Microverse

I'm writing this review just to warn people not to make my same mistake. When you see those ads about some kind of American online school teaching you how to code and guaranteeing you'll get a job after their course you feel like it's something amazing and a life-changing opportunity. It is not.

Disclaimer: This is my point of view as a student from an European country. Most of the students are from Africa, with lots of language barriers and technical problems. If you're not from a well-developer country, the same thoughts might not apply to you and you might see Microverse as a way out of a bad situation, but I still suggest you make sure that paying back 15.000$, which is a huge amount of money, is worth it for basic education.

TL;DR - Don't join Microverse, the education is barely enough to land you a junior position, the cost is absurd compared to the education and help you get, the learning material is all free and public, you don't get that 'Guaranteed job' they talk about and the diversity of students you'll face will cause a bad learning experience because of language barriers. You're better off following good tutorials on YouTube and later on attending a paid upfront specialization course that will help you secure a job way better.

I'll start off by saying I'm a lazy person, I didn't go to university and all I have is a high school diploma, but I had a passion for developing software, so I decided I might give it a try. You know, those amazing ads saying that you owe them nothing unless you get a job really sound tempting.
At the onboarding, you get some material to go through, mostly basic HTML/CSS and a bit of JS, you get paired with another student and you have to build a project from 'The Odin Project' list of assignments. You have a total of 6 pair-programming projects to finish before getting onboarded, and I have to say I've been either terribly unlucky or this was the normal onboarding process, because all 3 times I've had difficulties even speaking basic English to the other student because of their language, and one student didn't even show up so I had to submit the project all by myself. But this went well and I was excited to start my journey.

At the first modules, you get an introduction to very very VERY basic HTML and CSS, literally starting from zero, and have to build a sketch of your portfolio following one of the templates provided, you get to feel what a day at Microverse is like and you get to meet other students. As time passes by, you start realizing there's huge skill gaps between the students, the more you progress the more people will start copying and not caring about learning, ruining the experience of pair programming as they progress just by stealing other people's works. Microverse says they use tools to detect plagiarism among students, but I've had experiences where a student copied my whole project line by line and nothing was done about that, MORE THAN ONCE. The review process is given as a part-time position to students who are more than halfway-through the program, getting paid around 200-300$ per month, based on how many reviews they get, which means many people will just do it for the money and not for improving the other students' experience, resulting in poorly done reviews which let people progress when they shouldn't.

By the time you reach the final modules no one really cares about following the activities anymore, the meetings are joined muted with camera off, no one talks about anything, and if there is a pair programming activity, it's usually one side doing most of the job.

Before you get onboarded there's tons of promises about career coaches, financial advisors, student success team being there for you and helping you secure a job after you 'graduate', but I found out that as soon as I finished the program, all you get is a list of websites where you should look for a job on (Most of them requiring higher seniorities as they're remote positions) and that's it. They literally tell you 'Now go look for a job' and that's it. No offers as soon as you finish, no interviews setup already, nothing. Their promise of "We'll help you land a job" is just translated into a weekly call with a career coach that does nothing but rush through the available 30 mins for the session (For 4-5 students, not just one) asking about how job search is going, that's it. The most effort I've seen from the team at helping you land a job is a Huntr board where they say they have a curated list of job offers that could interest you, handpicked by the staff. What I found on that board, though, is a list of job offers where 80% of them wasn't even related to coding, and many of them weren't even remote. From the 20% job offers related to coding, they were mostly senior positions. They even had the guts to add a job listing as an auto sales person at a dealership in the US, which I find ridiculous and it just shows how 'handpicked' those job offers really are.

Don't expect the certificates or graduation you get from Microverse to mean anything to your future job interviewer, they always tro to make you leverage the fact that you've attended an online school and coded for over 10,000 hours while also doing pair programming and attending curriculum activites, but the education you get from Microverse is really basic, barely enough to land you a junior level job, that's why a lot of students will spend many more months sharpening their skills before they can actually find a position.

I'll end saying that I succesfully landed a job after Microverse, but it wasn't thanks to Microverse, not at all, I didn't get any support from them, and I feel like having to pay 15.000$ back is a robbery because of how bad my experience was with this course, when I could've paid less for better courses with more serious students.

I recently published an article on Medium titled, "My Journey as a Software Developer",  here attached is the link to that article - https://medium.com/@chiacarlyle/my-journey-with-software-development-11689ced7f8f. I mention this article because it talks a lot about my experience at Microverse; and yes, it's worth writing/blogging about.

Microverse is the perfect blend between theory and practicals, knowledge and skill, technical and professional, accelerated and traditional. It has one of the best curricula out there which focuses on helping you learn the most in-demand skills in software development so you can get a great job no matter where you are. The standard program runs for nine months, but students can take longer if they need more time to grasp the concepts. Career coaches help in job search upon completion of the curriculum. This is the basic information you can find anywhere on the internet.

