HyperionDev

Doing the Software Engineer Bootcamp with HyperionDev has been an absolute pleasure for me. I have found many aspects of the course relevant for application in my field (Water Science and Engineering). The course and exercises are structured in a manner that is easy to follow from a gentle introduction to an advance level. 

I would strongly recommend the course to the young and old, those who are young graduates and those that have just finished high-school. Coding is a good skill to have and there are limitless potential applications in the work place and in under&post-graduate studies.

I did the Full Stack Web Development Part Time Bootcamp.
It is a great course and I had an amazing journey throughout the course. The mentors and other departments are very helpful and they will assist in any way possible.

The course content is relevant to to current market. The most popular development stack is part of the course. You will also learn a lot of other technologies and they all compliment each other. The course is well planned and easy to follow. You will have to do a lot of research, which is part of the tech path, and this also develops you into a better full stack developer.

I highly recommend this course to anyone who want to start a career in web development.

 
The quick version: Terrible, terrible, terrible. Avoid at all costs!

Here's why...

Being in the Aviation Industry and grounded because of CoVid-19, I decided to ups**** myself by learning to code. I had done some coding in Python before on places like Udemy and by reading books, but decided now was the perfect time to dedicate serious time and effort into this. I joined HyperionDev for the primary reason of being accountable to a mentor. The website advertises that a mentor would tailer the course to your experience and guide you from “zero to hero”. I paid the full fee of R19 995 for the six month Data Science Bootcamp. It went downhill from there…

The bootcamp started on the 5th May 2020 and it asked me to schedule an “on-boarding call”, which I did. A call was scheduled, but never received.
I then checked on how I would go about scheduling a call with my mentor. To my surprise, the next available date was in four (4) weeks… June.
I then called HyperionDev and bought the above to their attention. I offered 3 scenarios: Either assign a different mentor to me, transfer me to a different bootcamp, or refund me. I was told to stick with it and was given my mentor's email address to schedule calls. I accepted.

I went through Level 1 of the bootcamp quickly, as I already had experience in Python. However, whilst doing the tasks, I remember feeling sorry for people that have never coded before at all. More on that later.

When I needed help from my mentor, I fired off an email and could only schedule a call a week later. Unfortunately, even the call was disappointing. Not my mentor's fault - How much can you really teach and explain in 30 minutes?

Think you’ll get personalized code reviews in your code file as shown on the website? Nope. They show code feedback on a separate webpage. If you’re lucky, it’ll be personalized. I received a lot of automated feedback. You’re told to ask questions in your code file, but the automated response doesn’t address questions. Better ask your mentor for help… in 2 - 4 weeks.

“Code is reviewed within 48 hours.” No, no, it’s not.

On to the content. The good stuff - the notes that will teach you how to code. They are delivered in PDF format to a Dropbox folder. There’s some text on there and a few tasks, which are much, much more involved than what you were taught in the PDF. Expect to research how to code if statements and loops on the internet. It does not teach them before you need them. Sure, doing your own research is good and part of the learning process, but there are limits. They should vary tasks just enough that they make you research the official documentation and not outdated forums. They plagiarize most of the tasks. If you want to do tasks/challenges, go to HackerRank or similar sites. Think the projects are related to real-world problems? They’re not. They’re just more meaningless tasks.

To accompany the PDF’s, are “example.py” files that have example code for you to read through. Right at the top, you’re reminded that they are there for you and should you get stuck, to please contact your mentor. Prepare for a 2 - 4 week wait if you go that route. Some files ask you to make sure you have Python 2.7 installed, while it teaches the course using Python 3! You run the file… error. Now you’re troubleshooting their example file. If you know what you’re doing, you’ll find the “print” statements aren’t accompanied by parenthesis (). The entire file still has Python 2.7 code.

They don’t teach best practices. All variable names are in CamelCase and not snake_case as recommended by Python style documentation. In another, you’re asked to install SpaCey, a Natural Language Processing module. Enjoy spending the day trying to get that installed! Don’t bother asking your mentor for help. They’re not available. The instructions on how to install SpaCey are incorrect in the PDF. Best to just go to the official SpaCey website. Also, the version of Python they provide for you is the 32bit version. SpaCey needs the 64bit version.

With all of that said, I asked for a refund on the 29th May 2020, as what they promised on the website before joining was not being delivered. I was happy to pay the one month fee of R4795 plus the 15% cancellation fee.

It has now been 5 weeks later and after working my way from Support to the Head of Education to the CEO and the legal department, I finally received a response:

They are putting me on the new cancellation policy which came into effect on the 1st July 2020.
It states that since I completed 29% of the course and that I enquired about the refund policy on the 29th May, my cancellation was made in week 4. I am therefore, eligible to receive a refund of 40% minus a 15% cancellation fee. Depending on how you work it out, that’s a refund of between R5000 and R6800. From R19 995. Disgusting. The bizarre thing is, even if I had just paid monthly, I would have covered the same amount of content.

I have no choice now but to take it further legally.

