Coding Dojo

Deciding on a coding bootcamp was one of the more difficult decisions I have made. Everywhere you turn people are promising you the career of your dreams with a big salary to boot. My goal with this review is to cut through some of that fluff and give insights that I wish people had given me when I was going through the process.

I signed up for the Full Time Onsite Dallas course which was broken down into 4 sections. Web Fundamentals(2wks), Python(4wks), MEAN(4wks), Ruby on Rails(4wks). While I signed up for the onsite course everything I did was online and I can not speak to the onsite experience.

Also, because I know people are wondering this, I had zero coding knowledge prior to Coding Dojo. I learned what a for loop was while doing the pre-course work that is given to you after you sign up.

This is not going to be short so here is a quick summery. Coding Dojo was well worth the money but nobody is going to hold your hand. Their learning platform is good, the online experience was better than anticipated, and being around peers who are also committed to changing their lives for the better is invigorating. If I could give .5 stars I would rate the overall experience a 4.5/5 but I will be giving an overall rating of 5 starts down below because I believe in rounding up. 

From this point I am going to offer criticism at some items but please keep in mind these are criticisms coming from someone who enjoyed the experience and gave it a 4.5/5. 

The application process was straightforward and the admissions team was much more helpful than admissions teams at other bootcamps. Vic answered the questions I had and pointed me to some great open house events where I got to meet some instructors and career service folks as well. They did not pressure me into a decision which felt really nice and they also helped me secure some scholarship money. Hint, write a reasonable essay about your journey to coding and you will get some money. Again I would have not even applied for one except for Vic so shoutout to him. 

Now something that caught me by surprise was the size of the class. The Web Fundamentals class had over 45 students in it on day 1. This was a far cry from the 10-14 students I was expecting. There were two teachers and two TA's but it was still too large. This continued through Python but after that my class size shrunk to 8-12 which was amazing. 

This was the first time I had ever experienced learning online and it was so much better than I thought it would be. The instructors did a great job of utilizing zoom and recording lectures so that we could participate in the lecture live while also having the ability to go review a section of the lecture that was particularly challenging. Another perk of having the class online was that it meant I was constantly engaging with my classmates even beyond the 9-5 hours that the course was being held. I made some great friends during my 14 weeks and it was so helpful to have people to talk things out with at all hours of the night. 

The Coding Dojo learning platform was impressive. So much good material on it and I was leveraging it all the time. As a student you get access to the learn platform for a year after you graduate and you get access to stacks that you did not take. You can continue learning new languages even after you graduate :). There were several instances where we were not using the most up to date versions of software etc. It seemed that this was usually so that Coding Dojo did not have to update instructions, content every couple of months or deal with the bugs that come with constant updates. I understand why this decision is made but it still is a little bit of feels bad. To be clear, if you learn how to code in rails 4.2.7 then you can code in rails 6.0.3 so your learning is not being stunted. 

The pace of the class was relentless. Web Fundamentals in particular was challenging for me. I would highly recommend doing as much of the prep work as possible prior to starting. I probably spent 50 hours on prep work prior to starting the course and wish I had spent closer to 100. So I would give yourself 2 weeks of treating the prep work as a full time gig prior to starting if you have no coding experience like I did. However all of the material in the prep work gets covered in class. There were 3 types of students(for the most part) during the first 2 weeks. The first was the group who had coding experience and they cruised through the first two weeks. The second was the group who had done the prep work(this was me) but it was the first time they had seen the material. This second group was always on the cusp of not being able to keep up but some late nights and long weekends got the job done. Then there was the 3rd group(it was the smallest) who had not done the prep work and had little if any prior coding experience. This last group struggled mightily. I recommend not putting yourself in the last group :).

If cannot dedicated yourself fully to this course then Coding Dojo full time is not for you. I spent between 70-90hrs each week just to keep up with the minimum requirements and be prepared for the next day's material. I was usually coding until past midnight every day with a break for meals and exercise. Yes, I worked like that on the weekends as well.

