Engineering Flex

I was a student at Chegg Skills (previously THINKFUL) enrolled in the Web-Development Course and got WITHDRAWN from the course for not completing on their timeline. The website promises a "self-paced" curriculum which is FALSE. Full-Time students are required to complete the bootcamp within 5 months, while Part-Time students are given 6 months to complete. The Tuition Refund is based on ELIGIBILITY, which a lot of students DO NOT fall under. Their claim in the contract prior to starting the course states, "If you live more than 60 min outside of a major city, you are not eligible for the refund" (many students find this out after they have already taken out a loan, or in my case, paid up front in full. The mentorship given to you during the program is a GAMBLE. I had 5 mentors while I was enrolled, 3 of them actually being helpful professionals.  2 of them being duds; while one would get mad at me for asking certain questions/ making me feel stupid and inadequate and I ended these sessions more stressed, my questions unanswered and feeling completely defeated. The Live Chat is outsourced to India, where I was constantly being matched with the same person, making their business practices very questionable (paying for cheaper labor overseas instead of employing people in the States) Chegg being an American company. 2 of my mentors actually mentioned their pay being insufficient to the students they had to oversee and Chegg not giving the mentors any guidance on how to be a helpful mentor. Chegg had continued to use reviews from the years it was Thinkful and falsely advertised  positive reviews, even though since Chegg had bought the company their reviews had started to tank. I ended up completing 35 lessons which came to a total of $6,767.60. Since I paid the full tuition up front of $9,475.00, they offered me a refund of $2,707.40 for the modules I had not completed. Given this ratio, I believe it's a ridiculous waste of my time, struggling and persevering through this program with only about 15 modules left to complete; they still decided to kick me out, ineligible to obtain my certification. Their reasoning being "The amount of time needed to successfully complete your outstanding modules exceeds the amount of time that we would be able to provide you, with approval from our finance and regulatory teams." After having paid my full tuition upfront and the coursework being entirely ONLINE; these reasons are complete BS in my opinion. This company wants your money and does not care about their students' success. 

I enrolled in the Thinkful Software Engineering Bootcamp (now known as Chegg Skills) with high hopes, but my experience fell short of expectations. Here’s a breakdown of my key experience:

Time Commitment Misrepresentation: The program advertised that I would need to commit at least 30 hours per week, but in reality, the projects and lessons took much longer to complete. If you request an extension on the program, you lose the refund guarantee. 

Ineffective Support: On multiple occasions, I spent hours working with chat support, only to receive answers that didn’t solve my problem. This was incredibly frustrating and wasted time.

Mentorship Challenges: My mentor stopped showing up to scheduled meetings and didn’t respond to my emails. They only communicated when I reached out to Thinkful.

Lack of Help with Projects: I got stuck on a project, and despite seeking help, no one was able to assist me. Realizing that I wouldn’t be able to complete the remaining lessons and projects on time, I made the difficult decision to withdraw from the program.

Program Changes: After I withdrew, the original program was replaced with a new one that advertises a time commitment of 10-15 hours per week and covers basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—skills I had already learned in the old program. This made me feel cheated, as I didn’t receive a certificate for my efforts, even though I would have with the current program.

Overall, my experience with Thinkful (now Chegg Skills) left much to be desired. While the idea of a structured, mentor-led bootcamp was appealing, the execution was lacking, and I didn’t feel supported in a way that would justify the investment.

Thinkful does a horrible job of helping students understand the intricacies of complex concepts. They walk you through the basics, then test you on something extremely difficult in comparison. There is no intermediate, there is not enough practice, and there is not enough support. 9 times out of 10, I have to go learn from someone on youtube, instead of from the course I paid thousands of hard earned dollars for. I regret choosing this course each and every day. It has been one of the worst decisions of my adult life. 

