Coder Camps

       I began studying Ruby so that I could apply to another camp; and about a year and several more self-taught skills later, I found myself on the phone with Coder Camps, since they were one of the only in-person camps in the Houston area. I talked to Christine, who made a very good connection with me and frankly made me regret not joining a bootcamp earlier. I looked them up, and mostly good reviews! She followed up at all the right times, we did more phone interviews, and within a couple of days I took the leap and signed up for a online(commute drains hours and money, especially in Houston) cohort beginning in November 2016. She told me we would talk once a week at least, to make sure the experience is good for me. (She never called once til it was time to ask for referrals to the program.)

       The quality of the pre-work was encouraging. I felt challenged to get it all completed, I got good feedback on some of the projects I needed to fix, and I felt really good about the stuff that I built. Eventually the time to start was upon me! The hours were from 9AM central to a break for an hour, and then we ended the day around 4PM.

       I was not impressed by the cohort size, as there was one in-person student, and two online. Four or five total. That was the first red flag. Stephen Walther was our main instructor, and he was very knowledgeable. The first few weeks were great. We learned Typescript, which I had never seen, I believe some Bootstrap as well, and of course HTML, CSS, etc. I excelled at anything we did because I was familiar with these basic technologies. I felt like a kid waiting for the first lick of a spanking because I knew that things would be picking up soon. Then it did! I was terrified of Angular (1.5), Node and Express when I was first presented with the app that we would be building our apps on, but that's when I really learned to break down new technologies and get an understanding for how they work. I got so good that the instructors thought I was cheating when I would "drive" the other students in front of the class. 

       That's actually the closest we came to pair programming, one student telling the other what to do while the other students watched. I found it extremely hard to pay attention when I was not directly engaged in producing the code. I didn't like how we would be introduced to new concepts with a walk-along, and THEN go practice. I found much more use when I introduced the concept to myself through reading the curriculum and Youtube the night before, and then implementing the concepts in the presence of a teacher, where I could ask any question I needed, and that way keep my momentum and really get the most of my time. Instead, I would be forced to follow along while someone else codes on the screen. I cannot fault them for their teaching style, but personally, I did not find it the most effective. 

       The first real blow came when our main instructor, Stephen, dipped off to go and teach a .NET course. He left us to Johnathon, who I believe was nothing more than a TA, and would occasionally come and check on us. This made me angry, because while John was helpful and had a great attitude, he simply didn't have the experience that Stephen did and therefore could not help us on the same level. Soon after, Stephen abruptly left Coder Camps. The next guy that came in, Brandon, was in between John and Stephen, but closer to John in terms of experience, and he honestly didn't have the best communication skills. 

       Brandon coming in introduced another level of complication to the cohort since I believe it was Stephen who wrote the curriculum in the first place. He didn't like Stephen's curriculum, and for good reason: component-based architecture was completely missing from it. This didn't bother me until I graduated and realized that EVERYTHING is headed that way. I started behind the race because I was taught to use an old version of Angular, and at that we didn't learn the industry-preferred style of app structure, even though Angular 1.5 supports it.

      While I'm on the subject of what I didn't learn, I barely know how to use Webpack, (only because I taught myself at that) and only know of SystemJs due to my own reading on Angular. We never learned any bundling technology. To me, that is one of the hardest concepts to grasp, and it's def something we should have learned under the supervision of a seasoned coder. 

     As for the projects, I built many quick one-day projects to demonstrate understanding of different features of Angular or Express, but only one personal capstone and one group project. My capstone was not much of a success in my opinion, and I blame the fact that I aimed a little too high. Definitely would go simple if I could again. It was just too data-intensive. I spent a lot of time trying to acquire data, find ways to manipulate it, and finally gave up on that and tried to produce my own. 

      The small cohort really hurt the group project, since there were only three of us by the time it rolled around. One of my classmates was too far behind to participate, so our group project was done with only two. I just wish I collaborated on more than one project. We struggled with authentication since nobody could provide a working version of Passport. How can I learn to use it if you don't even have a working example to show me? Brandon actually did it for us, and he had a hard time with it, adding several more technologies to make it work for some reason. He really did his best to help us, but still nobody was impressed when it came time to show it off. 

     The job services is a big joke. I won't lie, I missed the day that the career services rep supposedly talked to our cohort, but I did make sure I got the materials from our slack channel and reached out to them after that. I got a pdf and a power point telling me basic things like make a resume and make a LinkedIn, which I already had. I wish they actually took the time to introduce us to some companies. That was a big reason for me going to a bootcamp, I thought they would have connections to leverage and help us in the door. The rep could have at least replied to me. 

     I graduated at the end of January, and it is August now. I held my tongue for a while because I didn't realize how bad of an experience I had had, and I wanted to give them the chance to make it right, because things happen sometimes. They don't plan on helping (aside from me taking ANOTHER THREE MONTHS not being able to earn a living), and I feel that I will not get a job without going through more schooling. I am looking at different options, but I will not be returning there. You should not get the same amount of money from me because you messed up the first time and now I have to spend double the projected time in school. Even when I was teaching myself things like component-based architecture or webpack after graduation, the instructors on the slack channel didn't give a single f*** about me. No support. Except for Brandon. He took time to video chat with me when I was no longer his student and help me teach myself.

      I banked a lot on that bootcamp, and I feel extremely let down. It makes me angry and depressed when I realize that I am in the same situation as a year ago. It's really hard to put into words how discouraging this last year (including bootcamp time) has been for me. I am at a loss as far as what to do sometimes. 

I attended Coder Camps last year. In my opinion it had a very fearful atmosphere where you didn't want to ask questions and didn't want to make a bad impression on the owner, lest he made a snap judgment about you. He also has you agree to never be affiliated with another bootcamp or competitor in the future, so it's Coder Camps or bust.

Be critical of their website, these phrases are quoted from the original site: --"You don't pay until you get hired" : Your credit card is charged after 90 days of completing camp regardless of whether you have a job yet.

--"Hire Percentage 100% within 90 days" : The 100% hiring rate is only true if it doesn't count anyone who got kicked out, removed, or not "qualified" to graduate. The owner can/will change your graduation status at any time after camp - so I must post anonymously. I don't know the actual graduation rate.

--"Average Graduate Annual Earnings $70k+" : This statistic doesn't include a median or mode, so who knows if this number is skewed. My experience didn't match this stat, but I could be wrong. The only thing I can figure is that later classes have done better, or many students don't count towards the average.

--Hiring day and hiring partners did not come through to help me find a job.

--I received no technical interview training / very little preparation for interviews. --I was taught by a real developer, but I know at least one of the teachers now was one of my classmates.

--There are no statistics available from Coder Camps that show success over a longer time following camp Students I studied with struggled along with me, and we tried to make the best of a bad situation. I got 3 weeks out of 9 total of active training, most were half days. Things may be better now, but the rest of the time there was very little help. It was up to us to seek help from the owner or an employee. It was up to us to work on a group project with little guidance, and a personal project, also with little help. The students helped each other learn the most in the end.

Look here for other experiences that aren't buried: Victor Hugo's answer to Coder Camps: What is the Coder Camps Web Development program in Houston, TX like?: http://qr.ae/K78U4 How I got kicked out of Codercamps: http://sprky.co/2014/05/14/cod...

Overall, Coder Camps was not what I expected. You may not have the same experience there. You can learn a lot of programming on your own. Don't be naive, ask a lot of questions before you come, and think twice before making such a large financial commitment to such a new bootcamp.