After learning 3 languages and spending two weeks in Web fundamentals I would have gladly traded my 4 weeks of Ruby on Rails for 4 more weeks of Web fundamentals. This in my mind is why Coding Dojo was 4.5 and not a 5. The speed of the course is such that I would have much rather spent more time learning fundamentals of coding instead of another language. I think this would have given me a better handle on the "why" of things which is key to my understanding and being able to fully explain concepts during interviews.

The instructors I had during my time at Coding Dojo were great. Each one had industry experience and were very knowledgeable and willing to help. One of the big things you see as a red flag for bootcamps is when they have a bunch of former students as teachers so I will note that while I was there several students were hired as new teachers and they did not have industry experience(at least according to their LinkedIn). All of these former students were incredibly bright and my interactions with them was nothing but positive but if you are a perspective student you should be grilling your admission person on this and not settle for a wishy washy answer. I'm guessing that the pandemic and moving all classes online has led to an increase in the number of students so Coding Dojo needs more teachers which I get but I would be aware of this. Again from a review perspective my teacher experience was great.

Also another note on teachers: I learned the most from Chris who is the head of the Dallas dojo. However he is the most challenging instructor at Coding Dojo. If you do not enjoy being pushed or want a teacher to be gentle while helping you then you should not take any classes with Chris. Personally, I loved it and learned more in MEAN and Ruby on Rails than I did in Python. You have been warned :)

Coding Dojo makes TA's available to the students for questions that arise after hours(aka after 5pm). The TA's were super helpful but I have to give a shoutout to TA Daisy who was always so knowledgeable and helped me out of many a jam. The TA's were usually available until 8pm during the week and there were not any TA's on weekends. Not having a TA on the weekends was a bummer. Having a great group of friends comes in extra clutch on weekends as they can get you unstuck and not force you to wait until Monday.

Let's talk about Career Services now. My Career Services contact was Michelle and she was fantastic! I gave the job assistance score a 4/5 and Michelle was the reason for such a high score. As a student you get your first Career Services meeting about the time you finish your first stack. Career Services will help you as much as you are willing to help yourself. No one will write your resume or LinkedIn profile for you but they will be there for suggestions, edits, etc. I set up bi weekly meetings with Michelle and she helped hold me accountable for making progress on my resume LinkedIn etc. When I started I did not even have a LinkedIn but I was getting interview opportunities in my LinkedIn inbox before I graduated largely because Michelle was willing to work with me every week. I only put in an hour or two each week into my job search during the bootcamp and even that small amount multiplied by the weeks in the course paid massive dividends and has led to multiple job offers within a week of graduation. 

The reason that Job Assistance is not a 5/5 is because Coding Dojo does not seem to have any pipeline type relationships with employers. Coding Dojo has set up some great tech talks and I have connected with those people on LinkedIn etc and learned a lot. However, I have not experienced anything like having potential employers attend project demo days or things of that nature. 

Coding Dojo will give you the structure, tools, and community to successfully transition into a career as a developer but it will require over a thousand hours of work. I was ready and willing and Coding Dojo was the place that allowed my desire to switch careers come to fruition.

Hope it was helpful to learn more about my experience and if you have more questions feel free to ping me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerry-perkins/

I like many people signed up to Coding Dojo because they made the claim of having you job ready to make a transition in to Cyber Security. After completing the course I can say that it does not help prepare you to be job ready. The program does a good job of introducing you to the field but that is about it, an introduction. $16K for an introduction to the cyber security world is way to much in my opinion. The first 8 weeks are supposed to help prepare you for the ComTIA Security+ exam and I am glad I paid money for other resources because they didn't cover most all the topics that are on the test. Professor Messor has a YouTube playlist dedicated to the Security+ exam and that by far was more helpful in preparing me for the test which I passed but I had to binge watch those videos in between keeping up with the classwork of Coding Dojo... and the Professor Messor videos are available for FREE!!!! I know they have built their reputation based on coding  and I've heard great things about that but their Cyber security stack has many holes and flaws. The assignments are too elementary to be considered work experience. It causes more frustration than learning because there were plenty of times where you had to request help from a TA because the lab assignment would not work as it should. The online lesson are far from being beginner friendly and the staff although they are nice and helpful are not experts in the field. A few of them received the same certifications we paid to learn about while I was studying with the company. In my opinion you would be much better off doing Googles Cyber Security Cert or even ISC2 Certified in Cyber Security and save your pockets in the process. The Career Coordinator they promised has yet to meet with me due to an internal shifting of staff. I went through a 6 month boot camp and met with someone once. I am speaking as a person who was able to was achieve the tops honors of the program Triple Black Belt. Just unacceptable quality for the price paid for the package. 

