Software Guild

Do yourself a favor, don't waste your money and most importantly YOUR TIME on this program. I will be reviewing online .Net program only. The in-person bootcamp might be good due to live interactions with the instructors and some accountability, but please STAY AWAY from the online program.  Here is why:

1) They will make you buy a $700 laptop for $1500 (Dell Latitude E5470). I’ve owned several PC’s and before the start of online cohort I asked one of the instructors, if I could save some money and use one of my existing machine for the course. He categorically said no, saying that “the Guild doesn’t want to support somebody else’s hardware”. I went ahead and purchased a $1500 laptop to find a mediocre machine with Community Edition Visual Studio on it, that I could have downloaded myself for free. Here I was with one more PC in my collection

2) Poor platform. The Software Guild claims that their instructors have had big experience developing for the enterprise, but the fact was that they couldn’t build their own decent educational platform. They use pre-build so-called “Moodle” platform, which lacked any functionality other than hosting pdf’s and videos. 

3) Pre-Work $1000. Absolutely not worth it.   It consists of very poorly written 2-3 page pdf’s. You will learn much more on platforms, such as codeacademy.com

4) They don’t keep promises. Before we started the program, we had an orientation session in which we were promised:

• to be checked by a mentor/TA every week. My mentor Randall Clapper never did.

• Flipped classroom Session every week

• One-on-One sessions with mentors that you can schedule in advance.

And guess what. By the middle of the program, we didn’t have any of those

5) Busy staff. Assignments and quizzes were checked a month after the submission due date, so you won’t get your code reviewed on time. I had my assignments and quizzes finally checked after I dropped out (month later).

6) Unorganized curriculum. This was pretty much the reason I dropped out of the program. I had to read other books and watch video tutorials to understand concepts, because of low quality reading material and confusing videos. Why the hell I have to pay money to the Guild, if they can’t teach me right. 

The bottom line is this. This program is not worth $10K. If you want to learn web development in online environment  and don’t risk your money doing that, check out launchschool.com ($200/month). Really quality education!  If you want to stick to .Net career path, buy good .Net books like Troelson's "Pro C#" and hire a mentor at codementor.io. It will be cheaper and more effective. If you have questions about this online program email me directly moisklad@yahoo.com and I will answer any questions, before you shell out $10K.

Note from moderators: The following is consolidated from a separate review written on 1/30/2016.

Eric, you are in no position to verify me on this site. This is why there is a option here "Review Anonymously". I can prove to readers that I was indeed a student of the program by submitting documents that I still have or you can ask me any question related to online .Net program .Just let me know if I should do this. So please don't try to discredit my review, by doubting my enrollment with the Guild. Below are my comments to your answers.

• "Laptop Cost: Laptop purchases are no longer required.​" "...they were sold at-cost and did include a premium support package​...:

OK. Will you buy back my laptop then? Or at least refund me the "premium" part of it?  "a premium support package". Really? $700 laptop with premium support that cost another $800?

• "Poor Platform...Building our own system would take resources away from students ​..."

You guys charge $10,000 per student! It's your responsibility to find resourses to provide modern learning system for students, not the ancient one that you had when I was enrolled. You pride yourself to be enterpise level developers. Show students your skills by actually building something useful for students.

• "Pre-work $1,000: The Introduction to Web Development course is being updated and released as a free online course in 2017​"

Can I get my $1000 back? Seriously your material really really sucks and not worth even $20!

• "Our mentors, including Randall, are available every weekday via a program we call open office hours ​..."

Had sessions with Randall as well as a flipped classrom session with him. He was so bad at teaching, that nobody in class had any questions to him at the end of a flipped session. During my mentor sessions with him, I noticed that  he doesn't explain how and why things work, he just tells you what to type on a certain line. That is a bad teaching 

• "Flipped classroom weekly sessions were ended due to student survey feedback ​"

Nobody asked me about my opinion about flipped classroom sessions. I would've loved to have them. How did you survey student? Why I was never asked?

• "Our policy is to have assignments graded within 3 business days of submission​..."

So I guess both employees that did my code reviews did not do it on time. They were Phil W. and  Randall C. Knowing their names proves you that I was a student at the Guild. And it's your responsibility as a Chief Academic Officer​ to make sure they follow the rules. And I did request Operations manager to change mentor for me. Never happened.

• "Unorganized curriculum​. Our hundreds of successful alumni would disagree with this assessment​"

Of course, because all those alumni are in-person students, whose face-to-face experience with instuctors is completely different from the online students. .

​Guys, all Eric's promising words aside, bottom line is that their online program is not there yet for them  to charge $10,000. $1,000-$2,000 maybe at most. Their in-person bootcamp might be good due do live nature of classes and there is some accountability, because you can tell things to the face.  

I would suggest you to stay away from the Online .Net program until they guarantee 100% money back, no matter how late you request them . I strongly suggest you to contact at least 3 current students to ask them questions and don't believe if they say that students are not willing to be contacted. My mistake is that I contacted only 1 student and he was the one chosen by the Guild. Later that student dropped out himself. It just show how bad their online program is. 

As I said before, if you have qustions about the program or need an honest feedback on the staff at the Guild, feel free to contact me at moisklad@yahoo.com. Good luck!

