Microverse

I am Daniel Larbi Addo from Ghana and am a full stack developer training at Microverse. It all started earlier this year (2019) when I decided to join Microverse and the journey has been great. I learn a lot from my coding partners, my stand-up team, mentors, code reviewers etc. The journey to becoming a full-stack developer has been awesome. Before Microverse: I used to work for G.E.S as a teacher in the public sector of Ghana. I have been teaching for 6 years, now I have left the teaching job and focused full time to Microverse. I recommend everyone to join Microverse and become the Software Developer you dream to be.
Now I can say I have a family of developers I can interact,  ask for clarification and code together. I hope in the future, there will be some financial support for some of us to fully enjoy the program. 
I thank Microverse for giving opportunities for us all.

I’m a Microverse graduate from Ibadan, Nigeria, and I now work as a full-stack remote developer making 8 times of what I earned previously, 3 times what my colleagues in Nigeria are making.

Last year, a friend suggested I should learn to code instead of continuing to work in customer support for a US-based company. I took his advice. I started learning to code through freeCodeCamp, but I stopped because I didn’t have anyone or anything to push me to keep learning.

I learned about Microverse and applied. I got in and I worked hard to make sure I didn’t lose my chance to become a software developer without paying until I got a job. The program was actually fun. I cultivated great work habits and made good friends all around the world. I still talk to some of the friends I made several times a week, Sanel from Bosnia and Dipto from Bangladesh. I’ve never even been to those countries.

Microvere also helps you prepare for working in a professional, remote job. They make sure you learn how to actually build projects, how to work together as a part of a remote software development team, and the process of getting your code live. My job is like Microverse, I submit pull requests and get my code reviewed by fresh eyes several times a week, like I used to with Kevin (my mentor at Microverse, from Kenya)

I recommend Microverse to anybody. I have three people already working on the pre-course work from my recommendation. I think that if you can make sure you have internet and electricity, Microverse is what you need to do. I know those aren’t problems in Europe, they can be in Africa.

Some background: I used to work in finance, but I started learning to code after realizing a lot of what I did in finance wasn’t being valued and there was so much opportunity in software development.

I joined Microverse as part of one of its first cohorts. For me, Microverse’s biggest draw was that, unlike most other coding bootcamps and really most traditional forms of education in general, where they take your money upfront and don’t care what happens afterwards, at Microverse I wouldn’t owe anything until I got a job—and if I didn’t get a job, I wouldn’t owe anything. This means that the organisation’s interests are the same as mine, which is a system that is fundamentally better in every way. All education should be like this. So I decided to take the leap and join.

Before joining Microverse, I learned a little bit of coding through free resources like freeCodeCamp and practicing through #100DaysOfCode. Microverse realizes this—that some of the best learning content is already out there—so they focus on guiding you to the right content and supporting you with a network of intelligent, ambitious people.

Microverse is also based on “remote pair programming”. If you’re not familiar with remote pair programming, it’s based on the idea that two heads are better than one. Basically, we were paired with another student, and every day, my partner and I would switch between being a “driver” and “navigator”. One of us would write the code and the other person would watch and provide feedback, comment, or suggest a different way of doing things.  My partner (Kyle) was great—he was smart, ambitious, and hard-working. I was lucky to have him—we had our “aha!” moments at different times and we were able to play off of our different strengths.

The program is also substantially more thorough and complete compared to what typical coding bootcamps offer. So this really should not be called a “bootcamp” or considered as such.

One of the last parts of the curriculum is the “career prep” portion where you spruce up your resume, your online portfolio, and your online profiles while also practicing interview questions.  I found some freelance work through Microverse, and combined with the projects I completed during the program, I received A LOT of calls and emails from recruiters before even finishing that section. I was humbled. I ended up turning off my online profiles and stopped accepting more interviews.

Going into my interviews, I didn’t feel ready for them because I didn’t have time to practice. Luckily, I passed several of them and received several job offers. I was like “Is this actually happening?” I genuinely started losing sleep because I was having a hard time deciding between several great job offers.  

