LEARN Academy

When deciding on which coding bootcamp there are several key factors when need to consider, and in this review, I will explain those key factors and how LEARN Academy proved to be the best professional educational decision for my goals. 

• In-person vs. online: I started my LEARN Academy cohort in February 2020 and for better or worse was able to experience both the in-class and online (Zoom - remote) version of LEARN Academy as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In an ideal world, one should attend the in-person experience in order to further solidify friendships within your cohort, the teamwork aspect of being able to discuss code in-person with a whiteboard, and just the general fun of being able to walk around the classroom with a Kombucha in your hand and see what your peers are code. Nonetheless halfway through my bootcamp, we pivoted to remote and we didn’t skip a beat. I feel that all aspects of the curriculum were maintained and we were even able to quickly start utilizing important digital tools more heavily (Git, Slack, VS Code Liveshare) that are fundamental for remote dev work in the future anyway. Overall “in-person” I feel is ideal for learning, but LEARN was super successful in replicating the “in-person” experience online. 
• Internship: The internship is a TREMENDOUS value add for choosing LEARN Academy. I had the opportunity to join a company and work alongside 5 developers at a fast-growing startup in San Diego (keep in mind I started to learn to code just 15 weeks prior). My internship was extended and I continued to work for 10 months at the same company gaining practical coding experience every day. I was hired as a contract worker with no benefits, but nonetheless, it was an invaluable experience to work on actual production code. The internship is guaranteed for 4 weeks but I would say ⅓ of my cohort was asked to extend for 1 or more months and they were also paid for their extensions and were able to put actual development work on their resumes. 
• Tech Stack: The tech stack I learned while at learn was React, Javascript, HTML, CSS, Ruby on Rails, and Postgresql. All of these technologies are widely used today and if you are new to the industry they serve as a solid foundation to grow from. My internship was entirely in Vue but I used my React foundational skills I learned at LEARN to rapidly learn the basics of Vue (over the weekend from when my classroom experience ended and internship began the following Monday). 
• Quality of teaching instruction: During my course, I had three daily instructors committed to my cohort ~6 to 1 student to teacher ratio (they pivot the number of instructors based on class size). All in all the teachers I had were able to meet me at my learning level and explain complex concepts into more easily digestible content. They were ALWAYS available to answer questions and held office hours. Like most things in life you get what you put in, so make sure you ask questions all the time and ASK for help when you need it. We also had an excellent Professional Development week, led by the Career Services Manager, and in addition, had access to other developers at several of the dev agencies that were in the same building. If my instructors didn’t immediately know the answer to my question or debug my problem they were able to get back to me with my answer in a timely manner. In addition, we had various guest speakers and panels (from the SD tech scene) which made class each week super interesting. 
• Prep Materials: The best resource that LEARN offers in terms of preparation for the bootcamp is their JumpStart weekend. I highly highly highly recommend you participate in that weekend as that was the defining experience that made me decide whether I liked to code and whether I had the confidence in myself to pick up skills quickly over a short period of time. I went into my cohort with about 2 weeks of prior Javascript training and the JumpStart weekend but it was really not enough. I highly recommend people begin studying at least 3 months prior to your cohort (I fully realize that is easier said than done, with life and work, but anyone who came in with prior coding knowledge in my cohort accelerated their learning 2x-5x compared to myself who just wrote my first line of code 14 days before my first day of class.) 
• Facilities: LEARN Academy classroom was GORGEOUS in Union Co-work near Petco Park in downtown SD. Unfortunately, I could only attend for 8 weeks due to COVID but the surrounding made you feel like a true web developer in the chic industrial glass-lined classroom. Also the free Kombucha, coffee, tea, and beer (after hours) wasn’t too bad! They also have two main classrooms so we were frequently able to do check-out (sharing what you learned) at the end of the day and learn what the other cohort who started before us was working on that day.
• Community: The LEARN Academy Community is the most vibrant tech career pivoter/bootcamp community in San Diego hands-down. Pre-COVID LEARN held bi-monthly meetups in its classrooms, celebratory cohort get-togethers, project demo days, and evening guest speakers. Now the community of course has shifted remote, but the online Slack community is also super active. On Day 1 you are welcomed into the Slack group and tons of people who were in your shoes starting the bootcamp who now have fancy developer jobs in the San Diego area (and beyond) are willing to help answer your questions and refer you to positions. Once you are a LEARN alum you enter a network of tech leaders at major tech companies throughout San Diego/California and beyond. One additional thing (which I think they still do), is if you want they pair you with another LEARN grad to serve as your Mentor. To this day (Jan 2021) I still meet with my Mentor each week and he has been an invaluable resource post bootcamp for skill development, motivation, and job search help..
• Growth Areas for LEARN: 1) Improvements to my experience include a more clear path of what milestones I needed to achieve in my coding skills before being ready for Day 1 of the bootcamp. I was provided resources but had no idea where to start. I believe that they are now offering propriety prep materials to new students (I just haven’t reviewed them as they were not available to me when I started) 2)Focus more curriculum time on unit testing. We learned Jest Javascript testing (for maybe 1.5 weeks) I feel like it is a critical developer skill that I personally did not pick up quickly and should be prioritized earlier.  3)Introduce earlier data structures and algorithms into the curriculum, as many technical interviews nowadays focus heavily on them. Overall at the end of the day with 12 weeks to go from 0 to junior dev I understand it is tough to squeeze it all in, regardless LOTS of personal self-study is necessary to keep up with the pace of the class if you come in with no prior coding skills.

Overall, there are plenty more points to speak about when speaking about LEARN but at the end of the day after three months of classroom instruction, I was successfully contributing to an agile development team at a tech company in San Diego. The process to prepare for the bootcamp, take the bootcamp, and perform at your internship is INTENSE. The skills to learn to code is like learning a foreign language you constantly need to have a growth mindset and practice, practice, practice. 10 months after my bootcamp I am still growing and learning each day and that never changes. You must have it within yourself to persevere, be a self-starter, and make many many many personal, financial, and family sacrifices to have a chance at getting a junior developer position in 2021. With that being said LEARN is the most well-rounded and experienced resource available in the San Diego area to place your faith in to prepare you for a successful life-changing career pivot. 

LEARN Academy is such a great Bootcamp. The way this Bootcamp is run makes learning fun, easy, and stress-free. I was laid off during the pandemic and it was a no-brainer to make the decision to join LEARN Academy and invest in myself. Even though I had to help my kids during the last of their 2nd-grade year in school, I was able to review lectures I missed within hours and be back up to speed the same day. Not only did we learn different programming languages we also learned how to conduct a technical interview and practiced each week, we even had an entire week devoted to professional development that prepares us for our job hunt. But the most valuable benefit is the 1 month guaranteed internship. The entire experience was seamless and enjoyable, it really is a community you want to be a part of. 

Learn Academy is a fast-paced program for getting practical experience with many different relevant technologies in a short amount of time. The immersive portion happens quickly,  students are exposed to Git, data structures, and we were pair programming daily through the day's projects. The curriculum is structured for layering in new technologies, and before you know it, you're familiar with relational databases and doing a deep dive into the inner workings of Rails.

