NEXT Academy

I had a great time at NEXT academy, had a good batch of fellow students with me. The course itself is tough and a lot of people do get discourage when they start to struggle. You do need to preserver and just keep at it and its your duty to find a mentor and force him/her to sit with you till you understand it. 

A lot of the students do struggle at the start since they have not completed the pre-course materials. The amount of prework a student has done is directly related to how well they preform during class

For me the most valuable thing that I got out from NEXT academy was the network of rails developers since I am an startup founder and also the coders mindset which is the ability to learn how to find the information you need to code/ solve problems as well as thinking very granularly which does not come naturally to me since i used to be a strategy consultant which I am used to looking at the BIG picture.

Do I think the course is worth RM9000 - well it really depends on how seriously you wanna take it. If youre not willing to work your ass off then obviously it wont be worth it (that basically applies to everything in life). NEXT is a new company and they are still improving and I am sure that they are working very hard to ensure that they get the best mentors and they improve/customize their teaching styles & circullum for the students.

The journey experience moved exponentially upwards for me.

The first 2 weeks was tough. I had to scrap all my lousy expectation for notes and lectures. I had to change how I think. I hated that there is no black or white for my answers. I hated that everyone have a different answer than mine yet no one was wrong. I spent 3 hours trying to brainstrom my first answer to find that it didn't work. I wanted answers but my teachers asked me to think. THink think think! Thank god there are teachers who are willing to sit down with me even after class to walk through my code. 

Looking back, that's the best thing that has happened to me. I thought I was one of the smartest person back where I was but I was humbled. Today, I would consider myself one of the most resourceful person in my crowd.

I loved my final week. We forgo our sleep trying to build our app. There were so much sense of achievement building everything from scratch after going through so much hard work in the past 8 weeks. What makes it sweeter was when we showcased our app, people came up to us and said good job, some people asked if we would want to bring our app to the next level as they know investors.

I think the only comment is:

- Give me more opportunity to mingle with investors and have more events to showcase my apps

I am amazed how people can just spam negative reviews over here (of which I suspect multiple negative reviews were from the same person). 

As a student graduated just recently (June 2016), I think I owe NEXT Academy a huge favor, which made me feel obliged to leave a good remark over here.

The bootcamp was tremendous, where I learn the same curriculum from the Silicon Valley yet I was merely paying a pityful RM9000 as oppose to 12k USD. To me the best part of the bootcamp lies in its experiences, the long-lasting friendship that I have acquired during the 9 weeks was invaluable. 

What I love to emphasize particularly in response to the haters out there is the career support that NEXT Academy have gotten the graduates. It's been only less than a month that I am consider an alumni, but I have already been through several sessions with employers from Air Asia, Digi, Goquo, Materialize, Flexiroam, 123RF and many more, all set up by NEXT Academy. 

The fact that NEXT Academy have been there for 2 years and still maintain an employment rate of 95% says a lot about their quality of teaching. 

Right now, I am eaglely waiting for my job interview results. Wish me luck guys!

I have zero programming experience before I joined the bootcamp and I manage to secure a job as a RoR developer after that. 

What is good about NEXT Academy

1. The mentor are very helpful and they are willing to stay beyond their working hours to help us to solve problem.
2. The friends we made in bootcamp are awesome. All of us come from different walks of life while sharing the same enthuasism of entrepreneurship. We learn from each other and at the same time, becoming the driving force of each other.
3. I can pay full attention to coding as well as learning step by step according to the syllabus.

What NEXT Academy can improve? 

1. Code review :  Review should be provided so that we can know how we can improve our code. (Otherwise we will just assume the code is fine as long as it is working.) 
2. Expectation setting : Students who expect lecture-based of teaching get very disappointed and can't adapt themselves well. Expectation settings/interview should be set so that students can know what to expect and what not to.

Personally, I find learning in NEXT with new people around working together solving the foggy and challenging problems are much better than solving on our own via self-learn. I like the social interaction part where people from different background works together, like the business consultant, marketers, founders, artist and well, speaker alike, sharing their thought together. You don't get those when you're doing self-learn.

As a person who self-learnt iOS and been through the Bootcamp myself, coming from a firmware engineer to upgrade his/her skill to meet the market trends and demands, NEXT indeed did a good job providing pointer-learning training. I would not want a lecture type kind of course, neither wasting my time on Youtube videos for free classes.

On the silver lining, after reading the reviews below, I think what NEXT can do is providing a softer exit plan for those who aren't truly into software developer career. It can provide a friendly approach for those who realise that at best, they really can't code.

As to answer some furious claims below, if NEXT is not doing their job as described in other reviews, my batch couldn't have won 2015 Master of Code hackathon as champion when all of us are in week-4 out of 9 weeks, Left alone we won 2015 Global Master of Code. We aren't all coders but rather, individuals who are passionate about integrating each other strength and push each other to beyond the limits.

Hi guys!

I'm from the November 2015 batch and graduated in January 2016. Before NextAcademy, I was an ecommerce store owner, bored Engineer and someone who bought too much WordPress themes and plugins. Due to the fact that WordPress plugins were moving to subscription basis (it all started from WooCommerce), I spent about USD 22k on various WordPress products. And then our ringgit started plunging versus the dollar and plugins were suddenly really expensive.

So one day I spoke to a developer friend and she suggested that I take up coding. One thing led to another and I ended up speaking to Josh before joining the bootcamp.

So how's the bootcamp experience?

I'm glad I enrolled into the bootcamp. It was many long hours. Some days Petr and myself would camp in Starbucks trying to solve the challenge of the day and make our code better. But it was an invaluable experience overall.