The short version.
I believe that this course is good for complete beginners but it is too expensive for the value you get. That's in regards to the knowledge you come out of the program with and your chances of breaking into an engineering role, particularly in this economy. If you are going to go through with the course, I highly recommend taking only 1 stack (i.e., language). They're extremely similar and it's not possible to become proficient in multiple languages during the course's timeframe. Honestly, my biggest regret in this course was taking more than 1 stack.

The longer version.

Background. A bit background on me for comparison sake if it helps with your decision making. I've worked a bunch of corporate jobs from finance to consulting. I'm good at excel but was a complete beginner at coding. I started learning how to code on my own about 4 months prior to enrolling into the bootcamp. I ultimately decided to enroll because I wanted to accelerate my learning with the thought that the bootcamp would significantly decrease the amount of time it took me to get a job. I came in knowing that bootcamps in general are not a golden ticket into a software development role, and that ultimately, you get out what you put in.

Curriculum. I took two stacks, Python and MERN (Javascript). I definitely did learn a few things during the program. However, I was surprised to see a number of lessons in the curriculum were simply links to other sites. In fact, the very most I learned during the program was during the lesson on CSS and the curriculum was basically all links to lessons you could find for free, such as Flexbox Froggy. I do want to make it clear that you do learn the basics of programming from loops, data types and conditionals. You also come out of each stack being able to build a basic app, learning how to build the frontend, backend and connect the two. However, I knew most of the material already even though I had been learning how to code for 4 months prior, using free resources. There's definitely value of having structure and guidance (although Chat-GPT could fill that role) so if that's a reason why you want to join the program then that's a great decision too. Just please don't take more than 1 stack. I think MERN is the best because you learn react and that's a very popular frontend framework. The stacks are basically copies of each other and I didn't gain any additional value, but it was expensive. The bootcamp sells you on the importance of learning multiple languages but once you have the foundational knowledge of a language, it's all syntax from there. You're likely gonna forget the first stack's language nuances by the time you're done with the second stack anyways, and I think it's more important to show that you're proficient at coding through your projects. That becomes a lot easier when you stick to one language.

Teachers and Teacher Assistants. The bootcamp has multiple lectures weekly and also provides TA support throughout the afternoon / evening. I found both the teachers and TA's to be very nice and knowledgable about the curriculum. They're former students, which is definitely helping the bootcamps employment numbers. There are moments where it's still clear that the teachers and TA's learned coding fairly recently. As I mentioned in the curriculum section, you get taught the basics and if you need help with that level of knowledge, then the support is great. Step a little outside of that boundary and you don't get much support. I visited the TA's about a number of times during the course with questions that were just a step or two deeper into what was being taught in the curriculum and I genuinely can't remember a time when they answered my question. One TA even explained that it's a skill to be able to find an answer by myself, which is true but I'm also paying over $12K for you to help guide me. Chat-GPT became popular during my time in this course and I can confidently say that it has been so much more helpful than Coding Dojo.