The instructors are fantastic. The student to teacher ratio is very favorable for student-teacher interactions, and they were consistently pivotal in getting me on track with the material on pace to get through the assessments. There is a lot of information, so be 100% prepared to have no life while you're working through the curriculum. I thought 100 hours a week would be an exaggeration, but I was consistently logging 95-100 hours each week studying the material straight through the weekend.

The past four months have been a grueling yet highly rewarding experience. You get out of it what you put into it, and you have to put a lot into it if you want to get through the totality of the curriculum, but at the end, you will have the skills and confidence necessary to land your first position as a developer.

After completing 10 years of military service, I decided to take the plunge and transition into the civilian workforce. I knew that I wanted to go into tech and had always enjoyed dabbling in coding. I also knew that I did not want to invest the time or money to attend a 4-year college to get a computer science degree when I already have a bachelor's. 

I decided to investigate bootcamps. I looked at Origin, HackReactor's online program, UCSD and LEARN Academy. All four were comparably priced and offered some sort of veteran discount. LEARN offered a weekend Jumpstart program as a initial trial. It offered the chance to preview the class style without the daunting pricetag. After attending, I was sold.

The course is based around pair programming. While it may not be everyone's style (quite honestly it isn't mine), it's a great environment for learning. If you're stuggling through a section, your peers can help explain as you work through a problem. If you understand how to solve a problem, you can teach your peers and further cement your understanding of the topic. There is a reason why the instructors stick to the format. It works. 

Another thing that the instructors will stress is learning how to solve problems on your own. They will try to lead you to where you can find answers but try to put the onus on the student to actually solve it. This style can be understandably frustrating for some people initially but it is hands down the best way to become accustomed to the reality of engineering. In this job you will constantly be faced with new concepts and no instructor. Becoming a pro at understanding documentation and tracking errors through your code is an essential software engineering skill. 

As to the price tag... you have to think about what you are paying for. Can you learn everything on your own online through practice and tutorials? Absolutely. Could I have gotten to where I am today by doing that? Definitely not. I needed the focus, immersion, and guidance provided by LEARN. I needed a place to go every day which pushed my learning pace forward. I needed peers and instructors who held me accountable for the effort I needed to put in. I also needed the internship to solidify what life looked like as a developer. 

I would highly recommend LEARN to anyone wanting to pursue a software engineering career. I would also encourage everyone to do their due diligence to learn what that career is really like. Go to Jumpstart. Do some tutorials online beforehand. Make the commitment to put in the effort. I got hired by my internship company and work on some really cool stuff now as an engineer. I love my job and I have LEARN to thank for making it possible.

Being at LEARN Academy not only kept me motivated to cram months and months of full stack development knowledge within a short period of time, but the staff and leadership shared past experiences and lessons learned as a developer, offered mentorship, and provided access to the invaluable network within San Diego. I cannot thank LEARN Academy enough to allow me to switch from being a healthcare management consultant to a data engineer within a few months, which ultimately allowed me to achieve my goal of being within the software industry and actually making a difference. While I am done with my boot camp experience at LEARN Academy, I know that I will keep them involved in my current and future plans and help them continue their amazing efforts within the San Diego community.

I attended LEARN Academy in 2018 or their Alpha cohort from January to May. Two days before starting LEARN I had my last shift at the deli I worked at the time. Four months later I was signing an offer letter with the words 'Software Engineer' in the opening paragraph. LEARN can absolutely change your life, but only if you jump in the deep end.

MY STORY
I started LEARN with about 50-60 hours of self study, much of it directed by the prep work for the course. I knew that I had to dedicate as much time as possible to the endeavor much because it felt like my last chance to really change my life for the better. I said goodbye to most of my friends and told them I'd see them when I had accomplished my goal. I saw my family once a week, and did yoga twice a week, and those were my anchors. Everything else that I had to give went towards class. It didn't happen overnight, but every week I put more and more time in.

By week 4 I was going to events 2 to 3 nights a week. By week 7 some classmates and I attended a 12 hour hackacthon on a Saturday, and placed. We won 'Most Innovative'. Nearly every Saturday thereafter a group of use went to study at LEARN for 4-5 hours.  

When it came time for internship placement I gravitated towards an internship at Kitu Systems, a green energy company looking for a intern to do primarily functional testing in Cypress. On the fourth week of my internship they offered me a position. I'm now officially a Software Engineer (at least that's what it says in my job description).

I'm writing this review two weeks into my new job, and frankly I walk around my office with a big goofy smile half the time because I'm so grateful to have 'made it', but the truth is that I'm not done, no in this field ever is. You will always be learning and improving on your craft (I spend an entire workday last week just reading AngularJS technical documentation).

Not everyone will get a job right out of the gate. Many of my classmates are still looking, and from the few dozen alumni I've spoken to I can tell you that some people more naturally gifted that I might have as much as a two month job search before they find their first position. This is not meant to be discouraging, it's just a fact of the industry that job hunting can take time.

DO THE WORK
LEARN Academy provides you all the tools necessary for a sucessful career as a Software Engineer, but they will not force you to use them. 
- There is about 40 to 60 hours worth of prep work to do before the class starts, but they won't turn you away if you don't do any of it. 
- The actual class day at learn goes for 9am to 5pm, and there are no grades and no penalties for being late. If you show up early you can read the days lessosn before hand, and if you stay late you can review it. 
- There are night-time learning and networking events in the LEARN space nearly every week, and in the general downtown area nearly every night, but you are not required to go.
- There are myriad opportunity to take on extra projects, or continue class projects after school and into the weekend, but you are not required to do so.
- If you ask the instructors for code reviews of personal projects you do on your own time, they will find a way to get you one, but they won't just offer them  left and right.  

CONCLUSION
LEARN Academy will give you the opportunity to start a career in an ever growing, lucrative, and fascinating industry. It is hard, tiring work, and requires a lot of time, far more than just the 40 hours a week on in-class time. If you can give it %100 of everything you have to give, it will change your life.

Attending LEARN Academy was one of the best, most satisfying decisions I've ever made for the growth of my career. I spent a few months researching the coding bootcamp I wanted to attend. I remember scouring the internet for reviews on every possible bootcamp. Some seemed too focused on just shoving people through the curriculum or not being worth the money in one way or another. Online bootcamps seemed way too shady and disconnected from the student when this is something where a student NEEDS a mentor to help them get unstuck. Learning on your own can be done, but can take two years when a person could attend a good bootcamp and get it done in 3 months and pay it off before those 'would of been two years' are over, and now you have a job and experience already before you would of gotten your first job.

Every day I attended LEARN I was completely satisfied with my experience. The instructors and owners care about the success that you want to get out of it and will do their best to help you reach your short term and long term goals. If you request additional help, the instructors will without hesitation help you during lunch or after class. They truly care about the student - especially the student who takes their choice to attend seriously. It's hard to help someone who doesn't pay attention in the first place, or who doesn't put any effort in.