I do not recommend Thinkful. The test system they have called 'mock interviews' is so bizarre and seems like it was created as a gatekeeping device. For most of the final exams set up like these mock interviews, you have several coding challenges and you have to make all of the coding problems become fixed so that the Qualified tests pass. You get two attempts at exams and then dropped. The exams are pass/fall (as in, get all answers correct, one mistake will result in a total fail). The material is often outdated and honestly much worse than what you can find for free online with Odin Project. This was a waste of money. I wish I hadn't signed up for Thinkful because I didn't learn relevant material for today's software engineering market. The actual prestige of Thinkful is nonexistent so nobody in the job market cares if you get a certificate from here. I hope others can avoid this place.

My mentor and Academic Success Manager were the reason it was worth it. Having someone to help and guide you into the industry is crucial, it takes  more than knowing how to code to succeed.  

I completed the Engineering flex program in August 2021. I came in with no programming experience and working a full-time job and part-time job. My goal was to go through this program and get a job in the field ASAP. There are a lot of pros to this program and some cons. Pros:

You are able to do this during your free time (about 20-25 hours a week).
The program went through both frontend (React, JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and backend (Node.js, Express)
 It started from scratch which helps those who don't have any background
The mentors were good
You come away with 4-5 good portfolio pieces
The timeline they give you helps to keep on pace for graduation

Cons:
Make sure you gel with your mentor. I had 3 different ones throughout my time. I chose to get a new one after the first month. He didn't help me at all and didn't really care that he wasn't helpful. The second mentor got a new job and left. The third mentor was great
The mentor sessions were twice a week for only 30 min. This was good that we met twice a week but sometimes it wasn't enough time to cover what I was hoping to cover.
The projects are the same for all of the students which doesn't set you apart 
They had support called ThinkChat that helped when you were stuck, however, half the time they just wrote the code for me without any explanation and the other half of the time they didn't know how to solve it.
They only had videos for about 30-40% of the material. This was a con for me because I learn best when someone explains it to me (like a video). So the other 60-70% I had a very hard time understanding because I just read the material and then was supposed to understand it at a level where I could implement it on a deeper level. 

It was very challenging and times where I wanted to quit. I kept going and finished it up. When choosing a bootcamp, I would definitely think through how you learn best. This program is great for those who can learn by reading and doing. If you learn in different ways you can definitely do this program, but you may not learn as well. I look forward to finding a job and using the skills I learned in this program.

Thinkful was a pivotal part of my career switch. I wanted to leave my healthcare career as I realized it's not for me. I really liked the support of mentors and fellow students throughout my experience. It was really time consuming but it's worth it if you put in the effort. 

My experience at Thinkful was life changing.  I found Thinkful at the start of the pandemic when I desperately wanted to switch careers, but didn’t quite know what I wanted to do.  I have no prior coding or computer science experience - so if you don’t either, you don’t need it.  You will learn everything you need to get started in this new field!  I participated in the Software Engineering Flex Program.  The flex program allowed me to create my own schedule and work part-time.  Keep in mind, I still spent most days from morning to night coding - whether that was on course work or my own personal extra study time.  I would encourage you to take the time outside of dedicated Thinkful hours to study on your own.  I found supplementing with outside resources was key to my success.  They prepare you for the real-world of development right away - your “finals” are live coding interviews which is exactly how it is when you start applying and interviewing for jobs.  This alone was instrumental in preparing me for that process!They provide you with a mentor and have a live chat feature where you can receive help in realtime when you are stuck on a problem.  I learned more than I ever thought possible.  It was one of the most challenging AND most rewarding experiences of my life.  It has put me in an amazing position for my new career.  Everyone I interacted with was incredibly supportive and encouraging.  Remember to trust the process and take it one day at a time.  This program is NOT easy.  You will want to quit.  At times, you’ll feel like you can’t do it.  You’ll doubt yourself.  But I promise you, when you choose to persevere and dedicate yourself to the hard work, it was 100% worth it!!

