BrainStation

At the time I made the leap into Wyncode I had been a stay-at-home-mom for 4 years. Before that, I had minimal work experience as a social worker. I knew that at some point I would have to level-up my education to make myself relevant and employable again. 

I had dabbled in html and css while blogging about motherhood, and had started trying to learn javascript through sites like Team Treehouse and CodeSchool. I kept losing motivation and getting stuck. 

I tried an in-person Intro to Development class at the LAB where Wyncode is located. The teacher of that class, Walter, was also one of the instructors of Wyncode at the time. He would tell us about the Wyncode experience and I saw many of the students working hard at all hours. The culmination of our Intro class coincided with the culmination of Wyncode’s 4th cohort. 

Walter invited me to pitch day and told me I should consider enrolling in the course. I wasn’t biting. $10k and 9 weeks away from my babies? No way!

At pitch day, I could not ignore the energy of Wyncode’s founders, Jo and Juha. The event was buzzing with interesting ideas. It had been years since I had been in a professional setting with so many other adults, and I had never been part of something that people were so excited about. After the pitches, I had a chance to meet some of the women from the 4th cohort. I talked to a couple of the teaching assistants, and Diego- the campus director at the time. Everyone was so welcoming and enthusiastic. When I left the event, I knew I wanted to join Wyncode.

I struggled with the decision for a couple of days, but after talking to Diego, who convinced me that the people who put the most on the line tend to excel, I decided to make the leap. 

By the time I enrolled, the start of the 5th cohort was just days away. I was so nervous and emotional about leaving my kids, but I knew tech was where I wanted to be. Development has a good job outlook, often flexible schedules, and location-independent- all those things fit well with my lifestyle.

My time at Wyncode was intense (as it should be). I was constantly learning and building. I was surprised by how much emphasis there was on business and teamwork. I spent long days at the LAB fixing bugs, and asking for help from the Wyncode staff. When I wasn’t coding, I was attending various Miami Tech events. There is something almost every night. I pushed myself really hard, and I still had to go home each day and be a mom.

Upon graduating, I wasn’t sure I wanted to take a full-time job right away, but I met a company at Pitch Day and decided to interview. They offered me a full-time, work from home position and would send me to Jacksonville to train with their team of consultants at Hashrocket! I happily accepted!

I have since left that job to start a non-profit with some of my Wyncode classmates. I also do freelance development and am a part-time teaching assistant at Wyncode. I have not stopped learning and just got back from a React.js conference hosted by Facebook in San Francisco. I get offers to come in to interview for companies all the time and I’m lucky to be in a position where I can be choosy about what I take. It’s a great schedule with my two small kids.

Besides feeling professionally relevant again, the number one thing Wyncode has provided is an AMAZING network of people. Between the alumni, the hiring partners, and the Wyncode team, I have built so many relationships that wouldn’t have been possible without Wyncode. It truly is my second family. 

I am so glad I decided to join Wyncode. It has been life-changing. It feels like the sky is the limit!

I have experienced Wyncode Academy from the inside and the outside, I have seen every part of the organization, as an employee and a student. Someone might see this as a kind of bias for this review. But as I sit here on my desk at a billion dollar Silicon Valley startup, thinking of how I got here I can confidently say, without the worry of bias, that being a part Wyncode Academy is the best decision I have ever made. 

My experience with Wyncode is a bit unique. My journey began as an intern for Wyncode in the summer of 2014. I was a middle school science teacher before my internship, I arrived two days before the end of the first cohort. I met Jo and Juha, the founders as well as Ed, the instructor and the students. What struck me within the first day was a couple of things, how hard the staff was working to ensure the students were succeeding and how brave the students were to take this course, untested and brand new.

I was entranced by the positivity and relentless attitude of everyone around me, something hard to find in a traditional institution and near impossible to find in the public school system. So great was this internship experience that I decided to leave my job as a teacher and work for Wyncode as the first campus director. For a year and a half I worked as campus director and as admissions director. Over the course of this time I was able to see first-hand, the lives of over 100 students change radically. As admissions director I would speak with people every day, disillusioned with their previous jobs, in need of a change. Nine weeks later, a developer, with passion for technology and a great paying job.

I cannot say I wasn't a skeptic of the value or the efficacy of this program at first. You see for me, as a Wyncode employee, it was not about money or the growing popularity of the Miami tech scene. The sole reason I arrived in Miami (I am a California native, raised in Mexico) was to teach, to change the lives of people in tough situations. That is what my job as a teacher in a public school could not do. That is what Wyncode Academy could do. The Saturday after the end of every nine week course I would find myself staring out, thinking of the graduates and how their lives were transformed, all with the sincere satisfaction for the work I did to help. I was doing what I had set out to do. This continued throughout my development at Wyncode.

