Concordia Bootcamps

When I was searching for a bootcamp, I wanted to find something that would match my goals which were to learn the industry standard technologies and find a job as a web developer. That's why I chose Decode and I have no regrets. In only 2 months, I have a solid understanding of JavaScript, React, Node, and Express! Less than 2 weeks after graduation I found a job as a Junior Software Developer! The teaching staff are very professional and helpful. They know the material very well. The admin staff really helped us with the job hunting process and prepaired us for interviews while providing us with local contacs.

If you've found your way here while prospecting your application to DecodeMTL - you've likely got that in common with every graduating student from the program.

Know this; you'll have an awesome supporting cast. The class I was apart of was the very first cohort with their new instructor, Jacques, who has a decorated academic and professional background in computer science. He is extremely patient throughout his lectures and isn't afraid to stop at any point to make sure no student is stuck before moving on. Jacques is most interested in drilling home the fundamentals of how you write code and the best way to approach a new project. You'll have tons of assignments to get your hands dirty and my suggestion is you practice each one of them more than once. Try writing them up in different languages, implementing different features. Unfortunately, just showing up to class won't be enough to get your money's worth with this type of endeavor. You'll need to stay late, work from home and even come in on weekends to take full of advantage of the material given to you. Luckily the TA’s are also, in my opinion, professionals within their own niche. Luke, Jordan and Nadim are all super guys who will go the extra step in helping you anyway they can. None of my questions were left unanswered and they each complemented the lectures in their own way. I found a lot of value was given from the TA's and that's something you can't get by learning online. 

The space at WeWork is great, not only students surround you but small businesses as well - there is no shortage of motivation to stay late and catch up on some work. Kevin's interview process to get into the program is improving each cohort, funneling down the students most motivated to succeed. You'll be surrounded by people who want to be there and that will push you to do better. The post-camp job assistance is what I think sets this course apart. Kevin messaged me almost every day after graduating, checking in on my job hunt, giving advise on ways to go about changing my approach and offering his insight all the way up until I accepted an offer. His job isn't done once you graduate - that alone speaks volumes on his commitment to you.

If you're on the fence about the material, don't worry about it. You'll learn how to learn to code. Do some research on Montreal’s job market before applying and really convince yourself this is right for you. I landed a job using a language we weren't taught - but because my fundamental foundation was solid, it's much easier to pick up new languages once you know how to think like a programmer. With that being said, I would 100% recommend taking this course. It isn’t for everyone but if you use your resources wisely, there shouldn’t be any surprises. Don’t be afraid to message any past students on LinkedIn, or even schedule a meeting with Kevin prior to discussing your concerns, anyone would be happy to help. Good luck!

tl;dr: Decode is great. Do it.

Want to learn to code useful things? Decode is for you. Want to understand how web technologies work? Decode guides you quite far down that path. Want to specialize an a particular field or technology, well, you'll need to go beyond what Decode offers, and don't expect to come away a senior programmer. But you will come away with all of the fundamentals you'll need, a solid understanding of web technologies in general (and a deeper understanding of a several mainstream tools), and the confidence and know-how to jump in and start building anything any app you have in mind.

Decode offers excellent instruction and lots of access to resources and TA's. The classroom format offers plenty of information and theory, but also opportunities to test and challenge what you think you know, and lots of discussion so you can learn with and through your classmates. It's intense and will keep you busy, but if you put in the work, you'll definitely be able to stay on top of the fast-paced structure. The curriculm is in-depth and relevant, focusing on the trends in tech as well as some staple-tools of the industry.

I came to Decode with a prior high-level understanding of programming. I left Decode with a solid grasp of how to put that knowledge into practice. (I also found a job within a month!)

If you're on the fence about this program, my advice to you is to stop thinking about it and just do it. You won't be disappointed.

 

About Staff:

- Very caring staff: The owner, the instructor (Jacques), TAs (Luke, Nadim, Jordan) are all very attentive and helpful. They always make time for you when you're asking a question, or trying to solve a problem. They are never impatient and will sit down with you as long as they can, to make you understand the concept/problem/solution.

 

-very competent TAs and Instructor: They know their subjects very very well. Each all have their own specialties, be it in HTML, CSS or Javascript, so if you have any questions regarding a very specific problem, you have your own expert at any time.

 

-good communication. decodemtl uses slack to have staff and students all communicate with each other. So even if the TA or Instructor is not present physically, you can always still reach out to them.

 

About the course:

-course material. Very in line with what's hot in the market. This past cohort (10), we were learning mostly React.js for front-end, but also learned Node.js and express for backend, with firebase database. We also touched on jQuery a little bit, HTML and CSS. What I would add, is perhaps learning mongoDB, since it seems to be very popular.