Thinkful changed my life. I was working as a massage therapist when I had lost my dad in early 2019. In the city I was living in, there weren’t any in person boot camps so I had to turn my attention to finding a remote one. I had looked at other boot camps but due to their pacing and how many tech stacks they have you learn, I felt overwhelmed. Input Thinkful, which had the very opposite.Thinkful's smaller tech stack (Node.js, Javascript, Express, React, PostgreSQL) and longer program length (6 Months) meant that I would learn the information but really take the time to learn the fundamentals. Meeting with a Senior Developer (they refer to them as Mentors), was an awesome experience in of itself. Not only can they help you with the current assignments, they can help with learning, building your full stack apps and more. The program manager was awesome as well with their check ins from time to time. But one of the biggest things was the mock interviews. I have bad interview anxiety but the people who ran the mock ones did a very good job at making you feel comfortable and confident.  The curriculum is pretty up to date.  It can be a bit dry to read (theres a lot of reading) but there was some videos/screenshots showing you what they were talking about.  The only thing I would change is swapping out PostgreSQL for MongoDB as MongoDB is a lot easier to work with than PostgreSQL.  You'll learn Javascript and then proceed to learning stuff on the front end before moving to the backend.  Overall, I would do it all over again. It’s a great program, great community of people as well.

 Thinkful’s Engineering Flex course has the potential to deliver you into a new career as a web developer -- but that’s largely dependent on you and your background. It is an excellent opportunity to learn a JavaScript web development stack for someone with a drive to learn, that wants to solve challenging problems, and who is able to dedicate at least 25 hours a week to it. Like with many worthwhile endeavors, just showing up and pushing out mediocre work that satisfies requirements will yield mediocre results; you should be deeply invested in learning, working to always go above and beyond the curriculum, and writing code you wouldn’t hesitate to share with employers. Luckily, Thinkful’s mentor system supplements the curriculum and your mentor will extend your reach as a student, teaching you useful design patterns and best practices. In the Flex program, you meet with a senior developer twice a week for 45 minutes. You may have multiple mentors throughout the course (depending on their specialty and fit), but I had the same one throughout my time in the course and happily learned a ton from him. Be prepared to have a focus for each mentor session in order to get the most out of the experience, though it’s sometimes fine to have a more laid back session. I don’t mean to imply from the above, however, that the curriculum is deficient. It is well written (excluding some early modules that must have been hastily updated), has clear, functional code samples, and plenty of projects along the way where you are guided to implement the majority (if not all) of the solution. Most of the curriculum is text-based with not a ton of video, but I prefer that mode of learning. Your knowledge and ability will be tested periodically as you complete modules through mock interviews with senior developers and graded projects. These will include at least three “capstone” projects that will be developed 100% through your own efforts and act as a snapshot of your expertise in the technologies you’ve been learning. Capstone projects are an excellent opportunity to demonstrate your skill and are the meat of the course -- they will push your boundaries as a developer and will become a major component employers will use to evaluate you for jobs. Another element of the course worth mentioning is the on-demand help that you can get through Thinkful’s Slack workspace and its in-curriculum ThinkChat application. The former includes the entire Thinkful community, so questions you have (or those you want to answer in order to give back) may be answered by students or other mentors. ThinkChat connects you to dedicated technical coaches that will help you get unstuck and is a fairly new feature (introduced about half-way through my time in the course). Finally, I should stress that it is worth qualifying for graduation (finishing on-time and in good standing), as the job leads, alumni network, and advice provided by Thinkful and its career coaches will help you get interviews and persevere in the job search. 

The flex program allowed me to learn software engineering at my own pace as I juggled work and other life events. It helped me gain the knowledge and confidence to change careers into software development. I really enjoyed the mentorship aspect and learned even more during those sessions. I've very happy with the investment I made in choosing this bootcamp. 

Thinkful was a great program. I was one of the last students to be on the older curriculum and watched as they updated all information and lessons to include more modern information. I managed to get a job just under one month after I graduated. My favorite part was having my weekly mentor meetings. He was really great and flexible with his time. The curriculum is text-based, short sections with assignments (sometimes graded) at the end. They have a really active discord channel, full of incredibly helpful students, mentors, and other staff. The community is a large part of my success. The job assistance was everything I could expect from a Bootcamp. They don't give you a job, but you get a career coach who helps you with everything when you graduated. She suggests jobs for you, helps you with your LinkedIn and resume, and supports you through the whole interview process. She exceeded my expectations. 

