General Assembly

I'm part of the first cohort that graduated a few days ago. I have technical background (Bachelor of Science in Computer Science) and some programming experience.

 

Research before signing up, and why remote?

Signing up for this first cohort was a huge leap of faith. I did so much research in finding the right programming bootcamp for me.

I even went back and forth to NYC to learn more about the bootcamps while attending a part-time programming class. Each way is 560 miles from my home. I put around 15,000 miles in my car in the process of deciding if I should go enroll in an immersive program.

Because I lived in a rural area, quite easily called the boondocks, I crashed at my relative's apt in NYC for free (lucky!). I still had to go home every weekend for 3 months while going through part-time programming classes. After that grueling commute cycle, I realized that I really can't leave my family alone almost 600 miles away, even if I want to join an immersive programming course. 

My husband is military so I cannot simply uproot our lives for my desire to go into an immersive, and become a programmer.

I really needed to think carefully about what I was going to be doing for the next few months in regards to my career change. After weeks of decision making, I came to the conclusion that I needed to either drive 110 miles every day roundtrip if I wanted to learn how to code in the nearest big city, or attend a remote bootcamp.

I ultimately decided that I should apply for a remote immersive program.

 

Hard time finding the right remote immersive bootcamp.

After applying for several more selective programming bootcamps and passing, it just didn't feel right. It felt like the people that I was put in contact with weren't eager to talk to me. Almost like I was a bother, especially the people who did the technical interviews.

I was getting a bit frustrated because I just couldn't connect with the people I was talking to. It didn't feel like they were eager to help me learn. Instead of sounding enthusiastic about teaching me, it felt like they were talking down to me. Of course, learning the best languages of the moment is key, but I also wanted to feel comfortable with the folks I will be dealing with for the next few months.

 

Seeing GA's Ad for the first cohort (aka guinea pig).

A General Assembly Admissions Advisor reached out to me. I was surprised. It took me a few seconds to process why GA was calling me. I honestly forgot about applying for their remote program. A few days back, I submitted their online form in whim to get the curriculum. Most of the schools with harder vetting process didn't really follow-up.

I've read a lot of reviews on GA and it just didn't seem up to par to what I envisioned myself getting into. The reviews for GA are so mixed everywhere.

Being the inquisitive person that I am, I politely grilled the GA representative on every single aspect of the program. She was very professional, it made me happy to talk to someone who knew what I'll be learning.

But I still wasn't convinced. 

I politely told the admission advisor that I might go with "XYZABC" school because I've already been talking to them weeks back. She convinced me to give it a chance, and attend the information sessions they have. The contrast alone between her demeanor and the uncaring conversations I had with the other "top" school convinced me to give it a shot.

I went to all of their information sessions with the lead instructor and the program head. All I can say was is that their information sessions were really live and open, very unscripted.

I pondered for a few more weeks, until I finally decided to go with General Assembly's Remote Immersive.

 

The pre-work.

I honestly wasn't ecstatic with the pre-work. I thought that it could've been much more focused on drilling the fundamentals than coming up with a pretty project. Honestly felt nervous when I went through the pre-work. I was thinking, "what the heck did I get myself into".

I was upfront about this when they asked for my feedback. I am not scared putting this out there. This also shows that nobody is silencing my voice. I even used my name in this review. Not going as anonymous.

I believe they tweaked it for the upcoming cohorts. I'm not sure. Attend the information session and do not rely on my statement alone. They are constantly tweaking things.

Although I did say that I wasn't much fan of the pre-work, because to me it lacked the preview on the fundamentals that the instructors will eventually hammer on you, I did not dock a star. It is because it ultimately did not take away anything from my learning experience.

 

My experience in the actual lessons.

The beginning was rough. It's just like starting your first day in class, or first day at a new job. A lot of adjusting and discomfort as you go into "immersive learning" mode.

However, I sure did learn a lot. I get goosebumps just thinking about the whole experience. 

I honestly can say that I got out so much from this program. I was able to finally utilize the tools, the Computer Science Fundamentals, that I I didn't know what to do with before graduating. I'm learning ASP and C# now, a few days after graduating. The program was very systematic in teaching us how to approach new topics most efficiently. 

 

Shoutout to my awesome instructors.

I also know it also had a lot to do with our awesome instructors. I am so thankful that I got the instructors that I did. Our instructor group had about 20 years experience collectively between them. That alone speaks volumes of my experience. Did they make it hard on us? Nope. They definitely gave us the chance to excel, but if the student didn't want to, they were not hard on him or her. But the instructors definitely did not slack off in whipping our butts to learn as much as we can. 

