Bloc

I enrolled in bloc last year for their 36 week course and it's completely revamped my skills as a designer. I graduated from college with experience in print design but web design was always the scary subject I dared not cross. Mentor Chris Courtney was a massive help and really helped me re tool my entire design process for more digital outcomes. We really stressed the "why" of what we designed, rather than just making something pretty.  Bloc really works collaboratively, and it was not just a one on one mentorship, but online groups all over the internet to interact with team members and other students. The main benefit of a one on one mentorship is that your mentor really and truly cares about weather or not you succeed, and really push you to do your best so you come out of bloc an even better designer and ready for the working world.

I really wanted to pursue an education in programming and web design.  I discovered coding bootcamps all over the country and started my journey to find the one that was the best fit for me.  Originally I was going to enroll in one of those immersive bootcamp programs that you would sprint through in less than 12 weeks.  But upon further review I found that I wanted to take the time to digest each new lesson at my own pace.  I also found the immersive bootcamp pricing to be a bit much.

I then found Bloc and started my dialog with the company.  I loved the flexibility of the program and learned how to spend my nights and weekends developing my coding skills.  Ricky Panzer was my mentor that I talked to every week and helped push me in the right direction every time I got stuck.  It was an amazing experience and I am successfully taking on my very own freelance jobs today.

I am nearing my halfway point with Bloc and so far my experience has been great. My mentor has been excellent (Timothy Barnes) and I look forward to diving into my Frontend material after the holidays.

Bloc is setup so you work through checkpoints with your mentor while building out projects. I love this approach compared to a few other in person classroom style camps I checked out. All in all, Bloc has been an awesome place for me to learn thus far.

I do find myself having to be my own boss and that was a bit of a transition. I consider myself to be a independent learner, however this part of the learning took some time as I adjusted to not having a teacher glaring over my every move.

Thus far, I have completed my Reddit project, Wikipedia project and a personal project called ReferMe. 

I would absolutely recommend Bloc to my friends and family!

Pros I liked my 2nd mentor since my 1st was so horrible I had to switch. 

Cons the program is way over priced for what  they offer and give you. Mentor meeting aren't enough and the teaching method used are very confusing. Majority of the work is done by yourself and nothing is really tought by the mentors, they are just there for questions. There multiple options when it comes other schools that offer same material for less then half of what BLOC charges. If I could go back I would NEVER go with Bloc. I wish someone told me what I know now. I just hope somone else dosnt make the same mistake of choosing bloc. 

I never knew that Bloc existed, as I have been trying for about 6 months to find an online bootcamp, I have not been so successful. Reviewing several bootcamps over the last few months, I refused to become discouraged as I continued to see what local Bootcamps and software schools were available. After finding a couple from the course report  list and through word of mouth, still to no avail an online bootcamp. After receiving the Course Report Bootcamp newsletter, I was astounded that they had several bootcamps listed, hopeful to see more bootcamps become available, AN ONLINE BOOTCAMP! Bloc it is. Reviewed the site, sent my email for further communication, and requested a call from the advisor for a call to setup my online learning for the Designer Track program. Am I excited? Yes. Will I be jumping right in to learn all the things I could have been learning over the last 6 months while looking for this opportunity? Yes. Will I not only get to advance and develop my career, but build on to my many talents as a IT developer. Yes, yes, YES. Thank you Course Report for the newsletter but most importantly this opportunity to review something as spectacular as my personal growth. :)

Overall experience: I graduated from the Frontend program with Bloc in February 2015 on the 36 week pace. Initially I started on the 18 week structure as I wanted to get as much information as possible, however work caught up with me and I moved it to the longer structure. I must say, having that flexibility was crucial towards my ability to succeed. My mentor worked with me when I intitally struggled on some early JavaScript concepts and was able to give me multiple resources that helped me navigate signifcant trying moments. At the end of the day, the experience was fantastic despite the big learning curve. Expect to learn a lot of information and definitely expect to fail, and that was what really set me up for success when I reached the project portion of the program. 

Current position: Sales Operations

Prior experience: I had completed the Javascript tutorials on Codecademy, done a lot of Treehouse and also a bit of Code School prior to Bloc. 

Goals: I came into Bloc looking to build applications as well as a portfolio that I could eventually put in front of a company. I am not currently looking to transition right now, but easily could in the next year or two as I start to put the skills I learned to use. 

Mentor: My mentor Andrew was absolutely fantastic. He works at a top tech startup in Silicon Valley and I felt I was learning the most valuable and relevant information from him. He made it very clear to me that relevancy is increasingly important in education and I never felt I was learning something outdated working with him. At the end of the program he mentioned his company was hiring, but I was not ready to leave my current role to take him up on the offer.