The perfect mix of working at your own pace and support from mentor, coach, and other students. I completed the Engineering Flex program and it was a fun experience. Prior to this program, I had no coding background but the mentors, and peers helped me through the process. 

My experience with Thinkful has been amazing! The resources provided for us are really designed to help us excel and are designed to give us short cuts to success. I liked the way the courses were structured and the order that they were revealed to us. The mentorship program was the secret to doing well in the course, because the material is hard. The mentors really helped me believe in myself and helped me easily understand concepts that I was unfamiliar with as someone from a non-tech background. 

Overall, the program provided the foundation needed to become a successful software engineer, which is exactly what I had hoped for. The technology is relevant, and the career checkpoints seem up-to-date for current trends and attitudes. There are a few things to keep in mind:- The mentor is great...if you have a good mentor. If you don't have a good mentor or feel you aren't getting the most out of your sessions, switch right away. I waited a long time to change mentors thinking I was past the halfway mark, and I wish I had switched sooner. My new mentor was awesome and it would've been a huge help to have had him from the start.- A couple of months into the program, I joined a group of 4 other students that were around the same spot in the program. This comradery, vent outlet, resource sharing, and support group was one of the best parts of the program. This program is hard, and knowing others feel the same way is very encouraging and provides the push needed when the going gets tough. So if you can, find a small group of other students to struggle with and you will all benefit.  - 20 hours a week is on the low end. Also, if you are working or have a family while completing the program, the graduation date is a bit unrealistic. Out of the 4 other students I worked with, plus myself, each of us utilized the extension. My own view is to plan to fall behind, but keep working consistently and putting in more than 20 hours a week...you'll get there. I went into this program with little to no coding experience. But with passion and determination, it's very doable. It will suck at times, but when it's good it's great. And the reward of finishing cannot be understated. The career support after graduation has been great. Based on my experience, I would recommend the Thinkful Engineering Flex program.

Overall, this course was very challenging and took longer than anticipated, but ended up being worth it in the end!** Before choosing any bootcamp course, I highly recommend reading the CIRR course outcomes report for that course!According to the CIRR report for Thinkful's Engineering Flex program in 2019, 82.1% of students withdrew from the course, and the ones that graduated took a median of 247 days to do so. I'm not saying this to scare you away from taking the course, but I just want to warn you that it is very difficult and most people don't end up finishing it. And if you do enroll, don't beat yourself up if it takes you longer than the advertised 5-6 months to complete it.That being said, I had a pretty positive experience overall, and ended up getting a Full Stack Software Engineering job a little over a month after graduating!Overall Experience: 5/5The course isn't perfect, and apparently some of the mentors are hit or miss, but I was paired with a pretty awesome mentor who made my experience much more manageable. In total it took me about 8 1/2 months to finish the course. I had a couple big personal events that happened during my course that delayed me a lot, but the Thinkful staff were very accommodating and gave me more time to finish. Another thing to note is that while I was enrolled, they added a feature to chat with an expert when you get stuck, which was (sometimes) helpful. They also created a Discord channel specifically for the Engineering Flex program, which was much more helpful in getting me unstuck. They're constantly adding features and tweaking things to help improve the student experience, which I appreciated.Instructors: 4/5Since this is the Flex program I didn't really have traditional instructors, so this review is for the Thinkchat "experts", my mentor, and the helpers/mentors on Slack and Discord. My mentor was great, but if you don't like your mentor you have the option to request a new one at any time which is nice. The helpers on Slack and Discord were also incredibly helpful and patient. I would see them on Discord answering people's questions all day long, so big shoutout to them! Thinkchat was very hit or miss, and in my experience was mostly a miss. Some of the "experts" I got paired with took 10 minutes to respond every time I said anything, and after an hour came to the conclusion that they didn't know how to help so they would transfer me to someone else. Very frustrating. However I know they're testing a video chat feature, and are trying to improve this. Curriculum: 4.5/5The curriculum was pretty thorough, and it's 100% text-based. This wasn't a huge problem for me, as I supplemented the curriculum with lots of Youtube videos, but could be an issue to some. My biggest gripe about the curriculum is that the estimated time to finish each segment was wildly inaccurate. Towards the second half of the course especially, a lot of the sections took 2-3 times longer than the time they give. This caused a lot of stress since I felt like I was always trying to keep up, and forced me to rush through some of the content. By the time I got to the capstones I had to spend a considerable amount of time going back and reteaching myself the previous content that I rushed through. Overall, they cram in a ton of content in a "5-6 month" course so like I said earlier, don't feel bad if it takes you longer than advertised. Job Assistance: 5/5I was paired with a really awesome professional advisor who was super supportive and gave me a ton of resources to help in my job search. She gave me great tips on how to approach the job application process, and was also constantly sharing job leads through Slack. I was also able to sign up for a free mock technical interview through Skilled which was awesome. Overall, the job hunt game is mostly about networking (I got my current job through Slack) and my advisor did a great job assisting me throughout the whole process.