There is a lot of hard working successful students that come out of LEARN that land in awesome jobs that wouldn't be possible if they hadn't attended LEARN. If a person does the suggested pre-course work, attends LEARN, works hard to understand the material everyday, asks questions about what they don't understand, there's no doubt that they will land an awesome job and career. A person should go into the school humble, willing to constantly learn (because that's what a developers life will be), and to take it serious. You will get out of it what you put into it. I would gladly answer any questions about my experience and recommend it to anyone who wants to be a developer. A coding bootcamp won't hold your hand as they magically transfer skills into your brain. But they give you the network of people you need, the environment you need, the mentors you need, the internship you need to get some experience, the encouragement you need, and the right direction you need to be successful.

There is absolutely so much to learn when you are just getting started in web development, and I thought Learn did a great job easing into it the first two weeks and then going full force. It was extremely challenging and takes full-time dedication to get through, but they are there to help you the whole time through. I had a great experience and made awesome friends. I definitely recommend this bootcamp, but only if you are willing to go in 100%. You get what you put in. The one-month internship is also a great way to get started, but it's really up to you after that to put in lots of hard work to get an actual job. They will definitely help and support, but you have to put in tons of time and effort - the first job is the toughest to get! But, as far as bootcamps go, this one is awesome. Highly recommend!! 

Here’s how it happened: With 2 BA’s in the humanities and some tinkering with computers every so often, I really had no knowledge of what computer programming was.  But I’d just been through 10 years of sales to try something more ‘creative,’ and then 7 years working for myself, and now I needed a new career, again.

 

I’d looked at LEARN Academy once before, and balked.  Fast forward 2 years, and I made the decision to pay the tuition and get through the 16-week JavaScript Web Developer Coding Bootcamp at LEARN, and see what’s what.  Why?  Because I knew that it was something that I wanted to do before I left this Earth.   I’m not (too) old, and I’m not sick, but if not now then when?  When I’m 70?  Sure, maybe, but stars had aligned and it was time.  So I pay, and I go, and I graduate and now it’s late on a Sunday night and I’m typing into my laptop when I should be doing a million other things, but I wanted to write this review so others could know…..that I loved it, and though I am still on my journey to become a software developer, I know in my brain and in my heart that it was the right decision for me.

 

And now I’m going to speed this up:

 

Pro’s:

• Instruction was engaging, relevant, current if not bleeding-edge
• Instructors I had were naturally gifted teachers (knowledgeable, patient, encouraging)
• Room space was small enough to keep me focused, but big enough to be comfortable and comfortable enough to enjoy it and not view it like a “training” or “being in school.”
• Other staff were always friendly, available for questions, and basically seemed to enjoy their job of making sure we had what we needed to not only get through the cohort, but then get a job when we were done
• I loved the downtown location for getting outside for fresh air, coffee, food, whatever
• Cost - reasonably competitive with other offerings (that don’t include a month long internship to complete the training (non-Jedi, sorry)

 

Cons:

I honestly can’t really think of any.  In a effort to be as transparent as possible, I know one of the owners and he is a friend, but what I write here doesn’t affect him nor LEARN one way or the other.  I feel like I made some good friends while I was there, but I don’t see these people socially and I’m truthfully not trying to curry favor with anyone.   

• We had a few technical glitches - and turned it into a real-life learning event of “something is broken, what do you do now?”
• Not really a negative but I could have (personally) benefited from a little more review of the checkpoint assessments.  Having said that, when I asked for help, I was always given one-on-one attention until I was comfortable

 

Whether you’re considering LEARN or any other coding bootcamp, here are some things I’d make sure my past-self knew before staring:

• Get through some HTML/CSS/JavaScript classes on-line, maybe a little command-line training, basic computer stuff.  I did very little and it cannot be understated that this was a mistake.  They told me to do it beforehand, and I sort of did…a little
• Know that you’re going to be given access to the career or job you want, but you’re going to have to earn it.   The LEARN experience gave me everything I needed to succeed.  It’s just a matter of putting that into practice
• Start networking for your future job as a developer Day 1.  In fact, start right now
• Whatever you decide, I wish you well and hope the future brings you much success

A year ago, I was a wedding planner. Today, I am a software engineer at a Fortune 50 company.

People laugh when I tell them that…like they think it must be a joke. Let’s be real: it does sound like a joke. But it’s 100% true, and that is in large part due to my experience at LEARN.

I had a background in math and computer science, but life took me in a different direction, and a few years after college I found myself running my own wedding planning business. Fast forward almost a decade, and I had come to a crossroads. It was time to switch things up, and that meant either pursuing event planning in a different avenue, or returning to my roots. I chose the latter.

Obviously, my college education was outdated and, in the world of tech, pretty much obsolete. I needed some help to get back in the game. So I started to look into boot camps.  I researched my options, and was pretty set on the fact that I was going to have to leave San Diego for several months in order to pursue this dream.  Then I found LEARN.

From the moment I met Rob, Chelsea, Lisa, and the other staff, I knew these were my kind of people. When your interview feels more like catching up with an old friend you just never happened to have met yet, you know you’re in the right spot.  Which is not to say that they don’t take this seriously. It’s called a boot camp for a reason; you will be challenged, at times your brain will be fried, and you will wonder, “what on earth have I gotten myself into?”  But you will also find yourself surrounded by a community of people who are interested in not only seeing you succeed in the course, but who are committed to your overall well-being long after you’ve graduated.

Full disclosure: Everything about my experience wasn’t just peaches and cream. There were difficult personalities to work with. My internship experience was not the perfect fit, and I didn’t get a job from it like I had hoped. It took me 15 minutes to figure out how to turn on the computer on my first day, and I was sure that I’d just made a huge mistake by signing up for this thing…

But it turned out to be the best decision I’ve ever made. LEARN gave me a foundation in web development, and more importantly, taught me how to learn web development. After all, that is what a career in development is all about: constant learning.

Three months after graduating, I interviewed for a software engineering position at a Fortune 50 company. It was a full-day interview with multiple coding challenges and technical interviews with various senior engineers. Because of LEARN, I was confident in my technical skills, and made it through each challenge happy with my performance. I got the job offer that night.  Scratch that. I got a job offer that night which was far beyond what I had let myself hope for.

I’m now six months in to my job, and loving every second of it. I can’t believe I get to do something so fun as a job, and that I get so well paid for it.  Going to LEARN catapulted me into this new career, and I will be forever grateful. Not to mention, I made some incredible friendships with the other students and staff which go far deeper than just working together in tech.

Go to LEARN. Gain an education. Leave with a family.

LEARN was absolutely instrumental in getting me to where I am today. Before I attended LEARN I was stuck in a marketing job with little opportunity for advancement and days full of busywork. Now, I am a junior engineer at the beginning of a (hopefully!) long and productive career. My employment outlook is significantly brighter: I have a better job that's more fun and engaging, pays better, is more stable, has more room for internal growth and advancement, and values my personal and professional growth. And should I ever choose to leave it, there are tons of great opportunities in the industry to move on to other organizations doing exciting work with an ever-evolving technology stack. Changing careers was a big and scary step, and it isn't easy, but LEARN has consistently supported and empowered me to make this change, and that support continues today, more than a year after I graduated from their program.

