Coding Dojo

Before Coding Dojo I implemented electronic medical records systmes in hospitals for many years. I was a traveling consultant, so I implemented systems across the country. I wanted to learn some newer and different technoligies because consulting required me to mainly do the same job over and over. It didn't allow for much creativity.

I enjoyed my experience at Coding Dojo very much. I was probably the oldest student in the room (I definitely was) but I never felt that anyone there thought that was a problem at all. It required long hours, but it was fascinating and great to feel and contribute to the energy of my cohort every day. 

Having been a programmer in the past, I felt I was able to understand the basics fairly well but the pace was very rigorous. Also, a lot of information is supplied by the teaching staff, but a lot of self learning is also required. I did spend between 70 and 90 hours per week on average in order to keep up.

I feel that I walked away with a very good basic understanding of full stack programming and some of the details of three separate stacks. I have a lot left to learn, but I feel that I have a good basic understanding.

I completed the boot camp over a month ago. Since then I have increasingly been looking for a development position. I'm starting to get interviews and it seems that the projects I have developed on my own using my Coding Dojo skills are impressing employers. I'm hopeful that I'll land something pretty soon and gaining more confidence every day.

I feel that Coding Dojo was money well spent. 

I began my coding bootcamp journey at Coding Dojo in September 2017. I was unhappy with my repetitive job as a chemist and was ready for a new challenge. I am currently a software engineer at a small company in Denver, Colorado and it took me 1 month of serious searching  & applying to land a software engineering job.
The application process to Coding Dojo was fast and easy, and the instructors were great. Going through this program with a cohort of amazingly talented and determined students made the bootcamp fun and successful. Being continually challenged by my instructors and my fellow students pushed me to work harder than I thought I could.
I must mention though, that I had an upper hand to most of the other students in my cohort. I have a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry and worked as an Analytical Chemist for 2 years before beginning this program so I've been trained to think analytically and problem solving skills comes more naturally to me than most. But, Coding Dojo provides an amazing platform to learn from, and all the tools required to get a job (they even help with the job search process). Add in your will and determination to succeed, and you will be a software engineer in no time.

Coding Dojo was definitely worth the money. Our instructors were very knowledgeable and good at guiding us through learning material for ourselves via actual experience/trial and error rather than simply showing us how to solve a problem without any exploration - much like you'd experience learning a new technology on the job. I came in with some collegiate Computer Science coursework and feel like I learned more in a few months at the bootcamp than I would have if I finished my degree. The course is definitely challenging and can take up a lot of your time, but you learn quite a lot. You do have to learn how to keep your own discipline and stay on-track through the weeks, but the end result is worth it. The only negative point is that the text/videos given to us as part of our curriculum were occasionally confusing or difficult to follow, but instructors generally knew where the problem points in the materials were and were able to guide us through rough patches without difficulty. Overall, as long as you're able to motivate yourself to maintain effort even when the material seems difficult, Coding Dojo is definitely a positive experience.

I will be very honest about my experience at Coding Dojo in Los Angeles, CA.  

Ultimately going to the Dojo was the best decision of my life. I was previously an admin assistant and now I am a web developer who loves her job. BUT graduating from the Dojo was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.  I was fortunate to have a friend who went through the program and was honest about what to expect.  So, I was fortunate enough to know what to expect going into the program. Hopefully this review will help do the same for others.

In the program each student will learn three different stacks (a bundle of software that makes up a functioning website/application) 14 weeks.  Because a stack is made up of multiple different components you are constantly learning and building on what you’ve previously learned.  This is where the difficulty of the program starts.  If you don’t fully grasp something the rest won’t make sense.

The program is built for students to work together and help each other.  If a cohort fails to gel together or falls apart before the program is done, then it’s nearly impossible for a student to succeed.  Needless to say it is vital you make friends and keep going together. 

As for the program I wish it were three weeks longer, a week more on each stack.  There is no room for an error. Expect to do 60-90 hours of coding a week.  I actually told my friends not to expect to see me for three months and that is exactly what happened.  But the program does teach you how to be a fullstack programmer.  You will not be fluent in any stack, but you will have a working foundation of each language.

As for career placement, the Dojo does have a career service which does its best at connecting graduates with job leads.  But do not expect to get a job right out of the program. Most companies don’t want Junior Developers or they don’t trust bootcamps to produce decent programmers. (I honestly think this is the same with other bootcamps and not just with Coding Dojo) So expect lots of rejection, but do not give up.  I was one of the first in my cohort to land a job and it took me three months. Eventually all my cohort mates landed jobs – at least the ones who put effort into the program did.  So plan your finances accordingly and have realistic expectations. 