My experience with Thinkful was really positive. I did the Engineering Flex program and got a job offer a few weeks before graduating. I worked full time while doing Thinkful - it was great to be able to do this in some ways because it took the financial pressure off finding a job ASAP, but it would have been nice to be able to spend more time with the curriculum. It was exhausting doing both at once, but totally worth it in the end!It sometimes felt isolating doing the flex program, but I really liked the 'learn at your own pace' setup. A major benefit of Thinkful is that you have two 45-minute sessions with a mentor every week. I had two really great mentors while at Thinkful, and the weekly sessions felt like plenty of time to work through any issues I was having. My advice to new students is to confide in your mentor/peers if you're feeling overwhelmed or stressed, and to be patient with and kind to yourself! You're likely going to be absorbing a lot of brand new information, and you're not going to understand everything straightaway. Getting comfortable with being stuck/confused and celebrating when you figure something out will be key to your long term success! 

I had a really great experience with Thinkful's Engineering Flex program. I learned a lot of valuable tech skills and had tremendous support from my mentor and the Thinkful community.The only thing I'd caution prospective students on is that the program is an enormous amount of work - particularly if you lack any prior programming experience. So if you work full time, have kids, or other competing obligations, then you should plan accordingly and be aware that projects may take longer than you anticipate. But that's because you will learn a lot!

I found Thinkful in 2019 and enrolled in the Immersion pre-course in December. After completing the pre-work, I decided the Flex program would be a better option for me, so I switched! I talked to my mentor and my program manager and they were both very supportive of my decision to switch programs. On January 1, 2020 I started the Engineering Flex program. It was a unique situation as the Immersion pre-work is roughly the same as the first month of the Flex program. Thinkful was super helpful and helped me transfer my work so I didn't have to repeat what I just did. I settled into a routine with my work and probably spent 20-30 hours per week on the program to start. After everything shut down, I was able to devote more time to the program. I had 3 different mentors - 1 for the first section when I thought I was doing the immersion program, another for the second module through capstone #1, and then another for the React/Node/capstones. I really was able to learn from all 3 of them and had a great experience with each of my mentors. Personally, learning on my own and working 1-on-1 with someone works well for me. I was able to work on my own time and while I did think this contributed to me taking a bit longer on the program, I think I was able to absorb more information. My ASM (academic success manager) was also great. She was responsive and I always enjoyed talking to her. She was motivating as I pushed to finish which was helpful. The curriculum made sense, for the most part. However, it is a lot of information in a short amount of time. You will not be completely ready for a job. You just have to be curious and willing to do some learning on your own.  Even throughout the program, I had to constantly look things up - which I was grateful for given that in any job you will be doing the same thing. This teaches you how to become a competent "Googler" and researcher. Being able to find the information you're looking for is crucial. I also highly suggest using the resources Thinkful provides, like the technical coaches and the Slack channel. These things were tremendously helpful for me. I really appreciated the fact that technical interviews were included in the program. They are nerve-wracking and scary, but so necessary! I feel like that was a huge reason I was able to be successful in real-life interviews upon graduation. Definitely take these seriously and spend time preparing so you can be successful here. GETTING A JOB IS NOT EASY. This was a big misconception for me, personally. I thought I would graduate and instantly find a job. I think this is a mistake of bootcamps in general and is not specifically Thinkful's problem. It is extremely difficult to find a position with no prior professional/commercial experience. I would recommend trying to find an internship or something to bridge the gap between bootcamp experience and real-life experience. You really have to be devoted to the job hunt and be willing to apply, put yourself out there, and continue learning after you graduate. A job (most likely) will NOT just fall in your lap. However, if you do the work, you will find a position. Just be patient and realize that it does take 3-6 months. Overall, the program was great. I learned a ton of information and made some good connections. I appreciated how some career-prep was integrated into the program as well. I chose Thinkful because of their career support upon completing the program. I knew I would want help with the next step. I was super impressed with my career counselor. She did a fantastic job helping with responding to potential employers and helping me negotiate when I finally did accept a position. 