Take note, the instructor teams change every cohort. Again, attend the information sessions. You're spending $$$, an equivalent of a very decent car, you should at least make an effort in researching who will be teaching you. I for one would have not joined if I saw anything less impressive than what I saw the team that was going to be teaching me.

 

After graduation.

To speak of the other people in my cohort, I know of a few people already going to interviews. As of this writing, this is day 3 from graduating. I myself went to a few even before graduating. I cannot speak for everybody, but a lot of the people I grew close to, and am still chatting with, seem to be doing quite well. There were some who also had interviews before graduating, but a lot of us were holding out for remote positions.

Full disclosure, right now I'm not going all out in finding a job, so my view of the job market is not quite detailed. I'm thinking of either getting my MS in Computer Science or finding a remote job. At the very least, I want to code with and for a mission and get a job at a mission-focused company, hence the lack of vigor in applying for jobs immediately. The lack of immediate outcome in my part is not the fault of General Assembly. Plus, it's only been a few days since we graduated.

 

Jobs landing on your lap! Not.

Am I saying you'll easily get a job if you apply for this program? I'm definitely not saying that.

This is not a program for someone who saved some dough, and decided, "Hey! I wanna make easy cash!". Don't waste your money or your time if you're not willing to change your lifestyle, way of thinking, and personality.

 

How this program changed me.

I am able to dive head on to learning new tech without hesitation, my approach to working with others in the development side also changed. I'm no longer apprehensive about showing people my code, unlike 10 years ago when it terrified me to do so. I didn't go into this program to learn how to make easy money as a programmer.

 

How I approached the program.

I am actually one of the vocal (but constructive... I hope?) students. I didn't hold back if I felt something was preventing me from getting the best out of what I paid for, both monetarily and my time.

Working till 12am was normal for some of us, be it on homework or pet projects. My day in the immersive officially starts at 10am (although I wake up at 5am to do chores and attend to my family) and ends officially at 5pm. To really learn, get the most out of the lessons and work on my homework with the night TA, my GA time typically ends 11pm. Projects week normally calls for working until 2am. Those who had similar schedule (roughly 14 hours of coding each day for almost 4 months) were able to secure interviews before classes ended.

 

The job hunt.

Like I said, I'm not in full job hunting mode. I'm not even sure if I'm going to be able to find a job. But do I feel like I got my money's worth? Yes, I do feel that I made the right decision attending this program. I'm even in the process of talking to academic advisors from different schools regarding their Masters programs for CS majors.

Conclusion.

This review is about my experience. I am telling you about how effective it was for me in the aspect of being able to learn new tech and working in a simulated professional dev environment.

 

DISCLAIMER:

This review is definitely not an endorsement of the program. As of this writing (Aug 2016) I have not applied for a job at GA. They do not even have a campus in my big city. Definitely think hard, very hard, and do a lot of research before signing up for anything. And if you do sign up, make sure to do everything that will make your investment worthwhile.

You can visit my blog to read more about my experience as a WDI Remote student. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions you would like to ask a former student of the WDI Remote program.

I have to admit, this program was hard for me. I have a non technical background and there were times in the course I doubted it would work the way it said. In fact I got to a point where I was pretty sour on the entire thing, and there were a few weeks where I really threw a fit. 

I graduated two days ago, and I have to take back every bad thing I said. I was getting recruiter calls before my final project even started, and before I filled out a single application. Today was the first day I really started my job search in earnest, and GA has juice. I have gotten callbacks within hours of applying for anything, and matter of fact have an interview set for tomorrow. From an application I did halfway through today.

My story isn't over, since I've just begun jobhunting I'll obviously update this when I get a job. But the response from companies has given me a lot of faith. Here is what I will say in the way of specifics.

1. This is a really hard program; this is a really hard thing to learn.

Sometimes in this course I was miserable. I was trying really hard to understand, but I couldn't. There was a little while where I would get very frustrated and start to fault the program in my freak-out moments. But the struggling phase is probably just inevitable when you are trying to learn something really hard, fast. I have come to see that there is a method to the madness.

Some of my class actually didn't make it through, and if there is any definite difference I can say about who survived and who didn't, it has to be optimism. You have to know that even if you aren't technical, even if you feel like doing this is taking a big risk, you have to see it through. You have to discipline your dissapointments and frustrations and once out the other side, willl see the big picture.