I decided to attend a bootcamp pretty spur of the moment, and crammed enough of the JavaScript course on Codecademy to be able to complete a programming challenge as a part of my application. After the application was submitted, I interviewed with Chelsea, the CEO, and she made me feel really good about the entire process. I'd been checking out another boot camp in San Diego, but after comparing the technologies I'd be learning, and talking to her about what the experience would be like, I felt very strongly that I wanted to attend LEARN. I found out pretty quickly after that that I'd been admitted, and before class started I got another call from one of their TAs, to talk about my learning style and what to expect from the experience. It was very clear from the beginning how committed their team was to making sure I got the most out of my time there.

The coursework was fast-paced and at times overwhelming. 3 months just isn't enough time to learn it all, and you finish the program with a sense that there's a lot more work to do. However, the biggest value of this program is the process. You learn how to ask questions, and how to search for answers. I spent a lot of time feeling frustrated and like I didn't know what I was doing, but LEARN does a good job of normalizing that discomfort and teaching you to work it without getting discouraged (which is one of the toughest parts of trying to learn something so new and foreign as an adult!). The program uses project-based learning to get you practicing writing code from day 1, and consistent pair programming teaches you how to collaborate and has the added benefit that you're never alone with a problem. The instructors do a great job of balancing giving you the answer versus guiding you to find it on your own via research. LEARN also introduces its students to the agile process, which is widely used in the industry today, and this iterative approach means your project doesn't have to be perfect on the first pass.

After 3 months in the classroom, LEARN placed me in a one-month internship with a local startup. I got to push real code to their production application the first week! My particular internship did leave something to be desired, as the developer who was supposed to be managing me and two of my classmates wasn't very available, and we were assigned tasks and left to pretty much figure them out on our own. So the collaboration skills we'd learned in class and the support of the LEARN community proved to be vital to our success. Our instructors, classmates, and alumni were all just a chat message away, and we used our network a lot to get our work done. Even though I wasn't that well managed, I still learned a lot, and at the end of the internship our boss was impressed with how much we'd accomplished.

After graduation, I was nervous about getting a job, but Lisa, LEARN's outreach coordinator, was diligent about passing on job opportunities to recent alumni, and just about every interview I went on was thanks to her referral. While I was searching for a full-time job she even got me connected to someone who was looking for a part time independent contractor for web development work, so I was working (and practicing my new skills) while I was looking for work! I was hired on for a full time job about 2 1/2 months after finishing my internship. 

I can't say enough good things about LEARN. It's honestly changed my life. I'm so, so glad that I attended and that I'm still involved in the ever-growing, ever-supportive LEARN community.

I had been programming as a hobby and to help in my profession as an internet marketer for several years and wanted to switch to progamming as my career.  After a lot of searching for a bootcamp help with this change in career I found LEARN in San Deigo.  It appeid to me for a few reasons.  I wanted to move back to the San Deigo area where I grew up, the bootcamp focused on full stack development which was what I wanted to do, and it was less expensive than the other bootcamps I was looking at and appling to.

The actual program was fantastic.  The teachers adapted the curriculum to my experience level and really gave me confidence in my ability. Another thing to note is that LEARN is deeply involved in the community and it provided many opportunities to network and meet people in the San Diego Technology community.

After the class part of the bootcamp came the one month internship, which is guaranteed for every student.  Form that internship I got the job I have now and couldn't be happier with how things went.  The staff at LEARN really care about every student and will do everything that they can to help you succeed.

If you are looking for a career change, have invested some personal time exploring the field, and are ready to take action - LEARN Academy is the place for you. My time at LEARN was great and I have no regrets. I would not be where I am today without the school so I am forever greatful for this.

I would say the positives are: it is cheaper then most other schools, it was the first school in San Diego, smaller classes, one-on-one attention, internship for the last month for real life experience, and we had group projects which really prepared me for the real world.

Cons: the head teacher was difficult to work with at times and you had to be prepared to teach yourself if he didn't want to help you, I wish we spent more time on Ruby and Javascript and less time on everything else. 

I attended LEARN! Academy from July 2016 to November 2016. I looked into the various bootcamps here in San Diego and the internship that is part of the curriculum set LEARN apart from other bootcamps. I can't say enough about how awesome my experience was. It was very challenging, but at the same time it was manageable.

The people at LEARN truly care about the students and the school. LEARN isn't trying to push as many students as possible through the pipeline just to make a quick buck. They work hard with each student not only through the classroom time but also throughout the internship and through the hiring process.

The curriculum for my cohort was Ruby. It was fast-paced and challenging, but the instructors were fantastic. There is lecture time each day but the bulk of the experience is coding challenges. The instructors give you just enough guidance to help you in the right direction. They encourage you to solve problems and meet the challenges on your own, (which is more like the real-world working environment).

The daily routine at LEARN mimics a real-world work environment, so the transition to full-time developer for me was seemless.  I was placed at a great company for my internship and was hired as a full time developer at the end of the 4 weeks. 

Another note on the internships, the companies that take interns are all great. I would have been happy at any of them. The LEARN staff took great care in placing students in the right internship environment. It worked out great for me as I was hired by my internship company. 

Going the LEARN was the best decision! I highly recommend LEARN if you want to go somewhere where you will be more than just a number. You will be a part of a great community! 

I am a recent graduate of Learn Academy and here is how I honestly feel about the Bootcamp. I find very important work with good people who care and want success for others and this Bootcamp is definitely that. I am not going to sugarcoat this because this Bootcamp was not easy for me and I definitely spent many hours of studying prior and after sessions. What I love most about learn Academy was the people who are running the program from the CEO to the instructors and their partner companies. They hire awesome people to work with and they really care about people's success.  

Prior to learn I did research on what BootCamp I wanted to attend and I actually tried to attend one of the big name bootcamp but I did not like it at all because it was nothing like Learn Academy. It was huge size of classes and it was not personal at all. Learn Academy on the other hand his build for smaller size classes and people are able to connect and make connections with others who are attending the program. If you are thinking about attending this Bootcamp I would recommend you study on your own HTML, CSS and JavaScript and watch some videos on react and Ruby on Rails. I think this would make your life easier when attending the program because it’s high pace and there’s a lot going on so you want be able to keep up.  I had great experience at Learn Academy and I plan to be a part of this awesome community and staying in touch.  

If you're a hopeful web developer or engineer in San Diego, Learn is the only bootcamp I recommend. A couple primary reasons: 1. internship and career services 2. program's willingness to change.

The internship experience speaks for itself. To have the opportunity to apply classroom skills to a functioning business is so important. One of the biggest barriers to finding employment is job experience; the internship does help address that deficit. Learn's career services is also a real strength. A week of the program will be devoted to preparing you for a job search, from the obvious things like creating a new resume to the less obvious, like taking LinkedIn head shots. I do not know how else I would've pulled everything together and very much appreciated Bryan's guidance. 

I also mention the program's willingness to accept feedback as a highlight - and it absolutely is. Prior to attending Learn, I worked at a university managing a program and have real understanding of how difficult it can be to modify classroom focus or process. Learn does a really impressive job of soliciting and responding to feedback. Every cohort changes - new projects, new format, emphasis on new skills - which is incredibly difficult to do. It does help them stand out; each cohort gets better.  

