Engineering Flex

I had a little bit of coding experiance before taking the Full Stack Flex program and I enjoyed my time and learned a lot. The carriculum will give you enough to learn the basics and most best practices but if you aren't a self-learner Thinkful might not be the best fit for you (or really any bootcamp). I felt confident that I could teach myself coding but took this program because you don't know what you don't know and it gave me clear direction on what to learn and what was important to know to get a job, and I think for the most part it does that.

Cons:
My first mentor was not very knowledgable. That mentor only mentored people through the first month of basics and my understanding is that some people don't make it past that point so I think they try to save money by hireing less experianced mentors when students are early in the program. My mentor sessions basically just consisted of him checking my questions on stackoverflow. I learned nothing from him. I don't know if this was normal or I just happened to get a bad first mentor. It would be helpful for Thinkful to make sure all of their mentors have more experiance, even when a student is in the begining of the program.

The curriculum I went through was, in my opinion, really deficent in front-end testing. If you want to do any legitimate front-end testing you will have to teach yourself. It also does a terrible job of giving the student a good idea on what good front-end unit testing coverage would look like. I understand that the curriculum can only go so far in 6 months but i think this is the only place in the curriculum that really falls flat and doesn't set the student up for success.

Sometimes it felt like it took forever to get assignments graded and sometimes I got the feeling that little effort was put into the grading. I'm not sure that any grader ever actaully reviewed my capstone code and I suspect they spent maybe 10 minutes mindlessly going through the rubric. You'll get a few UI suggestions and they look for accesability isues but I didn't learn anything from the graders that made me a better coder. It would be much better if graders gave more feedback on code and checked for codeing best practices and also spent time to tell you what you did well. It's frustarating to spend a month on a project and the grade comes back with basically just, "Good job" as the only comment.

Pros:

My second mentor was great and incredibly knowlodgable and I learned a lot from him and I think his experiance alone was worth the price of the program.

Now that I have a job in software development I can say that the curruculum did prepare me well for a job. But with that said, you do have to be a self-learner. The curriculum will give you the basics and will point you towards what you need to become competent but you will have to challenge yourself with your capstones to learn new things.

I think I may have just gotten lucky but I got the first phone interview for the job I ended up taking the same day that I officially graduated. Talking to other students a result like that is not typical, but most did get a job in the field within 6 months.

Thinkful is online but it did have a lot of resources to take advantage of if I got stuck on something. Most hours during the day there is someone online that can answer questions and help you out. I never felt like I was stuck and had no one to talk to.

I never felt like I was doing busy work or wasting time. I was always learning and felt like Thinkful was getting me ready for the job field as quickly as possible.

Disclaimer: Thinkful offered me a $15 dollar giftcard to write a review

I took the Engineering Flex course. It wasn't quite what I expected going into it. It is a lot of information and a lot of reading going into it. Also, there will be some outside studying you need to do to really grasp the concept. Overall I found it really helpful and am really thankful for the course as it taught me a lot! The best thing about the course is definitely the mentor sessions or a least the mentor I had. He was very helpful and would go out of his way to make sure you understood the concepts. 

Enjoyed the experience at the time I took the course. The course material was pretty well written, and the mentors were very helpful as well. Having online QA sessions to go to regularly was especially helpful as an online student. I recently checked out the student portal however , and it seems like the QA sessions are now much more data science focused.

My experience with Thinkful was the single worst educational and customer service experience of my life - which is saying a lot.  The online curriculum is definitely subpar and there are no explanatory videos or live sessions as there are with other bootcamps.

The program provides you with bi-weekly mentor sessions to answer any questions your may have and to guide your progress. I went through 5 mentors - FIVE.  4 of whom 'ghosted' me and did not show up for our scheduled sessions. The other one chain smoked and made inappropriate comments throughout the duration of our sessions.

Most of the mentors commented on how poorly structured the program was and how there were better bootcamp programs available.  One mentor even said that it would be difficult to find a job without knowing Redux which was removed from the course material.  

I ended up withdrawing from the program after the fifth mentor called minutes before our scheduled session and said she was 'too busy' to be my mentor anymore.  After this incident I did not receive a reply from anyone at Thinkful for 1 week.  At this point I was months behind due to these administrative issues and had lost any learning and progress flow.  I had fallen completely stagnant. 

