| | Jordan | Having recently completed the 13-week boot camp with Coder Space, I can safely say it was a huge waste of time and money.
The website has many promises about the quality, the approach and the experience of staff but unfortunately these were never close to being delivered.
The lead-trainer was actually only our trainer for the first 3 weeks and from then on was rarely seen. For the remaining 10 weeks our trainer was a teenager who had very limited work experience and no teaching experience at all. He was a nice guy but continually struggled to explain how the code works or why you would use it, and often left me completely confused.
Lectures were very long, one-dimensional and completely unengaging, and appeared to have only been pulled together the night before. There were regularly mistakes in code, and training slides were just blocks of code without explanation and completely useless for later reference. The afternoon labs either didn't exist at all, or if they did were generally such a jump from what was covered in the morning that you would need to spend hours Googling answers, which, according to trainers was a good way to prepare for the real world!
There were no constructive 1-2-1's, catch ups or check-ins to see how you were doing, if you understood, were struggling, etc. and when we provided feedback to the lead-trainer to try and improve the failings, which we did on multiple occasions, no serious actions were taken.
The hiring support is handled by someone who is in their first role after university with no links in the IT industry, no experience in recruitment and what appeared to be no interest in the industry generally or in promoting the profiles of students to hiring partners. CV reviews were basic and for me personally, actually provided completely contrary feedback to the professional recruiters in the industry. Any other 'preparation', if you can call it that, for making you job ready didn't arrive until week 12 of the course.
Incredibly, these are only the highlights of what is wrong with this course; the list of failures and undelivered promises unfortunately goes far deeper.
Avoid the 13-week boot camp and Coder Space at all costs. If you have already paid for a course, try to cancel it and get your money back. If you are thinking about taking a course with Coder Space then quite simply, don't. |
| | Shaun | For the 13 week boot camp, Coder Space failed on so many promises: quality of instruction, support, content, and activities. The Lead instructor taught for 3 weeks and removed himself further from the group as the course progressed to the point where he stopped interacting with the group at all. The remaining 10 weeks were led by a teenage instructor who had no teaching experience. At any one time, there was only one member of staff involved in the teaching and learning.
Concerns of the course were communicated to the lead instructor in week 5. Feedback about the course was generally ignored and this led to further deterioration. We had to deal with unsatisfactory classes daily: large chunks of code untested, mistakes on slides, lectures written the night before, instructor unable to find problem with code so occasions were activity abandoned or not explained, activities not graded nor adequate opportunity to practice. The overall energy of the course was flat and non-engaging. This led to students requesting compensation in week 9; all requests from students were declined. We communicated further feedback in week 10 that on the whole again was not taken on board. Only in the last 2 weeks, the teenage teacher made an effort to check in on people, however this was their attempt to rectify problems too late in the course. At the end of week 11, one of the students had to plead with the lead instructor to interact with the group in week 12.
Career support was very generalised. There were two networking events organised: one was cancelled on the day with 7.5 hours notice and for the final developer demo evening to industry, there was only one company that turned up (the other 3 people were individuals with an interest in code). The overall engagement and interactions we had with hiring partners were not what they promised and often companies were not informed about what we were doing. The minimal interview practice we had in the final week didn’t seem to reflect real industry practice. On the website, it says that the co-founder takes a “hands-on approach, is a huge benefit to our students when it comes to the job application phase of the boot camp” – he had not once interacted with the group and was on holiday for the last 3.5 weeks when he should have been involved with the career support and hiring.
The overall experience was extremely disappointing and due to the way they continued to ignore feedback, I cannot see it improving in the near future. Their lack of passion for engaging people to get into tech comes across in their hands-off approach and the way the course was delivered. As a result, it’s damaging the confidence of people who want to get into the industry and undoing the good work of organisations that have worked hard to raise the profile of the tech sector and close the skills gap.
If you have signed up to January 2018 cohort, do what you can to get your money back. However, don’t let this put you off other boot camps. Consider North Coders, who seem to be doing it the right way! |