As a final note, I do think it's important to stress that you will not get everything out of Learn if you do not put in the work. Most career switches take about 18 months. Learn's program, including internship, is 4 months. I do believe that in order to be most successful, you have to put in extra time outside of Learn's allotted 40 hours/week. It is an intense program and requires focus for success. Know that the job market is tough for junior developers or engineers, but if you do the work, it pays off. I encourage you to control your fate as much as possible. Take advantage of learn alum, meetups, their recommended prep work, pairing programming, access to teachers and each of their unique strengths.

Learn is great. They will work hard on your behalf. Full recommendation from me.

My time at LEARN Academy was one of the best experiences of my life honestly. I came into it expecting to be good. But it ended up being great! I knew it would be challenging, which it was. I knew it would be hard at times, and it was. And I knew it would be a lot to take in, in such a small amount of time, and it was.

LEARN Academy and their instructors teach the content in way that makes it stick in your head. It is fast paced but as long as you are willing to put in the hard work and proper effort, you will pick it up very quickly.

Additionally, LEARN has you develop applications to practice the content which really brings everything together. Working with other students in the cohort is one of the best ways to learn because you're all learning the same content, at the same time.

One of the best things about LEARN is their career services. You are taken on a startup crawl in downtown San Diego so that you really get to see what tech companies are really like. After that, they help you practice technical interviews, real interviews, and prep you for your internship at the end of the cohort.

Overall, LEARN Academy is the perfect bootcamp if you're looking to become a software developer. I came into it having went to another bootcamp a few years back and there really was no comparison. LEARN is a hundred times better than the bootcamp I went to before. I recommend LEARN Academy to anyone interested in getting into the industry!

LEARN Academy was one of the best experiences I've had in my life! I absolutely loved being there each day working with the staff and learning with my classmates. It is, of course, not for the faint of heart. Transitioning to a completely new career isn't an easy thing to do and learning how to be a web developer in 3 months is a daily grind. But it is rewarding, exhilarating and worth it. The best part about it is that the LEARN staff are there for you each step of the way, supporting and guiding you.

I cannot stress enough how supportive, encouraging and thoughtful the staff are. Each of them worked with us on things on areas that we needed to develop and they even tailored the curriculum to fit our needs and the things we were interested in. Even though I was enrolled during a time where there was a transition for the Career Services Manager, we didn't feel like we were dropped through the cracks or that we received any less attention than other cohorts previously. And we are still receiving job support and mentorship, even though I've already graduated. 

I come from a kinesiology background and needed a change. I had my fitness business online but I decided to take the technology portion of it more seriously. I did not want to go back to college to start all over so I decided, after lots of research, I wanted to go to an immersive coding bootcamp to jump into a new career. 

Before attending Learn, I saw that they have a weekend course called Jumpstart. I attended and got a really good sense of the course work and how the class would be set up. After Jumpstart, I decided it was going to be a good fit to attend Learn Academy and the bonus is that the money spent on JumpStart goes towards your tuition.

The course is hard by taking a lot of brain power while also staying optimistic/humble. At Learn I felt like I had my classmates and my teachers to help me when I got stuck. Now, after having a professional job as a developer, all the soft skills you need for pair programming and learning in a semi-stressful environment is necessary! I work remotely and I constantly need to know how to work well with others and learn new things with other developers. The team at Learn strives to set you up for success and I am very happy I decided to attend Learn Academy!

I came to LEARN to disrupt my mid-career boredom. There were a few bootcamp-style options, but I was drawn to LEARN for several reasons: the unique internship aspect of the program; a commitment to diversity I saw in their staff, alumni, and community involvement; their place at the center of an active tech community; and the fact that, because they are local, they would be in touch with the needs of San Diego employers.

I'm over 40 and approach all new situations with skepticism. I started LEARN waiting to find out that it was all a sham, that I'd been taken for a ride, or that the level of learning was nothing I couldn't find in a few YouTube videos and I am SO happy to say I was wrong. All of what drew me to LEARN in the first place proved to be true. The educators are so passionate about the success of each student, as is the management - they have a reputation to uphold in this community, and that start with putting well-prepared program grads into the workforce. Beyond the tech curriculum and the amazing educators, two extremely valuable pieces of this program are the Career Services and the Internship. Students have real interviews with real companies, no smoke and mirrors. And the professional development portion of the curriculum combined with ongoing career services advice is WAY more than I ever got from NYU.

I will preface that reading the reviews on this site is what finally sold me on this bootcamp.  I believe I also applied to LEARN through this site. 

I moved from Chicago to San Diego to good to this bootcamp. I previous worked as a marketing admin doing product management type stuff.  Mind you, I am not extremely analytical so I knew that going into it I was going to need to step up my logic and analytical game.  It was no light decision - I had researched the various bootcamps in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco to find the right one for me.  I knew I wanted to be a part of a community, I wanted to be in California, and I wanted to learn how to build a website. Mentorship was also on my mind.  Most importantly, I was looking to do all of this AND on top of that, get a job.  

I worked hard during this bootcamp.  It truly is a bootcamp if you treat it that way.  It can also be a perfectly good way to waste three months if you allow to as well.  Let me explain.  

Bootcamp was from 9-5 with instruction in the morning and challenges in the afternoon.  Pretty standard for any bootcamp that i've seen with some being more intense and some longer.  I was extremely lucky that I had a great cohort filled with people who were like-minded and came to work hard.  The onerous was on me, though. I took the concepts we learned during the day and continued to learn things I didnt understand.  I spent hours on my off time learning the concepts, sticking with the fundementals, and going through as many of the exercises as I could.  I out myself through as many "tests" as I could during the time and still management to have fun and have a social life outside of coding.  That's not to say that I didn't think about coding and development most of the time.  One could easy sit there and do the coursework and expect a "certificate" only to find that it's rather hard finding a job.  It's not easy finding a job, there are countless ways employers will knock you out of their candidate pool.  Don't do the bare minimum if it's your goal to get a full-time job.
 
During our week of job preparedness, I took all of the instruction and truly applied it to whereever I could. I'm not the most disciplined, but I was disciplined enough to take the information and continue to apply it throughout the rest of my time.  It goes by quickly and you can't possibly learn everything you'd want in three months, but if you pay attention and work hard to grasp the concepts to apply to greater world, I think you have a better chance than most people in landing that job in development.

The instructors and network of people around LEARN is absolutely amazing and I'm continuing to meet people from other cohorts which has given me an extended network of some truly talented and amazing people.  It's an honor to give back to this community whenever I can.  (To put it into perspective, I haven't been back to my undergrad college since I graduated)

Through a concrete curriculum, extremely strong network, public speaking opportunities, and intensive job prep, LEARN helped me land my first job as a developer within a week after my internship.  Even after graduation, LEARN continues to provide me with tools to get out of my head and get into the world and make an impact through extended education opportunities at meet ups and various networking events.

I went to Learn Academy in 2016. I don’t know that I was prepared for it. I had studied JavaScript for months before I began, but still felt unprepared. It’s a whirlwind – it’s difficult, it’s exhausting, it’s stressful. It’s also rewarding- it’s a place to join a new community and to meet new people, and it’s a great way to challenge yourself and your brain.