Ultimately, there are so many choices for programs both online and in-person. I really do not want anyone to have to go through what I went through. If you commit to this program there is a strong possibility you will experience enormous delays and that you will be on your own with any problems you experience. 

Other programs may seem more difficult and less flexible in terms of schedule but it is well worth inconvenience for a comprehensive experience.

I enrolled in the Full Stack Flex boot camp because I wanted school like structure because I procrastinate without deadlines.  Curriculum is pretty good, but you'll still have to learn a lot by yourself that isn't covered.  I had 2 mentors.  The first was not great.  He missed meetings, didn't go out of his way to teach me anything unless I explicitly asked.  Second one was really good and I wouldn't have graduated on time without him.  They do guarentee a job but only if you complete it the course in 6 months or less.  I got employed about 3 months after graduating and I'm really happy with my job.

-Pros - 
It will provide you with good and updated material to get your skills sharp on the language that they are teaching you. 
It is fast paced, it will make time fly and you will be learning a lot really fast. 
It will challenge yourself as a professional, and you will understand the meaning of "detail oriented'.

-Cons- 
- Why didn't I start this program earlier? - I ask myself this question almost everyday.

It may seem overwhelming at the beginning but trust me they will provide you with the tools for your success. Understand that this boot camp is what its name means, it will require of your time to sit down and put the hours in. I currently have a full time job, my afternoons and evenings I have to dedicate to the program in order to stay on meeting my dates.

I am really enjoying working through the Thinkful curriculum, and the support of my Thinkful mentor and the community has really helped me through the process. I am currently a part of the Full Stack Flex program and one thing I really appreciate about this program is the flexibility to be able to get the work done outside of working my day job. The curriculum provides a lot of helpful reading, which I can sometimes do on-the-go, and the way the projects and assignments are structured is super engaging. They have elevated the program even more to include more online community among students as well as some local meet-ups and networking events. 

Before Thinkful I was working in IT. Thinkful gave me the tools and resources to help me launch my career in tech. My mentor was really helpful in answering my tech/non-tech related questions. After graduation, I was able to land my engineering job within my current company. As someone that already has student loans, I was a little bit on the fence but it was worth it in the end. 

I am currently in Thinkful's Full Stack Flex program. I work full-time and I needed the flexibility.  I had some experience going into it, and I honestly think you need to have at least some of the basics down (know some html, css, js). The program is thought, and it’s recommended to dedicate 20 hours a week to keep up. From my experience you need to put way more time in to really grasp all the concepts and become confident in what you learn.

The course is layer out in modules and for each module you read the material and do the drills and projects. The material is very rigorous and provides tons of extra resources as well. If you get stuck solving a drill or need help understanding a concept, you can reach out to people on slack or you can go into office hours and ask your questions. You get a massive amount of support and there are always people around that can help. Plus, you get to meet twice a week for 45 min with your mentor.

The mentor sessions are super important because you use them as mini-interviews where the mentor give you coding challenges, or can help you when you need help building an app or understanding a concept.

They are 5 mock interviews that give you a taste of what a typical interview feels like. I failed my first attempt, and the feedback I received from that helped me improve my learning strategy.

So far I think Thinkful was a great decision for me, it gives me the structure and the safety net I need to learn to code.

I've done a little freelance work creating websites in the past. I loved it but wasn't sure how to make my love for web dev turn into an actual career. So, about a year ago, I knew that I needed to take my skills to the next level and began to search for bootcamps that would not only help sharpen my skills but also help me change careers.

I stumbled upon Thinkful and I'm so glad I did.

From my initial phone conversation with my mentor, I knew that Thinkful was committed to helping me find a job in the tech industry. They were with me every step of the way from learning basic HTML to accepting a job offer at a tech company in town. 

Never once did I have to question what their motives were, or if they really wanted to see me get a job in the tech industry. They were committed to seeing me develop as a developer and committed to seeing me change careers.

If you're looking for a bootcamp that actually cares about you, Thinkful is the place where you need to be. I highly encourage everyone to give Thinkful a serious look if you're contemplating bootcamps. 

I am very satisfied with all the help I recieve,  my mentor is good at explaining material and the curriculum is straightforward.  