Personally, I think Microverse is a Godsend. No matter who you are, how much technical skill you have or not, Microverse will always have something for you. It is impossible to go through a single block in Microverse and not experience a marked transformation in at least one aspect of your career.
For people like me from developing countries who can not afford to pay $15000 upfront for a Bootcamp to get standard education, Microverse is a Deus ex machiña. Letting Micronauts pay gradually AFTER getting their ideal jobs is just amazing. An idea like this can not really get enough praise and commendation. Take advantage of it while you can!
Another thing that makes Microverse standout is its cordial, large, and ever-growing community. Once a Micronaut, forever a Micronaut! and of course, why would you ever want to leave such an amazing family? Senior Micronauts are always more than happy to offer mentorship, guidance, and directions, to younger ones. Those who have attained their goals always offer their insights and share their experiences so that others can learn from them. The students always help one another get unstuck, make them write better code through code reviews, contribute to projects through remote pair-programming, and so on.

Microverse is not without its cons as it can be very overwhelming, especially in its first few weeks. My stress levels got so high that I got ill, and almost gave up, but I had a good support system that helped me pull through that tough spell. Since then, it's gotten easier and better.

If you are into software development, Microverse is the right place for you; there is no Bootcamp that culminates to be better than Microverse, online or onsite, and you can quote me anywhere.

One Robert left a scathing review one year ago, I don't see any difference between his and my experience. I feel the curriculum is not strong, will not make one technically well equipped after the program. What you learn is very basic, most students have to spend time learning on their own after the program to land a job. The school has collaboration, pair programming etc as their USP, but it's all smokes and mirrors. Most students in UTC+1 batch have awful professionalism. I have seen some turn up to meetings half naked. In group projects, some disappear for days altogether, turn up at the end of the week and expect you to do all the work. Plagiarism is rampant.  Even when reported, Microverse turns a blind eye, because they need the $15k from the offenders, so they take no action. Microverse expects integrity from it's students, they don't seem to have any. All my Capstone projects have been plagiarized, when reported, they did nothing. The offenders will now be using my projects for job search which I will be applying to. Your reviews about your awful coding partners will not be taken seriously. It will not be conveyed to the corresponding student, so they continue to progress through the program and ruin the experience for some other student. Can't wait to pay them back and severe ties. Won't recommend. For 15k you would expect some first class coding boot-camp experience, all you get is some third rate African boot-camp experience that hands out certification even if you didn't do any work.

I found Microverse very exciting at the beginning, I guess mainly because of their advertisements (You don't pay until you land a job), but after I progressed through the program I started to see what it really was.

Reviewers:
They have part-time jobs for some of the most qualified students, their job is to review other student's projects.
For me, it was an awful process, for about 15 reviews I had, I just remember 2 of them where the reviewer
really took the time to go through my project and provide feedback for improvement. Once a reviewer called me
a novice, I reported the issue, and what I got was the supervisor having their back. Most reviewers just approved the
projects because they are paid, not because they want the students to go beyond their skills.

Instructors:
I see people giving 5 starts rating for instructors, which caught my attention 🤔, because, There are no instructors!
You do everything by yourself and with some help from your peers (if you're paired with a nice one).

Pair-programming:
Negative reviews about coding partners are ignored. Once, I entered a room where one student was not wearing his t-shirt,
thankfully there wasn't any girl in that room. After some time, 3 or 4 weeks, people start to attend the meetings just to
mark their attendance, and they join with the camera and mic off, I reported several times and nothing was done, just words, but
no action was taken.

Curriculum:
The material they provide is all free sources, they don't create any material
for the students, just the structure of what you need to learn after each topic.
What they do, is create the lessons, but the guidance on those is horribly explained, sometimes
I had to read those 10 times to really understand the requirements. I decided to drop out before the final module
because I found learning much more on my own. If it was $2k or $1k, I get it, less money less quality, but $15k is not
worth the money for this.

Conclusion:
There are better options out there. If you already have the roadmap Developer Roadmaps - roadmap.sh, Microverse is not your option. Many companies don't 
care about the bootcamp, just your skills or your experience, if you have none of those, a very expensive certificate of 
completion won't help that much.

A Microverse ad on Facebook appeared in front of me at the right moment. The message they had was "you don't pay anything until you get a job that pays you $1,000 USD or more.” That is a huge plus for people that don’t have the resources, but have the desire to study.  

Also, the fact that Microverse helps you to find a remote job as a software developer after the training is a huge plus. Now, we have 2 points in favor of Microverse.

