| | Greg | I'll start with the good.
The lead instructor has a great mindset when it comes to focusing on the students and how they learn and grow individually. I dropped the program early since the second half just felt like a prison and all the work is self guided anyway, but career services seemed pretty good from the bit that I went through. Good advice on setting up LinkedIn and resume building, but maybe don't expect much more than that. Most of my gripes are from the curriculum and environment.
The curriculum and environment...
The curriculum is almost completely taught by videos and self-guided time. You will be in class for 60 hours a week (so that they retatin accreditation), if you're five minutes late at any point in the day, expect a third of an absence, three absences you will be removed from the program. You will be pulled out of class or asked to change locations several times a day, often right as your just making progress/settling in. The building presents a hip, techy workplace at first glance, but the more time you spend there it quickly turns into the lifeless building it is.
The amount of effort that goes into presenting that environment would be better used actually building it. Every office around the building has giant glass walls that you can expect to feel like a zoo exhibit. They put on regular workshops in the middle of the space so they can make sure you see them being techy, or entrepreneurial, or whatever their angle is. It's an exhibit more than an incubator or school.
Overall it's a very disruptive environment. Also, not sure if this one is me being jaded by prior experience, but only expect to really walk into a job using the exact tools they teach the curriculum on. Instructors will not be able to provide advice unless you adhere exactly to what they have used and is part of the curriculum. Engineering is honestly a misnomer for what they selling here.
Data structures are very loosely touched on and never in the course is the application of engineering principles really taught. Expect to be handed a project with some test cases and told to go have fun. Assignments and tests are done by bullet points or following a list of instructions. It doesn't inspire free thought, or how to solve a problem using engineering.
The first six weeks of the course is definitely where the majority of the course lies. It does a good job of familiarizing you with javascript, but the second half where you're learning how to build actual applications. You're handed a business document and a rendering of a website and told to go make it. It's easy to make something show on the screen through code, but the means in which you accomplish this is where the term engineer comes from, and this is what is not touched on a single time through the course.
My advice coming out of this.. if you need the in classroom setting, do the part time course. You're interaction is probably the same even if you're there full time. But at least you have you're own schedule and can have a less distracting environment. The price tag is high. If like online learning, do online, maybe look at some of the paid courses available elsewhere. You will get a lot more material for your dollar.
So the real question. What are you paying for at Galvanize?
The space (not great), the curriculum (has value early on, but definitely not 20k), the instructors (hardly any instruction or mentorship), career services (resume, linkedin, cover letter, interview advice, pay negotiations, overall valuable stuff, but again not 20k), oh, and the name Galvanize/Hack Reactor, which does carry value. So long as they don't tarnish it. |