​Microverse has the same incentive as you—to help you get a great job. In order to get there, they guide you toward the best materials to learn the most in-demand coding skills, surround you with an ambitious community, pair you with someone else going through the program, and help you establish a schedule and accountability. All education should be this way

I attended Microverse remote software development program from April 2018 to September 2018 (full time) and found my dream remote job in Poland :)

My Background:

I studied aerospace engineering in college, but I decided to go for software development when I graduated. I was lucky to find a company in Beijing even though my goal was to find an international company to work for. After spending one year in Bejing, I went back to Taiwan and decided to start applying for international jobs. I had a hard time getting any job because back then I didn't know the proper way of applying for jobs. Then I found Microvese, a remote software development program that teaches you to become a pro at remote jobs. It was completely free until getting a job and it’s worldwide available, so I decided to give it a try.

About The Program:

The program is divided into two part.

In the pre-course work, I spent 1 month to get an overview of software development, web development, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Ruby and Ruby on Rails. However, I was still not ready to land a job after that.

Once I got accepted into the full-time program, I went over those same languages and technologies, but this time I built at least 30 different projects so I have a very deep understanding of each one now. I worked full-time with my coding partner (another student) by doing remote pair programming. That gave me a lot of teamwork experience, as well as teaching me the most important workflows used by real teams, and helping me improve my communication skills and English level.

 

I also dedicated at least 100 hours to mastering data structures and algorithms, so I’m now confident to work on more complicated algorithms and coding interviews.

 

Job Assistance:

 

Finally, Microverse assigned me a career coach that worked with me to help me get ready for job interviews. They helped me improve my portfolio, resume and online presence, and taught me everything I needed to know for job interviews. They then helped me find and apply to jobs and even negotiate my salary offers!

 

Overall:

 

This program is for the dedicated and determined, but it's not like college or another school. You’re working collaboratively with many other highly-motivated and smart people who are determined to start a career in software development. There is a reason why Microverse accepts less than 1% of the people that apply. If you're looking to pull the trigger and commit to learning to code, then this is the program for you. It is truly incredible how much you can learn in 22 weeks. This program was both incredibly challenging and extremely rewarding.

Bottom line? Great people, great program. If you're committed to this craft and you have a passion for it, go for it.

Best of luck!

Hello, my name is Giuseppe Tomasini, I am from Colombia and am currently studying at Microverse. I did not have any background experience related to programming, (I am a musician) before entering Microverse. I decided to take the pre-course that they were offering before taking the admission trials. This precurse teaches you the very basics of Javascript, Html, and CSS in a very didactic way.  You meet people around the world and try to complete some exercises with them, so from the beginning, you can be used to do pair-programming. This school does not have teachers, but they have a very clear path to teach you all that you need, step by step. They also have a lot of channels where you can submit your questions about anything and other students or microverse staff will help you 100% of the time. You will be assigned to different groups for doing your daily tasks and report your progress each day. I upgraded my English level, everything is in English by the way. Each one of your projects will be reviewed by other students more advanced than you, and you can also apply to this position and have some earnings. The course is very exigent and time-consuming, but it worth it. What made me decide to join Microverse was their payment method: you pay until you get a job (for more details see their webpage). I have had fun and made friends, but most of all learned a LOT during this journey. 

At the begging it's a little confusing with too many elements and pages they give us, but with only following the lessons you can get use to the platform.
Thanks that the curriculum looks to improve your learning methods, social and professional skills, after 3 months I feel capable to learn different programming languages and tools by my own and feel confidant in what I learned at the program.