Wyncode secured a partnership with The Knight Foundation to create a scholarship for low income residents of Miami. I had the honor of leading the charge in developing this scholarship from start to finish and all the while in awe of the true impact that Wyncode has on the Miami community. I had a job where people’s lives were changing, there was no doubt of the value any longer. As I helped in the expansion of the Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach locations I began to realize why I had ended up at Wyncode, it was because of my passion for education and technology. 

I have always been around computers and technology, an early adopter, but I did not code until I got to college. I studied Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley and took two computer science courses there. I loved them and hoped I had done more. When I was a teacher, I taught myself a tiny bit of JavaScript to motivate my students to learn to code. I had arrived at Wyncode because I wanted to be closer to technology and continue my duty to education.

When I had this realization I decided that my next step was to take the Wyncode course myself, and begin to make my way back to California, to be closer to my family. I was a student of the third Fort Lauderdale cohort. I learned more in those 9 weeks than in two semesters of computer science courses at Berkeley. I made incredible friends and was supported along the way by the teaching and operations staff. My goal after was to find a job in Silicon Valley. 

A student and friend from the first cohort, Walter, who was recruited by Udacity after he graduated and who I had met on my first day as an intern heard about this and connected me to the right people and encouraged me to apply there as a content developer, where I would be writing Ruby on Rails curriculum for thousands of students worldwide. It was the perfect combination of education and technology, the right job for me. Wyncode helped me throughout the entire process, from professional development, education, application, salary negotiations all the way to the day I signed my offer letter.

Wyncode has now changed the lives of over 150 people, myself included. The program is intense on purpose. Challenging consistently, and ever-evolving. The staff relentless in their purpose to change lives. The leadership insanely hard-working. The students motivated, dynamic and diverse. If you choose to take this course, know that it will be difficult and motivating, exhausting and inspiring. It will open opportunities at a speed you could only imagine. I have seen it and experienced it first-hand. Wyncode is the real future of education.

Wyncode has truly been one of the greatest experiences of my life. Full disclosure, I came here as a student in September and after the course I was hired by Wyncode to be an Instructor at the Wynwood campus. Before coming to Wyncode I was a high school math teacher. I loved my job and loved the students, but felt my impact could be greater through technology. Wyncode has given me the opportunity to do this, and for that am forever grateful. I spent a lot of time trying to learn on my own through online resourcse with little success, and with in the first week of Wyncode I felt I learned more than a years worth of online resources. Ed Toro is not only a gifted programmer, but also an incredible teacher(As a former teacher I am super critical). The best part of the Wyncode experience though is the culture. I made life long friends, high level connections in Miami, and attained a network of developers that are some of the best in the industry( an invaluable resource). For anybody considering a bootcamp, I highly recommend the Wyncode experience. It's the type of life changing decision you will wish you made sooner. 

I'm currently taking the part-time Product Management course at BrainStation and can't say enough good things about my experience so far! I was looking to learn new professional skills to help me progress in my career, but I wanted to learn something completely new. I work in Marketing and thought learning about Product Management/Development would help me have a better understanding of the products that I'm "selling" every day. Not only has all of the course material been completely applicable to my current role and company, but it will also be helpful for any future opportunities. The staff is ALL helpful and friendly, and the instructors and teaching assistants are current experts in their fields, so they can provide insight and advice based on relevant information. Two thumbs up!!

I am currently on week seven of the iOS Development course at BrainStation. This course continues to impress me with the challenges we face every week. I was looking for a challenge and was definitely able to find it.

I've been programming in Java for nearly two years and was excited to try an experience with a new language. I was expecting the transition would be tough at first, but overall logic is logic and I will pick it up quite quickly. I have been continuously suprised with the difference between the two languages and have been able to set a few goals for the outcome of this course. It excites me to have a challenge after programming comfortably in Java for so long. 

We are using Swift and I love it. Programming in Xcode is a beautiful experience, it's visually appealing more than anything, but the ease of dragging and dropping makes app creation almost like a game. You feel more like a designer than anything and are able to see what you are doing while it's happening. The simulator is very cool, as it takes the form of an iPhone screen as you load your projects and it switches between realistic app icons on the screen. Great experience.

Up until about two weeks ago, we have been using playgrounds over projects, getting right into programming fundamentals and transitioning into Object-Oriented Programming Swift style. We started making basic apps, including a calculator, a weather app and are currently working on creating a user creation and login/logout application. The current project is something fundamental for many applications, so I'm excited to see how this goes.

The instructors are very helpful and I have been enjoying the type of work we've been going through. I definitely encourage external resource hunting, as one day a week for three hours is not enough time to expect to gain all of the knowledge it takes to become an iOS Developer. It's very much a course that you need to help yourself while the very knowledgable instructors will teach you all the latest concepts and basics to lift you off into a new language to potentially master. 

So far, it's a pretty cool experience and I am very happy to have a few projects to add to my portfolio. 