We studied HTML, Bootstrap, JQuery, JavaScript, PostgreSQL, Ruby and Ruby on Rails. We had a professional week in which we made resumes and our own websites, and a month-long internship. It was grueling. A fair number of people in my class didn’t have jobs when the bootcamp was over and some of them recently got hired and I think that there are a couple that still don’t have jobs – nearly a year later. So be prepared to work very hard at this – bootcamp won’t magically get you a job – there is a lot of networking and applying to jobs in there as well. In hindsight my internship could have been a lot better and I wished that I pushed harder to get in a different company. My internship didn't help me get a job after I finished the program. 

In order to get the most out of your time in bootcamp I would recommend studying before you go and possibly taking an online intro to CS course, so the concepts won’t be completely foreign. I would also recommend taking courses through Code School and Code Academy.  When I decided on this bootcamp, it was the only one in San Diego. I would recommend that you research all of your options – do not rely solely on reviews – go to meet ups and meet people from the different bootcamps, and contact different bootcamps so that you can make the best decision for you.

In the end I don't think that this was probably the right bootcamp for me. I am thankful for everything I learned, I am thankful for all of the friendships I've made, I'm thankful for a new career which I would not have been able to get without Learn. But I also think that a different path to my new career would have been better for me. Be prepared to teach yourself, test yourself, and take responibility for your education. 

LEARN ACADEMY SIMPLY ROCKS! 

What mattered to me the most were the people. I found out about LEARN from attending an SD Ruby Meetup. One of the people, Rob Kaufman (co-founder of LEARN) was giving a talk that broke things down in a way that made it easy for me understand how parts of Rails functioned. That was huge because at that time, I did not have a clear idea of what Rails was. I think it also says a lot about how LEARN is so heavily involved in the San Diego Tech scene. The lead instructor of my cohort was influential with his style of instruction. It was not so much the learning of languages and how to use a framework but the building of good programming habits (both technical and with concern to general programmer happiness). Instruction had more to do with learning to think and communicate like a programmer. Without the insights of Lisa (the outreach coordinator) and Chelsea (CEO), the transition to becoming a software developer personally would have been stifling. I’ve been working as a junior software developer now for about five months and to this day, I find myself with so much gratitude for this community of great people.

I did hit some rough patches with parts of the material, and that's natural - it happens to EVERYONE. However, I always had someone to ask for help during and after my time at LEARN. Another beautiful thing about the people at LEARN is that they are also very concerned about burnout prevention. They want you to still have a life outside of the bootcamp because they truly understand that humans are humans; that our brains can only handle so much input before you collapse into a burnout—you learn better when you’re not stressed out. This was a very winning point for me because I’m aware that programmer burnout is a real thing. I experienced something similar to it when I was in architecture school. I appreciate intensity but I just don't think being at a computer for 15+ hours a day is conducive to maximized learning or good programming. And LEARN did a great job at providing a healthy environment. 

LEARN provides an internship after three months. I cannot emphasize how important this internship was both in terms of what I learned and how I used it to build my resume. My peers have gone on to work for companies that partnered with LEARN to provide internships. A month after my internship ended, I had four in-person interviews (plus three phone interviews). I received three offers. The job hunting process was no joke. It was a  constant hustle, but I was prepared for it because of all the groundwork that was laid during the Professional Development week at LEARN. Did I happen to mention that I work at a pretty cool fin-tech startup in San Diego Downtown? That’s right — Thank you, LEARN.   

They have it down when it comes to helping you build a network of people who will help you not only get your foot in the door, but also one that will help you throughout your programming career. LEARN is a co-op space for alumni. I've been back many times (and I wish more), to ask for help, to share my knowledge, to attend meet-ups, and to just be there and work among other programmers. I have seen that they have made an already amazing program even better. 

I have no doubt that LEARN will be the right choice for anyone looking to take the leap into the world of web-development. 

I had a great experience at Learn! The 3 months of full time class and 1 month internship where challenging but so fun! I learned Ruby, Rails, Javascript, HTML and CSS. I am very grateful to now be a part of the supportive and engaging Learn community too. I ended up getting hired from my internship and have been employed there as a Ruby on Rails Software Developer for over a year now and couldn't be happier! Thank you Learn for everything you've done to change my life. Keep up the good work!

At LEARN you's actually learn: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, TDD/BDD(testing), AJAX, JSON, REST API's, PostgresSQL, SQL, Git, Github, PAIR PROGRAMMING!!!, group projects, guest speakers, field trips, internship, interview practice, SEO education, Resume help, and networking. Each class gets better and better!

The thing about Learn is that they realize there's a burnout point and once that is reached you can't learn anymore at that moment. That's why their course in M-F 9-5. It gives you a weekend, and free time to recoup, and work on your own things. The other part to LEARN is that they teach you how to learn, and how to get unstuck. I loved LEARN. The people are great, and once school was over it's not like they go away. We still talk, have great friendships, and are actually working on an alumni project together. 

Bootcamps are not intended or the faint of heart. I went to Learn because I know some of the Ruby developpers in San Diego and I really like the inclusive and friendly ethos (MINASWAN!). Learn offers soiid full-stack immersion and it will surely kick your ass to cover material this fast but the team is flexible and fully involved in getting you through. The instructors and administrators really care about the individual students in the class and how where they are going after the end of the course. 

Attending Learn Bootcamp was one of the best things I could have done for myself. The adminstrators, teachers and fellow students were great to work with. I was able to learn a tremendous amount in a short period of time from people who are knowledgeable and passionate about coding. Learn not only provided the education, but also the motivation and support to get us all through this type of intense learning. They are very open to feedback and work very hard on our behalf to get us placed in the most ideal internships. I will always look back on my time at Learn fondly. I plan to stay in touch and continue to be a part of the Learn community.

If you're looking for a challenge and you want your career to be a creative outlet, this bootcamp is a good jumpstart into the inventive world of computer programming. LEARN will introduce you to the popular technologies used by many companies (Git, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Bootstrap, SQL, RSpec, Ruby, and Rails) and give you the space to create webpages and web applications with motivated peers. A big plus with LEARN is that they're well connected in the programming industry so you're exposed to meeting a lot of developers from around the world. Also, you're given real world coding experience by being placing into an internship at the end of the program. 

I was apart of LEARN's third cohort.  As many of my classmates and instructors would say, we looked forward to (almost) every day :) 

I would say I had a fantastic time so far.  Learned much more about Rails and of course utilizing common shortcuts such as utilizing devise and omniauth.  The Ruby, Postgres, and JavaScript sections were pretty good.  I kind of wish the their was a bit more beef on the rails section.  Nonetheless there is a vast amount of reaources out there and having another programmer look over your code realtime is amazing. 

