Technigo

I have just graduated the front end developer bootcamp with Technigo. The course includes html, css, javascript, react and some backend that will make you confident to search for junior front end developer jobs. I did the course together with my current employer to develop my work as an product developer. The course is intensive and really tough (I had never done development before) but with great videos and weekly mob programming I did it! Its part time (I worked during the course) but really fun and you hand in projects every week, both individual, pair and groups. I have learn so much and have now a great portfolio to keep develop. Im very happy I took the course and will recommend to all persons who want to develop their skills or change career. I graduated January 2023.

Before you read this review, please take into account that this is probably will apply to you too only if you are 100% the same kind of person as I am. I want to give you a brief description about me so you can decide for yourself if you should take my review into consideration before you apply to Technigo.
I....
- am not a Swedish and speak only English for the entire course
- knew only basic (very very basic) HTML and CSS before I joined Technigo, so basically the experience was almost non existence
- have anxiety & focus issue
- get overwhelmed pretty easily
- have a child
- had finance support from my partner so that I could just study and paused my work for about 6 months

For me, I would say my experience with this course was like an extreme roller coaster. There were times when I thought I finally managed but then the next time I felt completely lost (but apparently that's what almost all developers feel like all the time).
Here are some points I would say about this bootcamp;

- Every week, students got a new project and we were given reading materials and some videos to watch. The videos were very well made but unfortunately I think there weren't enough videos. Often I wish there were more recorded videos to start with because there were only 2 live sessions in 1 week. I personally think recorded videos were easier to understand because they were scripted, planned, and made so that it is easy to understand. Of course live sessions are very useful as well but I found it hard to focus in every session. My solution was to Google a lot of my problems, asked teammates, and looked at previous students repo to get some inspiration.

- I often felt confused and got overwhelmed by how much new information I got in one week. I didn't have the chance to take my time to understand more about the previous material because I had to go another subject the next week. However, that is what bootcamp is about. Fast learning. In one way, it's also good because I got to "sell" myself to employers with that ability to learn fast. Usually employers are very impressed at how much I've learnt in 6 months. So, this fast pace learning is a two ways swords for me. I was burning out ALL THE TIME, but looking at how I am now, I am glad I went through all those pain.

- The curriculum was pretty spot on with the demand of the market these days. Of course, there are many tech stacks that you might want to try but I think Technigo has chosen the ones that are the most popular. Maybe the next batch should get TypeScript intro as well (?)

- One of the best thing about joining this bootcamp for me is my teammates. I got 9 new amazing friends and they are all talented programmers now. Sometimes I felt like I didn't get much support from the teachers but my teammates were always there for me. So I can guarantee that you wouldn't feel alone in this journey.

- I studied fulltime (8-15) but often I knew it wasn't enough since it took time for me to understand many things. I found myself still studying in the evening after my child sleeps. Might not be the best way to learn but I guess I was too stressful and wanted to make it work. So, if you have stressful fulltime job, you might want to plan more. There are mandatory sessions where you have to be present for team sessions. In my case, it was every Monday and Tuesday. The live session with teacher isn't mandatory but I got to see recordings. One of my teammates have a fulltime job, so she mostly did her project in the evening. If you have the super ability like her, then go for it. But if you're like me, then you wouldn't make it with a fulltime job (that's why I took a break from work).

- If you have child(ren) and partner, you need to communicate with them about this bootcamp and how intense it could be. My partner knew how tired I was. I got overwhelmed almost all the time, I worried about the future and often I needed to be alone to function. I felt distance from my family during this study because of my stress. My partner helped a lot and took my role on the days I felt too much and couldn't function. So, definitely talk to your family and ask for help when you need it.

- Finding a job in tech is not easy but not impossible. I applied to 100+ jobs, got 1 interview and ghosted by 2 companies. I booked a 1on1 with career coach and she helped me to feel like maybe I could make it. As Technigo doesn't guarantee you will land a job, so this whole switch career business is your own responsibility with assistance from career coach. Assistance here is more like how you tailor your cv, your cover letter, LinkedIn, tips and tricks of how to switch career and of course the 1on1 session. It's useful if you already have connections in tech world but if you're like me who is an english speaking immigrant with zero connections, you might have to work a little harder on your job search. You got to standout among those who have 2-5 years experience.