I am currently in Thinkful's Full Stack Flex program, and I'm very happy with my decision. I was initially planning on doing a local in-person bootcamp. I wanted the face to face mentorship and the opportunity to have an immediate network of local partners. I decided to go with Thinkful primarily for two reasons (aside from being able to keep my day job while I learn...):

1) Mentorship. I have learned a ton by meeting with my mentor twice a week. And since it is a self-paced program (unlike a structured local bootcamp) I'm not held back by the class when I easily understand a concept, and I'm not rushed past a concept when I am slower to understand it. Also, I have a regional advocate, a project manager, that helps with bigger picture things, and helps support a local community of learners.

2) Job guarantee. Although I feel confident that if I put in the work that Thinkful is preparing me to enter the industry, I don't need blind faith. Thinkful is transparent about its outcomes, and reports are released by a third party (CIRR). Basically, if you can graduate, you are extremely likely to find a job. The caveat seems to be that because the barrier to entry is low for Thinkful, a lot of people don't make it through the program (roughly half). I am committed to taking it seriously and putting in the hours, and I am on pace to graduate on time. Even if I can't find work upon graduation (which I don't think will be the case), I am guaranteed my money back.

This program is not easy, especially while working a full-time job and being a father of two young children. For background context, I have a B.S. degree in Science, and have been putting in pretty close to the 25 hours a week to keep nicely on pace for the 6-month graduation.

I spent a good few weeks researching all the available bootcamps - emailing alum and current students to find out what they thought.

With Thinkful - the overriding feedback was that the course was great as long as you were willing to work hard and do what you need to succeed. Thankfully, that's what I planned to do!

What separated Thinkful from the others was that they offered money back if they didn't help land you a role within 6 months of graduating. To me, that spoke highly of how successful they believe themselves to me. They were willing to put their money where their mouth was - again, as long as I played my part!

I attended the flex course, which meant I could continue working full time. It worked perfectly for me, and I loved that I was able to meet twice a week with a mentor to help me push through the barriers that slowed me down to allow me to keep on growing.

I've got about a month left in my bootcamp and I gotta say I've probably learned more in these past few months than I could have alone. The curriculum is really streamlined to give you the most important details and best practices, that otherwise on my own I would have to spend a bunch of time researching what to actually learn, which is a huge time sink. Especially since I'm doing the part-time program, after working my full time job, I really only have 2-3 hours a day. So every minute is valuable. That being said, the curriculum can't possibly teach you everything, but it's a good starting point to let you branch off and help you know what you should be learning. If you are planning on attending a bootcamp, Thinkful's part time is great choice. But make no mistake, part time doesn't mean half the effort, if you want to do well in the bootcamp and as a web developer in the industry you gotta give 100%.

Some of the pros for me is being able to schedule times that work for me since my goal was also to continue to work alongside the program. I also really like being paired up with a professional mentor that really can help me narrow down my struggling points and help me progress through the program.  I think the material does a great job of covering up to date topics and complementing projects to go along with the material which can also be used in your personal portfolio when it comes down to applying for your first job. There are also 5 mock interviews which have given me a taste of what a typical interview will feel like and you get personalized feedback so you can work on improving yourself for the real one. One last thing I would personally recommend to anyone out there considering starting the program is making sure you have the time to dedicate to learning, practicing and progressing through the program because it is very easy to fall behind schedule.​

I am more than half way through the full stack flex bootcamp through Thinkful and it has been a great experience so far. The course has progressed through a lot of interesting and useful content in an intuitive way that makes it easier to learn and build on knowledge. I work full time as a product manager and everyday at work I am able to connect things I’ve learned in the bootcamp to development being done by the software engineers I work with every day. The two mentors I’ve had have been very engaged and always ready to answer questions and help me if I get stuck or just want to learn more. Besides always having a dedicated mentor to help with students through the content, every student also has a designated project manager who helps guide a student through anything administrative and is the go to person for any questions or advice about the course. Even though I’m not done with the course just yet, I have already learned so much and can build out my own full stack web apps now. Besides the basics, Thinkful teaches up and coming topics such as react and node so students are up to date with knowledge. The career management resources are also very helpful and connect work being done in the bootcamp to the overall goal of getting a job in software engineering. I have completed 3 of the mock interviews and with the combination of live coding challenges as well as classic interview behavioral questions they are a great way to practice interviewing as the bootcamp progresses. I have had a great experience so far and am looking forward to getting through the rest of the content and starting a career as a software engineer utilizing all the I have learned through Thinkful both technically and professionally. 

