Coder Camps

“Through accelerated and immersive courses led by expert instructors, our students become accustomed to thinking like a developer and adapting to the dynamics of working on an Agile software team.” - a quote from CoderCamps own website….

Our instructor was a brand new T.A. The teacher that was suppose to teach (Ron) left the company without any disclosure from Coder Camps. We found out from David Weems he left and that is the reason our emails for help went unanswered. So expert is 1 and a half months after graduating from BootCamp? It does get better, wait until you read how we were dismissed from the Camp and our loan “Divvied Up” amongst them. Best part, we were never notified of our dismissal, my wife who received loan and co-signed for my loan NEVER received any communications until Jan. 15th. They left a VM and then proceeded to tell their V.P. they spoke with my wife. We have an attorney, contacted BBB,CFPB,AZAG and will not stop until they pay for damages to credit and our mental and emotional stress. By the way, our T.A. tried his best and is an all around good person.... person is key, not expert.

Coder Camps was my first choice because it offered both an online option and a .NET option.  My background is as a technical trainer (amongst other things) and having taught mixed online/in-person classes myself, I was well aware that it's difficult to pull mixed classes off.  So I was a little surprised to learn that online students are taught alongside the in-person class.  I have to say they did pretty well, but sometimes it was impossible to hear what students actually there in the class were saying, and it was harder to stay engaged with those who were physically there.  And there were the inevitable technical glitches, but not as many as I thought there would be and they were usually quickly resolved.

Overall the instructors (Dan Do and Stephen Walther) did an excellent job.  There were a couple of sessions where I felt the instructor didn't have the sufficiently deep knowledge required in a topic to excel in teaching it, but  overall the quality of the instruction was high.  The lecture notes were reasonably comprehensive and there are many, many resources available online if you needed a deeper/different explanation. Be aware that it's very hard to keep documentation perfectly updated when, for example, AngularJS is releasing a new version every month or two.  So the lecture notes weren't always perfectly up-to-date, nor, frankly, can they be.

Before going to any coding camp you should be prepared for a few things.

First, you must work really, really hard.  There is no getting around this.  The less you know going in, the more hours you will have to put in to keep up.  I was fortunate in that I already had a lot of the basics and have taken classes here and there for 10 years (mostly in the last 3 years).  I did anywhere from 60 - 80 hours a week with the occasional 90 hour week.  There were one or two in my class who lacked basic knowledge and who struggled to keep up.  There were also one or two who I guess just had money to burn as they didn't seem to actually DO anything except show up (sometimes) when they felt like it.  

Second, you will likely do best if you already have some coding experience/classes under your belt.  Get familiar with the basics from some of the many free online courses out there, and you will find it so much easier than going in with zero knowledge.

Third, If you are online you will need to advocate for yourself more so than if you are there in person.  Get the contact information for the instructor and the TA and the best students in the class and ping them remorselessly.  Set up an appointment early in the day for after-hours if need be for a shared-screen online session, and even if you solve the problem you originally needed help with, keep the appointment because you will almost certainly run into some other problem you need help with.  If you are not comfortable being assertive you may feel you are being overlooked.  As a former trainer I can tell you this isn't deliberate - it's just if I can't see you I have no idea if you need my help unless you TELL me.

Fourth, only YOU can get yourself a job.  Sure, Coder Camps may provide you with a few leads, resume advice, and a session on common coding questions, but frankly it's YOU and YOUR skills that will get you a job.  I was networking throughout the class and in my last week I already had interviews set up with local recruiters and companies.  I did not expect Coder Camps to arrange interviews for me with recruiters or "hiring partners" and nor should you.  I know it's part of their sales pitch but frankly it will be down to you, and I'm okay with that.  I'm a grown-up.  I didn't need or want their help with getting a job (although the interview question session and the provided materials were useful).  If you need or want that support, then maybe this isn't the camp for you, although they do seem to be very focused on stepping up their career support.

Speaking of getting a job: I am a very non-traditional candidate.  I'm solidly middle-aged, a woman, no computer science degree, nor have I been coding since age 9.  Sure, I had some technical work experience, but nothing remotely resembling coding.  I figured that if I hustled I'd have a job in maybe 6 months.  It actually took me a little over two months.  Note that the first month of that was taken up with some personal matters, so really I was only seriously job-hunting for 5 weeks.

Lastly, there is both an indiividual project and a group project.  The success of the group project is determined by how hard your group is prepared to work and their overall skill level.  If you have unmotivated people in your group project, be prepared to either do most of the group work yourself, and/or make your individual project shine.