Ultimately what you put into the program is what you’ll get out of the program.  I’ve read some of the bad reviews of the program and I know some of the people who wrote those bad reviews.  I can honestly say those were the people who were constantly missing class, not staying late to finish their course work, regularly goofing off, basically not putting 100% effort into the program. So if you are serious about programming and you think Coding Dojo is the bootcamp for you, then expect to work extremely hard and have realistic expectations of job placement.

I enrolled in Coding Dojo after graduating with a Computer Science degree but feelling like I lacked some practical experience. I definitely noticed that in college a lot of the coding was done in a vacuum: the professor would setup a nice space in the code and tell you to fill it in with code relevant to the class curriculum. While the algorithms and fundamentals I picked up are definitely still relevant, coding isn't that clean cut as apply x algorithm we learned in class today, there's always going to be open ended questions on how to solve a particular problem and definitely documentation reading.

Different coding boot camps or schools will promote things like how they're teaching the latest and greatest framework, but it's rarely the important part. The most important thing is that they build students that can problem solve without hand holding and build strong fundamentals; there's always going to be another new shiny framework.

In that sense, I think Coding Dojo did some parts right while I was there: they started each day with algorithms and white boards, first thing in the morning. Not only are these similar to the style of questions you'd get in a job interview, but they sharpen how you think when coding in general, which is what the job interview is trying to assess. Some students started skipping algorithms in the morning, but this is the perfect environment to take advantage of: solving agorithms in groups and being able to see other ways of thinking.

In a sense that choice of skipping or not is the answer to whether your experience at Coding Dojo will be worth it or not. Coding Dojo provides the student with the tools and environment to succeed: Instructors willing to help, peers to bounce ideas off of, and training of fundamentals. It's up to the student to put in the effort to make the experience.

I was in a position that you, the reader, are likely in right now. The details obviously may differ, but a career transition/change is no simple feat. I'll give some short backstory then describe my experience at Coding Dojo. 

I worked as a consultant for the pharmaceutical industry for a year and a half. I couldn't stand that job and my girlfriend was already traveling/living in Australia, so I left to travel/serve tables/volunteer for almost a year and a half. Upon returning, I realized I had not-so-subtly choked my career trajectory within a few inches of its life. I'd had a very brief (one intro course) experience with coding in school (I studied an engineering discipline), and had always known that software development was a great path to pursue. I decided to look into bootcamps. 

For me, the bootcamp I wanted to enroll in needed to meet two criteria. 1: It had to be reputable, and 2: It had to be a short distance from my apartment. Coding Dojo met both, and its approach was interesting–teach three full technology stacks, where most bootcamps teach one. I figured the breadth of knowledge might put me at an advantage over other candidates come the job hunt. I started in March of 2018. 

A bit about my experience: The Coding Dojo curriculum moves extremely quickly. It's not easy. If you take it seriously and put in the work to keep up, you will finish the program surprised with your capabilities. I left the bootcamp feeling two things. 1: Initimidated by the world I had thrown myself into, yet, 2: Strangely confident in my ability to learn. The instructors are helpful without handing you answers, and there's a ping pong table. Pluses all around. 

Two months after finishing the program, I was hired as a software engineer. My company specializes in Internet of Things/Alexa business solutions via the AWS (Amazon Web Services) platform. We also do a good amount of machine learning/edge computing. Day to day, I'm a backend engineer. I use Python and Node (both taught at the Dojo) and discuss high level architecture for projects, which was also stressed during my time at the bootcamp. 

There are definitely many great choices when it comes to bootcamps. In my experience, Coding Dojo is one of them. 

I did an onsite Coding Dojo program about a year ago and got a job offer a week after graduation. It was a very intense three months where I was putting in 14-16 hours of studying 7 days a week. I was able to complete a couple of projects before graduation which made me stand out to employers. 

At Coding Dojo they prepare you to be a self-sufficient developer, so you do not need someone's constant attention (important once you get hired). The material is really curated and encourages students to do the research and find answers to their questions online (which is what you will be mainly doing when have some questions on the job) They go over the best ways to search for answers online and troubleshoot the issues. Coding Dojo also practices the "20-minute rule" where you do your own research for 20 minutes and if can't find an answer, only then ask the instructor for help.

