neue fische

Sehr negative Erfahrung im Bootcamp gemacht.
Meiner Meinung nach liegt bei Neue Fische der Fokus auf guten Umsatz. Es gab von Anfang an keinerlei Transparenz. Ein neuer Coach wurde eingesetzt, welcher noch nie zuvor unterrichtet hatte. Es gab massive soziale Spannungen im Kurs, welche bei Neue Fische lieber unter den Tisch gekehrt werden, obwohl sich mehrere Kursteilnehmer dazu geäußert haben. Die Geschwindigkeit des Kurses ist viel zu hoch um sinnvoll die Inhalte aufzunehmen. Jahrzehnte der Lernforschung scheinen an der Eingangstür von Neue Fische abzuprallen. Ich kann Jedem nur empfehlen, sich eine Alternative zu suchen oder sich vor dem Kurs massivst vorzubereiten.

I applied to the data science bootcamp, because I have been working in quantitative research and wanted to get out of academia and into a more technical role within the private sector. The course was what I expected it to be. You learn A LOT in a short amount of time. To achieve this, you have to work a lot, too.
The coaches are competent, nice and helpful. The lectures are a great mix of the intuition of the algorithms and the math behind it. At the same time you learn everything practically by doing coding exercises.
The course will be easier to master if you have a strong background in statistics, but even participants without it have accomplished a great deal.
In regards to finding a job afterwards, you obviously can't expect wonders after a 3 months course, but it definitely helped me a lot to get a desirable role. So in the end I am very happy to have visited the bootcamp!

Attending the Neue Fische WebDev Bootcamp in cologne was one of the best decisions I made this year!
I got into coding about a year ago when I started to think about a career change. One year later and thanks to my wonderful coaches Leon and Phillip I'm on the verge of being a Bootcamp graduate. 
I won't be lying: Attending the Bootcamp is going to be hard. The first weeks you dream about code and all the coding problems ou are not able to wok out. But after a few more weeks you will be able to solve problems you thought were unsolvable. I wasn't sure what to think about attending a remote Bootcamp at first. After the first few weeks, I was able to see massive benefits. We were able to solve problems by sharing screens and I believe your concentration was more focused on your doings. Even social interactions between students where great. Every Friday we had an "after-work" event where we played a lot of scribble, talked and had a lot of fun. We even had a "digitaler 11.11" where some of us dressed up and we had a little digital party. After 8 weeks of intensive learning in our digital classes, we started preparing our "Digitales Gesellenstück" (the Capstone project). Those 4 following weeks gave me time to apply all concepts we learned earlier. In this time there was always the option to get help from the coaches and the whole community. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Neue Fische to anyone who wants to get into coding.

Nice rooms at Spaces Cologne, nice and helpful people. Course concept is based on teamwork.  The coaches are nice, helpful and really interested in their students. I had a good time and I found a Job, although I came from a completely different business (social work and education). My only critical point is the Job Assistance. The employee responsible was more focused on the Hamburg students. I give 4 stars because the coaches filled the gap. They gave really helpful information for technical job interviews and gave the possibility to ask questions after the bootcamp. I keep in touch with Neue Fische alumni network, because I still like the people and the atmosphere. 

Instructors and the Cohort
I participated the data science boot camp in a group of 16 participants. After my studies 3 years earlier I did not expect it to be that hard. After the first week we knew why it is called a boot camp. The instructors did a great job in shaping the environment of the group so that it was a collaborative experience. The predominant driver of this boot camp is peer pressure - but not in a competitive fashion. The instructors gave us the feeling that we are in this together and that together we are stronger. Every attendee had some tasks from time to time and none would want to let the group down.

Learning Scope
The scope is quite large. The order of the course has a well designed structure. The course is focused on programming labs.
We had 2 one week projects and a 4 week capstone project in the end. These projects helped a lot in training through repetition without feeling like repetition.
I have the small critique that deep learning could be more fleshed out and I would have liked to learn something about reinforcement learning.

Job Assistance
We had various job sessions with advice for an entry into the field of data science or IT in general. Neue fische also works with partners that seek for applicants. From time to time those partners introduce themselves to the cohort. In general neue fische encourages networking. 
We graduated amidst the corona crisis and I personally have some trouble finding a job at the moment, but I am positive since the field in general is growing.

Especially in Germany it's still somehow experimental to choose that kind of alternative education. The most of developers I got to know so far, have a bachelor degree. But I heard also, that you're not necessarily learning to code in university – for bachelor students it's as well kind of a by-product. And I didn't want to develop the next computer, I don't need to know ALL the theory behind the practice. I just wanted to learn how to build websites. And I did it.

It was quit a turning point in my resume. Coming from theatre and literature, the only thing I brought along was a sense for structures. I learned everything else in that bootcamp. Sure, it's hard to learn something from scratch within two months and than write your first web-application within 4 weeks. But that's exactly what I was looking for: results and something happening. 

I would say the thing that helped me most getting started at neue fische, was the atmosphere there. From day one, it's clearly pointed out, that it's challenging – but they care for you in the same way: Have you drunk enough water? Do you have any questions? They make frequently breaks in order to recover, there is a fridge with free drinks etc. And on top of that, they got a strong awareness policy. Should be standard in 21st century, but it's still a pleasure to experience as normal together.

Last but not least: Yeah, it's coding. Numbers and variables the whole day long, looking for the needle in a haystack. Try some free coding courses online (like freecodecamp) to get a good idea of your next job ;)

For me it worked quite well to find a job: One month after graduating, I got a job in the city I want to live and I'll not complain about the salary ;)

I completed the bootcamp a couple of weeks ago and I found it super helpful and a good starting point to change your professional path into the direction of everything to do with data science. Will you know everything about data science after only 3 month? No, of course not, but you get a solid foundation and be able to build on that within your next role. And I'm still impressed what I learned and achieved in this relatively short amount of time.

If you are worried about if it is too much or you need to know a lot about statistics, as I was a bit: yes, it is a lot, and it definitely helps if you have a background in natural science or similar, like a field that uses statistical methods. Also it helps if you used UNIX before. And yes, the bootcamp is intense, but it can be done. You get a lot of support from the coaches, you just have to ask. They are super friendly and take the time to find solutions and are also willing to change the approach even during the bootcamp if you just let them know. For us, sometimes we felt a bit overwhelmed, but the learning by doing approach that is practiced during the course is good. Also, you have all of your fellow bootcamp students to talk to and (at least in my team) everyone was helpful and we had a great atmosphere. It helped that people came from different backgrounds in my opinion, and I was sad that during the pandemic we only met remote.

The bootcamp also helped me to get the position that I wanted. Luckily, I was able to do the course via the unemployment agency, otherwise it would have been too expensive for me. So, in summary, for me, it was definitely worth the work and the time that I invested and I would do it again.