 

The difficulty to find a good job in a small city encouraged me to join Microverse, as one of my goals is to enter in the software development world to learn how this works from inside a real software company.

 

After 5 months, I define Microverse as a place where you can find people with interests similar to yours, that are willing to help you anytime you ask for help, and a place where you will learn to code as a pro.

 

Another feature is the pair programming, where you will practice your English, learn to explain your ideas and code, and understand other people's code and ideas. Also, you will learn more about time zones.

 

But if this is not enough, there are also TSEs (technical support engineers) that review your code and give you feedback to improve your code and projects.

I found Microverse on LinkedIn and there were a couple of things that made me apply for microverse immediately were the stack they were teaching ( JavaScript, React, Redux, Ruby and Databases, Ruby on Rails ) and ISA ( Income Share Agreement ) where I've to pay nothing upfront and I've to pay 15% only when my monthly income is more than $1,000 till it reaches to $15,000.

I'm about to complete my React Redux Module and so far I've learned a lot of things that I couldn't learn alone due to distraction or I'll be doing in any Software Company.

For me, Microverse is an Ideal Software Development Institute to become a Full Stack Web Development and I highly recommend this.

The program has been great, no doubt it's so far the best online BootCamp I have come across. Before microverse, I tried self-learning but it was not easy, accountability is expensive, luckily microverse gives you that for free. NOW LETS SEE THE PROS;
-Holds you accountable
- Project-based learning
- So many professional skills(I bet most self-learners can not even use GitHub well, but microverse will make you see GitHub differently in no time, let alone LinkedIn/Angelist e.t.c)
- Experience working with teams in a remote setting, including remote pair-programming
- No upfront fees... you pay zero dollars till you land a job that pays atleast 1000usd(lets just call it free)
-Despite having many students to attend to, microverse is doing a great job attending each student at the right time.
- and many more pros, obviously I won't list them all..but those are the main ones.
BELOW ARE THE CONS;
- Not beginner-friendly, the program is designed to fit people with at least some prior experience, there is less room for being new, much more because it's project-based, and it has deadlines. That being said though, it's not impossible, I started not knowing anything too but here I am just finishing the 3rd module(react/redux), you might repeat a few weeks here and there but with persistence, you'll move.
- Studying materials and very insufficient, that say from the beginning that microverse has no teacher, they provide some materials but of course, it's not always enough, you'll eventually find yourself using other materials more(this will also teach you how to learn on your own)

CONCLUSION
- you won't find anything as good as this online, at least for now.
- I might have not written properly and skipped many pros, but trust me they overweigh the few cons..it's A platform I wish I knew about earlier.

As a learner with little background in software development, I applied to Microverse in October 2020, after visiting Microverse official website via a tweet I came across online. 
I officially started my journey as a Micronaunt in March 2021 after a series of pre-enrollment exercises, which later proved to be a very important aspect of my journey.
My first week seems a bit overwhelming, but with the support system put in place to assist beginners, I was able to excel the first few weeks and learn interesting skills that help boost my confidence and belief system as the weeks progress.
The program curriculum is well structured and organised in such a fashion that it present learners with varieties of learning material and curated course content to digest from based on learners assimilation abilities and speed. The support system is organised in a fashion that will enable learners to always have someone to reach out to when face with challenges, for example, one could easily reach out to the stand-up team, coding and collaborative partner, mentors and student success team, all readily available to support your growth and journey and help clear the blockers for continual progress.
The structure in Microverse has exposed me to the real-world work environment and each day to day activity and challenge I face has helped build my professional skills and shape my belief system to enable me to excel in my career as a software developer.
Every day, I wake up with strong determination and desire to give my best, always committed focus and persistent to achieve my career goals, these daily drives have enabled me to become great at learning any skill and mastering new tools with ease. Personally, for me, the manner in which the learning system has been able to inject into me the ability to learn and relearn things is my greatest motivation, because facing a new task doesn't scare me anymore, I just believe I have what it takes to learn and be the best at it simple!. Therefore, it has been a game-changer for me.
Finally, my journey in Microverse up to this point has been a fantastic and remarkable experience. So, without any reservation, I will recommend Microverse to anyone who has a strong desire to become a Software developer and want to be not just a full-stack web developer but the best that the world will be proud to have to join Microverse right away.

Microverse selects self-starter developers from around the world and from various backgrounds. They are at different levels in their tech learning/career, some have degrees, some don't. Some are switching to programming from another career, while some have many years of experience but only limited opportunities in their area of the world.
This mix leads to a unique learning experience, where you learn to collaborate with people from different backgrounds, with a unique accent in English, to create quality software. This, in my opinion, is a real strength of the Microverse. Indeed, any student coming out of there can adapt to any multicultural context in English in the tech industry and succeed.

