The Best Phoenix Coding Bootcamps Of 2023

This bootcamp was wonderful. The University of Arizona had incredibly warm and welcoming staff that were there for us students every step of the way! The TA's, instructor, and tutors were consistently available to us. My instructor was very passionate about coding and taught us so much valuable material we will use for life.

This was challenging doing alongside a full-time job, but they helped make it work and I am forever grateful for that.

 

 

I have successfully completed my 6-month journey through Arizona State University FinTech Bootcamp! I enrolled in the program with no prior coding experience at all. My background consists of construction and about a decade of day trading experience. I was not sure what to make of the Bootcamp at first as I had never done online education before. I was not very tech savvy in general. The first day of class my instructor asked me a question, he said Why are you here? I thought about it for a second and explained I am there to change careers, I am tired of the physical labor, busting my back all day in the blistering heat. He told me to remember my why and stay focused. I knew it was going to be hard but I decided I was going to trust the process. With the support of my classmates and my amazing tutor/mentor Johnathan I took it one day at a time and little by little started to learn how to program. I became very passionate early on in the course and used that passion as motivation to learn as much as I could. It is a fast-paced course and definitely not for those that are not willing to put in the effort. For disclosure and full transparency, I put in easily 20- 30+ hours each week of outside class time to really absorb everything but I was more than willing as I was determined to learn and remembered my "why".  My Instructor Estevan and teacher assistant Derek were very informative and insightful, they offered office hours before and after class which I attended every one. They could not have been any more supportive of me throughout the entire journey. They knew my background of having No background as it relates to programming and were more than willing to match my effort and support me by answering any questions I had. I realized that the experience is what you make of it so I asked as many questions as I could think of and kept detailed notes. By asking so many questions in office hours and taking detailed notes of the problems I had I was able to start helping other classmates debug their errors in class. Helping others allowed me to instill within myself what I learned. I am proud to say I was announced as one of the Top students in the class upon completion as I maintained an A+ average and missed no classes or assignments.

Being a day trader for nearly a decade I have been keeping track of tedious statistics, manually, first on paper in a notebook then eventually in an excel spreadsheet. Early on in the Bootcamp I realized I could use my skills to automate the tedious and very time-consuming tasks that were required of me. Around the 10th week of the bootcamp, I started working on a personal project to utilize for my day trading. I decided I would implement the skills I was learning in class, putting these skills to practical use in real time really ensured I was comprehending everything. By the end of the program I completed my day trading application and currently use it on a day to day basis to help myself make trading decisions. 

I would recommend this bootcamp to anyone that has an interest in learning Python. You can 100% do it through this Bootcamp as it offers you all the support you need to thrive. You have to have the tenacity from within yourself. If you want to further your education there is no better place in my opinion. The support and staff are professional knowledgeable experts in the field with a bleeding passion which is contagious.  I enjoyed the program and would do it all over again. 

My 2 cents:

Attend office hours 

Meet with your tutor weekly

Re-watch all the recordings of the classes

Take detailed notes

Work on your own passion project

Support your classmates

Always remember your "WHY"

If you want to achieve success Arizona State University FinTech Bootcamp is highly suggested.

I have recently completed the bootcamp so I can not give a fair assessment on Job Assistance yet as it is not applicable to me currently. I can say they do offer excellent resources and provide support in preparing for the career hunt!

 

This is a long review, but I know how intense this process can be for those of you looking at attending a bootcamp. It has now been about a year since I decided to attend a bootcamp to change careers. I looked everywhere online when I settled on going to a bootcamp; I read every review, I watched every video on Youtube, I even messaged alumni of different bootcamps on LinkedIn, and eventually, I found my way to Codesmith. For the last 3 months since the program, I’ve considered myself lucky everyday I made the choice I did.
 
 Codesmith is without question, the best educational environment I’ve had the privilege to learn in. I’ve been lucky enough to go to good schools in the past, but I’m really proud, frankly, to say that this online bootcamp has really left them in the dust in key ways. I’ll make a note here that I was hired as a fellow by the program after my time in the immersive program, so if you need a grain of salt to start, there could be one. 
 