I attended the Java cohort over this past summer. My instructor was Mr. Pat Toner. The classes were casual and comfortable. I was really impressed with Pat's patience. We gave weekly code reviews (often the code didn't work for everybody), we asked silly questions, we brought up various software issues for him to fix, and we did plenty of other annoying things. He was always encouraging and approachable.

As for the course, I had little programming experience so I don't have much to compare it to. I got a job outside of the network shortly after the course ended. I had several interviews and the course seems to  have covered many of the topics an interviewer would expect out of a jr. dev to know about. Certainly, you are going to have to put a lotta hours and expand on the topics covered in class hours outside of those times.

The staff that runs the job network is helpful and provide you with some useful tools and activities like mock interviews, and CV and linkedIn help. However, SG misleads propspective students in terms of the employer hiring event. If you go to their website, and if you ultiimately enroll in a cohort you might be getting into this with the impression that you'll have a shot with 100s of companies they are connected with. That's not really the case. About 5 showed up looking for Java devs and 5 for .NET. A good chunk of students landed jobs with these companies. But if it's not in NE Ohio or not exactly what your looking for you'll be outta luck.

Anyway, I'd reccomend attending SG. If you put in the time you can be successful there.

When someone tried to sell me on this idea that I could change my whole world in 12 weeks, I was quite skeptical. Long story short, this was the best career decision I ever made in my life. If I could go back, I would do it again in a heartbeat.

As for a little background, I had a lot of education before I showed up at the guild. The problem was that none of my previous degrees helped me land a job doing much more than performing menial tasks for more than $18,000 a year. Just for the record, these weren't degrees in underwater basket-weaving from Mom-and-Pop's Community College, either. Still, after spending so much money in student debt, I was skepitcal about throwing even more money at a vocational program. After a lot of consideration, I decided to bite the bullet and take a chance with the guild. By the 11th week, so many companies were making me offers that I couldn't keep up with all of them. In point of fact, my dream job back home as a front end developer couldn't afford me because I had so many better prospects doing full stack in another state. By week 11, I already secured a job paying more money then I ever thought I'd be making with full benefits, relocation, and education reimbursement. As I write this, I'm getting ready to move into the house I'm going to rent  -- located in the most affluent neighborhood anyone in my family has ever lived in.

What I would add is that I took the program very seriously, never missed a day, showed up around 6:30 every morning, I didn't really ever go out while I was there, and I'm not a stupid individual. That being said, I wasn't even the best developer in the class, but I worked very hard and managed to get a ton of job offers. If the goal is to get a tech job and you're willing to buckle down in one of the most difficult programs ever for 12 weeks, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. From my limited experience, the ones that didn't make it simply didn't put in the work or had some kind of attitude problem. At least when I was there, the standards to get into the program are so high that everybody who made it in is intelligent enough to succeed, so it really comes down to hard work.

I also kind of lucked out and got who I feel was the best instructor (Pat Toner), but I did keep in touch with all of the instructors to ask for help and stuff. Needless to say, I took advantage of pretty much every resource they gave me and it worked out fine for me.

Now that I think about it, as much as I'd like to complain about something so I don't sound like a group-think robot, there honestly isn't really much negative I can say about the program. They even screen everybody pretty well so there's seldom anyone on site with poor social skills (and that's saying quite a bit for a computer programming bootcamp). In fact, they even did personality assessments on your roommates to make the transition easier.

Just know if you're considering going that it's very hard and it takes a lot of discipline to suceed here. If you can pull it off, it really is what it's cracked up to be.

The syllabus was impressive, covering a full stack of well-known technologies. 

Coursework was largely group dependent. If your partner did not hold up their end of the assignment, your grade would suffer. The instructor was extremely poor in grading and giving feedback, even when requested. Not a single piece of code was graded for our second half of the cohort until a few days before the final was due.

The instructor did not complete the syllabus material, despite us having a few free days to do nothing towards the end of finals week. Even requested review sessions were not covered. When our concerns were voiced to the instructor, he became vindictive and left poor comments on our certificate.

If you are not willing to teach yourself most of the coursework, and cannot learn properly without feedback, I would not recommend this course to you.  

The Software Guild was a way out of a job that didn't make me happy. In high school, I decided to go into my family business instead of pursuing my love at the time which was computers and software. I had turned 30 and started wishing that I had made a different decision. I didn't want to invest the time and money in a university masters program and decided to take a chance on one of these software bootcamps. I chose the Software Guild because it was close to home, had great reviews, and it seemed grounded in the practical reality of work/business rather than selling dreams. The reviews were right and I was very happy with the decision I made.

The course was 12 weeks of hard work. Some students got hit by this harder than others, but everyone persevered through and succeeded in the end. We learned through writing code, which is the best way to do it. I ended up getting a job as a developer in Cleveland at a software company and though I'm still 2 weeks from starting, I feel like the environment of the Guild was similar to what it will be at the job so I feel very prepared to walk into it. My job will be in a Python environment. Even though I don't know it, I feel very capable of learning all these new things because I proved to myself I could do it at the Guild.

No, this kind of success won't happen for everyone. I had code in my brain all along, I was just sitting in the wrong job. But if you think you might be in the same wrong track, that you have a brain that thinks logically, syntactically, quickly, and is open to constant change - I couldn't encourage you more to look here.