The iOS cohort was a curiousity due to the lack of reviews for it found here. I applied to take the course and received a phone call from then admissions and campus director, Diego Lugo as well as then head TA, Walter Latimer. I was asked questions regarding some basic programming topics in order to vet my programming knowledge and received an email outlining my acceptance within the next few hours.

I participated in the 2nd ever cohort for iOS in the summer of 2015. It was a 6 week part-time (3 hour sessions, 3 sessions a week) course that featured instruction from an established and well respected member of the Wynwood Community- Karl Goodhew of YellowPepper. Karl has extensive experience in developing iOS apps, and the insights he provided (along with TA Derek Miller, also of YellowPepper) were invaluable with regards to my job search. Karl even set up my first ever interview for a software development position at YellowPepper, something that boosted the confidence I had in my abilities. My only criticism of Karl's instruction would be that the curriculum seemed to be piecemeal for various parts of a functional app. I would like to see this curriculum change to a sort of kitchen sink app that grows over the course of the six weeks, rather than implement the learned features of an app across various micro projects that dont add much to a portfolio. Another criticism I would like to add was that at some points, Karl seemed to have little patience for students and I got the idea that the course wasn't progressing as intended. Instead of attempting to get the cohort back on track, he seemed content to let us go about our own devices(and argue), pursuing our collectively agreed upon portfolio project, wasting an inordinate amount of time that may have been better utilized following a structured curriculum.

I was employed within 2 months of completing the course, thanks to the AMAZING Rita Rovira who is the director of hiring partnerships at Wyncode. Her advice on presentation and branding was precisely the information i required to become employable. It's safe to say that had I utilized this amazing resource available to me immediately following the completion of the cohort (I actually began seeking her advice one month after the cohort was completed) I would be employed that much sooner. Since working with Rita on my job search, I was employed within 3 weeks as a mobile developer.

I would recommend this course to any experienced programmer who is missing a social aspect to their career development. If you're looking to find a way to "get in" to the mobile realm coming from a differing discipline (they recommend having participated in their main ruby cohort prior to participating in this cohort, but if you can prove that you are a competent programmer you are welcome to join the iOS cohort... This is due to the fact that there simply isnt enough time in the cohort to introduce programming concepts from no starting point and then having to deal with platform specific programming techniques and industry best practices) then this course is for you!

The Product Management course offered by BrainStation is one of its kind. The course compresses a few months of MBA content into a few weeks. The course instructor comes with a great amount of experience. He was one of the key members in the launch of the famous BlackBerry Messenger. He has been in the industry for over 2 decades working with a wide variety of companies. Learning from an industry expert gives you the hands on knowledge and exposure that employers in today's age are looking for. The TA in class also comes from a Product Management background. The advantage is that you have best of both worlds - You learn the theoretical part of it along with the skills that are required to make you a successful Product Manager. The students in class come from a wide variety of backgrounds. We have people with a science background who are looking to develop their own product and want to learn how to take a product from its inception to launching it in the market. The class size is small, with approximately 30 students in class. Everyone has a grand project that they work towards from day one. At the end of it, each student has a tangible outcome, which can used later to show to employers for future jobs. 

First of all, I want to thanks Juha(Wyncode co-founders), Jo(Wyncode co-founders) and Matt Haggman(Knight Foundation) on the chance of the scholarship to attend Wyncode. 

First of all, attending WYNCODE was one of the best decisions I have ever made. When I started I just knew the basic of HTML5, CSS3, and just basic of JavaScript. Since week one, I had to work hard because I was learning something new everyday. It was intensive, but I told myself I must dedicated and commit to it, because is going to sky the limit on what I can learn and this is going to be a life long learning path! There wasn't a day since I started that I wasn't going to bed around 2am and waking up around 8am. What I realize is that the best students and developers are the one that puts the extra hours and putting the effort on solving the problems at any circumstance. I really love been surrounded by those kinda people because is motivated me and push me even more to learn.

The staff at Wyncode is phenomenon, I loved their style of teaching in which they teach a several concepts a day and then put you to practice on building small project and homeworks. Some are hard and make you like quitting but it just take pushing through the stress and overcoming the hard moments because at the end is all rewarding. The lead instructor Ed Toro is a great teacher, he is very calm and love to teach and see the students learn and succeed. As well as the assistant teachers they are really good programmers to. I really liked the opportunity of been able to learn from top quality programmers.

Wyncode curriculum is amazing, like I mentioned it was base on learning new concepts and putting them into practice by small projects and homeworks on a daily basis. On the weekends there were bigger project, that consist of what we have been taught through out the week. The projects are relevant to what most of the top industry are programming in todays world. Last but not least, Wyncode have a great curriculum to become a Ruby on Rails Full-Stack Web Developer, as well as a Front End Developer which is what I like.

Job assistant is amazing with Rita and Wyncode because they want you to succed. Today, I got hired for Front-End Developer at Coply System, is an amazing company and a great company culture.