 

-level of difficulty. This depends on an individual basis. For people with prior experience in coding (even just a little), it was not at all difficult. For people with less experience, it might take some time to get used to, however, after spending the first week getting the basics down, it gets easier.

 

-process of learning. With 2 hour lectures, a lunch break and 4-7 hours of coursework, there's a lot of time commitment. However, spending this time to solve and work through projects with TAs on hand, has helped me a whole lot, and other students alike. When you're stuck for 30 minutes on a problem, you can just go see a TA to solve it, instead of going through hours of errors and bugs. It's very efficient in helping you learn.

 

projects. 3 weeks of projects. After learning the tools for the first 5 weeks, you are ready to make your own application. Time goes by really fast, and you have a lot of fun building your own application. This is great for not only your learning experience, but also lets you figure out what you like doing -front end? back end? or maybe even both. At the end, your project is showcased to an audience of employers, who want to see what you are capable of, and possibly hire you.

 

Job Prospects:

demo day is a great way to meet future employers and network. With the projects that you demonstrate, the employers can see your potential. I happened to get an on-site interview right there and then, which is pretty cool. Happened to get an offer the next week. For me, it moved pretty fast.

decodemtl's job prep process. Kevin is very keen on getting his students a job, and will spend time with you to fix your resume, look over your linkedin profile and cover letter. He has used his network to get us connections, which is fantastic. Also, if there are classmates who have been in the tech field, they can also help you network with the companies they know too. 

This co-hort, Kevin hired professional tech interviewers to do mock interviews, which is great, as it helps people who get nervous, some practice. 

The fact that they have a job guarantee within a 6 month period tells us a lot about how they are confident about the students job prospects. 

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Atmosphere:

DecodeMTL is situated at wework place-ville marie. Great location, as you have access to Montreal's infamous underground mall with shopping and food all around. Not only that, but wework is a great place to study, as it offers free beer and coffee, as well as fresh fruit water everyday. The environment helps students feel comfortable, with the optimal setting for success.

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Students:

The people whom you will be working alongside are probably going to be likeminded, as they are spending the time, money and effort to do something out of the norm. They will be curious, and hard-working, which will motivate you as well. This isn't university, so the quality of people you will meet are the people who WANT to be there, and are making the most of their effort. 

 

I graduated in late August 2017 and found a paid internship as a software developer in November 2017. I only started learning JavaScript 2 months prior to joining, placing me at a very beginner level.    The course is difficult, you won't have time for anything else really for 8 weeks. Significant information is thrown your way and you will feel frustration and confusion. You just have to put in the time and things will eventually fall into place. I would dedicate at least 11 hours a day during the week and work on material on the weekends too (there are no days off).    Their job assistance was amazing. You could tell Kevin and the rest of the staff really want you to find work after finishing the boot-camp. They helped with our resumes, cover letter and set up a mock interview for practice. They also put together a speed interview session with actual employers looking for new talent, nothing came from it but I really appreciated the effort DecodeMTL put into helping all of us out.    I would recommend this course to anyone who has a decent foundation of JavaScript and an intense drive to learn code.

I have attended university, grad school, community night classes, and community college yet none of these 'formal' institutions have offered the level of education I received at decodeMTL. Now my whole conception of formal education and learning has been invalidated and I'll have to think about what I want to do with my future kids' education...

Note that I have approximately one year of coding experience before coming to decodeMTL (SQL, HTML/CSS, frontend JS, Java. Perl).

Let me comfort you in that I was extremely skeptical of these bootcamps as 'scams' (charging hopeless university grads in hopes of a job). I even took small workshops at other bootcamps here in Toronto to get a feel for them. Yet I eventually moved from Toronto to Montreal to attend as I felt the instructor knew his material best and the founders were invested in the long term success of their business. 

Firstly, you are immersed with web development. The immersion allows one to more efficiently develop good coding habits and work habits ('being in flow').

Secondly, you learn from a professional. A real professional who could (from my estimates) easily make >$150K in the tech field. I was astounded to have him answer my questions one-on-one and teach us. What a professional mentor instills in a newbie like me are helpful tips and hints that he likely faced when he was growing as a developer. Even 2 of the TAs were fully-fledged devs that knew their stuff. 

Thirdly, decodeMTL teaches up-to-date technologies so you have a competitive advantage overly formally taught CS students (who usually would know C, Java, Python) when applying to web dev jobs. 

