Chegg Skills

I graduated Thinkful's Flexible Web Development Bootcamp in May. I have gotten a job and an offer from a fortune 100 company. The Bootcamp does exactly what I expected it to do, which was to give me a start in the web development world. HOWEVER, there is one thing all boot camp seekers should know and understand. A web development boot camp is only as good as what you put into it. This is a field that requires a love and great interest in coding/programming. If you are going to spend the time and money to change careers, wouldn't you want to make sure that it is really what you want to do? Not only does this have to be something you are extremely interested in, you have to be willing to put in the hard work. Meaning you have to be willing to research, read, breathe, eat, and sleep code all while working full time and or having a newborn like I did. Thinkful does not hold your hand. They do not give you the answers all the time. They do not give you a master book saying here is everything now you're a web developer. Thinkful requires you to research, read, analyze and understand outside of what is printed and what they have as assignments. You MUST do this in order to actually understand what you are doing and learn a valuable skill set. 

Thinkful was great while I was paying. Meaning that I had 1-1 mentorship, I had a program manager who kept in touch or would respond when I reached out. I had a mentor who was experienced and challenged me to fight for every single word in my code. They even allowed me time to pause in my program to have my son, and then continue. However, the hiccup came when I was in this sort of limbo. I requested to stop being charged tuition because I was refining my portfolio and waiting on feedback. This process in total took me a month which I didn't deem as fair to pay if I had no mentor support. Once I stopped paying with the agreement of Thinkful, it seems services died down. It took 2 months to get full access to career support and by then I had already landed my first job offer.
 
So while there are issues that could be addressed, that doesn't mean Thinkful failed me. It only means things could be improved as all systems could. Thinkful is a good boot camp and provides flexibility in which course to take as well as financially. 

I'm a student at Thinkful's Flexible Web Development program. I'm about a month into the 6 month curriculum. Prior to this, I had taken a handful of coding courses online with Codecademy, Lynda.com, and CodeSchool. I also took advantage of Thinkful's 3-week prep course on Web Development prior to officially starting the FlexWebDev program. If you are on the fence, I do recommend taking this prep course, it's not very expensive to start and it gives you an accurate assessment of what the 6 month program would be like.  The course material seems to be a healthy combination of active/passive learning. You are never alone in your learning. You have access to a mentor for 1-1 discussions, there's several slack channels to seek out help or review. There's also workshops and Q and A sessions, all thorought the day making it accessible to someone like myself who's stuck at a 9-5 job during the day. Overall, I'm happy and satisfied with Thinkful and would recommend their services.

TL;DR: Thinkful’s flex web development program helped me land a dev position within 40 days of graduating. While I do think the program could improve in a few areas, I still think it is well worth the time, money, and effort.

There’s a lot that could be covered in this review but for brevity’s sake, I’ve chosen to focus on the curriculum. Let it be known that the Slack community, QA sessions,  Mentors, and Career Services team are all incredible.

I started Thinkful’s flex bootcamp with roughly two months of development experience under my belt; I knew what variables were and understood the basics of control flow, but had yet to build any real apps. The first curriculum module quickly got me up to speed on basic web development, and I completed my first capstone project with a reasonably solid understanding of framework-less front end development.

The second curriculum module focused on Node and the basics of backend development. There was considerably less handholding in this module, which forced me ask better questions and sharpen my Google-Fu skills. While being able to teach yourself and google your way through new concepts is an absolutely vital development skill, I would have had less difficulty during this section had I known that the curriculum intentionally contained less information. All that being said, the curriculum was well written and successfully explained the more abstract backend concepts.

The third module focused on React. Following the pattern established with module two, there was even less spoon-fed information and I spent more time reading the React docs than I did the curriculum. However, the curriculum does a great job explaining the topics it covers, and always links to more in-depth resources when necessary.

The fourth and final module focused on Computer Science (CS) basics. The curriculum was really well written, but I still spent a TON of time grappling with the sorting algorithms and data structures. I completed this module convinced that I had learned absolutely nothing, but I gleaned enough knowledge to satisfy most of the CS interview questions I encountered.