Favorite Project: This is a tough call. Building Blocjams or your own version of Spotify appealed to me for my love of music and I really enjoyed making it responsive. Nothing cooler than visitng your own app on your iphone in front of the family! However the capstone was what stood out to me. I had an app idea I always wanted to bring to life and my mentor gave me strong advice on what was capable of building early on. I was able to launch a strong V1 of the app by the end of the course and am focusing the rest of my evenings on it from here on out.

Final thoughts: I found Bloc to be exactly what I was hoping for. The curriculum had a lot of depth and my mentor gave the resources so I could be successful at developing on my own. I might come back for the Rails course in a few months!

I enrolled late January for the 12-week course in Rails Development (back then known as Full Stack Development, not to be confused with the similarly-named "Track" offered now). Over 24 weeks later, twice as long as I planned, I still hadn't finished my enrollment and would have required months more to finish.

I signed up right as the curriculum was changing from version 3.0 Rails to 4.0, and it felt like I was right in the middle of a construction site. Checkpoints were extremely wordy and hard to understand for someone like me who learns visually, the very antithesis of my learning style. Assignments at the end of checkpoints were either broken, incomplete, or so poorly worded that my mentor eventually told me to skip them and just submit the checkpoints. This backfired however as checkpoints began integrating these assignments further on, to the point where my foundation app had too many "workarounds" that the instructions basically no longer matched what I was doing anymore. I was told to abandon the foundation app in favor of pursuing projects, but by then the damage had been done. What should have taken one month by their estimates and my initial enrollment dictated, took me four, and it was never completed. It honestly felt like I was paying to beta test their new curriculum to ultimately fail.

Out of six projects to do, I finished one and nearly a second before withdrawing. My struggle with the foundation made it too apparent that I couldn't yet write code sufficient enough to do anything on my own, and the mentor(s) were just dragging me through it all. Nobody would hire me for what I barely know and any work I have to show after six months is either incomplete or basically not my own work.

Program coordinator was hard to get a hold of. Many times they said they'd call next week, and wouldn't. My concerns of falling behind were just dismissed. What should take one or two days to settle something took up to two weeks. Their own website says they hold students accountable, but what about vice versa? Poor communication and curriculum, guess who ultimately suffers? The student.

Thankfully the head coordinator talked to me (they had no plans to extend my mentorship when I was told otherwise) and my complaints were finally listened to. My refund would have been nullified if I hadn't withdrawn. It's left me pretty bitter that I went this long and put so much time and effort into it and things never seemed to get better with Bloc. Just excuses and apologies. They did admit that they didn't live up to their own standards or mine (to graduate and find employment), which effectively meant they knew they were wasting my time.

I can assume by now that the curriculum is in better shape and fully Rails 4.0+ now, but there's no way in hell I'd go through it again nor could I recommend it to anyone. My mentor tried their best but with Bloc's online "book" having so many problems and sometimes being just wrong, the outcome was pretty clear. I was later told that I shouldn't have skipped the assignments - Duh, but I couldn't do them, either.

I sent my foundation app to the curriculum's designer to see if there was any hope of fixing it, but never got a reply. A second mentor was added at one point, but he dropped me from his schedule.

In summary: I learned a lot, but not enough to be hired by anyone or much of anything to show for it. I don't have a good understanding of the core concepts because of the poor foundation. I have to spend more months and more money elsewhere to continue my education.

I took the Rails Web Development course, and found it to be an excellent online bootcamp experience. I have a baby at home, so taking an in-person one wasn't an option. The coursework is extremely thorough, and provided the guided instruction I needed to get started. And my mentor rocked! He was super helpful, and helped answer questions around why I got stuck. Overall, I'm pleased with the projects I've built, and quite satisfied with my experience considering how I got a job 4 weeks after my course as a web developer.

My experience with Bloc was an amazing one.  Entering into the program with very little knowledge of programming, I now feel competent enough to take on a job as a junior developer.

The greatest part of Bloc was the mentor, who went above and beyond to help me out and make sure that I not only could use what was being taught, but also that I understood the reasoning behind it.  

I absolutely would recommend Bloc for those who are dedicated enough to put in the time to get the work done, their curriculum is well thought out and designed, and the mentors will make sure you get where you need to be.

My experience with Bloc was overhwhelmingly poor. While good intentioned my advisor could never remember simple things like whether I was using Ruby or Angular. He frequently tried to push his own software solutions on me and several times had me scrap projects to try our new frameworks or generators that he considered the flavor of the week.

Their team is difficult to work with, impossible to escalate complaints with and has poor administrative oversite. For the amount of money they're charging you're much better off attending a different bootcamp.