Fourth, the founders of the school spend time answering any lingering questions or concerns. For example, the cofounders spent two hours speaking with me before joining the bootcamp to see if it was a good fit (as I already had some programming experience). Another example is Kevin Khoury (the cofounder) taking advice midway through the bootcamp and implementing it the NEXT WEEK!

Fifth, they told me what I was going to learn and delivered. Sure, we didn't learn algorithm time complexity analysis or array searching (traditional CS topics). However, the adminstrators did not promise me that we would learn such things. Instead, the focus was on creating a fully-fledged web application. If you finished early, you could always ask for more material from the lead instructor. 

To be fair, there are some things I still think should be improved:

- Be more punctual/professional. For instance, sometimes the class schedule would schedule a TA slot, yet he did not show up. Ironically, they would tell us to show up on time but oftentimes the TAs and instructors were late (10-15 mins). 

- Don't have 'empty' days. For example, there was a Friday scheduled to teach jQuery yet the instructor simply let us on own devices to learn jQuery from the documentation. From a customer perspective, I absolutely receive no 'value-add' from this type of instruction other than having a TA-handy. There was mutual agreement amongst the students that this simply is not fair for 'bootcamp'. I am expecting professional-developer instruction when coming to a bootcamp.

- 2 of the 3 TAs were new to the bootcamp (one even strictly mentioned s/he would not TA the next term). Therefore it took sometime for them to learn how to mentor and teach newbies. I felt I couldn't get the most value from them in the early weeks. 

Overall, I really miss the bootcamp hence why I chose to write this review. I probably sped my learning rate by a factor of 3 compared to when I am learning off documentation/youtube videos. Note I stated a 'factor of 3'. Namely, I want to point out that the engine for learning is mostly the student's effort. I would see students leave at 4 and others fight to be the last one out of the office. Needless-to-say, there was a clear correlation between the above students' diligence/effort and their learning (IMO). Don't expect to put in zero effort and learn enough to land a decent job (3 multiplied by zero is still zero). 

NB: The bootcamp is now $8000 (as of Sept 27 2017) which may decrease the 'bang-for-buck' ratio.

Cheers to the founders for making this bootcamp! Let me know if you ever release an advanced web development bootcamp or data science course! 

As the title says, truly think hard about this decision before you make it. I would only recomend this bootcamp to those who are in desperate need of a career change. It will give you the tools to get the bare minimum done and it will teach you how to learn on your own once you're out. However, if you are not desperate, do NOT go through with it. Also, remember that this is just my exerience for the most part. I have gotten feedback, before writting this, from two other attendies so keep that in mind as well.

To start, the screening process is pretty much nonexistent. This is not an exaggeration. They will pretty much take anyone so be mindful of this if you're considering it. The learning curve is decently high from just the technical to the 2nd and 3rd days of class, so study more than what is expected of you. Learn any and everything you can about JavaScript before hand for the best experience.

Thougout the bootcamp, the gap between the stronger and weaker students will just get wider and wider as the course is so fast-paced. There is no sort of assesment on the students whatsoever. I spoke to a guy from the bootcamp who put in a tremendous amount of effort each and every day, all to no avail. He was at the building till at lest 7:30 - 8pm every day. I won't say any names but we had spoked over lunch and he told me that he was considering quitting. I convinced him not to, but I personally feel that this situation was caused by the lack of support from the teachers. He had spoken to Ziad, the head teacher, about how he was having trouble and Ziad's responce was that he would interview students one on one for about 15-30 minutes (not sure exactly how long) to see where everone was at. Needless to say, that did not happen. That left the impression to me that he didn't really care where everyone was at. Finally, as you've probably read on some of the other reviews, Ziad does indeed tend to favorite the stronger students over the less strong ones. It's extremely evident.

I, and a good amount of the camp, learnt the most during the last two weeks of the bootcamp when we were seperated in groups to create a big project to present at demo day. Though highly stressful, I would say that was definitely the highlight of the whole bootcamp experience. I believe that this was the case because, as students, were all able to bounce off of each other. By doing that, not only were we learning our selves, but by explaning to the others, we had to have a better understanding of what we were talking about which I really appreciated. 

As for the job process, I chose to skip out on it. I had attended only about 3 classes after the bootcamp and for that reason, take this with a grain of salt. I don't belive that the job process is all that good. Essentially, I was given a resume to copy and was told to continue coding and hustle to get job offers. Obviously I didn't stick around to long so I maybe missed out on a few things, but I don't regret that. One thing I will say is that they offer mock interviews which is neat. At the end of the day though, most of these are all just little things that you can do yourself.