I am almost three months into the Thinkful Fullstack Flex program and I have to say I am quite impressed. The curriculum is very well structured and provides the right amount of detail. I had only very basic programming skills coming into the bootcamp and I feel that Thinkful goes at a great pace. Even without any coding experience, I think their materials provide enough fundamental lessons to get you up to speed.  

The mentor aspect is also very helpful. Whenever I get stuck or just need some explanation on certain syntax, my mentor provides clear explanations with examples to ensure that I truly understand the concepts.  

Hello all,

I just graduated from the Full Stack Web Development Flex Program at Thinkful.  It was both a great experience and a serious challenge.  Although I had lots of feedback to offer the school about the program and ways that I believe the curriculum could be improved, I do walk away not regretting anything.  

The program is tough and just because you pay thousands, doesn't mean anything is going to be served on a silver platter.  It was not always fun and just like in real life, I got really frustrated at times with my code and the learning experience in general.  But again, learning something totally new (and something seriously complex) is almost never easy.  I speak for myself anyway.

It's worth noting that I came to the table with years of HTML and CSS experience under my belt however I'd never written one line of JavaScript.  And despite me having the HTML and CSS experience, I found the Node and React portions of the course to be seriously challenging.  

That's where your mentor comes in and makes this particular program what it is.  My mentor was an absolute jewl of a human being much less a jedi master with coding and he never grew tired of my stupid questions and/or helping me out of a bind. He coached, tutored, encouraged and at times coded along side me to make sure I did my best. That doesn't mean all mentors are like this.  In fact I requested to change to a new mentor after a few weeks because I didn't gel at all with my first one and thankfully the school catered to this which ended up making a huge difference in my learning experience.

Being in the "Flex" program also meant that I was studying, coding and solving problems remotely.  So if you go this route, you must learn to use the community!!  For the first part of the course I didn't see a need to do this because I'm self taught and I generally read up on something or hack it to death myself to figure it out so going to Q&A's or asking questions in the forum just wasn't my thing.  I later learned that that was a big mistake.  The forum is filled with mentors and even talented students who can answer questions, analyze code with you and help to solve issues.  When finally pressed into a corner with some Node.js code I began reaching out to the community and holy crap what a huge help.  I should've been doing it from day one so that I was familiar with the other mentors and got to know people.  People who "know you" online tend to be even more helpful I later learned.

Finally, I'll say that for those considering attending Thinkful, in my humble opinion it's worth it in the end.  Just like you, I came to this website before making the decision because I wanted to know if it would be a sound investment or total waste of time.  Now on the other side I can tell you that it's totallly worth it.  And like me, you may find some things overly easy and you may find other things overly challenging.  But if you work your butt off and really apply yourself, you can do it and you WILL benefit from it. 

It's also just the beginning of my journey as pro developer not the end.  I can't hang my hat on a Thinkful graduation and think it opens doors.  It simply doesn't.  It's knowledge and discipline.  I learned how to learn and that in and of itself is a major part of this.  I am personally light years beyond where I was when I started the program at Thinkful and I'm now applying for jobs that previously I had to skip because I couldn't even begin to measure up to the requirements.

So take it from a Thinkful graduate, it's worth the time, effort and money.

If you have any questions feel free to drop me a line.  I don't mind.

Sincerely,

Bryan
 

As a student currently enrolled in the Full Stack Flex program offered from Thinkful, I would 100% recommend enrolling in one of their courses, should you be serious and devoted about perhaps becoming a software developer. The curriculum is solid and my knowledge of computer coding has gone from being able to manipulate user interfaces very well, to now creating said user interfaces and understanding the technical side, and so much more. 

I have yet to use their job assistance, but i imagine it will far exceed my expectations, the same way everything else in the program so far has.

I'm about half-way through my Bootcamp experience as a Fullstack Flex student, and although it's been very challenging at times. I'm impressed with my skills now compared to a few months ago. I started out as a somewhat coding newbie and my mind has flexed muscle I didn't even know it could! I can't wait to finish up the course in 3 months and I'm beyond excited for where this journey will take me. The best advise I can give is, if you're on the fence about applying just go for. As long as you put in the time, work and effort, you will succeed.