12 week course would be difficult, I had no idea how fast the class would actually go. We have a large class with a variety of ages and learning abilities. Our instructor goes the extra mile to make sure we understand. Thank goodness he has a sense of humor! Our classes are recorded so we can watch them again to review concepts that we might be struggling with. I have found that my extra effort in studying before and/or after class is making the difference to my understanding and retention. The hands-on projects are vital for making the knowledge stick!

On a side note, all the mentors and instructors have been helpful...even those who aren't directly involved in my class. Everyone here is willing to make sure you get out of this experience what you put into it. I love it here and recommend it to those considering a coding camp of this type. Keep in mind...this experience isn't for sissies or whiners.

Many people think these boot camps are a golden ticket, they are not. Before I even showed up in Seattle, I had no unreasonable expectations.I am a self-paced learner, I had studied extensively before I showed up. I won’t go over career placement/counseling because I never expected a magic way into a job. You are the only person that can get you a job, network, build and be persistent.  I only expected the following. 

1. A chance to code full time and get financing for the tuition, cost of living and gas.
2. A environment where I could meet others like myself.
3. A place to stay late and code when cramming to finish projects.
4. A instructor to help me when I needed it. 
5. A good resume project to leave camp with.
6. A place to find community even after graduation.

Basically, #1 is the only thing I felt was adequately provided, and that was provided through a third party, so hey, thanks to them I guess. I’ll start with #2.

#2 :“A environment where I could meet others like myself.”
I was hoping to meet passionate newbies who really had the drive and competency to build awesome thing. The “admissions representatives” aka, sales people, were just pushing as many bodies through the door as they could, regardless of aptitude. Look it up on glassdoor, they work on commission. Students that needed excessive hand-holding through lectures. Students that seemed to be barely able to operate their own computers, let alone build software.  I did meet some awesome passionate people at coder camps, but they were in different cohorts who have the same complaints about the program as I did.

#3: “A place to stay late and code when cramming to finish projects.”
When I first got to the camp, I had a late night TA. She was there if you needed questions answered, and to close the building late. However, 2ish weeks in, she got moved to a remote class and started working from home, subsequently causing the camp to close at 5 when the 2 instructors left. It would be occasionally be open a bit longer, but not often. I’d usually end up at the nearby coffee joint when I needed to get work done. 

#4: “A instructor to help me when I needed it. ”
This was partially due to #2, it was hard to get my instructor to help me on harder concepts when he had students who were constantly making him repeat basic concepts like git commands and editor hotkeys. Beyond this. He left the company 2 weeks before my final project was over, presumably due to differences within Coder Camps. The instructor in the other class was willing to help when I needed it, but much of the project as in a completely different stack, and I ended up finishing it out. Which leads to our next expectation.

#5: “A good resume project to leave camp with.”
I was in a group of 2 others, one remote and one onsite. We finished, but there were features missing that I sincerely wished made it in. Beyond our instructor leaving, the remote student had to begin working a full-time job for personal reasons. The scope of the project was made for 3 full time developers, and it was more like 2.25. I feel like this made me pick up the extra slack. The project works as a demo, but not as a product, and it still bothers me to this day. I put a lot of heart into it. 

#6: “A place to find community even after graduation.”
After I graduated the dot-net class wasn’t receiving new students, and the mean stack class ahead of me was finishing their projects. In total, on a day I would stop in there would be 5 people in the building including the instructor and TA, but often less. This was pretty suspicious, they went from just throwing in any warm body willing to pay them, to mysteriously sending no-one. This turned out to be that they planned to close the Seattle campus.  I tried to stop by recently to find out that they closed the camp. They are still active in arizona and Texas (so far as I know). I’ve found a good community outside the camp, the JS community in Seattle is warm and friendly. Unfortunately, Coder camps’ Seattle campus was actually in Redmond! And if you know anything about Seattle, the people here hate driving. So you end up spending a lot of time and gas to go to meetups and events where the community actually congregates.

Most of what I have learned hasn’t been from their curriculum, it was pretty badly outdated. I’m self taught, they taught me nothing. 2 weeks out of camp I found some contract work for a startup. With zero help from Coder Camps. And that’s fine, as I said, I wasn’t expecting it. That lasted about about 2 months, and now I’m on the hunt again. This whole experience was just sad. I came in with reasonable expectations and was disappointed in a spectacular fashion. Don’t trust a word they tell you.

I'm currently 4 weeks into my 24 week online course. I just compleeted the first module whicch is scheduled for ending week 6. The learning modules are set up to thouroughly test each skillset before moving on. Obviously as with any online work-your-own-pace class you're far more responsible for your own understanding than if you were in class. That said there are always good links suggesting additional reading for each concept and as I said effective tests to sohow you where you lack understanding.

I attended the Phoenix Full Stack Javascript course last spring, and I graduated in April. The class was very intense to say the least. This is a course for people who are serious about trying to make a break into the rapidly growing tech industry. The Curriculum is very fast paced, and certainly a need to study outside the classroom. The instruction was very fast paced and thorough, and the Instructor was very knowledgeable and always on point. As for the class Mentors, I can't say they were exactly a huge help. While the instructors themselves had many years experience in the tech field, the mentors were mostly Coder Camps graduates themselves, so their knowledge was more of a shallow understanding. At the end it was a huge relief to be finished and Demo our project to a sizeable audience. The Coder Camps Career Services guy, Brent Watson, was very helpful in setting up all of the resume boringness. He helped me fix up my resume, and built my LinkedIn profile to be appropriate to the tech industry that I would recently be entering. To say that there is a magic job opportunity right out the gates would not be accurate.  As with any job search, it is entirely up to you to get a job that you actually want.