Career Support. A big reason why I chose Coding Dojo was the lifetime career support. It sounds amazing and ultimately the reason why many people choose to join a bootcamp is to get a job. The people who you will work with are kind. I had a great experience interacting with them on a personal level, but they provided me with limited help. I didn't use all of their resources to be fair. I did use them for guidance on how to approach the job search, my resume, and review of my portfolio website. For guidance, it was very high level. For example, you should build out a portfolio website highlighting projects, get your resume together, and look at jobs on these sites. When I was talking to the sales rep, it seemed as if Coding Dojo had a lot more relationship or pipelines with companies looking to hire. However, at present there were no relationships like that. Part of that is the economy but it did not seem like there were many to begin with. For my resume and portfolio website, I just got a lot of praise or minor edits. If you come from a career path where you have experience writing a corporate resume then the career services in my opinion will not provide significant value. Especially if you also know where to look for jobs (BuiltIn, Wellfound, Y Combinator's website). These jobs aren't necessarily hard to find. However, if you're coming for less adjacent field then there is definitely value here. 

Conclusion. After going through a bootcamp, I understand all the comments about how bootcamp is not a golden ticket into a software development role. Yet, it can still be useful. The question is whether it is worth the cost. I say maybe, but only if it's for one stack. Also, I suggest part time if you can rather than full time because it's not going to be easy to break into engineering after this program. If you can be self-taught I would personally go that route, picking a project and then learning what it takes to build that project. In fact, that's exactly what I did and I've learned 5x more than I learned during the bootcamp. I even learned the most up-to-date popular technologies and frameworks, which the curriculum doesn't teach. Not that the curriculum is outdated, but it's also not completely up-to-date either.

It was incredibly overpriced. The career service advisor I was assigned missed meetings, didn't communicate and didn't care. She asked if I had LinkedIn even though I sent her my LinkedIn before the first meeting (the only one she showed up to).

FreeCodeCamp taught me more, and did it more effectively. I can't emphasize enough how disappointed I was with their curriculum, career services, and support in general. A TA I met with gave me false information multiple times and I eventually found the correct answer on StackExchange.

If you want to see how ineffective bootcamps are for getting you into tech, just see the amount of graduates that end up as unmotivated TAs
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As an individual coming from NO computer background what-so-ever, I want to  share my experiences.

First of all, I have a great support system at home that allowed me to focus 100% on this course for 4 months. I was able to take a recourse to prepare me for the full-time program. 

The first month was HARD. I thought I was going to give up. The assignments are fast, and I spent all of my free time studying. It was difficult not to compare where  I stood to others in my class. At my toughest moment, I reached out to my Career Services Manager and my TA. They both helped encourage me and offer support when I needed them. 

I would say the most important take-aways for those looking to join the bootcamp: Make sure you have a support system. Don't compare yourself to others in the class. Stay dedicated and find the motivation behind why you're doing this. 

Coding Dojo has great resources throughout the course, that continue on for 6 months after you graduate. There is also an option to pay more for a yearly alumni pass. 

Bootcamps / trade schools  are a great alternative to College, especially if you are uncertain on what you want your career or life to be. Coding dojo provided me with all the resources I will need to be successful in the course. I got to work at my own pace or work ahead. They have a structure for attendance and assignments, so you wont feel like you don't know what to work on next or where to be. Each instructor has their own way of teaching, some might work for you others might not, but you have the platform and your classmates to reach out to. 

To each's own, with a grain salt, If you need to see an entire application built from start to finish Dojo has a demanding curriculum that will take you there.  It took me years after college and running my own team that exposed my shortcomings of building an entire application from all directions (web/mobile).

I am nearly 40-years-old, dropped out of college while attempting to pursue a CS degree, then opted to build a tech start-up from scratch as Founder/Investor.... all have failed until I attended Coding Dojo.

The process is called "Drinking from a firehose". Normally, it would take approximately 5 years in regular college setting to learn software engineering. Coding Dojo on-site Burbank, took me there with 3 separate stacks within 14 weeks.

The most important part of becoming a developer is attaining the ability of becoming a determined self-sufficient Developer. All the instructors and staffs at the Coding Dojo were a tremendous help in reaching my developer skills. They were understanding of life events and I went through plenty. For example, I had court cases, hospital newborn emergencies, care broke down twice ( 80 mile daily ) , my close friend on their death bed, then attending their funeral. I was still determined to complete my course.

