BrainStation

I had very few doubts initially that Wyncode would be a good experience. At first, my toughest decision was which campus to go to. In the end I chose to attend the Ft Lauderdale cohort. It ended up being an awesome experience. My instructor at the time, Auston, is superb and really shows a passion for teaching. I think that if anyone is looking for this type of career change, this is the way to do it. Immerse yourself in a program like this, and you will realize that this is the way you truly can make changes in your life. The people at Wyncode do this for a living, they are not just teaching you to code, they are giving you the tools to make a change in your life for the better. It is tough, but if you believe you have the dedication and desire you can make it through and come out feeling like you have made a significant change in your life. Make no mistake, you have to really enjoy writing software so it's best if you have at least tried some preliminary online course first. They have a very good curriculum and they do a good job teaching. They also offer plenty of assistance, TAs, and assignments, but you have to be ready to work hard.

After the program, Wyncode really does make a concerted effort with job placement. Some people get placed quickly, others take a few weeks. It obviously also depends on the situation with the current job market. If you look nationally you'll have a good chance to get placed quickly. But one key advantage is how connected they are locally. So if looking for placement within South Florida is important to you, Wyncode has an invaluable network that helps to increase your odds significantly. 

I made it throught the program and I got placed in about a month in a DevOps position here in South Florida. As far as coding bootcamps, my opinion is that they are the best in the region.

Like most other people I will start by saying this is an honest and objective review, it is (in my opinion anyway), the only thing is that everyone’s experience is different.

If you do choose to attend Wyncode then you will hear the phrase “You get out what you put in” or something similar, which is true, not just for this course but in life. If you are not ready to fully commit then you may not get what you need or want from this course.

You have to understand that this is the basics being taught, it is a good foundation but you will not leave the course knowing everything there is about programming, I don’t think that will ever be possible and definitely not in just 9 weeks.

Overall Experience:

I did enjoy my time at Wyncode and met some great people while there and honestly believe that I would not be in the position I am now without it. I have learned to code the basics and can grow my skill and knowledge from what I have been taught.

On the other hand, there is a lot of fakeness surrounding the tech scene which can be hard to navigate and Wyncode does you no favors in this area.

I think the best way for you to know if you enjoyed something or if it was worth your time is to ask the question “would you do it again?” and in this case I think I would!

Curriculum:

People have differences of opinion on the curriculum, is Ruby the best or most relevant programming language to be taught at the moment? Most companies I looked at did not think it was but the majority of my cohort that were hired as dev’s do work in Ruby so it’s not an easy subject to resolve.

They do also teach Agile which some of the class thought at the time, was pretty boring or pointless but on the first day of my new career half of that days training was around Agile. Some subjects you may think are not relevant but they are so make sure you take in as much as possible.

Some other classes were, in my opinion, completely pointless, such as “Twitter and LinkedIn power using”, in other words if you want to search anything on these sites put it in the search bar, if you can’t figure that out by yourself then this course is probably not for you anyway.

One of the issues is the speed in which the lectures go, it can be very hard to keep up, especially if you are trying to code along with some of the instructors, sometimes you are best to just take notes and go over everything after class. Also sometimes what you would learn in class would have no relevance to the homework you would be given for that evening this forces you to look for references and teach yourself, this may work for some people but not all. This frustration was heightened when you ended up being taught it in a future class, after you figured it out.

Instructors:

The instructors and TA’s were great and somehow always seemed to be on hand to answer any questions, even at 2 am, if they were not there in person they were only a slack message away.

Now they say “there is no such thing as a stupid question” but every time you approach Ed (Head Instructor) with one it will feel like you have asked the most obvious thing in the world, he seems to know all the answer’s (well about programming anyway) and you would be best to try and use this to your advantage, he is a fountain of knowledge, so ask as much as possible.