2. The workload is EXTREMELY INTENSE, and you need to prepare yourself.

Cook a bunch of meals and freeze them ahead of time. Knock out any trips to the DMV or doctor you have on the horizon, you will absolutely not have time for it while in this course. If you have pets, honest to god make a plan to exercise and care for them. The schedule is that intense, and I am not exaggerating. 

If you have a spouse, tell them you are having an affair with your laptop for the next few months. Not even kidding. 

If you have any trips planned, cancel them. Do not make the ridiculous mistake of trying to move during this course, which is what I did and made me fall behind for a while. Also, do as much codeacademy as you can beforehand. You will be glad you did later. 

3. Mix trusting the program with your own gut and learning style.

My course was the first remote course, and there were things that worked and didn't. For instance, I found hand written note taking (what I usually do) was a mistake. You can't keep up with someone typing 60 wpm by trying to take hand written notes. Take screenshots, and code along with the instructors as much as possible.

CONCLUSION?

You know who you guys are, but the people that led my course (the first remote program) were Colin, Matt B, Matt H, Marc, Kristyn, Thom, Adi, Seth, and Meghan. (Shoutout so any corporate back patting does not risk missing you as it's target. It was well, WELL earned.) 

I was a tremendous pain to these people sometimes. I expected them to answer to me about how the course was running in a way that was probably obnoxious. They bent over backwards to help me. They were incredibly accessible. And adaptive. And as something of a dark horse within my class they put in as much effort if not more with me than with the super genius kids that were breezing through.

I don't think I have felt like an instructor, or all the instructors in fact, were this personally invested in me since elementary school. These guys were so on top of it. They knew before I did what languages might be easier for me to learn. They pay very, very close attention. They also are patient with that jerk set on cracking bad jokes and being the class clown. (Spoiler alert, that was also me.) 

I try to stick to the principle of being honest about both problems and solutions. There were plenty of times in this course where I was raising an alarm and freaking out. It is only fair now that I am through that I give appropriate credit. These guys are life changers. Even if you have doubts about this type of course, as once a huge cynic, I gotta say these guys are monumentally good at what they do. And the program they run meets if not exceeds the results that it advertises. 

UXDI at General Assembly helped me relaunch my career. I started in UX over a decade ago when the industry was just starting out. I spent a few years in a CX / UX role and then left to have my family. After almost 10 years out of the workforce, and out of the UX community, the industry had moved forward so much and my experience was very much outdated. I spent 2 years applying for jobs by myself, to no avail. It was then that I stumbled across UXDI at GA and thought I had nothing to lose. Incredibly, after only 1 week after my meet and greet I had lined up 7 interviews in 3 days! This was a combination of jobs i had applied for myself, interviews with recruiters I had met at the GA meet and Greet, and also interviews lined up for me by my outcomes producer. This was unheard of for me, considering I had previously spent two years trying to find employment. By the end of that week I had secured my first short term contract as a UX Designer. Since completing this initial contract, I have moved onto a permanent UX Reseracher role. I have been in this role for close to two months now and I love it. I am proud to say I am a GA success story - a middle aged mum who made her way back into the tech industry after a ten year hiatus. 

I took General Assembly's part-time front-end development course and was adequately pleased with it.  I had a fair amount of front-end knowledge prior to the course through online courses such as codeacademy.com, so the GA course was more review than anything (you won't need any knowledge prior to taking the course, however).  That being said, the instructor was great, the homework was beneficial and I loved the atmosphere created by the GA building/staff.  If I could afford the full-time tuition, I would definitely consider taking the bootcamp and making the switch to the programming field.

Personally I found the format for General Assembly's web development immersive extremely effective. The number of hours committed as part of the course forces you to focus on nothing but learning, or levelling up, your web development skills. However it's not just brute force transfer of information via presentation. In having a mixture of taught lessons to cover new topics, exercises in the afternoon to put that new found knowledge to work (and the chance to talk with teachers 1 to 1), and individual assignments in the evening to further practice & cement a concept.

Curriculum wise I think the areas covered are well chosen and have an appropriate bias to the real life skills you'll need as a software developer. One area I think could be improved is bringing testing in earlier - and give time to showing real examples of TDD from scratch - not just the concepts.

The teachers on my course are knowledgeable in their field, a great bunch to spend time with, and made themselves available to help students. GA is also a fun place to be. There are always interesting people around to chat with, when you have the time!

