General Assembly

Through my experience at General Assembly (note, when I started, it was still Bitmaker, but in effect, the content was General Assembly approved), I was able to land my first data science role.    While the industry is hiring Sr. Data Scientist engineers, and Sr. Data Scientists, breaking in is difficult for more entry-level Data Analyst/Scientists. However, I do like how there are Data Scientists who come from a variety of backgrounds, from social sciences, cognitive sciences, to mathematics.   On this journey, I’ve had a lot of support from my General Assembly instructor (Max is one of smartest, and also most effective teachers), career coaches and classmates.    Note, your mileage may vary based on your instructor, or peers (to drive discussion and helping each other). I was lucky to have one of the best. Our instructor worked at two local start-ups before joining General Assembly, so he had real experience. Additionally, he often presented at conferences like Pycon and abroad. This is the by far the reason why I am rating General Assembly so high, it’s because you gain access to an instructor who can teach the material better than online materials. Anyone can find a Jupyter notebook on Random Forests, or youtube video on Neural Networks, but to get insights from an Engineer who has written production code, and has advice about ‘flex’ topics like why Docker, cloud computing, and a better way of approaching a problem is invaluable.   Choose your boot camp based on your instructor. That’s the differentiating piece. Go to an info session, and ask him/her questions.   Coming from the software industry previously, the inclusiveness and culture were great, but not a differentiator for me. I’d imagine Brainstation being similar. But those guys were way too sales-y while recruiting, which is why Brainstation turned me off. The syllabus was a bit less relevant too.   To close I’d like to highlight two areas of improvement.

• It’s a jam-packed 12 weeks, but if there was a way to embed more data engineering, software engineering by removing some of the less relevant algorithms, I think that would be better time spent.
• Career support is great, but let’s raise the bar for those who have already worked in the industry. The general advice is table stakes (geared towards interns and university students), so it would be more valuable to have real data scientists, and data engineers provide advice on how they recruit, and perform whiteboard interviews. The network of alumni is growing, but the corporate partnerships engagement is weak as far as student employment is concerned. The career coach is working hard on early conversations with Telus Digital and MaRS, but at this point, there’s no real pipeline to feed students into those programs. Bet on yourself to find jobs rather than rely on employers knocking on your door on demo day. Set your expectations appropriately.  

I took the part time Front-End Web Development course from February 2018 to April 2018 as my plan was to move into the Software Engineering Immersive, which I am currently taking. 

I really enjoyed the front-end development class as I got to learn a lot of HTML, CSS and an intro to Javascript and JQuery. We were able to put together a lot of smaller projects and site mockups. Also, even though I have never had experience in any coding, javascript and jquery were a little difficult for me to grasp but in my SEI class, I picked up on everything MUCH quicker because of my previous exposure.

I've just completed the 10-week part-time course in Data Analytics and found the experience to be highly valuable.

As virtually a total beginner in Excel, SQL and Tableau prior to the course, I found the material and the pace of learning to be quite challenging and demanding. However, provided you are able to allocate the required time outside the classroom teaching and commit yourself to learning the content, the pace of study leads to the acquisition of a wide range of skills in a relatively short period of time.

The course material provided isn't perfect, which sometimes requires a degree of independent problem-solving and perserverence, but that in itself can be quite useful when it comes to utilising the skills being learnt week-to-week.

I found our teacher and teaching assistant to be extremely helpful and dedicated to helping the class and individuals follow the material and reach their potential.

Overall, I would highly recommend General Assembly and the Data Analytics course, provided you have adequate time in your week to dedicate the hours required. I was in-between jobs when I did the course and would have found it difficult to get as much out of the experience as I did had I also been working full-time. 

Doing the Web Development Immersive (WDI) program at Santa Monica was probably one of the best career decisions I've made. First of all, what struck me about GA was their international presence, being located around the world. Also, the fact that GA offers courses in a variety of fields, whether it's Web Development, UI/UX, Digital Marketing, also attracted me to them as I was able to take workshops in those subject areas as well. It was also a great learning experience getting to meet people and learn from the other students doing the other immersive programs such as in Data Science and UX.

My background prior to doing the web development immersive program was that I already had a degree in computer science and an entry level job as a web developer. But I still decided to do GA to learn new technology stacks and have a more solid foundation (particularly in Node.js, React and Mongo since I was only familiar with Ruby on Rails at the time). Even with this prior background, I was still able to learn a lot and push myself out of my comfort zone. The beauty of the program is you get out of it what you put into it no matter what your background is.

My instructors and peers were probably some of my favorite aspects of my experience there. The instructors and TAs were very helpful during class and after hours and taught very well with their use of analogies. The people in my cohort also provided a very encouraging and fun learning atmosphere and we all still keep in contact to this day, where some of us actually work together at our jobs.

Our outcomes producer also did a really good job helping us get our resumes and cover letters ready and provided good advice on how to market ourselves with the Do's and Don'ts. However, at the end of the day, we're responsible for our success in the job application process depending on how hard we push ourselves in putting ourselves out there and preparing for job interviews.

Overall, what I really liked about GA is the network that you get yourself into. I was able to travel to different General Assembly locations around the world, attending different events and seeing how the GA community and vibe is similar everywhere. Being a GA alumni also puts you as a part of the large network that significantly opens more doors and career opportunities worldwide.

     First, off I love GA. GA changed my life completely. I took part in the full-time web development immersive program and by far it is one of the best decisions I've made in my life. Never would I have thought I would be where I'm currently at in life.  