The only thing that annoys me was the buzzword’s (I hate buzzword’s). they are so disingenuous; I would rather you just didn’t say anything. I was going to write a few as an example but I even started to annoy myself even thinking of them!

Job Assistance:

This is one area, in my opinion, that failed completely. There was no real advice given here or that much help at all. It was more like you do all the work job hunting and when you tell them what you have found each week they would steal your ideas and leads and tell them to everyone else.

I know, on no less than three occasions, when one of my cohort applied for a position and mentioned this at Wynwork or to the hiring partner or a founder, everyone else from my cohort (and every other cohort that was still not employed) was advised of this position. This meant that the company would be flooded with resumes and would then reject the idea of hiring anyone from Wyncode.

During my cohort, one of my class asked what the tech scene was like for employment in a certain industry and they were advised that it was up to them to find out.

Since my cohort there has been a change of staff and I have heard that things have improved immensely but cannot vouch for that since its just word of mouth.

• Post clear, valuable, and honest information that will be useful and informative to future coding boot campers and what could they have done better.

I can only tell you how i see it and what i when thru. I took the Miami cohort and i did my research just like you are doing now i may have done it a little more than you since i actually moved from another state to attend the Wyncode Bootcamp. The pre-work was challenging time-consuming & i didn't do it all, ontop of that i set up parts of my environment wrong (Ed, the instructor, will say this the first day "there is always someone that doesn set up things correctly" yes, that was me!). The course starts out hard the first week and gets harder the second, am a pretty slow learner so it was hard for me the whole time!! get use to this rhythm. the teaching style that Wyncode has frustrated a couple of my peers but like all things, there is always and explanation and a reason for doing things.

learning style: Wyncode is gonna push you to your knees and expose you to things you do not know and that they have not YET cover they will not tell you "we will teach you this later" so it adds to the pressure of you trying to figure it out literally the entire day!! (class ends at 4 work ends at 1am 2am perfect for the waking up at 9am to make it to class by 10am). this worked out for me perfectly casue jumping without a parachute and knowing that feeling of not knowing shit! made me remember things better once they actually thought this it made it stick more and i for sure know how important that parachute is now. i feel if people dont understand this its gonna actually fuck with them so https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful-Learning/dp/0674729013 here is the book where i learned this. audible that if you end up taking Wyncode.

INSTRUCTORs:  ED Toro MIT grad and exelent instructor will throw as many references to you so that you can relate things you already know to the new things he is teaching you one of my roomates mr.sean G give me this insight casue ofcourst i had no idea what he was talking about when he talked about the other things either lol so i used the jokes he told tp relate them to the things he was teaching overall ed is as real as they come and straight to the point if u have a chance to talk to him milk him for as much knowledge as you can as he is always ready to share it. TIM Reen, Joe Ciancio and Bryce joe and Tim are wyncode alumns that know how to teach you since they know where your coming from you see them face problems and solve them infront of you i love there teaching style they will all ask "those this make sense?" and the only person that can stop you from learning is your ego my answer to this question is NO once i got to know them i didnt even wait for the question i just when PAUSE i dont understand this or i lost you here .. ask for help ! they want to teach you and sare there knowledeg with you!

CURRICULUM: You will not have time to learn everything and you never have enough time (this is still true now that i actully do this for a living) they pick out the things that they feel are relevant to the job market and teach them to you, you will absorb what you choose  and look back on everything else to recall it (notes are your friends shout out to SANTI for lending me hes notes !). i used everything i learned and continue to revisit what i thought i had learned. if you choose to go to a bootcamp and your reading this go to treehouse right now ! while you have time! trust me!!!(wish someone would have screamed at me like that.)

JOB ASSISTANCE:  they will assit you give you the openings and the tools to show up to a job without feeling like and idiot the assistance is seen on slack they pretty much act as a job search engine and will put a good word for you so you have better chances . i cant really speak much on it since i gota job almost 2 weeks later with out using much of there network. KEEP IN MIND JOB ASSISTANCE DEPENDS ON THERE BEEN JOBS! THE LESS JOBS THE MORE COMPETETIVE IS GONNA BE. GET EXPERIANCE Wyncode will give you some by hireding you to be a TA but aside from that you gotta come up with more real world experience. 