Overall, I really enjoyed the curriculum. There were a fair amount of typos and a few instances of non-functioning code examples, but most of them occurred because Thinkful is constantly updating the lessons. I’d rather have slightly unpolished curriculum than a pristine set of lessons on old tech and legacy projects.

My one critique here is that, while the curriculum does not teach UI/UX design, all of the capstones still have to satisfy certain UX metrics. These standards may be intuitive to designers and front-end oriented students, but this was not the case for me. I am a terrible designer and having to wrestle with design principles I did not know or understand severely hampered my progress. Having said that, the program still helped me land a job as a backend developer. I'd enthusiastically reccommend the flex program to any committed student excited about cutting-edge web development.

# Some Good Title   In June 2016 I started Thinkful's (TF) part-time web development bootcamp. I can easily and honestly say that this has been one of the better decisions that I have made in my life. Here I am one year out, employed full-time in an exciting job with enormous career opportunities with a company that treats me like I'm a valued asset rather than simply another cog in the machine. And all of this due to the amazing crew over at TF.   Quick background: I did half of TF's program, dropped out (although technically I graduated early) to take a short-term job, and then after the job completed the rest of the curriculum. In April 2017 I started TF's career services. My program manager told me that I had them in the bank when I finished back in November. So when I came back this April they let me pick up as if I had just graduated the program! This is just a single example of the folks over there going above and beyond.   Here's a few things that I think set TF excels and sets themselves apart.   1. Cost & Financing   Bootcamps can get to be very expensive, but my experience in financing TF has been relatively painless. When I enrolled in TF I was a poor college grad and because of the financing opportunities I never felt like the cost was too much of a burden.   It's no the cheapest bootcamp out there, but you get what you pay for. In comparison to going back for a CS degree, I saved thousands of dollars, and I felt like I got a good foundation on which to continue learning.   2. Flexibility   The primary thing that made TF doable for me was the ability to enroll in a part-time bootcamp. Sure, it takes longer (about 6 months), but this meant that I could continue working valet to pay rent while I taught myself the skills to become a developer. It's the difference between starting on your career change now and starting after you've saved up enough to take 3 months off work.   It should also be noted that they also offer a full-time bootcamp, if you are able to take off the 3 months to expedite your career change.   3. Remote   Also, in addition to making TF work around my schedule, I could attend my meetings and do my coursework from anywhere. This made integrating TF into my life all the more simple.   4. Mentorship   One of the best things about TF is that they follow the mentorship model. Rather than throwing 10-20 students in a classroom with a single instructor and a few TAs, they assign each student a personal mentor, typically a senior engineer working for TF on the side (this is important! Your mentor is actually working on production code on a daily basis, rather than teaching full-time). For the part-time program, you meet with them 3 times per week. Having that personal touch to guide you when you're stuck or want to study something outside of the curriculum (gasp!) is the extra push it takes to speed up the learning process and separate yourself from the rest of the pack in an extremely competitive field.   5. Career Services   I have yet to see another bootcamp offer continued career services as comprehensive and effective as TF's. To be honest, I feel like Career Services is its own little bootcamp. I started Career Services April 2017 with little knowledge of how to network, present myself confidently, or make a sales pitch for myself as a candidate. 6 weeks later I had two competing job offers and I feel like I've gained the networking/job-searching skills so that next time I need to find a job in the future I will be well-equipped and confident.   6. Community   For being a 100% remote bootcamp, TF has a killer community. They have a Slack channel for all current students, alumni, and mentors. Usually when you're stuck on a problem there's at least one person on there that can get you unstuck quickly. In addition, TF puts on multiple workshops per week on a wide range of topics, all of which are accessible to students.   Some people complain about the curriculum, but to be honest, I feel like the mentor relationships are more important anyways (TF is also very good about updating problems in their curriculum quickly). But the real learning happens from the mentors — they're the ones that show you how to teach yourself (because TF's curriculum isn't gonna be there when you need to learn the custom framework being used at your new employer)   Also, online learning is not for everyone. For myself, I found that the online experience was refreshing and TF has done an amazing job of blending the automated, online approach with the personal touch.   All in all, 100% worth it. Every. Single. Penny. Decide whether online mentor-based learning is your cup of tea, if you're more of a brick and mortar type then it's definitely not for you. But talk to the people there because it's a life-changing decision and Thinkful's doing an excellent job of equipping people for the next step in the their career.