Now being comfortable building projects in MERN, Java, and Python, I have the ability to continue learning other languages such as C++ (college attempt). 

Coding Dojo's Curriculum, On-site Instructors, and student support were all magnificent throughout the course in helping achieve something I thought I would be unachievable.

I really enjoyed my time with Coding Dojo. It is quite astonishing how much information and programing knowledge I was able to pick up in 14 weeks. I attended the online full-time boot camp and I am incredibly happy that I did. I think this is a great idea for anyone looking to learn programming. You do need to put the effort and time in just as with any other new skill in order to really get the most of out it. I had a great cohort that I was able to connect with and learn from. The instructors and TA's were all very knowledgeable and incredibly helpful to me. I appreciated my time during this boot camp and would encourage anyone to look into this as an option. 

I was 32 years old when I decided to enroll in a coding BootCamp, so its never too late to start a new career you'll be passionate about. Coding Dojo is an intensive thorough program! Your coding journey doesn't start the first day of class. It begins the moment you are accepted. Strongly recommend that as soon as you gain access to the platform, you start doing the pre-work/algorithms. I can't stress this enough! On average, I would study 60-80 hours a week (including some all nighters on weekends) just to have a grasp of what I was learning. Use every weekend to read ahead (or catch up) and ask your questions during class when they review. Do not be afraid to ask questions, no matter how silly they might sound. There's a good chance someone else will have the same question. You may feel like giving up, this is a normal feeling. Keep going! I lost count how many times I wanted to give up because I couldn't understand a concept. I pushed through it and still graduated. Find a good support system like friends/family. Let them know that you will need their help and support. Try to make friends, your cohorts are going through the same thing you are and may be stuck on the same parts. Work together to understand what you're learning. The TA's and Instructors truly want to help you understand what you are learning and I have to reinstate this again, DONT BE AFRAID TO ASK QUESTIONS AND ASK FOR HELP! You can do this! Be persistent and don't give up on yourself!

I loved my time at Coding Dojo! My instructors always were quick to communicate and created a lovely environment. The platform was well organized and user-friendly. There are many ways this school creates community, between the Dojo Hall and discord it would be hard not to make friends. Both students and TAs go above and beyond to help you gain a deeper understanding of the material or help through any problems you are struggling with. Shout Out to Zack, Adrian, Cameron, and Justina I worked mostly with these lovely people that I would give a raise if I could. They are all incredibly sweet, enjoyable, informative, and go above and beyond. The curriculum was very challenging just because there was so much to learn in such a small period of time but it was certainly worth it. 

As the title says, if you're willing to put in the time & effort, Coding Dojo is an amazing bootcamp to get you started in a Software Development career.  This probably applies to Software Development in general, but since Coding Dojo offers 3-stacks(not all 3 are required), it definitely is not something you're just going to be doing on the side, or when you have free time.  Having graduating from the 3-stack program, I can tell you that if you actually put time aside to study the material, understand how each line of code works, understand how individual components contribute to creating an application & try to solve problems on your own without looking for someone to hold your hand every step of the way, then you will have a great foundation to build upon from there.  As far as I know, Coding Dojo offers the most value in terms of languages, web technologies, etc, that are taught versus other bootcamps that I've looked at.  BUT, as I said, you have to put in the time & effort to get the most out of it, do not just do the bare-minimum.  You're given the most in-demand tools(the ones most job postings are looking for experience in) to equip yourself with in order to help you get started in a new career in Software Development.  Half-way through my second stack I felt comfortable enough to start applying for jobs, so I ended up landing one before graduation.  If you plan on doing the bare minimum, i.e., just turning in the required assignments & passing the exams, then this is a career that you should reconsider.  I learned a LOT at Coding Dojo, then continued to further my new skill sets on my own after having a solid foundation of each stack which has led me down a never-ending rabbit hole of information(in a good way).  Take the tools that Coding Dojo offers here and put them to work.