| | Nicholas Bowen | 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. |
