General Assembly

I went to GA Seattle WDI (Web Development Immersive) course. It changed my life. Within 1 1/2 months of graduation, I was offered a great job at a company that's considered one of the top 5 to work for in the pacific NW. Starting next week I'll be a Software Engineer making more than twice what I made in my previous career, and I enjoy the work much more. I can't heap enough praise onto the General Assembly Web Development program. Like I said, it's changed my life in ways I didn't think possible.

The WDI experience varies from class to class largely depending on the teachers. There is no standard curriculum across WDI classes, they are put together by the teachers of that class. So people from one WDI class learn things a person from another WDI might not not. There is also no standard pre-work, this too is put together by the teachers for their class. Seeing how this varies from classes in one location, I can only imagine the difference compared to several locations.

Credit the folks at GA for being very quick to make adjustments based on the student feedback. It’s great to know they do listen to the feedback, and are constantly making adjustments, but it doesn’t change what you’ve missed out on. 

GA is fitting so much into 3 months, there is so much taught at a very quick pace, some things are squeezed in so while “covered” it’s not really a learning experience. 

The overall WDI learning experience also depends on if you’re starting with prior experience with at least one or two languages. The pre-work was not adequate preparation for the class if you were starting with no experience. Before starting WDI, it would be best to spend a couple of months at least becoming familiar with JS and Ruby, you will be setting yourself up for a much better learning experience. If you need extra assistance/time with a teacher you’re out of luck, this was not something available to students.

They have some terrific teachers and several not so terrific teachers. People can be highly qualified skill-wise but this doesn’t necessarily make them a good teacher. Additionally, they have many teachers who are only recently out of their WDI program. Like most learning situations, the teacher has a big impact on the learning experience. When you need to learn in 3 months, and don't get a do-over, it's a big drawback to have a not-so-good teacher for the 3 months. 

WDI is a grueling program that can be truly amazing and rewarding if you’re lucky to have quality teachers. It’s a very comfortable environment, which is important since you’re there from morning to evening. Their emphasis on “community” is great. If you’re not starting with a good amount of prior experience you will need to be fully committed for the 3 months. The majority of students who took the program with no prior experience finish and still need to learn while those who took the program with some prior experience are ready and able to land jobs. 

There is a weekly session with a career person but once the program ends, aside from some shared leads, you feel like you’re on your own in the job search. Which can be intimidating when you’re trying to land that first job as a developer and you see the job posts which make you feel like you're not qualified for the job.

I have no regrets about taking WDI but I also wish I would’ve known what I now do. GA can be a great experience but depending upon your learning style and needs it might not be best for everyone. There’s no way I would have the knowledge I gained in the 3 months if I was learning on my own but learning more about other bootcamps, I can think of at least one that would’ve better suited my learning style and needs.

I took to the nighttime FEWD course at GA's SF campus. I thought the first 2 curriculum sections (HTML and CSS) were good. The teachers explained the concepts well and had us apply new concepts to projects. However, the last section covering JS was very difficult and the curriculum was not in depth, leaving the majority of the students lost in the last 3rd of the course. GA should have realized that JS was a much more difficult concept to grasp and created more material for students to read, create better practice projects and so forth.

Over all it was a good intro class for frontend web development. Most people weren't looking to switch careers, just up-level their current skill set. 

I didn't have a great experience.  I was really pressured to sign up and was assured multiple times that I did not need Adobe CC experience - which for this class was just not the case.  I think if I had some level of comfort with Photoshop and Illustrator, I would have enjoyed the class more. 

I thought the business strategy was basic - and my instructor was pretty terrible.  He has lots of skill and experience, but those two things combined do not always make a good teacher. 

Overall, a massive waste of my time and money.  

I took a one day course to get a review, which wasn't that great. A few students left before the class ended with hours to spare. I think the guy was very knowledgeable about Analytics but couldn't teach worth a dime. 

I looked into their digi marketing program and was considering that but declinced to move forward after speaking to a couple of reps. The first was very wishy-washy in her statements and contradictory. I spoke to another rep upon request. She was better, but I could tell a lot of her answers seemed made up on the spot. I'm comparing this program to other programs and continuing to look. Here are some things that should be readily available for prospective students: 

-feedback from random graduates who can be emailed.

-success rate of students who intended to find work afterwards and actually got placed, inclusive of data on part timers, contract, and full-time.

After checking out the digital marketing teacher and not being very impressed (no website and almost zilch on social media presence), I realized that it was initially supposed to be a female teacher. Now it's been switched to a male teacher who was probably brought in the last minute, which would explain why he didn't have much of an online presence. Not very appealing when the subject to be taught includes social media. FYI, I've read quite a bit on these start-up bootcamps (very low barrier to entry) and the digital marketing programs seemed to be treated as an afterthought, including the amount of teaching practice, or lack thereof, that these instructors have. Not to mention that the founders have no background in education as a past interest or career.  It seems I'll have to patchwork the coursework I need from different places. I'm looking at Stanford, Duke, Berkeley, and MarketMotive next. Here's something to read on: http://www.fastcompany.com/3023456/become-an-ios-developer-in-8-weeks-the-truth-about-hack-schools

Regarding bootcamps for coders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-U5D4RSHRI&feature=youtu.be

 

Maybe it was the particular representative who forgot to attend charm school, but this place really rubbed me the wrong way.

Here I was, all set to attend an informational session and ready to shell out big bucks for continuing education.  And then, prior to the informational session, I get a phone call from the head of admissions demanding to *screen* me and know about my profession before letting me attend the informational session, even though this information should have been clear from my LinkedIn profile and company URL!!!!