I encourage you to do thorough job market research before going into any coding school to see if the stacks offered at that school align with those in demand in your market. The beauty of Coding Dojo is that they cover three most in-demand stacks, which drastically improves the chances of getting a job. 

Also, when it comes to coding- you must think of it more than just a job, in my opinion, in order to be a successful software developer, coding also has to be your hobby. 

Last but not least, perk of Coding Dojo is that you get the lifetime career services support. So when you are looking to move companies or just need some career advice, Career Services Manager is always there for you.

I would again emphasize the time commitment for the duration of the program. Coding Dojo has all of the necessary tools for you to become a successful full-stack developer, and you are encouraged to use them, BUT if you just expect to put in less than 8-10 hours a day it will be much harder for you to land an offer you will be (or should be) happy with.

Before attending courses with Coding Dojo, I was in office management for 25+ years and the only coding background I had was HTML and CSS. For years, I had been interested in becoming a developer, but didn't know which route to take so I called a friend who manages a software engineering team in San Jose, CA. He gave me the contact info for Coding Dojo and told me he had heard really good reviews about them from his colleagues.   All of the instructors I had were fantastic and the courses were well laid out. The web fundamentals class was a breeze because of my previous knowledge of front end languages, but I really struggled with the back end stuff. I would recommend having some sort of basic foundation/understanding of Python and/or Javascript beforehand. If I had at least that much, I believe the experience would've been less stressful for me.   I am still working in an office managemenet role. However, because of dual knowledge of office management and coding, I was hired by a tech company to work remotely handling all of the back office administration, as well as helping some of the dev work. After my first year, I was offered a position as a full-time developer.   P.S. My company has hired two other Coding Dojo alumni over the past two years ;)

While Coding Dojo doesn’t teach every aspect, it gives you a good solid foundation  in web development AND the ability to be a efficient developer that gives you the ability to learn outside of the platform. Other words more advance depth concepts can be obtain from docs with easy understanding. The technology is always changing so rapidly that it’s a must to learn the foundations and to have the ability to know how to keep up with the changes. So don’t expect to come to the boot camp and complete it and that’s the end of the road for training. You still need to keep learning after you complete the boot camp which gives you the knowledge to do so! The only pitfall I found was there are some technology stacks / topics not really covered. Such as docker. AWS in depth. Firebase. Severless approach, graphql and some others. While the topics aren’t a must. It’s something that you will most likely run into one way or another. 

I joined the dojo at 18 and I went to college for a year... Not for me. I wanted to learn to code for the longest time and I just really didn't know where to start because I didn't have any peers that could tell me where to start. I went to the one in burbank and was early every single day for the first month which is how they spilt up the languages they teach you by months. After a very short first week of front end dev I learned python as my first language with Django. I didn't get to make a project in any stack as the school finds passing your test more important then creating a project yourself. If I could go back I would have not done the test at all and just focused on personal projects during that time. My next 2 language were ruby on rails (ruby) and mean (JavaScript). My experience with ruby was plesent even though I didn't really care for the language and still don't but the teacher was very smart and wrote the online ruby part of the platform which was nice (thank eduardo 🥚). My Mean experience was not good and I would like to give the teacher a little credit he tried but boy is it a lot to learn in 1 month, I believe it was the fault of the curriculum, as M. E. A. N stand for mongo(your nosql database), Express(request handling library) , Angular(A front-end extremely heavy framework) , and Node(JavaScript on the server). I believe one person passed the test for mean out of the 30 in my cohort... Honestly it was disappointing especially since we did algorithms every morning before coding with would be actually really helpful but then you'd have a 10 min break and then go into an hour long lecture. If the lecture was first and then algorithms back to back so people would have more time to code I think that would be better. But back to mean, after I left the dojo with my strength in python I felt like I had to learn JavaScript so I decided to learn react which would have been 10000% easier to learn if they taught it at the dojo instead of angular. But I had to learn react on my own. You won't get to learn Java or any language unless the teachers currently working there teach it. I still haven't gotten a job yet after a year but that's because I want one in js react or python. The best thing that you will learn from the dojo is how to be self motivated and sufficient. The most important thing to me was the exposure to this world that I had always wanted to dive into but never had the know how where to start. I don't know how some of the people around me made it as long as they did, some of them were over 30 and had like families because if you want to learn and get your work don't I was there from 7am to 8pm or later every day.