To sum up: this was a positive experience for me, but I went in with realistic expectations (I have changed career before by doing an intensive course in this way).  I also was prepared with a good amount of self-study prior to doing the course.  And, of course, I worked my butt off and was proactive in getting the help I needed.  You will come out of this with a good grasp of how to set up a full-stack .NET project using cutting edge technology and frameworks.  You may not have a solid grasp of the why, but how to do things should be enough to get you your first job.

You are welcome to look me up on LinkedIn and send me a message/invite.  I'm happy to expand on my rather lengthy review.

TL;DR:

Pros:
Knowledgable instructors.  
Cutting edge technologies are taught.  
Full-stack - you can always specialize later if you want.
Fairly reasonable price.
Fully online option if you like coding in your PJ's

Cons:
Online / in-class mixed instruction is very hard to pull off well and didn't always work.  
Career support was not quite as promised (didn't matter to me), but is clearly being worked on.
Not everyone in the class had the aptitude or work ethic to succeed and sometimes dragged down the rest of the class.

Comments:
You will get out of this what you put into it. 

       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 left a career making about 80k a year to take what I thought would be a small paycut to about 70k a year.  This was according to Chris Lipari who said they had a 98% industry placement with an average salary of 75k a year.  Over time, I found out this is not true.  I watched his number change from 98%, 92%, 95%.  He just makes it up.  In addition to that, I talked to past students that were still attending and had been without a job for over a year, most over 6 months.  All bright individuals.  Don't buy into this program unless you are going to code.  The career prospects are crap.  The teachers are great, and I was told I would be able to sit in on the next camp once, free of charge.  This too, changed during enrollment.  They were "no longer doing that"  however, I signed a contract.  Welcome lawsuit.  I did learn how to code, I did not get a job, I spent too much money on something I could have learned myself on my own over time.  Great.  The pace is super fast and many of the people spent over 100 hours a week and still did not pick up everything because of the fast pace.  Thank god for the instructors who were more than willing to help. 

The teacher was very knowledgeable, cared about student learning and progress and definitely took time to answer questions. I was online, but our class was delivered with in person students. The teaching method made sure everyone was included, during class time... Unfortunately, there was no offline office hours given. I know that the in person people were able to ask questions of the teacher and other staff members, but, knowing the value of expert advice and feedback, I'd think the program would find a way to create a similar experience for offline students. I graduated from the program, I learned much and am very confident in my skills. I think I can do most things I need to and am equipped to quickly learn other skills and languages in the future. However, for me, I'm not sure the 9 weeks was long enough (my top choice and similar programs are 12 weeks, and don't be fooled by the inclusion of coding from scratch, other schools do similar pre-work and are still at least 12 weeks). It definitely seemed like they were trying to build the plane and fly at the same time. Week six was very light on lessons, it was supposed to be on mobile development but there was only 1/2 day of teaching. We self taught the rest of the time that week. They mentioned several times that they were working on the lesson plan, but we never saw it come to fruition. The absolute worst was the after graduation student support. Their career advisor missed out appointment twice and never acknowledge his error. The advice he gave was very generic input one could find anywhere on the Internet. Overall his demeanor was that of a used car salesman. After our 30 min talk I never heard from anyone in their office. I will say this school was my third option, but my family situation made it so I had to go with their online program. If my other schools had the option, I would have chose them. Doing my research beforehand, I had serious misgivings about this program. I used LinkedIn to chat with previous CoderCamps grads and heard some very lackluster reviews. But they were the best option for me at the time. That said, and being a man of faith, I will say that was were was supposed to be. They were available during the time I needed them, they had an online option, the teacher was an expert and good at actual instruction. Finally, I was able to land a job and the knowledge and skills I received will make it easier for me to add on the necessary skills to become an expert in the field in the next few years. I am happy that I went there, but I want you to think long and hard and definitely do your research. This program has its eye on expansion, and while the teachers are concerned with student success, the leadership and rest of the staff don't appear to be.