There are FAR, FAR, better courses out there that are free or very cheap. If you want to learn web development, use freeCodeCamp. If you want to learn Python, use Udemy. Courses are excellent and only cost around R200. Sure, you don’t get mentor support, but you get very little of that at HyperionDev, anyway.
If you specifically want to learn Data Science, try Codecademy or DataQuest. I have since moved on to another learning platform called Udacity and it is amazing! Projects are real-world - Analysing actual data sets. Content is fantastic. Video and text is available. They mark projects with personalized feedback in less than 24 hours. They marked my last project in 10 minutes. Mentors answer questions within 30 minutes.

If you must join HyperionDev, DO NOT pay upfront. Instead, pay monthly. That way, if you feel like they sucked you in by false advertising, you can at least cancel and stop the debit orders. Lesson learnt.

Good luck.
 

 Where do I start as the list of negatives are basically endless. I really wish I had seen the HelloPeter reviews before deciding to spend R20 000 on a course that doesn't offer you anything near what they promise. This is meant to be a modern, tech, educational platform that is forward thinking, but I can promise you it’s just like any other old school company. Theres nothing revolutionary in the way they teach, mark your work, provide your tasks… It's basically a drop box folder and are code isn't reviewed line by line, you just get overall feedback. 

The course has massive holes in it (full-stack web development), and you basically just end up running a bunch of free courses in parallel to try and get you over the line, which makes you think what the point is of spending R20 000 on a mentored course that does nothing of the type. You get a PDF outlining what you need to do which suffices at first (to make sure you get past the refund clause in their policy wording), but as you move on you may as well just skip to the tasks and research those online. I had to get the developers in my current company to help me out and due to learning everything online from multiple sources, the way I write code isn't good practice. This leads me to my next point…

There are way too many students for the mentors available and there is no personal touch of them knowing where you are, and what they should teach you because of this. Sometimes it takes over two weeks to get a session and by that time your ripping your hair out as your 5 tasks behind and need another 4 sessions. I work a full-time job and getting sessions after hours is a nightmare. The one thing they are good at is selling you the course, I was promised this would be a breeze outside of my 9 - 5 job and that they are specialists in this. Don't even think about this course if your working, but I wouldn't recommend it if your not either. My tutor really tried to help me out after hours but was always exhausted or had to cancel sessions at the last minute. I put aside weekends for this only to be cancelled on last second and then to spend the rest of the weekend just stressing about how to finish the tasks by myself.

The customer support operates at a snails pace, to get anything sorted takes days to a month. I complained and eventually got a small refund which took over a month, still not happy with the outcome.

My advise, keep your hard earned money and grab courses online, as you learn way more from free websites than spending a huge amount of HyperionDev. 

They will not "Kickstart your career in tech".

Where to begin, I sold my car to pay for this course, and what I received in return was an out-dated course, basically zero career support, a half baked hiring platform with no opportunities for the average graduate, most job postings on their connect platform ask for years of experience.

As for the certificate, it has no recognition in the industry and if an employer looks at the certificate all they will see is a certificate of completion, you can get the same thing from an R200 Udemy course.

Furthermore, the Mentors have to look after way too many students and are frequently swamped. And the one time I needed help from my mentor he told me he didn't have experience in the topic I was stuck on.

Everything you find in the course material can be sourced for free online and through youtube tutorials.

I have found myself a job based on past experience and I have asked multiple companies if they have heard of HyperionDev...not even one has said yes.

Don't waste your money, time, or effort on this scam.

This course has been amazing. Due to finances I was not able to join, but HyperionDev Team helped me get in. The course content teaches you what you need to know. You may need to go do research to find out more. That is where you have the discord channel where you can ask any questions and people in the course can assist you. The few times I have needed support assistance, my issues were resolved within a few hours. My mentor marks very well. All the comments and tips on how to improve really help. I have learnt much while on this course, specifically on how to make comments correctly :D. If you know nothing or very little about programming and want to learn more, this course can do that for you.

Pros:

• Course content suitable for beginners
• Mentors provide improvement tips
• You can retry your task if you do not meet the requirement of 70%
• You have access to a discord channel where you can ask many questions
• Support team responds quickly
• Access to HyperionDev Careers

Cons:

• After a lesson, you may need to do some more research to fully grasp the concepts (finding examples etc)
• You can only submit 3 tasks a day and have to wait 24 hours before you can submit again (prevent mentors being swarmed)
• Discord help may take long depending on people's availability
• If you are more advanced in programming, Part 2/3 is where the fun starts
• No job guarantee

It has been my dream to become a software engineer, however plans did not go as anticipated and I found myself in the built environment profession. Learning about HyperionDev and how they have produced successfully aspiring software engineers regardless of their educational background, skill level and age, revived my hopes once more that I am not too late as well to pursue the dream. The curriculum has been in an easy-to-grasp format alongside with extra helpful mentors. I have not only gained the skills sets in Python and Java programming so far, but a new way of thinking logically and effective approaches to problem-solving as well. If only I had known earlier about HyperionDev and their flexible and convenient way of producing software engineers I would’ve been a top engineer by now. Nonetheless, I cannot wait to graduate in July and dive in the real world of software engineering and so reach my desired haven.