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DevPoint Labs teaches an 11-week, full-time and an 11-week, part-time online full stack web development coding bootcamp. The bootcamp curriculum covers HTML, CSS, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, SQL, JavaScript, React, Redux, and more. DevPoint Labs' approach to learning combines pair programming with traditional lectures and a mix of group projects, lean methodologies, hackathons and one-on-one mentorship from instructors.
DevPoint Labs is aimed at students with little to moderate experience in web development. To apply, candidates fill out the short application on the website, then chat with a staff member about their motivations. Once accepted students will need to complete pre-work before the first day of class.
Leading up to graduation, DevPoint Labs prepares students for finding a job with mock interviews, workshops, guest speakers, and a Launch Day to showcase their projects to potential employers.
A little under 4 months ago, I was living in Birmingham, AL, working at a bank building boring reports for management and playing with Excel spreadsheets all day knowing I had no future here. I had always had an interest in software development and convinced my wife to move across country to pursue this career. I had spent the previous year or so getting myself familiar with basic web technologies such as HTML, CSS, Sass, JavaScript, and a little bit of Node JS (backend), but never truly h...
A little under 4 months ago, I was living in Birmingham, AL, working at a bank building boring reports for management and playing with Excel spreadsheets all day knowing I had no future here. I had always had an interest in software development and convinced my wife to move across country to pursue this career. I had spent the previous year or so getting myself familiar with basic web technologies such as HTML, CSS, Sass, JavaScript, and a little bit of Node JS (backend), but never truly had an understanding of it all and how it all worked together. But I knew that I had the drive and the passion to be in this industry if I could only completely immerse myself in the development enviroment surrounded by like minded individuals.
I applied to DPL for the winter cohort 2018, and got accepted a few weeks later after a few interviews and prep-work. That was it, getting accepted was my ticket out of Birmingham and my confirmation that it was my time to do something I truly believe I should be doing. I packed up, left Alabama with no regrets and headed for Salt Lake City with my wife and my doofus golden retreiver. The same week I arrived, living in Airbnb's until I found an apartment for my small family, I met with Nhi Doan (co-founder of DPL) for the opportunity in tech scholarship interview. A week later I got the email saying that I have been awarded the scholarship for the program, after showing Nhi my passion to be in this industry, and a few portfolio projects I had built prior to attending DPL. I have been asked several times why I attended DPL, if I had already had experience prior to attending, but the real answer is that I didn't have "true" experience. Sure, I had a few small projects that I had built with JavaScript, and even some React projects, but none of them were solid enough evidence I knew what the heck I was doing, or if I could even work with a team.
I had been applying and interviewing with companies all across the country prior to attending DPL, even for basic front end development positions, but every time a question came up such as, "Do you have any experience on the backend?", or "Have you ever had any experience on a dev team?" my answer was always "No". Each and every one of this interviews were followed by a rejection letter with the words, "sorry, we are looking for someone with a little more experience". I was always strong to enough to land an interview based on some of the projects that I built because my design/art background always made things look decent, but when I got in the weeds with an interviewer and they asked me to solve a simple algorithm counting vowels in a string, I would clam up and it would be over.
Prior to the start of class, I did my homework. When I say I did my homework, I mean I truly DID my homework. I spent several days if not weeks reviewing every single algorithm on free code camp. Dev Point doesn't directly focus on algorithms, but teaching your brain how to solve algorithms, by breaking them up piece by piece and learning to solve them programmatically will put you leaps and bounds ahead of your peers looking for jobs. Plus, knowing how to solve them in general, will make every programming language so much easier to learn, because you will start to learn patterns that appear in every single language. I'm not saying you can't make it through DPL, without being a professional at solving algorithms, I for one am still learning and I am still actually terrible at them, but I am 300% more confident in job interviews now, knowing what I know.
