| | Anonymous | I am writing this review one year after attending Helio Training. Many of the reviews that have been written on this bootcamp seem to come from people who have recently gotten out or are still attenting. I wanted to give this review to describe the challenges, the ups and downs, pros and cons, and how Helio prepared or underprepared me for the real world in web development.
To start off, I will say that you will not and cannot learn full stack in 13-14 weeks. It is simply impossible, no matter how many hours you spend coding, the concepts will be difficult and will take a lot of time, repetition, building up and burning down projects. With that being said, I believe Helio did not transition the concepts well and I, as a student could not grasp the concepts of Javascript very well. Since it is fast paced, and goes through fullstack, the structure itself is flawed, and leads to confusion, many gaps in knowledge, and lack in competency as a developer. I believe it is professionally irresponsible for Helio to teach fullstack in 13 weeks, it may work better for them to just have a front end course or a back end course for students to choose from and extend it out to be atleast 4 months.
In my current position, I am a front end developer, and have struggled in the role. Obviously, your first dev job is going to suck and it will have a lot of growing pains for you. From this experience alone, I have realize that Helio has inadequately trained me. Yes, it is important and essential for devs to continuously grow and learn and make this a lifestyle, however, it should be Helio's duty to teach us how to learn these things in a way where it is retainable, which they did not do unfortunately. What I learned from my current job is that it is essential to understand Javascript concepts, what functional programming is and why we use it. Many bootcamp grads do not have the competencies to answer this. At the end of my bootcamp, I could literally not answer concepts in regards to variables, scopes, closures, recursions, etc, you get the point. Helio also does not talk to you about how a dev oriented team operates, and that may throw you into a curveball as well. Its important to know and understand the agile process as well, but that can be learned at your first job.
As for the career serive, it is and was helpful to me. I was able to get my resume fixed up, and had some connections made. I do wish however that the career services did more follow up and have more connections for grads to get onto. Perhaps, an apprenticeship approach may be better suited for Helio, because many of the grads are obviously under qualified for many of the jobs available in Utah and beyond.
The instruction I recieved from Helio was disorganized. There was a curriculum laid out on paper, however it was not followed in those orders and became a bit disorganized. The classes were not started in a timely manner, and topics would pivot. The instructor was very smart and well versed in web development, but seemed to lack the passion and enthusiasm that could have really helped other students and myself. When building our projects, we were not given adequate guidance. I do wish that they could have done some group projects based on a concept we learned and build on top of those concepts in the later weeks so that the learning can be better solidifed. Projects are so important to presenting your knowledge to potential employers, so an improvement in that process should be a bigger priority for Helio.
After Helio and a year later, I realize that all the tools I need to learn are online. I spent a couple hundred dollars on codecademy and there are many paths in there to choose from ,I chose web development and data science path, and I actually have learned more from codecademy than Helio and it was $9,900.00 cheaper than Helio. So if you are considering changing careers and going into web dev, I would strongly suggest codecademy first, before considering a bootcamp.
So would I recommend Helio? They have amazing reviews, and mostly positive comments, but the positive comments are from people who come out fresh from the bootcamp, I urge you to do more research and be more realistic. Finding a first dev job will suck, ALOT. Learning to code will take alot of time and energy, you will have to make a lifestyle change to get this information burned into your brain and Helio cannot teach you that. Can you learn these things on your own? Yes you can. Can you find a job on your own without a bootcamp? Yes you can. Can a bootcamp help? Depends. Helio and other bootcamps may add value because of the career service and people that may hold you accountable. You also work with people who are in the same boat as you. Helio also offers tuition reimbursement if you are not able to find a dev role in 6 months after graduation, however that comes with stipulations, so I would ask about that prior to joining.
With all that being said, my final note is, just do your own research and come up with your own conclusion, ask many questions and don't feel pressured to join. It is your money at the end of the day and it is your life. |