When you're looking for a .net camp, the options are a bit more limited than other tech stacks. Let's just say my company is heavily invested in the Microsoft stack.

Chris Attaway and Brian Wood are really helpful instructors. They did a better job explaining things i had trouble with than the curriculum did, which leads me to my only real problem with the course. My biggest complaint would be the "sparse" curriculum in places. Some things weren't deeply explained, and you have to do a lot of outside study. More on that in a bit. However, i've seen a glimpse of their new curriculum, and it seems to be much, much improved. The biggest benefit of this course, and the reason i'm scoring it high overall, is that as the curriculum improves, I'll get to go take a look at the new stuff. The access to free future training that all grads get is a great benefit. I've been told an "ala carte" option for the modules is coming as well, which would be nice: won't have to take an entire camp, just go freshen up on the things i want.

So, for me the negatives are the sparse curriculum, and the difficulty of learning tech like this online which probably would apply to any camp. I also invested in a codecademy sub to suppliment what i'm learning. That said, someone like me needs a bit of structure and some deadlines/assignments to progress, and the course provided what i expected there. It seems they're taking the criticisms about the group project to heart as well. I've been told that going forward, instead of a big group project, it's an individual project++.

Bootcamps are not for everyone. i'm not sure that a novice would have a great experience online, because of the self-directed nature of it. A novice may be better served being in a room with instructors and really interacting with them. You really get out of these courses what you put in. I spent many a day re-reading training materials and re-watching videos, working on my individual project.

However, at the end of the day, i progressed further making useful software on modern toolsets in this short, few month course than I did as a computer science major for two years. It feels like codercamps has somewhat recently changed ownership / management or both, and i have pretty good feelings about the future direction of this camp. 

I didn't rate the job assistance category, as I'm using this camp to broaden my existing knowledge (non-dev, but still highly technical). The career assistance didn't appeal to or assist me much at all... but i can see how someone entirely new to the tech industry and job market would benefit. 

I'd also like to see an increased emphasis on the types of algorithms and whiteboard-interview type techniques that tech companies use nowadays.

Bottom Line: I feel like i got my money's worth, but this type of training is not for everyone. You have to be immenently excited about the idea of building software , and have strong troubleshooting and research abilities already, particularly for the online course. If this is you, you'll enjoy the course and make a lot of progress.

This school is an absolute farce. I attended from September of 2016 to January of 2017 because our first teacher quite before the class was event a part of the way through, the second teacher wasn't actually familiar with Javascript, and the third teacher, while experienced, didn't actually know one of the frameworks we were to be taught (AngularJS). That last teacher I mentioned quit the school before my cohort was complete because of disagreements with how the course load was handled.   You'll find my picture on the home page of the Coder Camps website saying some prescripted junk they wrote up for me about how they helped me find work. It was really a combination of me doing to tech meetups and having the good fortune to meet a small startup that was interested in supporting bootcamp graduates. Unfortunately despite getting a job at that company, the lack of fundamentals and understanding of concepts the bootcamp was supposed to provide in the curriculum was absent, leading to me losing that position.   The curriculum during my time at Coder Camps was outdated, incorrect, and neither of the cohorts I participated in on site actually completed all of the topics meant to be covered. We never completed authentication, hashing, tokens, our angular lesson was basically nonexistent, and the list goes on. I would also like to point out that a majority of the students that attended the cohorts I was in were hired by the school, not as developers, but various other unrelated positions. The only person I know of from my classes that managed to secure a developer position is one that quit the program, received a refund, and attended a different bootcamp that actually had a developed curriculum and teachers who understood and where passionate about the material.   I will close with the fact that this program has done nothing for me except leave me with a $540/mo loan payment that I can't afford to pay back and a career services department that has not been in communication with me in almost 4 months. The one communication I received was a short message saying they have no leads or opportunities at this time. I have not heard from them since then, despite numerous attempts to reach various people within the department. I would demand a full refund of this program if I could, because the only way it transformed my life was by adding a debt that won't be paid off anytime soon.

 

Hey guys, a little about myself. I've studied management Informtation Systems at Texas Tech University. I'm 22 years old, and love everything about computers. I found that in my time at University I was extremely unprepared for practical implementation of my knowledge to the workplace. I first found out about codercamps after figuring out I wanted the intensity that acquired a programming bootcamp. I was accepted into AppAcademy, and HackReactor, but Jason, the admissions counselor made me truly feel at home and after talking with some former students I made a pretty daring move, and moved out to Arizona to take the course.

Let me say it is THE BEST DECISION I HAVE EVER MADE. With these things you get out of it what you put in. If you expect to magically learn programming in 3 months by sitting on your a** you're poorly mistaken. I will say they make it so easy to be ingaged however.My favorite part about this school is the network. The instructor (Jesse tomchak) is incredibly knowledgeable and he truly cares for people. Most importantly the network of students is incredible. Everyone helps with everything. I feel like I am a part of the family. These guys gave me the practical knowledge to turn my creativity into real world applications. Trust me when I say out of all of my education, this BY FAR has been the most valuable. They have a coders for life program so you can come back any time you'd like and learn as many languages as you can handle. I highly recommend this for anyone that wants a career out of programming. Best choice I've ever made.

 

*I am a student and am no way shape or form endorsed by codercamps, and I receive no benefit from writing this whatsoever*

I just wanted to share my experience because I'm annoyed I didn't do this sooner.