Overall Experience: FIRE ** 808&codebreaks Wyncode & Wynfam4life!!!! this was and amazing experiance with and amazing group of people i dont know where they all are right now but i will say i love you all!! step back i just put my whole c8 clan on a pedestal! BLess! ^^ 

DONE BETTER: every great meal deliciouse slice of cake end up in the the toilet smelling like shit so here is something that i feel can be improve in wyncode. LONGER cause hey i alwasy want more for my money!!!! more hiring partners cause there can never be enough! better mechanisam for picking groups i felt i got bambusol in my group am lookin at (retracted) and (retracted)! people should work on what they choose to work on at the end it worked out but it couls have end it bad! Wyncode does adapt what we give in retro but most of the big changes come in for thenext cohort (am jelouse of you already), i know you cant change a system you have set up right away but maybe make it more object oriented and where you an make a change in one place and apply it faster. 

conclusion if you wanna change your life and by that i mean your career then Wyncode will transform you and give you the tools to modify yourself. now i hear this other bootcamp is better well idk what to say to that cause i didnt do those other bootcamps i did this one.

If you are debating on doing a bootcamp over the question of "can you really learn everything you need to be a developer after 9 weeks?" then you are looking at it the wrong way. Even people who have been in the field for 10 years still have more to learn. So what makes this bootcamp worth 10 grand?

This isn't a factory that is going to give you the most common 100 steps you need to learn to build a web-app and get hired. They try to introduce you to as many technologies and concepts as they can so you can break down a problem and figure out how you want to solve it. You learn that there is no one "right" answer to approaching a problem. The lectures cover a wide-range of things you should learn to become a junior dev, and it is a ton of information shot at you in those 9 weeks. The point is they teach you how to use the free resources out there to teach yourself so you'll be able to grow with the industry for the rest of your career in tech.

Is it hard?

They have a motto: "You get out what you put in". I'd say they do that plus a bit more, but you have to put in the work. You definitely need to dedicate hours of undivided attention to learning the material. However, the resources (TA's, projects, and networking) make all your hard work flourish. Sure, you could use all the free resources out there to teach yourself, but Wyncode gives you the structure to achieve that in less time, plus connect you with companies and classmates who also can connect you to companies. Wyncode is as hard as you make it.

This bootcamp was definitely worth my time and money. I wouldn't have been able to push myself on my own. They won't hold your hand. You have to fight for the job, and fight to learn, and get help. However, in the end that will help you make the most of what they have to offer.

I was hired 1 month after the camp was over by one of their hiring partners, SapientNitro. This isn't just a boring, build-a-simple-website, sort of job. It's an exciting ad agency that wants their workers to continue to grow and learn. Did Wyncode hand me the job? No. The set up group interviews and then I had to put in the work to follow-up, interview well, and show my skills. Wyncode was valuable because I wouldn't have known about SapientNitro if it wasn't for Wyncode, and vice versa.

I love Wyncode and the people behind it so much that I am also a part-time TA for them now.

I'd like to preface this review by stating that I was asked by one of the founders of Wyncode, Juha, to write a review. I planned on writing one anyway prior to his request, but I wanted to wait out the post-graduation 90 day job placement period before doing so to give Wyncode a fair chance. As of writing this, it’s been exactly 100 days since I’ve graduated. This review is fully honest, transparent, and objective. I’m not holding anything back.

Also, this review is based on my own personal experience... and like anything else, your mileage may vary. That said, I’m not going to preach the clichéd "what you put into it is what you get out" hustle statement because that should be common sense. I can't think of anything in life in which that does not apply to.