    My instructors at the DTLA campus are amazing and very dedicated to teaching and preparing their students for a job in tech. Of course, at the end of the day, it is all up to the students to put in the work and apply those skills. The curriculum is very well designed to take you to the level needed to be hirable after completing the course.
 
   As for the job search, it all comes down to you. It's a little hard at the beginning but once you have your foot in the door your in. Most tech interviews are the same so the repetition of interviewing helps in your favor. software engineers are in such high demand there are open positions everywhere in tech. The skills you learn at GA get you one of those positions but like I said its all up to you.

Once I had made the decision to change careers and become a UX Designer, I turned to General Assembly on the recommendation of a friend from London, who had worked with GA trained UX designers in the past. It was one of the best decisions I could have made. Changing careers can be a very stressful thing, and if it weren’t for GA I might have chickened out. Not only did the UXDi course equip me with the tools, language and skills required in the field of User Experience Design, but the “Outcomes” portion of the program completely prepared me for re-entering the workforce in my newfound circumstances. They provided an incredible support system and helped me navigate my career change in the best way possible. I was employed within 30 days of graduating, and made back my investment within months.

If you have an aptitude for human centered design and the willingness to be proactive and put in the work required, then GA can provide the tools to help you succeed.

Incredible instructor, engaged classmates, relevant material covered in course, and focus on building transferable skills

Instructor (currently, VP of Product for a health tech firm in SF) was great at facilitating a collaboration among students, and gave constructive feedback to each product team at the end of every day. He created a safe learning environment, and I plan to keep in touch with him for future Product Management job openings.

Job Prospects After Completion: Depends on YOU! It's up to you to keep your network fresh and informed regarding your career plans. GA will share some career resources with you, but they are not as helpful with finding a job as they could be.

I took the Digital Mkt accelerated 1 week course and in general terms I can say it was a great experience. It's definitely a lot of information to digest in 1 week and I think that the final presentation complicates even more the equation because by day 3 everybody is more focused on doing that, than on processing all the different topics. However, I think most of the relevant topics are covered, the teacher shows a lot of knowledge about digital marketing and the course is well structured. Additionally, the school is really nice and well located, plus is a great place to get to know cool people. Overall it's a great option but I would try to do the part-time instead.

I already work as a designer and just needed to learn a bit more about UX. Just wanted to let others know that I enrolled in their part time 10 week course and found it quite useful. Of course this is not a comprehensive career switching course and only provides a good starting point (you will need to do much more in the future on your own or through other programs), but it provides good basic knowledge about the field and skills needed.

I do not regret enrolling and think that the course helped me get a boost in my design career. Not life-changing, but the course is pretty good.

 

I'm 6 business days removed from the course and I have an onsite interview with Amazon on 10 days after I graduated for a Designer Role. I am going through a recruiting agency but it was the resume rebuild that the outcomes program helped me with and my portfolio that was also designed in class that helped set me up. I received some prep info from the recruiting agency; after hearing what the company is looking for, I am confident that I have learned the skills needed from taking UXDI course. The next step is the interview process and making sure that I articulate my process clearly, something that is also taught as part of the immersive course. GA stresses so much how important networking is, and through networking is how I was able to get this onsite interview, I didn't wait till after I was done with the course before networking. I started early and told friends, family and anyone else who asked "what are you up to these days" about how I was going to a design school and where I wanted to be after. So when this role became available, a friend of mine contacted me and told me they have a opening for the role. Granted I didn't get hired or had the onsite yet, what happened here alone is a testament to how important networking is and that is why GA stresses it so much. 

*Disclosure* I'm a very optimistic person, trying to find the lessons in every thing negative that happens so take that into consideration when reading my reviews. 

About the school itself, I had a great experience attending the course. I made new friends with talented people that I still keep in contact with. I was fortunate enough to be able to take time away from working so I can fully immerse myself into the course. I understand that there are bills that need to be paid but it is also a huge load of stress of your shoulders if you don't have to worry about working at the same time since the immersive course is a 9-5 kind of thing, I usually stayed a bit later and some days till 8pm when they kick me out working on projects and other things. 

The instructor we had was very knowledgable and experienced, he was able to answer every question we had in a manner that he didn't just hand us the answer, but asked thought provoking questions that would lead us to the answer. Theres an instructor assistant who was also very knowledgeable and welcome as well that we were able to bounce ideas off of. Their feedback was also constructive and provided valuable insight. They're not here to hold your hand but they will support you when and where they can. 

Some other benefits is that you could attend any workshop that was hosted at GA for free, and there was also a hackathon at the end of the program. It was a great experience working under pressure with people you've never met before. 

I feel like I benefitted from this course a lot and that it set me up to make the transition into the design field. The amount of work you put is what you'll get out of it to be honest, if you decide to put in as little as possible then of course you're going to benefit as little as possible. As RW3 would say, "the separation is in the preparation!" If you plan on taking this course, my advice is do everything as early as possible! If my resume wasn't ready to go right after I graduated then I wouldn't have been able to send it to the recruiter for my interview thats coming up. I also decided to code my own website using boot strap so that was a learning curve and took some time to polish as well (I'm still not done polishing it) but I started 2 weeks before class ended. 

The only con I have is that its tough to schedule a time with the Outcomes Person. Theres only 1 person for Seattle and she's awesome but getting that individual help takes some time. When I realized that this was going to become an issue, I started scheduling multiple 1on1s with her way ahead of time. 

Good Luck!