I graduated Thinkful's Full-time Web Development Bootcamp in January 2017. 

After spending a month working on my portfolio, resume and personal portfolio projects, I started the job hunt. Thinkful was with me the whole way.

I started at my new job in late April 2017, doing exactly what Thinkful trained me to do. I love the company and the people (and the paycheck), and the web development work I now do.

Do you need a bootcamp like Thinkful in order to get into this industry? Absolutely not. Everything you need to know you can learn for free. But Thinkful makes the tuition worthwhile:

-course material is streamlined, clear and concise. You spend your study time effectively. I bounced around through online tutorials before joining. Thinkful helped me focus my efforts.

-when you get stuck (and you will), Thinkful mentors and faculty are only a few clicks away. You will need to learn how to work through problems on your own, and Thinkful helps show you where to look or where to ask.

-there are a lot of tools out there. Thinkful introduces you to many of them, and shows you how to develop an efficient workflow.

-javascript proficiency is not the same as fluency. I could read and write javascript with some hesitancy before joining Thinkful. Midway through the program, it became second nature. But I didn't become fluent until tackling data structures and algorithms at Thinkful. The code review and refactoring that faculty lead me through proved invaluable.

 

Thinkful is not perfect. It's composed of people after all. The biggest challenge I saw with it was were growing pains. A few newer faculty were not be as well versed in the course material, or able to answer your questions as well as others. But they will not hold you back. There are lots of very well-versed faculty and mentors on hand to help you through the hurdles.

The only other criticism I found with Thinkful was in their course material. Most of it was very clear and easy to follow. But, a few places needed flushing out. Fortunately, they have been, and continue to be. Thinkful's course material is always being revised, updated and augmented. This continues being relevent after the program, since graduates maintain lifetime access.

 

Like everything in life, you will get out of Thinkful what you put into it. I put my undivided attention into the program throughout, and focused just as intensively (maybe more) on perfecting my job application materials for six weeks afterwards. It was one of the most rewarding investments of my time and money yet.

This is not a get-rich-quick-scheme. You cannot buy yourself a job through Thinkful. But, if you're willing to put the work in, Thinkful will deliver.

 

Web Development job search suggestions:

-have a blog, sharing problems you ran into in your projects, and how you solved them

-spend time on your portfolio and your portfolio projects. Make them look good and work well. Create documention for your portfolio projects.

-take an interest in continuously learning new skills, and showcase them in your blog and/or portfolio.

I was an 18-year military veteran transitioning to the civilian side after being let go due to congressional sequester budget cuts. Without any prior knowledge of JavaScript and only a basic understanding of HTML/CSS I successfully completed their 6-month course and landed a full-time position in 4 weeks after graduating at $60K+. My course mentor guided me through their curriculum focusing on topics that would improve my ability to land a job. After graduating, I entered their job assistance program and received outstanding personal support. 

This isn;t easy. No one is going to spoon feed you the answers. You are going to have to do the work. But if you dedicate yourself to completing the course, understanding the material, and getting a job. You will be successful.

First off - let me say this: I put going to pursue my four year degree on the backburner to attend Thinkful.

I already had prior experience and a good coding knowledge, but needed direction and mentorship more than anything. I could tell from the moment I enrolled at Thinkful that everyone was there to help to their fullest capacity.

I have progressed relatively quick through the course due to my past experience, but my mentor has been a tremendous help on advanced topics and workflow. The guy seems to know literally everything about everything.