Overall, the bootcamp is not something that I regret and my experience wasn't horrible, but it could have been something much greater. You're pretty much on your own, but you have the comfort in working in a room with like-minded people. The bottom line is: are you someone who is either in need of a new career badly or needs guidance to learn? If so consider it. If not, don't bother. Start your own projects at home and you'll get to the same place. I am not trying to speaking badly of them, I just wanted to be as brutally honest as possible to help the individuals who are still deciding. 

The instructors and admin staff at decode are really great. They offer support from start to the end on every aspect of learning, job search and even more. They have an approach based on learning by doing and if you put the effort into it, it will pay off. Ziad the lead instructor is a great teacher capable of diving in details but also explaining from a high level perspective. Kevin the admin has an incredible networking experience and will make you employable in a couple of meetings! Overall great experience!

I would not recommend DecodeMTL bootcamp to just anyone. Their approach is not for an absolute beginner or for just anyone. Coding is generally not that easy. You need to at least have some experience in coding before you attend thier bootcamp. Moreover, It is a lot of money to pay for a bootcamp. So it is best to spend your money on a really good bootcamp.

I understand that we need to code and complete the workshops during the bootcamp by ourselves. The teacher, Ziad, is smart but I doubt if he really wants to share all his knowledge with us. We asked him to share with us suggested solutions to only one workshop (not even every workshop) so that we could do it in our own times, because during the bootcamp he only asked us to do only one project in that specific workshop. Plus it would also be good to learn how he would code, approach or do it. He did not give us the suggested solutions. Instead in that workshop you will see some pieces of information about other courses of DecodeMTL related to that workshop.

I felt that DecodeMTL would only spend more time on certain students who have potential. Not all students received the same treatment. I felt that Ziad does not care much if a few or some students may be left behind during the bootcamp.

 

My experience at decodemtl was extremely great! I would strongly recommend it to anyone who would like to pursuit their career as a web developer. Please don't worry if you are non-tech background, as long as you are determined and desciplined, you will benefit a lot from this course. I'm really happy that I made a perfect choice to attend this bootcamp. Here are the reasons that I love this bootcamp:

1. Class size - Small class size allows the instructor to give intructions to each student as well as answer almost all the questions from every student. 

2. Reachable resources - The structure of the bootcamp is that in the morning is the lecture and afternoon is the workshop, which is an excellent opportunity for you to practice. There are 2 TAs there for you to ask questions whenever you need until 9pm. I really love the way they answer questions, they won't give you an answer directly, they actually guide you step by step and lead you to the right track. It is a great way of teaching cause they teach you how to think as a developer. And the TA is always there for everyone in the class.

3. Nice environment and atmosphere - Although it seems to be a very intensive course, the atmosphere and study environment is really relaxed and great. The main instructor Ziad is super helpful and he really knows his stuff very well. Kevin and Zoe are super helpful as well, they are always there to help whenever you need. It really feels like a family.

4. Final demo - Final demo is one of the amazing parts of the bootcamp. By the end of the bootcamp, you will get a final project, it'll be done as group. On the last day of the bootcamp, each group will present their project in the lobby. By then, decodemtl really makes a lot of effort inviting tech recruiters and companies coming to see our demo. It is a great opportunity for all the students to present themselves and talk with those who are interested in hiring developers.

5. Resume & Linkedin session - At around the 5th week of the bootcamp, Kevin will come to every student one by one and spend time with each student to go through their Linkedin profile, What's more, by the end of the bootcamp, Kevin helps every student to optimize their resume line by line, his great patience impresses me a lot, and this is a huge asset of this bootcamp.

6. Mockup interview - This is another great part of the bootcamp. Before you start your job searching process, decodemtl organizes mockup interviews, which allow you to get a general idea of how tech interviews will look like and be more confident and less nervous during the real interview.

So if you decide to join the bootcamp, I also have following advises:

1. Study the prep course decodemtl prepares for you carefully. The prep course is great and it allows you to have a basic knowledge of what you are going to learn during the bootcamp.

2. Personally, I would recommend going into the bootcamp with as much JavaScript knowledge as possible, this will help a lot with the learning curve and will allow you to understand the concepts more deeply and faster.

3. Please make sure to put 200% energy into the course. Especially the workshop, please make sure to finish each workshop, it doesn't matter if you finish slower than others, it's not a competition, and it's never a waste of time to do it the 2nd, 3rd or 4th time just for a review.

The 8 weeks was such a great experience and I've learned a lot more than I expected and I'm a lot more better than I was 8 weeks ago. But for sure, I'll keep learning :)

Wish you all the best and good luck :)

Joy