I was part of their second troop (started May 04th, 2015, graduated July 24th, 2015), and I'm writing this review to highlight issues not only with Coder Camps but also boot camps in general. I DO NOT RECOMMEND going to a boot camp in the Seattle area because they have not caught on really at all here, unless you have prior experience (atleast some college experience). I was a high school graduate with no coding experience before this, took their CFS and their Full Stack .NET bootcamp, and while they said they can take anyone (who was willing, and I was) from zero to hero, and said prior to my graduation that 'I would have no problem getting a job' as I was commended frequently for my hard work and dedication, yet here I am, less than 2 weeks from paying my first massive payment for an education which so far has served no career purpose whatsoever. I have applied to over 100 jobs in the Seattle area, focusing on Front End Developer, .NET Developer, and any junior positions but have only received communication back from less than 5 companies, 2 of which gave me introductory interviews but nothing after that. I'll admit, I'm not the greatest at interviews because Coder Camps didn't train us on interviews, they trained us on getting a website up and running and well, yet interviewers are not asking these questions, but asking Computer Science questions and notepad coding, something that takes years to do. I think coding bootcamps are feasible, but DON'T go to a Seattle area one, and DON'T go to Coder Camps. Why? Coder Camps doesn't offer to pay (or simply hold) your payments for the non-student loan you have through them, even if you don't have a job. Their 90% placement rate seems bogus because I don't believe anyone in my troop has gotten a job, the previous troop got jobs outside of the Seattle area, and the troop ahead of me only has one who got a job in Alabama.

The problem with a Seattle bootcamp is that there isn't a lot (only Coder Camps and Coding Dojo that I'm aware of), and that doesn't give you the selection like you would have down in San Fran, so apply there, where you can try and get deals and make sure they will hold your payments until you get a job. Coder Camps was a great experience, but I think every coding bootcamp is, so it isn't special, and that's why while I'll recommend going to a coding bootcamp, I don't recommend Coder Camps nor any in the Seattle area, as the job openings are mainly for Senior or Mid-Career developers with years of experience on top of a BS in CS.

I plan on editing this review if I do get a job to accurately portray my experience with Coder Camps and coding bootcamps.

Finally, here's two of the major cons of Coder Camps: 1. Doesn't withhold your payments if you don't get a job, and 2. Doesn't get you hired. I have received zero help (period) from Coder Camps in finding a job. They work with TEKsystems, yet I went in for the set-up interview and they have yet to even get me a single interview, versus just going out on my own has gotten me two.

TLDR; Don't go to Coder Camps anywhere, and don't go to coding bootcamp in Seattle area if you don't have already progress towards a CS degree. Go to a bootcamp in San Francisco and find one that withholds payments for your non-student loan if you don't find a job. I graduated 3 months ago, have been actively looking for a job, applied to over a hundred jobs for modest positions, gotten two interviews, zero help from Coder Camps on getting a job, and in 10 days my first payment of $350 dollars a month will kick in where I have not improved my wage at all. I'll update this review if I get a job. Thanks for reading, and beware!

I'm going to keep this blunt and honest, for the sake of those interested in attending this course. If you want to take this course, prepare yourself mentally and physically. I have absolutely no background in coding, but i studied hard with the materials provided and managed to master everything in the course - while my other classmates at a similar disadvantage decided to coast through the course assuming they would get help later. Not only did they not learn the material, they are now retaking the course because of their complete inneptitude. Make no mistake, boot-camps are not for everyone.

Lastly, be honest with yourself and expectations. Coder Camps had a very loose cirriculum - and as soon as the instructional section ended, we were stuffed into a group project in a seperate room by ourselves unless we deemed it necessary to go bother a intructor for help (instructor began teaching a different class). Not only was I basically paying to rent a room to write code in, but my groupmates were absolutely no help, and the end product of our project was absolute garbage that i didnt even want to put on my resume. Their Career Services was a absolute joke as well, Im fairly sure i incited the scheduling of a career day just by emailing the camp director and complaining. They continually forgot to respond to my emails, never followed through on weekly checkups, and best of all (seriously made me laugh) emailed me asking if id like resume help - which i obliged with my resume - and then immediately told me the career services leader would be taking a honeymoon in hawaii for 2 weeks.

If you have got this far, you might ask yourself, why should i attend coder camps then? Well the answer is that - a coding camps outcome is universally dependent on the work you put in. Regardless of everything that i wrote about above, I put in the work to learn the material, contact my instructor when i was confused, and go above and beyond to make sure the work i did was spectacular. I have joined a friends startup company to work on mobile apps, and within 2 months of job searching have landed a position as a Junior Software Engineer. Bottom line: if you want it bad, you will make it happen.

Pros: My instructor was amazing. Stephen Walther is a professional developer who worked at Microsoft on the ASP .NET team, has written books, and knows his stuff. I learned a lot. I had almost no experience with code development. It was intense, and frustrating but very rewarding.  The other students were great. It was a very supportive class and a positive atmosphere. 