Pros: Nice location, instructors are nice.  1. The only saving grace for this program is that you get to intern for a company and get real work experience. A lot of the people I met had great internships (myself included) where I learned more than in 3~ weeks than I did in the 3 months I spent at LEARN. You can build great connections with your internship boss and use that to branch out and find work.    Cons:  1. Instructors are all alumni from this program. All 3 instructors graduated less than 2 years ago and now they are in charge of teaching the new cohorts how to code. When I asked Hillary (the person who "interviews" you before you officially start the program) who the instructors would be she responded, "The instructor is someone who has 15+ years of experience in this field and is very knowledgeable" only later to find out that he retired and taught us maybe 1 course out of the entire class.  The "lead" instructor was this guy who looked high all the time and had no idea what he was talking about. And about 90% of all lectures were done by the Associate Instructors (again alumni who graduated with less than 2 years of actual developer experience. Some of then never actually got a job and just got hired back so LEARN could inflate their hired numbers) When asking questions, instructors often times would say "Let me get back to you" and never really get back to you with a coherent answer. Often times during lectures, there were students who would correct the "instructors" because they were making errors or doing something incorrectly.    2. Job Hire.  In my initial interview with Hillary, I asked what the success rate was for students. She told me that the percentage of all alumni was around 84%~. I asked specifically about the previous cohorts and still got that same number. Fast-forward to "Professional Development Week", the career coach person throws out the same exact number despite maybe 2 months going by. Then fast-forward again, I have completed my internship, I reach out to ask about employment numbers and get the exact same number. There are no specifics, no real data, no concrete evidence ever presented. Just a random statistic that never changes. So in about a 4-5 month span, the success rate has stayed exactly the same? Yea I don't buy it and neither should you.    3. Cohort Group  There is no pre-screening or assessment done before you do this program. Looking back, that should have been a huge red flag that LEARN just wants your money. People in my cohort ranged from being geniuses and having comp-sci backgrounds to people who could barely type. As someone who was middle of the road and understood the concepts after putting in extra work, it was difficult to learn because LEARN operates using paired-programming. Some days I would get steamrolled by the students who already had tech backgrounds and they just wanted to finish the assignment. Other days it was like pulling teeth trying to explain a topic to a student who didn't know the difference between JavaScript and Ruby.  Overall, it was difficult to learn topics consistently and would require HOURS of extra work outside of class to try and understand it. (Also in part because the instructors couldn't/wouldn't help us --> it was part of the learning process )   4. Outdated Technology LEARN would always try and flex and say things like "We are constantly evolving and teaching things that meet the demand of the marketplace" in regards to their curriculum. However, they have been teaching the same React/Ruby on Rails curriculum for the last 2 years at least. Newbies reading this should know that Ruby and Ruby on Rails is not big anymore and definitely not big in San Diego, Orange County, or LA (where I am assuming most people attending this program would be from). Rails is popular in San Francisco and New York and even then, you find other programming back-end languages like Java, Python, and Go WAY more in job postings than Ruby on Rails. Is Ruby/RoR a good skill to have? Sure. It's easy to learn but when you’re applying for that Junior position that requires Java or Python, they're not going to choose you. Also, half-way through the program, the instructors decided to stop checking in on student progress. Students had lots of questions and nothing every got answered and we just moved on, wasting about 2 weeks’ worth of projects that got no real answer. Overall, if you're paying this much money for a boot camp, you should be learning the latest and greatest not something that was popular 10 years ago.    5. Professional Development Week You have a whole week break during the cohort where you update your professional appearance on LinkedIn and build a portfolio. You get lecture after lecture on topics ranging on elevator pitches, updating your resume, and updating your LinkedIn. If you want to save yourself the time and energy doing this, just find a portfolio on YouTube and spruce it up and make it your own. Go on LEARN Academy on linked in and just search any alumni (literally any of them that have it) and you can see the paragraph that every single alum has in relation to what they did at LEARN. Also, you get a professional headshot done for all your professional online presence. The Elevator Pitch is just a YouTube video, the portfolio template they give you, and again, you're going to have the exact same blurb as anyone who has ever attended LEARN on your LinkedIn. At the end of the week, you send your resume to Bryan who is the career coach person for feedback. The feedback is honestly not even remotely useful because after independently testing that resume against job postings and resume critics from real developers, my resume would have been instantly scrapped and ghosted.    Conclusion: Would I do LEARN Academy again? Absolutely not. There's mediocre student support wrapped in "we are a family" mentality which means their niceness covers up the fact that they are in fact, pretty useless.  From teaching yourself, working against other cohort students to try and figure out issues when pair programming, and doing the bare minimum when it comes to updating your social presence, it’s obvious that LEARN is not in it to truly help students succeed and just want your money. Nobody, from the CEO down to the instructors, really has a solid tech/developer background and it shows. I would highly encourage you to consider doing another program that is actually student-focused, has actual instructors that have experience in the industry, and a large reliable network. You are paying 14-20k for this and it should be worth that. But in reality, you are paying 14-20k for a 1-month internship with a local tech company which really makes no sense. 
 

I joined LEARN in 2019 to pursue a career as a web developer and was told by them that 85% of their graduates have jobs within six months. I have since found out about 8 months after graduating that, that number is completely made up and it is much harder to get a job then advertised. They make it seem as if it is so easy to break into the tech industry. In reality, you need much more experince then they can offer. They also preach that you don't need prior experience, but that is also a lie. They do give you a good environment to be around and help you start to understand what you are doing, but this is not worth 15k. I strongly advise someone who is looking to joing a coding bootcamp to find one that actually invests in you finding a job. The staff at LEARN are very nice, but I would be too if you paid me 15k to hang out for three months. I'm not saying not to join, but don't expect to get hired afterwards. 

I understand that this program seems to have been a success for a handful of individuals . The technique of teaching they provide may work for some, but not all. Everyone has a different learning style and Learn only supports one way, which is peer programming. I understand this is great within a working environment, but not everyone is able to solidify information in that manner when learning something new. When I am spending  8 hrs. a day, plus $14,500,  I should feel I have used my time wisely, rather when I going home frustrated. Expressing my concerns, which they don't like you to complain about anything, just constructive criticism, I was pretty much told maybe this program was not right for me. Which it was not and I withdrew. But that kind of attitude towards some one interested in learning a new skill is undiscerning. They should be more understanding and accommodating to each person's learning style.

Learn promotes that their camp is for beginners, which it is not. It is more geared towards people with some kind of background in programming, not just an interest. I feel their screening process should be more thorough, with a technical part before officially being accepted into the program. The curriculum was disorganized and hard to follow at times. There are reputable sights to learn Web Development, build a portfolio, provide you skills for interviewing and finding a job. These sights do not cost much or are for free. Not sure what Learn feels they are providing for $14,500, other than  lining their pockets with money. Please consider other options before throwing your money away or going into debt. 