     Thinkful offers a comprehensive, remote, full stack program in the Javascript family of languages and libraries. The curriculum traverses everything from HTML to CSS, Javascript, jQuery, React, Node, Express, PostgreSQL/SQL, Git, Postman, and DBeaver. The trajectory of the curriculum is solid if you keep pace with the program and keep up with practicing Javascript operators as you can get mired in the back-end programming module covering Node and PostgreSQL and lose your footing in JS while you get buried in database concepts and server-side programming which is long-winded and challenging if you're completely unfamiliar with it.      I think the biggest challenge of my program was communication and being held accountable for my progress. On the one hand, those aspects are completely within a student's realm of control: you can reach out, contact (or attempt to contact) your Academic Success Manager or mentor, you can linger around on the Slack channel to find help if you have many free hours a day, or you can use the ThinkChat feature to get one-on-one guidance with a technical coach. There were many times I would reach out to my mentor (any of the three I had) and three or four days could pass before we had our next meeting and they would say, "I didn't hear from you since our last meeting." That was ultimately ironic because I had posed a question and never received a response. This was the major reason why I had three mentors -- lack of communication.  I ultimately had four Academic Success Managers; one after the next had something that forced a change in their assignment to me. But my final ASM was pretty brusque in her communication, not offering options but giving me strict "do it or else" ultimatums pointing to being withdrawn from the program and failing rather than suggesting paying for an extension, for instance. The major issue I have with all of those channels and, maybe, the program entirely, is that nobody proactively tended to my challenges. While it is said with many of the assigned coding submissions, "your mentor should view this" or "you can use this as a conversation starter during your next mentor meeting," none of three mentors I had ever brought to my attention that anything I was submitting was missing the mark or needing clarification and I'm certain that I needed guidance on many occasions. There was no progress meter for the program and there was no review over time to see that the concepts were sticking...until months later. And at that time, once immersed in the more complex parts of the program, you just don't have the time to really backtrack and "catch up" on those concepts you may have lost footing on as you are pretty buried in full stack capstone projects and pretty intense mock interviews.     Now, I will say this: COVID challenged my capacity to succeed at this program and the format of the program and the effect that the pandemic had on others may have contributed to its lack of efficacy. I can't speak to what others were experiencing, what the school itself was dealing with, converting all programs to remote, and handling a very different and, maybe, very busy student load. But for my part, a paying student begging for guidance that exposed more examples of coding with explanations, some how-to and how-not-to-do comparisons, and more consistent communication from the only person I was regularly in touch with about my questions and concerns being that I didn't have a program instructor (my mentor), this program was less engaging and inclusive than I expected. I think their screening process should assess incoming students better too. I had no introductory "placement test" to see that I should even be in the program and I could have used some introduction to Javascript, for example, so that I had a better base of knowledge going in. I did graduate! I'm super proud of myself, maybe even surprised! The career department has been immediately and thoroughly engaging just a couple days in! And their success rates for job placement is one of the main reasons I chose them over every other school. I won't say "don't" consider Thinkful. Just know that you have to be ready to operate mostly independently and I highly recommend doing some side-by-side application of concepts on other platforms if you haven't solved problems with Javascript before.