Cons: My first complaint was having a class with both in person students and remote students. The flow of the class was....strange....and often very distracting with students who were joining the class via the internet.  We wasted a lot of time fixing technical difficulties and dealing with communication challenges. 

Secondly, after the first few weeks when the class works on the team project, there was little to no help. Our group struggled with the project and it took a week for someone to look at our code and tell us how to fix it. Even then it was minimal. You can only Google and use StackOverflow so much. So the last three weeks we were basically on our own with no guidance other than a very short weekly check in. This is because they piggy-back the troops on top of one another so the instructor is on to a new class and doesn't have time to assist the former class. I don't fault Stephen with this. He's just doing his job. 

The website claims Coder Camps has "Hiring Partners". Apparently they don't have any in Seattle. We were not introduced to any of these partners, not one employer came to Demo Day, which they claim is a job fair (not even close), and the only reason I got any help with my resume was I consistently emailed the corporate office for some help. Then I was told that it's a bad time of year for hiring (I get that...the holidays and all) and was giving a list of employment agencies. I could have (and did) done that on my own. 

While we learned a lot of great skills, there was absolutely no job interview preparation or resume advice/help. I didn't know what a technical interview was until I started researching the interview process on my own. White-boarding? What is that? 

Honestly, if you have the discipline to learn development on your own, do it. Or find a program that has an internship or a job placement guarantee or at the least a REAL job fair and connections with employers and plenty of preparation for real world job interviews. 

This program isn't worth 11,900, go somewhere else.

• They hire junior programmers to teach. My instructor only has a year of coding experience. This person hasn't been a developer out in the real world.
• My teacher is also remote, this person doesn't not teach in person. There has been several technical problems, that make our lessons shorter. If you want to pay 11,900 for a romote jr programmer instructor go to coder camps.
• Romote students are in your class too. This students will slow your class down. 

Before, you attend coder camps ask questions. Make sure your instructor is not remote. Don't just talk to the sales guys. Go talk to the students in the course that you are intrested interested. The .net course is better then our js course, because they have mid-level or a senior teaching the .net. This program isn't worth 11,900.

INTRO:

I left a career in sales to make the transition into a development career. I knew going into this, that it was going to be a difficult transition, especially with bootcamps still being quite new within the industry. However, after a good amount of online research, I felt that Coder Camps was going to be a great fit for what I was looking for in development.

THE COURSE:

Learning even just 1 technical language in 12 weeks is a daunting task, let alone Full-Stack .NET. Overall the course is extremely difficult, and as other reviews have stated, will require above and beyond time dedication to stay up to speed with the course. The great thing about Coder Camps is that the instructors and resources that you have available during the course, are eager and willing to help get you up to speed if you feel that you are slipping behind. My Instructor Dan, continuously made himself available - even during the weekends, so if you have him as an instructor - you're in for a treat.

The languages they teach are top notch within the industry. I was constantly praised on my school of choice when people saw that they taught both Typescript AND AngularJS, in addition to the typical JavaScript/ C# languages. One recommendation that I would give to the school (at least from my interview experience down here in Irvine, CA) is to teach a bit more SQL. Nearly every interview I have been on has been SQL,SQL and more SQL, which I had to go additionally learn on my own to feel comfortable being able to speak to it. 

Overall the course material WILL prepare you for the real world. The CRUD style applications that are built throughout the class, are exactly what companies will have you build in interviews - and to my experience, was comfortable doing it. 

ONLINE vs. OFFLINE:

I'll keep this short and to the point - I took the course online. Coder Camps did a fantastic job of making the online students feel included and ask us questions and it did not hinder my learning experience. There were occasional audio issues, but nothing too serious. That being said - If you have the opportunity to do so, I would still take the course IN-PERSON if you can. Being able to speak to the instructors in person, and have code reviews in person - rather than having a screen share session - is invaluable. Although I must say waking up in the comfort of my own home and learning, was amazing.

JOB ASSISTANCE:

This is where I feel that the experience lacked a bit. Toward the end of the course - specifically during our final presentations, I felt that everything ended very abruptly. We spent 1 day (actually only 2 hours) reviewing "interview" type questions - including "Fizz Buzz", etc. (if you don't know what that is - you will eventually), and we never re-visited it after.

Following our final presentations, which you dedicate three FULL weeks to, everything ended with an "OK, thanks - bye" type of feeling, which myself and other campers felt was a bit strange - especially those of us that were online students. 