Pros: 
- Excellent career services 
- Internship included, and some were paid 
- Curriculum reflected current trends/job opportunities 
- Flexible with daily lessons based on student needs 
- LEARN is very involved in the local tech community, so there are a lot of connections to be made 
- Good work/life balance 
- School is understanding and respectful of students' external commitments 
- The people who work at LEARN are wonderful 

Cons: 
- Learning material on website sometimes unclear or had mistakes, and continued uncorrected despite student feedback 
- Few opportunities taken to assess students' knowledge, no code reviews 
- Morning lessons frequently ended with "So does that make sense to everybody? *silence* Great!" 
- Instructors always willing to help, but not always experienced enough to be able to help 
- Pair programming required, but can be more inhibiting than helpful depending on individual learning style 

Bottomline: 
- Glad I did LEARN, certainly a good way to change careers and get your foot in the door with the internship. At the end of the day I'm confident I'll get a job and I'm excited to start a new career, but it was a windy road at times 

Advice to LEARN: 
- designating a scrum master would help with continuous improvement 
- if resources allow, code reviews would be very beneficial to students

This Ruby on Rails bootcamp has a solid curriculum. It starts with the basics, HTML, CSS and moves on to JavaScript, JQuery and Ruby on Rails. Their instructors are patient and help you with problems without giving you the answer. They are invested in their students and really want you to succeed. They push the importance of getting out in your community with volunteering, meet-ups etc. Overall, I would say Learn was a good experience and helped me to level up in my coding career.

I'm also glad that they got rid of the instructor because he wasn't the right person to be teaching coding to total beginners. He was impatient and demeaning to those that needed support that most. Isn't the point of attending bootcamp in person is to have hands-on experience and get support when needed?

Overall, I had a good experience at LEARN and learnt some but it would be a mistake to assume to you'll come out prepared to be a developer from day one. Once you start your first job as a developer, you'll realize there's a huge of gap between what you need to know and what you learnt in short 12 (actually 8 weeks because of "1 week of professional development and 3 weeks of final project").

 

 

 

 

I attended this bootcamp on a scholarship in which the entire tuition was waived. So first I wanted to express my gratitude for the people at LEARN for providing me that amazing opportunity. I probably would have not attended had it not been for this scholarship. I just wanted to preface my review with that so you understand the context of it since it might not contain the same kind of cost/benefit complaints that many other reviews contain.

I think the great thing about this bootcamp is that it's run by a husband/wife team and that the wife is actually the CEO. I think that is quite inspiring for many women coming into this industry filled with sexism. She advocates for inclusion and has given talks on such topics in the community which I think is something different than other bootcamps. This place feels like a safe environment.

My cohort was small and we all managed to bond very well with each other. This bootcamp was very adamant about not studying any new material once we left after 5pm. Though I definitely think that reviewing some material for a while when you go home by yourself is great to solidify the concepts. 

This bootcamp labels itself as a Javascript/Rails focused bootcamp but that may be misleading. Of course when building web apps Javascript is going to be dabbled in much of the time so it never really goes away. But we don't necessarily focus on it too much. We spend about 2 weeks doing Javascript and we actually learn programming concepts through this language. I think this the time period during the course that I actually felt my mind being stretched. After this period, we move into Ruby but I felt like we should have spent more time in it. The curriculum didn't feel as challenging during the Ruby portion which was about a week.  When we moved into Rails I lost that 'stretchy' feeling and I didn't really feel like I was doing any 'programming' but merely managing this vast library that is Rails which is fine, but I felt like concepts were beginning to slip away from my mind.

Now this kind of segues into why I titled my title the way I did. During the course we pair program everyday. We would have a standup sessoin in the morning where we talk about what we 'Mad, Sad, Glad, or scared' about and check-in. then we would have a presentation on a topic, and after that we would pair up and practice what we just learned. 

In certain respects, pair programming is great because if you get stuck, your partner is there to provide an alternate perspective and you are able to keep moving fairly quickly. The thing in my mind that I felt like could have been improved and this is might be a  more a personal issue, is that you inevitably come to a point where your stuck and your partner may find a way to get unstuck for you but you might not understand how they came up with the solution they did. Asking questions and requesting them over and over to explain something to you sometimes isn't effective and isn't in the best interest of time. Some people work very fast, and some things click for them more readily whereas others learn differently. People going into bootcamps come from VASTLY different backgrounds, some may have had exposure to programming, some have math degrees, some have no exposure whatsoever. I found myself taking a backseat a lot and letting the other person drive because I just didn't think I was grasping things as quickly as they were. In this short time period, your going to have vastly different outcomes depending on the student. 

This is where the time-based nature of the course comes to the forefront and I think is the biggest obstacle to truly learning concepts for some people. Keep in your mind that this is a BOOTCAMP, with all the implicatoins that that entails. You will be exposed to concepts and then PUSHED through the curriculum whether or not you understand them fully. There were times where I felt like I was just going through the motions and was completely lost but didn't feel like reaching out realy helped me out either. The TA's couldn't really provide the personal attention needed to truly help, they always seemed to be pre-occupied with other things, or perhaps they are just introverted. This is the problem with time-based education, or the factory model which bootcamps emulate from the traditional school system. You need to realy dig into these concepts that your learning and your going to need repetition, and when your only their for a few months, your inevitably going to feel pressure.

What I wish was that they had more instructors who had experience in the industry. We had one head instructor who was very knowledgable but I don't think he knew how to relate to people too well despite having a degree in counseling. I perceived him as being impatient, elitist and authoritarian. He would frequently 'hush' or interrupt what they were saying to people when they would try to explain their disagreements, or get quite short with them when they weren't getting something as quickly as he wanted. This kind of behaviour doesn't encourage students to want to ask questions if they feel they are going to be attacked subtly by doing so. I'm not the only one who felt this. The TA's were helpful at times and not so much at other times, as they were also grads of the same bootcamp.   

This bootcamp is also unique in that they provide a one month internship with a local company. These companies rotate every cohort. Some were looking to hire someone, some weren't. Some are paid, some are not. Some companies came and gave presentations and we would rank them. After the rankings the LEARN team then setup interviews based on wht we ranked, though not everyone gets what they want. Then after the interviews we would rank them again, and the companies would rank the the interviewees, and again LEARN would try to find the best fit.

The companies are vastly different in size, ranging from startups without office space with 5 employees, to established companies. But I think on the whole the internship is valuable to providing real world experience that you can use on a resume'. There is also a group project during the last two weeks where we built out a complete web app from scratch utilizing the Agile process with daily scrum sessions. At the end of the two weeks we had a demo night to the local community. This experience was very valuable as well, as now we have an app that we can use in our portfolio.

 The bootcamp industry needs a lot of work and I don't know how much longer it's going to be around, but despite my criticisms, I am grateful for the exposure I received to a new field. I feel the large part of the value of being in a bootcamp is being dropped into the middle of a pre-existing network of people who are in the industry and who can help you navigate the waters of moving into a new industry. You can go to meetups with people from your cohort, find out about jobs through your network of peers, and for that the experience is valuable.

Thanks to a presentation that the CEO Chelsea gave about finding your motivations. I was able to really clarify what motivated me to be in the tech industry. This clarification was something that definitely boosted my confidence and helped me figure out a way to present myself to people that I felt was true to what I am passionate about. I think that was one of the most helpful things during the course because there were times where I was questioning myself asking 'What am I doing here? '. I discovered and connected my passion for open source, with sustainable agriculture, social justice and worker co-ops. Now I have a clearer picture of where I want to go in the future. 

Overall I am very grateful for my experience and I feel confident in the direction I need to go now in my learning.