Attending Dev Point was the absolute best decision I have ever made in my professional and personal life. The instructors are fairly new but are absolutely capable of getting you where you need to be if you take the program seriously. You will hear this a million times, but the result you get out of the program will be a direct representation of the work that you put into this program. I didn't enter DPL expecting them to spoon feed me every single ounce of information or get upset when my instructor didn't know how to solve a problem I had. You learn to eventually talk yourself out of your own problems, sometimes I solved a problem just sitting next to an instructor like they had some kind of answer aura around them even though they didn't even have to say anything. Dev Point was an excellent fit for what I wanted out of a bootcamp. I knew coming in they were going to cover some topics, that I had already been exposed to, but that's ok. I knew it would just solidify what I already knew, plus maybe even touch on something I didn't even know was possible!
Dev Point did an excellent job structuring it's curriculum in such a way where everything compounds on what you learned the previous day. There were projects almost every single day, projects that not only reinforced topics covered in the lecture, but were amaing projects to showcase in interviews upon graduation to potential employers. We had two hackathons in our cohort, which if you haven't ever attended one, I highly recommend it. Plus, if you are in the Salt Lake City area, message Marc Price(admissions counselor) and tell him you want to sit in on a hackathon to see some of the amazing things students are able to put together in a few hours, after only learning how to program for a few weeks! Prior to attending (once I arrived in SLC from AL), I attended launch day, which is the program's graduation day, and the final hackathon from the prior cohort. It was an awesome experience and I got to meet some really awesome people who are still friends / contacts to this day, so I highly recommend it.
There are a few helpful tips to consider if you are planning on attending DPL that I would like to share:
1. Take this program seriously, and employers will take you seriously. The one thing I cannot stress enough to people is take this program seriously, SERIOUSLY. Dev Point will provide the structure for you to learn, and will even provide the tools to help you learn, but it is on you and YOU alone to actually learn what you are doing. They will provide projects every night to reinforce the lecture for the day, or even some additional resources online to continue to learn. Our cohort was over the Christmas break, and our instructor even provided a "12 days of coding" curriculum to keep us busy and coding during the break. There will be plenty of opportunities to learn and be pushed if you give yourself the opportunity.
2. Show your passion through every project that you build in class. Dev Point will assign a new project almost daily to help you build your skills through programming. You will never get where you need to be if you just worry about the lecture and the lecture alone. If you only focus on learning how to code and not on actually coding throughout the program it will show later on in the course when you are building projects with your peers, or even in an actual interview. Every project that is assigned to you take it seriously and treat it like you have been given a coding challenge from an employer, that has to be turned in the next day. Once you feel like you are "finished" with it, (it's never actually finished), think to yourself whether you would be proud to show this to an employer, if not keep at it. If you keep this mindset throughout the entirety of the program, you will have a plethora of amazing projects to stack your resume and your portfolio site.
3. Code, code ALOT. I have spoken at a few QA sessions for Dev Point Labs while I was a student and students always chuckle when I tell them I went to bed before 1 or 2 a.m. maybe a handful of times when I was in the cohort, but I am dead serious. I coded so much during my cohort I was waking up in the 5 hours of sleep that I got writing lines of code in my sleep and solving bugs while I was asleep. There were several times I woke up in the middle of night, went to my office, and solved an issue I had a previous day. You have to be living, breathing and eating code to fully understand everything that you are learning. You have to be applying the previous days lecture in some form or fashion, whether it be helping others learn by teaching, or contuniuing to build your own personal projects.
4. Put life on hold. During your time at DPL, you have to put your life on hold and just hold out for a few months on doing extracurricular activities while you focus 100% on the program. Besides, you are paying $10k for the program, so why would you waste any time you have on something, atleat until you graduate. I am married, and just moved to Salt Lake City during winter months, so you can believe me when I tell you it was hard to not go snowboard every weekend with friends or just explore the surroundings! I am also a huge gamer, so telling my friends, "hey man, I know winning the FIFA world championships would be cool and all, but I gotta do this homework", was a huge challenge for me, but in the end, we still won the championship after I finished school, so it was a WIN WIN.
