DevPoint Labs

A few weeks after finishing Devpoint, still basking in the glow of being hired as a dev, I posted an honest, largely positive review of Devpoint Labs on Switchup's main competitor site (you know the one). With that review, I encouraged anyone reading... Read More to reach out to me on Linkedin if they had any questions/comments or concerns. I was totally blown away by the response from people reaching out to me with the exact same eager, anxious, excitement that I had when I was first beginning this seemingly crazy moon shot attempt at a career change.

I would encourage anyone reading this to go read that review first if they want a more in-depth look at why I chose Devpoint Labs out of the abundance of options that are available today. In this review, I thought it might be helpful to address the number one question I get from people reaching out to me, namely, "Will this school get me a job?". My response to the numerous varieties of ways in which this question has been asked to me, can best be boiled down to these three, infuriatingly rhetorical questions for you, the reader, to answer:

1. Do you love coding?
- Everybody loves money. While it is true you can make great money as coder, you will actually have to be coding for 40-60+ hours a week every week in order to make this money. There are plenty of ways to make money and not everyone will love coding. You're inside a lot, you're constantly having to learn new things that are going to be completely changed in a couple of months (see: Javascript), it's stressful, it occupies a lot of your mind. Do you like having to constantly solve new problems? Do computers interest you? Are you a self-starter who can find answers for yourself or do you rely on other people to answer your questions for you? These are the questions you should be asking yourself and thinking deeply about. Seriously, don't just say yes, is this something you could tolerate doing? Of course the best way to discover this leads me to my next rhetorical.

2. Do you practice coding?
- The number of people I have talked to who have gone into, or are planning to go into a coding bootcamp with zero coding experience is absolutely shocking to me. If you go into a web development course and you have not written a single line of HTML, CSS, or JS, [south park reference incoming...] you're going to have a bad time. Practice, practice a lot. If you need to sign up for the course first to light a fire under your butt give yourself at least 3 months beforehand to learn to code, learn what you like to code, and learn what you WANT to learn to code. Yes, I am aware that prodigies exist that go into these things with no experience and come out the other side on top. Don't bank on being an undiscovered prodigy, practice.

3. Do you have grit and persistence?
I'm going to go ahead and reiterate the cliche I'm sure you've read in all kinds of bootcamp think pieces on Medium. Coding is hard. You're going to question yourself, your intentions, and your own talents a lot. I work with senior devs now with 10+ years who still do this on a daily basis. This is why the first point in this list is so critical. How will you respond to the setbacks and disappointments you are 100% guaranteed to experience on this journey. I had sent out nearly 100 job applications with a response rate of about 20% before I got a real job offer. Expect setbacks, expect rejection, expect doubt.

If you can answer each of these questions with a DEFINITIVE yes, then my answer would be yes, attending Devpoint Labs will provide you the education, community, and environment you need in order to land a job as a software developer. I am still actively engaged in the alumni community, I love going back to see the instructors and meet new students. It's exciting and reinvigorating to be around people who are hungry and passionate about coding. I'm not a TA, I'm not a paid reviewer, I'm a guy who attended Devpoint Labs and it worked out great for me. Whatever it is you end up doing, I truly hope that it works out great for you as well.

Always feel free to reach out on Linkedin
Max Winslow

My Experience with DPL was overall pretty positive.

They have some great instructors here who care about their students. The material was challenging and fun to learn and by the end of the class, I really thought I could fly and be ready for a position... Read More as an entry-level developer. I was so pumped! Or so I thought. I began applying to jobs left and right and time and again I was turned down. I found myself thinking that I had done great at an interview only to find out I failed miserably at the technical aspect of my interview.

My biggest issue with this school was not so much the teachers or material (honestly they were awesome). But rather, the lack of support in career preparation and support. Upon completion of the coursework, I found that the career prep and support was almost entirely absent. Towards the end of the course they brought in someone to go over linked profiles, and resumes, but in terms of actual career support and preparation for technical interviews, (which are critical to succeed in when landing and WebDev job), there was nothing. There was really no career coaching team to speak of. There were no prep or training for mock interviews, no prep for technical interview questions, no best practices for resumes and LinkedIn profiles, job negotiation training, no tips in job searching and tactics, and there has yet to be any kind of quality networking event for past students where representatives from local tech companies come out to discuss career opportunities.

Many people coming to these kinds of boot camps are those who are putting down a lot of money to learn vital skill sets to make a big career change. Some even quit their jobs entirely so that they can make the full-time commitment to become adept and prepared for a career in web development. The material we went over was awesome but I am disappointed by the complete absence of actual support.