I should mention a couple of things about my "profession" and "background": I'm CEO of a software company with a graduate degree in computer science.  And my name is obviously foreign-sounding.

I do believe these people discriminate based on some factors that are not clear.

 

It's definitely a difficult path...but rewarding if you put in the time and effort. General Assembly fosters a community that thrives off of on another and also pushes young programmers towards a job that they will treasure. I had literally the best group of instructors in the school's history, not to mention being put amognst a brilliant crop of students. The 9-5 12 week schedule is rough, but there are some days off in between. We learn Ruby, SQL with Postgres, Testing with Rspec, Cucumber and Jasmine, Sinatra, Rails, HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery, Underscore and Backbone. They do a lot also with the Job Search Standup to try and get you jobs, but you should be prepared to do a considerable amount of work on your own as well. I would recommend the WDI program to everyone.

I think back fondly of my time at GA and my classmates and instructors altho I found the experience stressful and physically taxing at the time.  I would say peoples experiance during the course varies very widly depending on the insturctors, you really don't know what you are going to get coming in.  Some of them are better with code, some of them are better with teaching, some of them are better with dealing with people.  Different groups of students have different needs.  I will say that they do take feedback seriously and pivot fast to meet needs of group.   

When it comes to results the sales people said 99 - 95 percent get jobs.  So far this has shown to be almost true, I would say 6 months later maybe 70 - 80% are working either in internship or job.  They have a phenominal support program in place but it is still on you to get yourself hired, and it difficult to break into this industry.  Those who obtain employment work very hard at getting it, employers do not generally trust someone without real paid programming experiance.  When the course is over you will be exhuasted but still have a lot of work to do. Its also important to mention that where you were in life before taking the course does still have bearing on your employability.  This is not direct ticket to a career, you have to find a way to differentiate yourself, these bootcamps are pumping people out onto the job market at an excellerated rate.

I definatly feel more part of the tech industry.  They did give me many skills and knowledge necessary to access it in a short timeframe, I dont think I could have learned so fast any other way.

For validty and Gravitas I need to mention that I have a background in teaching the STEM sciences. That being said, the experience at General Assembly was far below SUB STANDARD and HERE is why:
     1. The course producers had/have no experience in teaching, curriculum design, or coding....Let me reiterate....the people designing the courses have no prior experience, education, or training.  My original course producer I saw only once in 3 months.  Another course producer quit without notice, leaving our class without this support for a month.  A handfull of students would regularly meet with the staff to provide viable simple solutions to recuring problems, these solutions were ignored, yet they would ask us to take time out of our day to complete feedback forms to help them shape future classes.  Students who continued to voice thier opinions were asked to leave the program.

     2.  The instructors, although good coders, were awful teachers.  Examples: teachers yelling at students, teachers walking away from students during instruction, teachers not available during critical project weeks (by unavailable I mean holding meetings in another room for several hours unapproachable and unresponsive to student needs),  Teachers frequently going off topic at length.  Teachers leaving for vacation without replacement staff.  The coup de grâce was that after 2/3rds of the course was finished half of the students could not make a simple Ruby on Rails App !!!  The material was retaught at the expense of learning any remaining curriculum.

     3. The Job Assistance staff and Outcomes Staff changed multiple times.  The lead outcomes producer would spout the same speech each time she met with us.  This should have been provided in note form or Powerpoint presentation and critical information addressed. The information she provided was topical and cursory, it was plainly obvious that she was a good meet-n-greet person, but lacked the skills at actually instructing how to land a job.  The remainder of the staff was primarily recruiters with no real incentive to assist in job placement.  They claim to have a mentorship/internship program, to this day I know of no one in ANY of the graduating classes that took part in any such program.  GA claims that they have 90% placement within 3 months after graduation.  This was not even close.  In fact while they gave us this speech 50% of the previous class was unemployed 4 months after graduation.  50% of my class is also without placement.

I just finished the January cohort of General Assembly's Web Development Immersive in New York last week, and am pleased to share that the quality of my instructors, the curriculum, and my classmates all exceeded my expectations! We started with a strong foundation in Ruby and then built upon that foundation by learning SQL, PostgreSQL, Rails, and basic HTML. We combined all of those tools to build our first independent projects (basic CRUD application utilizing an API with user authorization & authentication). Next, we transitioned to a deeper dive into HTML5 & CSS before shifting our core focus to JavaScript in the back half of the course. After being introduced to the basics of JavaScript and jQuery we started working in small teams on group projects modeling the agile development process. Finally, we learned Backbone.js before embarking on our final independent projects for the course – a capstone of everything we'd learned and an opportunity to utilize the process we'd learned to work with new frameworks and technologies. Beyond the full-stack of languages we learned, our course placed a huge emphasis on the principles and process of good software design. We always utilized Test-Driven Development and mastered RSpec, Jasmine, and Capybara as tools for unit and acceptance testing. We also always modeled the full agile, behavior-driven development cycle from collecting user stories, to daily SCRUMs, to full retrospectives after every sprint. I'm incredibly pleased with everything we learned and feel empowered with the process and tools to design excellent web applications. I'm also really confident in my ability to continue learning more on my own! The first part of the course placed a strong emphasis on traditional pedagogy – our instructors were largely teaching us the ins and outs of Ruby, but as we started to gain momentum in our technical grasp of our first programming language the pedagogical model shifted slightly to more of a "teach us how to fish" style of learning. We learned the techniques and process to approach new languages and technologies, and it's exciting to know that I can continue to grow and learn on my own!