The curriculum is a curated list of resources covering both technical and soft skills.
On the technical side, it's mostly HTML, CSS, Javascript (ES6+), ESLint, StyleLint, WebHint, Webpack, React, Redux, Ruby, Ruby on Rails. One thing to point out that I think is fantastic about Microverse is the student's exposure to Git/GitHub from day one. I remember before Microverse, although I was already a developer, my workflow and comfort level with version control were very limited. Throughout the course, the student works on several projects (usually) one per week (the first project being his own portfolio). As a result, he builds a contribution graph on GitHub worthy of a world-class developer, and the activities lead him to vary the way he contributes: commits, pull requests, code reviews, issues.

As for soft skills, the curriculum covers a lot of notions, such as planning one's week, managing conflicts, learning to give feedback...
I particularly liked the fact that the curriculum pushes us to modify our Github, LinkedIn, and AngelList profiles to make them look professional. This makes the student ready to apply for offers even before finishing the curriculum, even if it is discouraged by the institution.

I pointed out earlier that the curriculum is a curated list of resources. This can be both a strength and a weakness. A strength in that the student is exposed to different sources of learning, and is not dependent on a single source. This opens the mind and allows for more detailed learning of concepts.
Unfortunately, it can also be a disadvantage in that the learning material for a concept is sometimes too long for the time available and too broad for the complexity of the task. Thus sometimes the student can feel overwhelmed or lost. This is for me the major weak point of Microverse. I would like to point out, however, that they are constantly optimizing. Indeed, they regularly ask for feedback from students and work behind the scenes to improve the curriculum, the learning experience, and the overall student experience.

Finally, I'll talk about support at Microverse. Although it is entirely remote, there is a Student Success team that provides wonderful support to students and is available to address concerns of any kind.

In conclusion, Microverse is an excellent choice of school for anyone looking to pursue a career in tech at a professional level and ideally remote. You learn things that are in demand in the market, while building your reputation as a developer, expanding your network as a professional, making friends, and being assisted and supported by a dynamic team.
It is not perfect and certainly has things to improve in its operation, but I can only recommend it, as I see the effects on my own person even though I am still a student.

Take a look at my various profiles to get an idea of what I am talking about:

GitHub: https://github.com/Kingjosh007
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/king-josaphat-chewa
AngelList: https://angel.co/u/Kingjosh007
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KingJoChewa 

Enrolling at Microverse is one of the greatest things that ever happened to me. Here at Microverse, you don't pay tuition upfront until you land your dream job and earning at least 1,000 USD. As a student of Microverse, I've learned a whole lot here as regards software development, remote work, pair-programming, communication skills, mentorship, and collaborative skills.
The way the program is structured is entirely amazing. Here, the methodology is project-based. There're five modules on this program and the students and their coding partners have a series of projects to work on each module, which is amazing. Some projects are solo while some others are collaborative. This approach helps the students to learn pair-programming, remote work, and collaboration.
There're both mandatory and extra algorithms and data structures in the technical curriculum to help the students improve their problem-solving skills.
Also, there're fantastic Career Coaches that helps the students prepare and land their dream jobs at the end of the tech curriculum.
There's a whole lot to write but I'll have to stop here. However, I won't forget to say that Microverse also helps some students who are committed and are facing financial challenges with student supports. And I'm currently a beneficiary of the Microverse stipend support.
So, there's nothing I do not like @Microverse.
Sincerely,
James.
Thank you.

I've been a student in Microverse for 4 months already, i think this has been a great experience overall since day 1. 
New students are grouped in teams of 5(like scrum), this methodology helps improve the student's abilities by allowing them to share their daily experiences with others students from around the world(amazing huh?) while also improving communication and team work.
Personally i can give testimony of the amazing staff Microverse has, they are always open to hear you whenever you have a difficulty and that says a lot about their mindset as a company.
Pros:
-Great way to start your software development career.
-Meet people around the world.
-Build experience.
-Helps you build a daily routine and discipline.
-Improves communication and team work.
Cons:
You need a 10mb stable internet connection at all times(for collaborating with your coding partner in video call)
There is some basic web development and coding requirements to join.
For some people with different timezones to the US, it might be difficult to attend the program since its from 9am-5pm

This program is actually one of the best programs I've found. It's a really quick and serious program, so you have to be focused on what you're doing the entire program, but even with the speed of the program, it's a really good experience, not only because you learn a lot in a short time, but also because you meet new people every week, and you can build your professional and non-professional network with the people you find here. I started the program knowing some HTML, CSS, and a tiny of JavaScript, nowadays, I feel really confident with JavaScript, React and Redux, even though I know I still have a lot to learn. I would really recommend this program if you are really interested in programming, even if you don't know anything about it right now, but if you want to learn, this is a good place for you!