OVERALL, I think this bootcamp helped me to kickstart my career in tech and got to know what I'm getting into, hence the 4 stars. There are things that they could improve (just like any other schools) but you got a chance to give them feedback as well and they will get back to you regarding anything you want to talk about, be it complains, compliments, or questions. I appreciated my time here because I got to know wonderful people. As I said before, this review might not applied to everyone who attended the bootcamp, but if you're like me or closer to how my situation is then you can take this review into consideration. I graduated recently and I got a job 2 weeks after I graduated. Last but not least, it is all up to you how you move forward with this. In the end, you have to work hard yourself and Technigo is a good tool to boost your progress. 

It has been six intense months where I’ve had no life except coding and my half-time work, but I’m amazed at how much I’ve learned! I knew nothing of coding beforehand and now I truly feel ready for a front end job. It feels like I’ve got a solid foundation in both front end and backend dev work.
If I could do it all again I definitely would, but I would have liked to be more prepared on how intense it would be. Maybe not work 50% just so I could have time for basic ground control like food, washing clothes, do the dishes or meet some friends.

I did the frontend bootcamp starting in January 2022, I did not complete but stoped taking the course after 8 weeks as I felt coding wasn't for me. I'm writing this review as it's hard to get accurate info what you can expect from the bootcamp. Take this into account that I have the perspective of someone who only did 8 out of 24 weeks and 95% of students who finish the course have jobs and seems pleased with the course as the demand for developers are higher than the supply.

The course runs at 50% pace, you have three teaching sessions per week and two where you study in your group.
It's a generally a good program, the topics are relevant and you have a weekly project where you practice the things you learn.

Pros:
If you finish you'll get a job that has better salaries and benefits than most industries and you get there in only 6 months.
It's highly compressed and you get a snippet of the most relevant tools needed for a frontend developer.
You'll get a good network of developers and a portfolio which you can show future employers.

Cons:
The problem with frontend bootcamps is that you need to compress what other courses teach you in two years into 24 weeks at 50% pace. I had almost no prior experience of coding, in my group only 2 out of 8 had coded before. I would suggest you get as much coding experience as possible as the pace in the course is brutal. You will not be able to only put in 20 hours per week. All in my group put in 30+ hours at least. 
 
My biggest criticism is that you don't get enough teaching on the basics and still is expected to complete fairly complicated coding projects each week. The explanation is that the program tries to improve your ability to solve problems simulating a regular day of a developer. In my group we were all struggling with javascript and we didn't have enough knowledge to complete the projects by ourselves but had to solve it by looking at previous students work and reverse-engineer it.  As I didn't finish the program I can't say if the strategy of not giving enough teaching on these complex topics to improve the students problem-solving ability is the right way? Maybe it's the only way as the program is so compressed? To me it just seems counter-intuitive. How can you solve complex problems if you don't know the basics. On week 7 we were taught things that we would have needed to understand what we were doing on week 4, I can't understand the rational. If Technigo doesn't want to give more live sessions, why not have more pre-recorded material which the students can watch instead of filtering through 1000 clips on youtube. Everyone was struggling and when asking teachers for assistans you were forwarded to stack-overflow or tried to find the info online. After putting in several hours to solve something without success it doesn't feel like you're improving your problem-solving skills but only wasting time. If this is expected it needs to be communicated to the students. 

This course is a really good and relevant one. Every day is full of information and hands on training. I could not do any programming before I started and now I have a job where I program! Its great teachers, the structure is very relevant, we got to work with interesting companies and we all had so much fun together.

 

I recommend this course to anyone who would like to learn programming, its an inspiring way to get to know this world and perfect for everybody who wants to learn about programming. Every day there are new things to learn and you are surrounded by people who jst want to teach you as all they know.