5. NETWORK. One of the main downfalls, of becoming a developer is that alot of us are introverts and get night sweats thinking about meeting someone new or having a normal conversation with someone, that you have never met. In the end, networking is what is going to get you your first job as a developer. Not saying it isn't possible, maybe you are just a resume wizard, who got paid in college to write resumes for other people, but it is an extremely competitive market, so show casing your abilities to people on one sheet of paper, is the equivalent to the browns winning the super bowl, possible, but highly unlikely.
a. LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the obvious first way to meet people with similiar interests in the same industry. Connect with people, bug them, ask them to meet with coffee. I once met up with a guy from LinkedIn when I first moved to Salt Lake City, who I had never met (it's actually possible), at a coffee shop he requested. I didn't ever mention to him that I despise coffee, not the smell, but the taste. I showed up and he had a coffee pre-ordered for me. I held my nose and chugged the thing and tried my hardest to keep a smile on my face. It will be awkward, but the more times you do this, the easier it will be.
b. Slack. If you haven't been exposed to the development world yet and have never heard of Slack, you should go ahead and google that one. Download it, find some communities that mean something to you, whether it be UtahJS (if you live in Utah), DenverDevs, several others loaded full of developers ready to answer any questions you may have. It is actually surprisingly a tremendously effective networking tool, without being the suited up, title heavy, word explosion that LinkedIn can be sometimes. Just get involved in the communities on Slack, and eventually people will get to know you and you can meet up with some of the other Devs or work on projects with them. Alot of these channels have a job postings channel, where recruiters post daily job postings for you to apply to. And the best part, you can send them a message DIRECTLY and express your interest.
c. Meetups. Meetups, if you are new to the community are mostly organized through the Meet Up app, or through slack channels. But they are usually like minded groups of people who meet once a month, or week, to discuss a certain topic in the tech community. GO TO THESE. Attending Dev Point, there is little time to really be doing anything other than sleeping, but if you can make it to one or two of these during the three months I highly suggest it.
6. Show your passion. Last tip I have to end this review for Dev Point is just to show your passion that you have. If you truly want to be in this industry and are excited about your future in development this will come natural to you. If you are in this industry solely for the money, then it will eventually show and you will get weeded out by employers fairly simple. You will notice during interviews, they will ask you questions like "What side projects are you working on, or what open source project is your favorite. They ask these questions because they want to gauge your interest level, and see if you are passionate about the things that you build, or whether you are contributing to the community.
I say all these things to tell you that if you choose Dev Point Labs to jump start your career in development, you won't be dissapointed as long as you follow the tips that I suggested and work HARDer than you ever have before. Their curriculum is perfect, and they are always doing their best to keep it current with up to date technology. After graduation I was able to land a software engineering position a few weeks after I graduated, only because I took every project seriously and it in turn, grew my skills light years ahead of where I was when I first came into the program. DPL provides all the necessary support to get you where you need to be, but in the end, it is up to you to determine where you land.
If you have any questions about the program or anything at all please feel free to reach out to me.
Website
Github
Good Luck!
Daniel B.
Marc Price of DevPoint Labs
Community Director
Jul 20, 2022
How much does DevPoint Labs cost?
DevPoint Labs costs around $11,000. On the lower end, some DevPoint Labs courses like Part-time Web Development cost $5,500.
What courses does DevPoint Labs teach?
DevPoint Labs offers courses like Part-time Web Development, U of U ProEd Full-time Web Development.
Where does DevPoint Labs have campuses?
DevPoint Labs has an in-person campus in Salt Lake City.
Is DevPoint Labs worth it?
DevPoint Labs hasn't shared alumni outcomes yet, but one way to determine if a bootcamp is worth it is by reading alumni reviews. 155 DevPoint Labs alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed DevPoint Labs on Course Report - you should start there!
Is DevPoint Labs legit?
We let alumni answer that question. 155 DevPoint Labs alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed DevPoint Labs and rate their overall experience a 4.82 out of 5.
Does DevPoint Labs offer scholarships or accept the GI Bill?
Right now, it doesn't look like DevPoint Labs offers scholarships or accepts the GI Bill. We're always adding to the list of schools that do offer Exclusive Course Report Scholarships and a list of the bootcamps that accept the GI Bill.
Can I read DevPoint Labs reviews?
You can read 155 reviews of DevPoint Labs on Course Report! DevPoint Labs alumni, students, and applicants have reviewed DevPoint Labs and rate their overall experience a 4.82 out of 5.
Is DevPoint Labs accredited?
Post Secondary License with the State of Utah
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