I would hope that after putting this much money and time into something like this that I would have the support from an experienced career coaching team to continue to build my resume and portfolio and to have the guidance in navigating my career search.

I have been working in education for the past few years. It has been something that I am very passionate about. However as many know, there is not a lot of money in education. So after feeling like I had maxed out my possibilities at the school I was... Read More at, I needed something more. I have a background in technology. After talking with various friends and family members, I decided to look into programming.

I searched and read reviews on all of the major bootcamps offered in the area. I found that DevPoint Labs had great reviews and had recently gotten an accreditation from the University of Utah. Which as far as I understand is the only bootcamp to offer that benefit. So to me the choice was made.

After starting the course, I realized that my decision was correct. The staff was extremely accommodating to any questions I had. The instructors were extremely knowledgeable in what they were teaching. You can tell that they enjoy working in the field and are up to date on everything that is happening as it happens. They both have very different teaching styles, that I feel are a good compliment to quick and in depth learning. Which is what this course is all about.

Coming from a background that had little to nothing to do with programming, I felt prepared to enter an industry that otherwise would have known nothing about.

Overall it was a great experience, and I am happy I took that first step. It was scary and will probably continue to be. However I now have a job as a Full-stack developer, and I love what I do!

After my Spring 2016 semester ended I was wondering what I can do over the summer. I decided to take the Ruby on Rails course and it was honestly one of the best decisions I have made in my life. Coming in to the course I thought it was going to simple... Read More web developement that can compliment my IS degree at the U. The instuctors teaching styles are very distinct from one another and its great to be able to learn from these different teaching styles. This course gave me a passion in web development, I was hungry to learn more after the course, so after the course I became a TA(Teaching Assistant) at DevPoint Labs and started taking the JavaScript course during the night time. The JavaScript course made me want to work towards front-end development. Currently I am a full-time student at the U, also I'm the TA for the Ruby on Rails and JavaScript course. I will graduate in the Spring of 2017 and hopefully I will be able to find a full time developing job after that.

I knew the smallest amount of HTML and CSS when I started and now I can build custom websites and web apps! The teachers are first rate and the class was fun and challenging. The best thing they teach us really is how to problem solve and teach yourself... Read More new skills so you can keep learning and growing after the class. Highly recommend.

I attended the spring 2016 part-time session for Front End Web Development/Full-Stack JavaScript course. From the get go the administration was awesome. I was able to sit down with Nhi Doan over a few meetings and discuss with him my interest in learning... Read More to code and taking my professional development into my own hands. The enrollment process was relatively painless and before I knew it I was sitting in a small class and learning to code. I can't lie... this class was intense. There were times, my brain just shut down, times I wanted to give up, times I felt like hurling my computer at my instructor's head. This was close to four months of intense coding and learning concepts and principles that required me to go over the material again and again and again. The instructors Dave, and Jake though were extremely patient and provided a lot of support for us. I almost didn't finish the course, but because of the staff's encouragement I was able to launch an awesome web app with my capstone team and be part of an awesome experience. DevPoint Labs gave me a solid framework and base to go out and code and most importantly continue learning. I do wish after having finished the course that I could have devoted all my time to the course itself and taken the Full-Time course. Taking it Part-Time worked out okay with work but there was so much material to cover that sometimes I felt that I didn't have enough time to let the material itself stick. It was an extremely challenging course and I would recommend it to anyone seeking to develop their technical skill set for professional growth. The one thing I would say where the course could it improve is their prep-course work. I feel like in order to truly hit the ground running that they need to have a better set up for the prep-course work. Getting basic principals of HTML CSS and JavaScript down SOLID before jumping into jquery, node.js, json, ajax, or redux is vital to being able to succeed.

I like the technologies they decided to include in the curriculum. It's the only Utah school doing Rails right now. The JavaScript library they're focusing on is React, which it appears the more forward thinking jobs in the industry are heading that way.... Read More As mostly a Wordpress/Frontend Dev, I was worried about making myself future proof to beat the obsoletion curve. That is no longer a concern, though I'm going to have to go back over a good portion of the course material to really get a lot out of it.

Make sure to take this class when you have little to no other life events/obligations going on, because all your time these 11 weeks needs to go into this intense course. Don't be shy and make sure you ask questions when they come up. Do the pre course work and take advantage of lab time so you can ask questions when you're stuck. This way you'll avoid falling behind.

The teachers a very good at slowing down during follow alongs and they know what they're talking about.

Communication before signup was a little lacking like the first review said, but I'm very glad to have stuck around for the rest of the course.