Additionally, Thinkful comes with a job guarantee for certain cities. The strategy they roll out to help you get the job is amazing. It forces you to make real world connections and not just shotgun your resume everywhere. While I'm not 100% in the career services phase yet, the contact I have had with them so far shows that they are completely committed and very knowledgable in what they are doing.

I highly reccomend Thinkful even if you're an absolute beginner. The value of a mentor and a team devoted to you in priceless.

About a year and a half ago, I was like you. I was reading through these course report reviews trying to decide on which bootcamps to take. After reading hundreds of reviews (literally), I decided to take Thinkful's Full Time Web Development Course. There were couple of deciding factors:

1. Ease of Enrollment

While some might argue that a good bootcamp needs to be hard, I wholeheartedly disagree. I think a good school needs to be able to take someone whose level is at absolute 0 and be able to teach him/her all the skills required to become 100. For this reason, Thinkful was perfect for me. They gave me a 2-week assignment to follow, which I was able to finish with little difficulty. Then, I had some skype interviews to talk about my goals, personalities. After that I was admitted and ready to learn. However, don't let this fool you to think it's an easy course. I got employed within 2 months of graduation. That tells you how complete this course is.

2. Contents

Speaking of the 'completeness' of the course, Thinkful definitely surprised me. At the time of searching, Thinkful was the only bootcamp that made all of its course materials end-to-end. I'm talking about chrome extensions, skype-like video lecture room, bootstrap-themed responsive course notes that you can view from your phone, easy-to-follow lecture slides, etc. You also get life-time access to these contents even after you graduate (and they get updates as well). It's different from other bootcamps where it looks like they ctrl-c/v some notes from wikipedia or blogs into craiglist-styled webpages. If the content makers were that dedicated to creating their own contents full-stack, I knew I could trust them into making me a full-stack developer. 

3. Mentors

Unlike other bootcamps I was searching at that time, Thinkful offered what's called a 1-on-1 mentorship (on daily basis). I knew that I learn best when I have a person to interact with. So, I decided to go with Thinkful. Although I was only given 30-40 minutes of mentorship everyday, my mentor, Jason was very generous with time and effort. We would work on concepts, problems that I did not understand during lectures/projects. The instructors are also extremely dedicated to helping students. When I requested some 1-on-1 tutoring (other than mentorship) outside of course, everyone was willing to devote their time into teaching extra. Obviously, you have to show effort, but when you do, teachers will match your enthusiasm.

4. Size of Classroom

This was an important factor to me because I wanted to be appreciated as a student. I didn't want a course where I have to wait hours before someone could answer my question. At the same time, I didn't want a course where my only interaction is with a teacher (not enough pair programming experience). To me, the ideal size of classroom would be somewhere aronud 10 students. That way, you have mutual interaction between teachers and students. At the time of enrollment, Thinkful's course had maximum of 8 students (they refused to accept more due to same reason). By the end of the course, I made some life-time friends and mentors, whom I still reach out to.

5. Career Support

Before researching on coding bootcamps, I thought to myself, "If a bootcamp does not have a great career support, I might as well be doing a self-study." It was already intimidating to spend thousands of dollars on learning something I wasn't familar with. I wanted to make sure I get some kind of fail-safe insurance. Thinkful provided 6 months guarantee, which is a promise of full refund in case of unemployment 6 months after graduation date. Most of top-tier bootcamps didn't provide this option (probably because they wanted to advertise that they can 'confidently' place students in jobs without the 'insurance'). Truth is, getting a job isn't all about a student's excellence. Sometimes, it's really about how lucky you are. I've seen students (from Thinkful or other top bootcamps) who are miles better than me struggling to get a job for months. I have no doubt that Thinkful will prepare you to become employable by great companies, but it shouldn't hurt to have a back-up plan, just in case that takes longer than 6 months.

As for the actual career support, I cannot recommend the program enough. Thinkful takes career support like its own course. After you graduate, you will immediately enter what's called a 'career-search' mode. You will have industry-styled agile scrum meetings every day with career mentors (these are different from your code mentors) who will help you with every career related issues--building resume/portfolio, preparing elevator talks, interview questions, etc. I felt like I was supported by the whole team throughout the day. Plus, the career team usually has pretty big network of recruiters, which was crucial at landing my first job.