Pros:
- Good community helping all the time
- Professional and easy to follow curriculum
- Great base coding structure
Cons:
- Completely self learning
- Some lessons are confusing

I was skeptical at first whether Microverse is a good fit for me. When I started the first module I knew it was worth it. 
1) You Learn everything you need, to become an excellent Full stack web developer.
Well you might say that several other resources offer that, then continue reading.
2) You get to meet amazing people and build a great network.
3) You build solid soft skills like communications, leadership, mentoring, pair-programming and many others.
4) You'll have a career coach for life 
5) If your goal is to land a job, Microverse is the best place to go. You'll definitely find a job.

I went in expecting little and was blown away by the detailed and thoughtful program. It is a well-developed program with an amazing community that is very cooperative and eager to help. Its staff is very responsive and very understanding about the personal problems that arise from being a student in an extremely diverse community. They claim that they are doing this for primarily altruistic purposes, and from everything I have seen, they have shown this to be true.

It is, of course, a BootCamp, with everything that comes from that. As they don't have much time, concepts are introduced with links for further study, but this further study is expected to be in personal time. Still, the amount of information that they manage to impart, in not too hurried a fashion, is astounding.

There are no instructors or lectures in this course, but the structured system that they have implemented more than compensates for that. They also focus strongly on professional skills alongside technical ones, getting you ready for getting (and keeping) a job from day 1.

Microverse selects self-starter developers from around the world and from various backgrounds. They are at different levels in their tech learning/career, some have degrees, some don't. Some are switching to programming from another career, while some have many years of experience but only limited opportunities in their area of the world.
This mix leads to a unique learning experience, where you learn to collaborate with people from different backgrounds, with a unique accent in English, to create quality software. This, in my opinion, is a real strength of the Microverse. Indeed, any student coming out of there can adapt to any multicultural context in English in the tech industry and succeed.

The curriculum is a curated list of resources covering both technical and soft skills.
On the technical side, it's mostly HTML, CSS, Javascript (ES6+), ESLint, StyleLint, WebHint, Webpack, React, Redux, Ruby, Ruby on Rails. One thing to point out that I think is fantastic about Microverse is the student's exposure to Git/GitHub from day one. I remember before Microverse, although I was already a developer, my workflow and comfort level with version control were very limited. Throughout the course, the student works on several projects (usually) one per week (the first project being his own portfolio). As a result, he builds a contribution graph on GitHub worthy of a world-class developer, and the activities lead him to vary the way he contributes: commits, pull requests, code reviews, issues.

As for soft skills, the curriculum covers a lot of notions, such as planning one's week, managing conflicts, learning to give feedback...
I particularly liked the fact that the curriculum pushes us to modify our Github, LinkedIn, and AngelList profiles to make them look professional. This makes the student ready to apply for offers even before finishing the curriculum, even if it is discouraged by the institution.

I pointed out earlier that the curriculum is a curated list of resources. This can be both a strength and a weakness. A strength in that the student is exposed to different sources of learning, and is not dependent on a single source. This opens the mind and allows for more detailed learning of concepts.
Unfortunately, it can also be a disadvantage in that the learning material for a concept is sometimes too long for the time available and too broad for the complexity of the task. Thus sometimes the student can feel overwhelmed or lost. This is for me the major weak point of Microverse. I would like to point out, however, that they are constantly optimizing. Indeed, they regularly ask for feedback from students and work behind the scenes to improve the curriculum, the learning experience, and the overall student experience.

Finally, I'll talk about support at Microverse. Although it is entirely remote, there is a Student Success team that provides wonderful support to students and is available to address concerns of any kind.

In conclusion, Microverse is an excellent choice of school for anyone looking to pursue a career in tech at a professional level and ideally remote. You learn things that are in demand in the market, while building your reputation as a developer, expanding your network as a professional, making friends, and being assisted and supported by a dynamic team.
It is not perfect and certainly has things to improve in its operation, but I can only recommend it, as I see the effects on my own person even though I am still a student.

Take a look at my various profiles to get an idea of what I am talking about:

GitHub: https://github.com/Kingjosh007
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/king-josaphat-chewa
AngelList: https://angel.co/u/Kingjosh007
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KingJoChewa