 - Admissions: It is worth making a comment right away that getting into Codesmith is not easy, but it is NOT an unjust process like I experienced in other programs. I speak from experience as someone who applied elsewhere, tried to go through admission processes at other places (everyone should have options), and eventually conducted the literal technical interviews for Codesmith myself, the admissions process is doing its job well. I won’t get too lost in the details, but I will say that if you can pass the Codesmith technical interview, you have what it takes to become a software engineer. They test on every quality and detail that I was tested on in a real technical interview for the job I have now. That all said, don’t rush into this process. It is possible, having seen both sides of admissions, to brute force your way through, with time. Do NOT throw $20k into something before you are ready. If you understand, for example, how to add methods to a prototype so they can be inherited by other objects, you could be ready. If you have no idea what I mean by that, do not stress even a little bit; just take your time to learn is my point (:
 
 - Curriculum: The curriculum is fantastic. You will touch all the technologies you need to get a full-stack developer position: Javascript (you’ll be a pro), React, Node.js, Git/Github, etc. However, what you come to appreciate and feel confident in by the end of the program is that you could see any tech, any framework, even any new language, and given realistic timelines / expectations by your team “in the wild” could learn what is needed to solve a problem in whatever tech stack. This is really because — Codesmith doesn’t create cookie-cutter engineers; Codesmith creates first-class problem solvers who communicate empathetically and technically like senior engineers. If you want to understand why outcomes seem so high for this program compared to others, the answer begins with these 2 qualities above all the rest.
 
 - Portfolio: Not a ton to say here, although a ton could be said. It is worth noting that you will have a better time job hunting when you have real open-source products on the resumé. And Codesmith focuses on making you build real, open-source projects before you leave. You don’t want to pay for a program that is tutorial style really, because why not just spend $2k (at most) in Udemy courses and be done with it? Codesmith makes you build in small teams of engineers (like in the real world), on projects that are technically impressive and that are REALLY challenging. You’ll hear “hard learning” thrown around a lot in and out of the program, and there is no form of better learning than solving a bug you’ve been stuck on for 6 hours with a team; this makes a good portfolio for sure.

- Hiring Support: I have so much love for the hiring support team answering every ridiculous, anxious question I ever hit them with, day or night. Codesmith really points you in a direction at the end of the program and teaches you how to carry yourself in interviews in the tech industry. Tech interviews and getting hired generally as a software engineer is honestly very formulaic. It’s almost entirely behavioral / very ceremonial, which was somewhat surprising to me. Codesmith guides you through all of these processes and really do their best to ensure you have support networks (during and after the program) to guide you through the idiosyncrasies of the tech industry. I would NOT have gotten a job as smoothly as I did if it wasn’t for their mentorship.

- Management/Team: This part could be a never-ending rant. I think what you will find, even will find just by attending the free workshops, is that Codesmith is a community of really passionate people that are putting in the work for the right reasons. I truly believe Codesmith only works because the instructors and the management of the organization are people who are passionate about seeing people change their lives. Will Sentance is the founder and owner, and not only will he give your cohort a lecture at the end, but you will get several chances to hear from him throughout the program; could not be any more apparent this person cares about fostering a space for people to change their lives. Eric Kirsten is a senior board advisor that will lead you through the hiring program. Eric is another huge element of the “secret sauce” of success at Codesmith. Takes a certain level of tailored mentorship to get an engineer to negotiate $15k in base salary after only 8-12 months of studying the industry, and Eric will take a hands-on approach to make sure you get that. Phillip Troutman, he’s the chief academic officer, is another key player you’ll hear from often. Let me tell you, part of the secret of Codesmith is convincing students every day they can do everything and anything so that they actually go out and attempt insane feats of engineering; Phillip is the key to that happening. Every program has different instructors, but in the central remote program — Katrina Villanueva and Jared Lewis are *the* reason students understand the core curriculum so well. Their compassion and attention towards student success is without question what makes the CTRI immersive so effective. For the sake of not making this piece of the review endless, I’ll stop here, but yes, there are that many incredible people in this organization.

 - School / Life Balance: There is very little balance. This is my very real, very difficult con for the program that I would not hide from anyone. You will eat, sleep, and breathe Codesmith, which at times will be a lot to handle. This program is hard. You will watch your cohort go lows and highs of imposter syndrome almost daily. It can even feel a bit cult-like, I suppose, at times. But what can I say — you get a room of intelligent people together every day who want to change careers in a (seemingly) impossible time frame into a field that is really challenging and competitive. It isn't crazy to assume that process will be hard, but if you put the work in you’ll be so glad you did it one day. It took me about 10-11 months, from start to finish, from the day I decided to attend Codesmith, to the day I got a job offer.
 
 There are other great programs out there for sure, but if I was to do this all over again, I’d be right back at Codesmith.

This program helped me learn and grasp concepts I could not on my own so fast. Gained familiarity with Routing, Switching, Dynamic routing along with Firewalls, VPN's and troubleshooting.