As some of the reviews below reflect, our cohort had difficulties. We had a new instructor who was apparently hired right before the cohort began. It was obvious that he hadn't had enough time to learn the curriculum, and that becomes detrimental when you are learning at the speed of a coding bootcamp. We also had an awesome daytime TA take another job a few weeks in, and she wasn’t replaced, which made it tougher to get help when we really needed it. Finally, Fort Lauderdale’s former classroom was a dump. The chairs were great, but everything else sucked. It was covered in dust because the walls were unsealed concrete block, it was directly next to train tracks which caused constant (and often extended) disruption, the internet connection dropped daily, and coming and going at night was shady to say the least.

So why a five star experience? Because nothing in life is perfect, but what I got out of Wyncode was more valuable than anything advertised. 

I learned how to learn.

When things broke, and when we didn’t have enough TAs, we had to fend for ourselves. While that might seem like a negative, it really opened my eyes to what I’m capable of. In nine weeks I went from knowing basic Web 1.0 HTML and CSS to creating fully-responsive web applications. I’m proud of that accomplishment, and Wyncode gave me the resources to get there. 

Yes, there are a ton of free and inexpensive online courses to learn development. But they don’t give you the benefit of working with others to generate ideas and problem solve. The true benefit of Wyncode is the people you meet and work with daily, and the insight you gain from working together. I was forced to get out of my jaded, introverted comfort zone. I spent crazy hours and weekends with a great bunch of people. Most importantly, l learned how to learn quickly. Learning quickly wouldn’t have been possible for me had I tried to go it alone. 

To my knowledge and experience, all of the other problems I addressed have been corrected. I visited the new classroom. It’s not directly next to the train, and it’s very nice inside. I sat and listened to the new instructor for about 30 minutes and he seemed to be doing a great job. I didn’t hear any complaints in the Fort Lauderdale Slack channel about the internet connection following my cohort.

I found a really cool job with a start-up two weeks ago. Wynwork, the post-graduation job search sessions that are held weekly, gave me the motivation to get that job. Someone below mentioned that Wynwork is like group therapy sessions for the unemployed. I agree 100%, but I certainly don’t see that as a negative. Being able to hear the struggles and successes my peers were going through and know that I wasn’t alone pushed me to get where I am today. 

Also, Juha and Johanna are awesome people, and really do care. They were swift in addressing the issues I personally had, and the way they handled those issues came from the heart. They hire great, positive people from an industry that can be cold and closed off. They’ve built a great program, and they know what they’re doing.

Would I do it all over again if I had the chance? Hell yes. I see myself as a different person after Wyncode. Wyncode not only taught me how to code, it gave me some very important life skills, and I’m forever grateful for the change that I went through. Prior to Wyncode I’d never in a million years let my cynical brain say anything like that. Nothing in life is perfect, but learning what you’re really capable of is invaluable.

From the very first day the Wyncode "Family" accepted me for who I was and was constantly encouraging me to always be learning and growing. Wyncode taught me that some days we make massive strides, and other days’ mere inches but as along as our efforts are channeled in the right direction you'll always be better then you were the day before. Wyncode not only provided me with the knowledge to be a Web Developer but they provided me with a "family" I know I can always rely on. The support they offer their students and alumni is overwhelming: technical support, after class/week-end teacher assistants, and even weekly "job search" workshops. It is truly amazing how much one can learn in a collaborative environment surrounded by like minded individuals all reaching for similar goals. I will be honest it is intensive, you will be studying/practicing at LEAST 10 hours a day 5 days a week not including weekend projects and homework assignments. You WILL get frustrated but like I said the support is there you just have to be willing to put in the effort. Some of the draw backs of Wyncode is that it is only 9 weeks long and the amount of time spend learning JavaScript is not nearly as much as the time learning Ruby, but that is on purpose. See Wyncode teaches you that once you have learned one programming language you tend to be able to learn other languages a lot faster and I would 100% agree with that. So although it would definitely be great to have more time spent between the two programming languages it is not necessarily needed. Overall going to Wyncode has been one of the best experiences of my life and I wouldn't trade the people and connections I've made for anything! If you are considering attending Wyncode please attend a pitch day event or stop in one day and see what it is like I am sure you will be impressed! (Special shout out to: Juha and Jo, Ed, Jose, Joe C, Henry, and Bianca... Amazing group of people!)