I did receive assistance with my resume, which ended up helping a great bit - but this was only AFTER speaking to a fellow camper friend having mentioned he got help with his. I would have really appreciated some additional assistance for the first few interviews and to guide us a bit better and help us better understand what to expect in the weeks to come. Now before I just make it seem like I am ranting on, I'm sure Dan and other instructors would have helped me if I had any specific questions, but having felt like a lost puppy after the course was over, I had no idea what to ask or even expect. 

CONCLUSION:

This school is a fantastic school. If you're thinking about joining a bootcamp that is specific to the .NET framework - Coder Camps is a top notch choice and will prepare you technically for this industry. I know this because 8 weeks after completion of the course, I was offered a position as a Jr .NET Developer in the Irvine area for an unbelievable company that works with the NFL and major retailers like McDonalds and Walmart to code and build interactive LED color video displays, and I am extremely excited to start my new life. 

 

Many people think these boot camps are a golden ticket, they are not. Before I even showed up in Seattle, I had no unreasonable expectations.I am a self-paced learner, I had studied extensively before I showed up. I won’t go over career placement/counseling because I never expected a magic way into a job. You are the only person that can get you a job, network, build and be persistent.  I only expected the following. 

1. A chance to code full time and get financing for the tuition, cost of living and gas.
2. A environment where I could meet others like myself.
3. A place to stay late and code when cramming to finish projects.
4. A instructor to help me when I needed it. 
5. A good resume project to leave camp with.
6. A place to find community even after graduation.

Basically, #1 is the only thing I felt was adequately provided, and that was provided through a third party, so hey, thanks to them I guess. I’ll start with #2.

#2 :“A environment where I could meet others like myself.”
I was hoping to meet passionate newbies who really had the drive and competency to build awesome thing. The “admissions representatives” aka, sales people, were just pushing as many bodies through the door as they could, regardless of aptitude. Look it up on glassdoor, they work on commission. Students that needed excessive hand-holding through lectures. Students that seemed to be barely able to operate their own computers, let alone build software.  I did meet some awesome passionate people at coder camps, but they were in different cohorts who have the same complaints about the program as I did.

#3: “A place to stay late and code when cramming to finish projects.”
When I first got to the camp, I had a late night TA. She was there if you needed questions answered, and to close the building late. However, 2ish weeks in, she got moved to a remote class and started working from home, subsequently causing the camp to close at 5 when the 2 instructors left. It would be occasionally be open a bit longer, but not often. I’d usually end up at the nearby coffee joint when I needed to get work done. 

#4: “A instructor to help me when I needed it. ”
This was partially due to #2, it was hard to get my instructor to help me on harder concepts when he had students who were constantly making him repeat basic concepts like git commands and editor hotkeys. Beyond this. He left the company 2 weeks before my final project was over, presumably due to differences within Coder Camps. The instructor in the other class was willing to help when I needed it, but much of the project as in a completely different stack, and I ended up finishing it out. Which leads to our next expectation.

#5: “A good resume project to leave camp with.”
I was in a group of 2 others, one remote and one onsite. We finished, but there were features missing that I sincerely wished made it in. Beyond our instructor leaving, the remote student had to begin working a full-time job for personal reasons. The scope of the project was made for 3 full time developers, and it was more like 2.25. I feel like this made me pick up the extra slack. The project works as a demo, but not as a product, and it still bothers me to this day. I put a lot of heart into it. 

#6: “A place to find community even after graduation.”
After I graduated the dot-net class wasn’t receiving new students, and the mean stack class ahead of me was finishing their projects. In total, on a day I would stop in there would be 5 people in the building including the instructor and TA, but often less. This was pretty suspicious, they went from just throwing in any warm body willing to pay them, to mysteriously sending no-one. This turned out to be that they planned to close the Seattle campus.  I tried to stop by recently to find out that they closed the camp. They are still active in arizona and Texas (so far as I know). I’ve found a good community outside the camp, the JS community in Seattle is warm and friendly. Unfortunately, Coder camps’ Seattle campus was actually in Redmond! And if you know anything about Seattle, the people here hate driving. So you end up spending a lot of time and gas to go to meetups and events where the community actually congregates.

Most of what I have learned hasn’t been from their curriculum, it was pretty badly outdated. I’m self taught, they taught me nothing. 2 weeks out of camp I found some contract work for a startup. With zero help from Coder Camps. And that’s fine, as I said, I wasn’t expecting it. That lasted about about 2 months, and now I’m on the hunt again. This whole experience was just sad. I came in with reasonable expectations and was disappointed in a spectacular fashion. Don’t trust a word they tell you.