Byte Academy

I came to Byte Academy from an accounting background with some casual programming experience. I was challenged in the areas where I thought I was ahead of the curve and I was guided by the teaching staff when I came upon more difficult material. The pace is fast and everyday they challenge you to stretch past what you thought you could do.

I am not going to claim it is perfect, but Byte Academy staff work closely with students on a daily basis to improve personal and overal experience. During my three months I saw several changes in curriculum and teaching methods that improved my experience.

This program is not for you if you:

• Have difficulty following instructions or being taught.
• Expect a collegiate experience.
• Are not willing to spend extra time to give yourself the best opportunity to learn.

In my opinion, Byte Academy is a worthwhile investment if your goal is to take three months to change how you work, how you think and are fully invested in the process. Byte Academy has every resource that you could think of to make you a great full stack Python developer. You just have to show up and take full advantage.

This is a fantastic bootcamp.  At the moment it is still small which means personalized attention from an extremely competent and passionate instructor staff.  The environment is collaborative - students in more senior cohorts jump at the chance to help those who are new to the bootcamp.  There is a lot to learn in a short amount of time, so best to come in having completed the prework so that you can hit the ground running.  Be ready to put in the hours! Curriculum is rigorous, but if you're serious about this then that's exactly what you should want.

Byte academy does a great job at pretending they are a full service academy and having amazing job placement after. The truth is, they hardly have any graduates and have had more people drop out than graduate with jobs. All of the reviews on this site are written by the people who work there or by current teachers. The teachers care more about their side projects than they do their students. They force multiple people to repeat so most cohorts are made up of 3-4 students. When I first started, I was the only one I my group. They do a great job of just handing you work and never reviewing it unless you ask. The curriculum is decent but the amount of work per day is just insane. My favorite quote from the instructor is "I'm sorry I haven't been helping you today but it's kind of your fault". People have to repeat the first 4 weeks twice?? That's not their fault but the instructors. The instructors act like they're above you but behave like children. The whole school needs a serious redo and structure change. Do not waste your money here but go to a proven school like General Assembly or flatiron.

 

Byte academy teaches far them simple programing, it teaches you how to think like a software engineer. We covered basic CS algorithms and how computers function at a lower level to give us a better understanding of what out programs are doing. We worked extensively using proper git work flow, white board sessions and constant team communication. I learned that the over all design and implementation is far more important then the lines of code one would write. Byte was a great experience and the instructors are very knowledgeable and attentive, ready and willing to help out any time, even nights and weekends. The sense of community that we have with the staff, alumni and fellow students is like a tasty cherry on top giving every one a larger pool of knowledge and experience to draw from and contribute too. I would, and have, recommended Byte to any looking to grow in the development field.

I can't say enough good things about Byte Academy. From the admissions, to the instructors, and everywhere in between this is a great bootcamp. The environment is very relaxed, while also maintaining a professional atmoshphere. I learned enough to build full stack apps, and if I am unsure of something, I now have the know-how to research and learn something new. I would recommend Byte Academy to anyone, and ecourage anyone who is on the fence, to go ahead and enroll! 

If one person reads this and changes their mind about this school, I will have done a great service to you.

I will start by saying that people have graduated from here and certainly have gotten jobs. Every bootcamp will have success stories, even the worst ones like this one. My review is based on a few factors you should seriously consider. I am going to describe the situation for my cohort.

There is no challenging admissions process. You'll get an easy question and an interview and you'll be let in automatically. This is the first red flag as there is little competition to get in which lends to the belief that it is a hands off experience once you're enrolled.

The curriculum was completely in-transition. The cohort before me didn't even learn React. Students were teaching themselves. My cohort was the first to have React in the curriculum and it was rushed and sloppy.

They don't have a dedicated course curriculum on Github or anywhere.

This is a huge one - they promised different paths you can take for the FT course - Blockchain, Data Science of Fullstack web development. The truth was that the only thing they offered was Fullstack web development. There was never a path for Blockchain or Data Science. It was complete blatent false advertising. It's actually funny that there are so many choices here for what course I took because the only thing they offered truly was the Fullstack web dev course.

The school is very hands off with attendance or projects. My final project was hardly fleshed out or fancy but there were no real benchmarks or code review or anything to truly demonstrate a mastery of the course work. I saw a student from a previous cohort graduate because they created a Google plugin as a final project. It was hardly something deserving of a final project standard but I could also understand it considered they probably didn't get the same "teaching" I did.

As a former student, I can tell you that many of the reviews here are from students turned employees or employees that are just bumping up the ratings of the school.

There are no career services to speak up - they have no connections to hiring partners. There are no career fairs where companies are looking to hire their bootcamp grads. Your help will be the equivalent of you going to Linkedin and connecting with people on your own.

I am a real former student and my experience was very underwhelming. For the investment you make, you should demand or expect a very structured, rigorous program and you will not find that with this school. 

Do not attend this school. If you really want to go to a Bootcamp, do some serious homework and re-read this review if you are thinking of going to Byte.





 

What to expect:

Bootcamps consolidate a lot of learning into a short amount of time.  You'll get out of it what you put in.  You'll get instruction on topics in the morning, and then you're often left to tackle problems on your own in the afternoon until you ask for help.  I found the instructors to be knowledgable and helpful.  However, part of the value of a bootcamp is spending time writing the code and learning to solve problems on your own.  When you're on the job you won't have someone holding your hand showing you how to code up a merge sort or figure out why your HTML elements are out of place, and the instructors try to strike the balance between helping when you're stuck and merely giving you solutions.  A lot of it relies on your own effort, but I know I personally learned a ton.

What you'll learn:

Core computer science topics are taught in Python.  Data types, data structures, search/sort algorithms, etc.  SQL and relational databases.  Web development incorporates the basics of HTML, CSS, Javascript as well as the Django framework.  I came from a finance background, so I didn't need to finance instruction as much.  They could find better ways to merge the coding and finance instruction.  At the moment they're fairly separate.  However, by the time they bring you through the basics of Python and comp sci concepts, there's not much time to dive into domain specifics, so it's understandable.  The third month of the program allows you to pick your own custom project and explore that area more deeply if you want.