Yes, it's possible to follow the self-study route and learn Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. However, the coding bootcamp route has definitely paid off for me. My previous experiences with PHP took me ages to learn with self-study and I did not understand how to use the correct tools for the job, nor how to write 'DRY' code (modular non-repetitive code).

The nine-week course I completed at the Ft. Lauderdale campus (at the FAT village art district) offers a well-rounded study of all of the web technologies and tools to create a functional web application. The course also stresses mobile-first development, so your web pages can operate in many ways like a mobile app. The curriculum is not perfect, but the instructors are intelligent and the TA's are always helpful.

While a large portion of class time consists of lectures, there are also other learning formats such as socrative, hackathons, class coding and group coding. Self-study is also important while in the bootcamp, as the projects are quite time consuming, regardless of experience level. Expect to spend many hours working to get the most out of the program.

Though I had previous coding experience, most of the others in the cohort did not. There is no expectation of programming knowledge, but the program moves very quickly. Be sure to complete all pre-work to gain understanding before the course begins.

Two other reasons I chose Wyncode were that you are given a membership at the coworking space...this provides a helpful environment with less distractions (as focus is key when working on a tedious thing such as computer code). Though placement is not a guarantee, there are access to hiring partners, networking events, and Wynterviews (group interviews).

I graduated from BrainStation's Web Development Immsersive Class in June 2016 and found the experience to be comprehensive and enjoyable. In 10 weeks, students are taught how to build a functional web application from beginning to end. Many students have no previous experience in web development and are still able to follow the course's quick pace, although it would certainly be beneficial. The course is structured in a way that students are presented with new topics in a meaningful order that allows a thorough understanding of how the different parts of a web application are connected. Although there is no formal job assistance, the staff at BrainStation is very active in helping students achieve their goals. I would certainly recommend this course and would advise prospective students to have clearly defined goals heading into the course as well as a realistic expectaion of the amount of work that is required to achieve loftier goals.

Before coming to Wyncode, I graduated from school with a degree in both Finance and Marketing. After graduation, I spent a year in Madrid teaching primary school. I have yet to mention coding in my background, because January 11th, the first day of cohort 8, was the first day I ever touched or had even seen code. I will admit, the first week I was pissed, frustrated, upset, etc. but that was only because doing this course and learning this material, I had to adapt to a new way of processing and thinking.

Fortunately, the great instructors and ta's at Wyncode really helped me through this. I felt at ease, if not overtly comfortable, asking whatever questions I had, no matter how stupid they were. All due to the atmosphere that this program has created. If I had not elected Wyncode and went with another program, I strongly believe I would not nearly be at the level I am at now. 

To be blunt, previous to Wyncode, I envisioned this career as one that is completely isolated and done while hidden in a cavernous basement pounding down bags of Dorito's and liters of Mountain Dew but this could not be further from the truth. Yeah, after Wyncode you'll be able to create things you never thought imaginable, but to me, that was only a small part of the overall experience. The intangibles of creating a network in this exciting new space and the people I met both students and in the tech community, I value just as much. 

And because this is such an honest review, there were many others in my class who were better coders than I was. With that being said, I still have a job as a developer. It's easy to ridicule this program for their job placement services if you are naive and expect Wyncode to magically gift you with a job upon pitch night. That's not going to happen. I worked to get my job but I am aware and thankful that if it were not for Wyncode and what I learned there, I would not be in the position I am now. The jobs are there for you if you work to find them.