This bootcamp is intense. It definitely gives you the basic knowledge to kickstart your journey into tech. Every week you get a new project with a new focus area. You learn a lot of new concepts during your time at the bootcamp. The description says that it is 50%, but you definitely have to put in more hours. I don't think you will get everything you need out of the bootcamp if you only do 20 hours a week, and you need to be aware of that before applying. Especially if you are completely new to coding like I was. I do think that what you learn is really relevant in the industry, and we learn up to date things. I do have a lot of comments about the support and the teachers though. We do code reviews ourselves and we do not get feedback from our teachers. If we have a question, we ask it on stack overflow and not directly to our teachers, except during the live sessions if there is time. Also, if you work during the week and code during the weekends, you will not get help from stack overflow as they only answer during the weekdays. You can get help from your team members but not Technigo. So you need to be aware that all that you learn is up to you. There is a chance to book one on ones, but they are scheduled and limited. I feel like I did not learn as much as I would have liked because I did not get much feedback and that is how I learn. I like to know what I could have done better, what is best practice, and what is not. As in our final project where we got comments that we should change some stuff as it was bad practice, but we had not learnt that before. It was never mentioned in the live sessions or video material. It was such a basic thing as well and we had to spend quite a lot of time to fix that after we had handed it in.
I also attended the career coaching. Be ready to juggle those assignments on top of your weekly projects. They give relevant tips, but are very slow on feedback. And as they say, they are only there to coach. You are the one who will have to land that job. They say that 95% gets a job afterwards, but do you know the timeframe? I did not. There are people who get a job before graduating, and there are people who get a job after 8 months. It would have been nice to know that beforehand, as it is paints Technigo in a very nice light. It is not as easy as the marketing implies. I graduated 2 weeks ago and I am still job hunting, and I am not the only one. Only one person out of 10 in my team has gotten a job so far. 

So all in all: Very good marketing, good concept and so-so execution.

The bootcamp experience has been really fun and I have learned so much since I didn't have any previous coding skills! Every week I felt like I got information overload and it's easy to compare yourself with others and feel like your peers are so much better then you. Those who had some previous knowledge (even if it's just a little) of CSS, HTML or JavaScript definitely got a head start. So I would suggest to learn as much as possible before you start the course. The intro-course and application assignment does introduce you to CSS and HTML but try to go deeper if you have time.

I worked 50% while doing the course but I was prepared to spend most of my spare time on my studies, which I did. If you have the possibility to spend full time on studies and not work then that is the best.

Each project was challenging and creative and I have enjoyed working on every single one of them. The team set up has been great where we really help each other and often work together. Your team is basically your support group since the communication with the teachers for 1:1 time is not so easy to get. I was fortunate enough to get help whenever I got stuck from my sister who is a frontend developer. This really lowered my stress levels since problems always show up when you don't have time for it. 

Don't be surprised that you will copy a lot of other peoples codes since previous students projects will be available. Here it's allowed! It's up to you to make sure that you understand why the code is working. Most of the times copying doesn't even work unless you know what you're doing. This program is all about problem solving. Many times I felt like I didn't have time to really understand some things and questioned how much I actually learned. It wasn't until the final project where I truly felt like things fell into place, but it's important to trust the process!

I have loved Techigos bootcamp and i'm sure you will too!

I would definitely recommend the Technigo Frontend bootcamp to anyone interested in getting into web development or looking to do a career change.
Technigo has managed to narrow down their syllabus to the most needed practical skills a starting JS developer needs. The bootcamp is very hands on and you will be able to apply the theory you are learning right away with weekly projects.
The last sprint of the bootcamp is dedicated to learning the basics of the Backend and how to set up an API, which I considered a great starting point if you would like to go more into a Backend or Full Stack direction.
I would encourage anyone taking the bootcamp to compliment the lessons with more practice and study on the side though. It is a very high-paced bootcamp, and a lot of material to learn in a short time; so you need to take the initiative to keep learning on the side, and digging deeper into the concepts.
I was also part of their Career Coaching program, which was extremely useful to me. I was coming from the Restaurant industry into tech, so I needed much guidance on how to prepare my application package, network and get an idea of what the tech industry is like. So this was a big help for me during the job hunt.