**

That being said, I don't want to give impression that Thinkful works for everyone (that would sound like an ad). It's certainly designed for specific group of people. If you are someone who cares about all the factors listed above, I highly recommend this program. If not, there are other bootcamps (or even self-studies) that will meet your need. As for myself, it worked perfectly. I got my first programming job (working for Intel) within 2 months of graduation.

If you're like me, motivated to pickup the skills needed to be a developer but lacking the discipline and structure to commit, Thinkful's part time bootcamp will likely be the perfect program for you.

This truly is one of those things where you get out exactly how much you put in. Do not enroll expecting someone else to do the heavy lifting for you. Do expect to get paired with an expert mentor who is more than just an instructor, but a confidant and Jedi Master who will push you along your quest. Do expect other smart, talented mentors who offer office hours for answering anything from technical questions to industry tips. Expect to engage in a community of hungry developers in training and help eachother out. Ask questions as well as answer questions in the Slack channels from your peers (see the rubber duck debugging).

Thinkful proved, for me, to be an amazing experience and a real game changer. Towards the end of program track I began to put my resume out and apply for jobs. Derek, my program manager was very flexible allowing me to pause my mentor sessions and was really supportive, even getting me in touch with career counslors before I finished. Within a week I was landing interviews and was fortunate enough to get an awesome offer from a company where I love to go to work everyday. 

Changing careers and becoming a developer is not easy, but it's extremely rewarding. With a little guidance and the right support, it's very doable. I recommend Thinkful to friends all the time, it's that good.

I enrolled Thinkful's online flexible bootcamp in December 2016, graduated in May 2017, found a Front-End Engineer job in June 2017. Overall it was a good experience and has toally changed my life. I was paired with who I think is the best programming mentor ever. We had 3 sessions every week and each session is for an hour. That being said, you pretty much need to teach yourself and learn how to learn programming. That is also my favorite part of this bootcamp experience.

After I graduated, they gave one 1-hour session every week to chat with me about my progress on job hunting and gave me some tips on how to write a resume and how to interview. Just like learning programing, hearing someone talking about it one hour a week is not enough. To ace your interview skills you'd need to spend much more effort on it. In terms of job search you're pretty much on your own and it's definitely NOT as easy as how every coding bootcamp advertises. What I really appreciated was that after I received a job offer they were very prompt on assisting me with salary and benefit neogociations.

Thinkful as a coding bootcamp has grown very fast in the past one or two years and they have, I think, over 100, if not over 200, programming mentors working with them. I have talked with about 15 mentors at Thinkful at their Q&A sessions. To be very honest, none of them were as great as my own mentor, in terms of knowledge, the ability of explaining things, as well as patience and attitude. So you'd have a really great experience with Thinkful if you're paired with the right mentor. But if you're less lucky when they assign you a mentor, I'd be a little worried.

Overall, if you are willing to commit and put in very hard work, I think Thinkkful is a great place to learn coding and pivot your career. I would recommend it.

I completed the full time program and found a job pretty much right away. That is, however, not always the case for everyone, so if you do the course make sure you are prepared to spend at least 3 months looking for a job. It's really a matter of luck and being at the right place at the right time. If you treat looking for a job like a job though you should be able to find something.

My advice to anyone considering this program is to first spend a good amount of time working through free online materials to make sure web development/ coding is a good fit for you. I spent about 5-6 months working through codecademy and free code camp before committing to thinkful. I learned how to work with html, css, JS, jQuery at a beginner-level on my own. I went to a couple tech meetups in my area to see if I had similar interests with people already in the field.

Besides preparing me to be successful for thinkful's program, doing the prep work confirmed that this was somethig I actually wanted to do. If you have a good time working through those tutorials and you enjoy working on small projects with jQuery, you will be successful in the program. Read about nodeJS and reactJS and see if it really interests you. Good luck and enjoy the process!