Enrolling in a course at General Assembly was arguably the decision that has had the quickest impact on my life. I had zero experience with tech outside of being an avid consumer of the Internet and its depths. The curriculum was well-suited to someone without prior knowledge. It does assume that you have the desire to learn, however. Most of the criticism I have heard is from those that were under the false impression that the course would make them experts at web development without any sort of effort on their part. This is not the case. For me, this was an important component of General Assembly - the course and its instructors showed me what was possible and through the projects, I was able to build my confidence to the point where I believed that I could build anything. That was true much before I believed it, though. General Assembly and its network of alumni, students and instructors imbued me with the confidence I needed to recover from what seemed like failures but were really just adjustments to my journey. I would recommend (and have done so) enrolling a course at General Assembly if you are serious about changing your career or adding valuable skills to your tool kit.

I graduated from the Web Development Immersive at General Assembly (campus Melbourne) and couldn't be more delighted. Course was relevant, fast-paced, well structured and it really taught me more than I could possibly imagine that I could learn in such a short time. The staff and the teachers at GA are the most amazing as well! Two weeks after the graduation I landed my first job as a junior developer. This course changed my life so I would be happy to recommend it to anyone - it will be the best decision of your life.

My background was computer science degree with a heavy emphasis on theory and not alot of web development. I had learned the basics of Ruby on rails through books but the course helped me understand fully the language and framework. The instructors were very helpful, passionate about coding and always available for help online or in person. The communication they used with Slack was extremely convenient. The course was fast paced and just as they instructors advised before starting, it needed to be done at a time in your life when not too much else was demanding. My only suggestion would have been to either add 2 more weeks to the course or subtract something in the beginning that was less important. The projects were challenging and went right along with the course material. The last few weeks of course were a tad bit rushed but I was so proud the last day of class when I stood and presented my application and it worked. It wasn't the prettiest but it indeed worked and I came up with each creative idea on my own. Definitely a good experience and I'd recommend to any other beginner or even intermediate developer.

Before starting General Assembly's full-time Web Development Immersive course I was a journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 

I'd taken an interest in data visualisation, and knew a little bit of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. But I didn't know enough to confidently use code in my day-to-day life as a digital journalist. I simply couldn't learn fast enough in my spare time, or without a classroom environment where I could ask for help.   I knew the course was expensive, and would require me to take unpaid leave from the ABC. But I'd spoken to a few graduates who assured me that it was worthwhile - that once graduating, I'd be able to code and use my new skills to be a better digital journalist.    I eventually decided to take the plunge. I built a little website on why online journalists should learn to code and pitched it to the ABC. They gave me unpaid leave, and $5,000 towards the cost of the course.    But about six weeks into the 12 week course, I resigned from the ABC.   I was having the time of my life. I had met an amazing group of people. My eyes had been opened to the tech industry. I was coding day and night, barely sleeping, running on caffeine and chocolate, but absolutely loving life. My instructor Joel Turnbull was incredibly talented - and hilarious. I loved every bit of the content that we covered. The General Assembly staff were amazing.   I made the decision to resign because I knew that in order to continue progressing my coding skills, I would need to be coding full-time, rather than trying to code on top of my usual day-to-day journalist responsibilities. I also wanted to be in a supportive environment where I could pair program and be mentored by a senior.   It didn't take me long to find my first job as a developer with a company called ansarada. During the course we studied Ruby on Rails and JavaScript. At ansarada I'm a back end developer writing C# and SQL. I've kept up my front-end skills on the side, and in a few weeks time I'll be moving to London to start a new job as a software engineer with Twitter.   Doing WDI and changing careers from journalism to web development was the best decision of my life. The tech community is like no other, and I'm so happy to be part of it. 

As a designer and in this modern world I needed to get my skills involved with web. I signed up for the 10-week part time course after following one of the one day workshops - 'Code in a Day'. Working full-time the night classes suited me just fine and only 2 classes a week was good, as it did not overwhelm me. Straight off the bat the course layout was great, pre-work that with a video tutorial took you through the basics steps and as each class progressed we would always relate back to what we learnt earlier to keep it refreshed in our brains. The pace was good and even when I personally fell a bit behind or had difficulty the instructors were quick to help and very understanding. Having materials accessible online is a huge benefit for at home studying and using 'Stack' as a communication source was resourceful. All in I've finish the 10 weeks confident, all be it not a pro of course, to continue on with my own studies and update my resume to include web skills. It’s real world knowledge and skills for the real world workers.