What went well

1. I could code after the bootcamp!
2. I got a part time US job with US salary, that enabled me to focus on building my SaaS app and doing content marketing for traction
3. The part time job would not be possible without my Github account with all the stuff we built in the bootcamp and more
4. Friendship we made in the bootcamp is invaluable :D
5. We had happening tutors! Thanks Jalen, Shin Yin, Estelle, Tom, Holloway and the rest.
6. Camping overnight to work through code for our assessment was an experience by itself
7. I'm now a Ruby, Rails, PHP and Laravel developer :) I also do quite ok with JS. Wouldn't be possible last year before the camp
8. MaGIC's scholarship made it possible
9. Been getting a number of job offers since the bootcamp as well
10. Oh yea, let's not forget, Ping Pong

What could be better

1. Coffee! - Perhaps some coffee daily would help as some challenges can be challenging
2. Code Reviews - As some of the reviews have said, code reviews didn't really happen unless we asked our mentors for it. I guess I was persistent enough to bug our mentors on their opinion on my code, and many times they gave me ways to do things better, faster and more efficient.
3. More help at the end - Towards the end of the bootcamp, it felt a bit rushed. Perhaps we were trying to do too much in too short a span of time. Also, with our juniors, the December batch in, our mentors were spending more time with them. Oh well, we suddenly realised that we did the same to the October batch! :D
4. Reunion and gatherings! - I guess the one thing we're looking forward to are reunions and gatherings. Let's not just have batches coming in and going out, but perhaps ways for the various batches to get to know each other. Once every 6 months perhaps, Josh?
5. Cert - I'm not sure, but I haven't gotten my cert yet :(
6. Perhaps a job portal for grads would help those finding a job. 

Should you do the bootcamp?

If you have a passion to do your own startup, work in one or just plain have a career change, Next Academy is a very viable place due to its pricing and vicinity to KL. 

Do note that the bootcamp can involve long hours, losing your fitness (I gained 10kgs during the bootcamp =.=), missing out on friends and gaining panda-like eyes. It might frustrate you due to the difficult challenges and sometimes you're left alone, but hey, I guess that's how the working world is like.

Conclusion

The bootcamp has been a life changer experience for me. Yes, it could be better, but for RM 1k (under scholarship), it's a no brainer to consider.

p/s: Read my experience of the bootcamp here

https://www.wpstarters.com/web-development-bootcamp-in-malaysia/

There has been extremely diverse opinions about Next; and reading them all, one would be inclined to think that Next is either extremely bad or extremely good but with lazy, disgruntled students dissing them. Which is it?

Next Academy is like a school offering to teach its students how to swim. Some fishes, some dogs and some eagles sign up. Next takes their money and throws them into the pool. “Here you go, learn to swim!” And leaves them there to either sink or swim. Eventually the fishes swim the best, the dogs barely scrape by to the end of the pool and the eagles, realizing they’re going to drown, fly out of the water to safety.

The dogs and eagles are pissed at Next for taking their money and leaving them in the pool to drown. The fishes can’t understand why the other animals can’t swim and decided that those other animals must be either “stupid/lazy/stubborn/spoonfed, unwilling to learn independently”. (It’s ok, dogs, you’ll run faster and farther than any of them, and eagles, you’ll soar high!)

There are all kinds of learning styles and needs among people. Some people learn spatially - learn by seeing, some learn by listening, some by doing, some are interactive and thrives in a discussion environment etcetera and etcetera. To complicate things, people also have different kinds of intelligence; musical–rhythmic, visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic, logical–mathematical, bodily–kinesthetic and so on.

Self-taught coding could maybe, possibly be suited to people who primarily i) learn by reading ii)  (perhaps) are more logical-mathematical. What about people whose natural sensory is to learn by listening, and whose primary intelligence is in bodily-kinesthetic? What about those with learning disability? Anyone can learn coding too but they will probably struggle a little more than those who do not realize their learning styles makes them more adaptable to self-taught coding.

And therein lies the problem with Next Academy. Next adopts a simplistic view to learning; either you work hard and succeed, or you don’t work hard and fail. Anyone who has a different opinion is shut out as ‘stupid/lazy/stubborn/unwilling to learn, insert other negative character trait’. This is an insult to those who do work hard and still can’t get results and frankly, an insult to the teaching profession.

Because here’s the other thing. Teaching is not spoonfeeding and spoonfeeding is not teaching. For Next to confuse teaching with spoonfeeding and vice versa is to show their lack of understanding of education pedagogy. There is a real methodology to teaching to ensure students grasp concepts and there is a methodology to asking questions to lead students to think of answers themselves.

To keep insisting on not ‘spoonfeeding’ when people are asking for ‘teaching’ is to show Next can’t tell the difference. And worse, they sing the propaganda that if you don’t try hard enough, you are just ‘stupid/lazy/stubborn/spoonfed, unwilling to learn independently’. Clearly this mantra has rubbed off on some of their graduates. Are the people at Next bad? No. They probably do want to help people but unfortunately they are fishes who don’t understand that there are different kinds of animals out there.

This makes everyone a loser at Next; The students who ‘lost’ RM9000 and got bitterly disappointed for not achieving their goals, and the ‘successful’ graduates who only reveal their narrow minds by joining the chorus of ‘stupid/lazy/stubborn/spoonfed, unwilling to learn independently’ accusations against critics that is propagated by Next.

For that alone, I would recommend potential students NOT join Next. Try another bootcamp that is more open-minded and caring towards its students, regardless of their capability.

But firstly, try out a few free online tutorials on YouTube, try a few paid online courses or get a developer friend to teach you an intro class. Figure out if you are a fish or otherwise. If you are a fish, go ahead and join a bootcamp. If you are not, don’t waste your money on a bootcamp. It’ll be a better investment to hire a developer who knows how to teach and can teach you. The most important thing is to understand your learning style and learn to code that way.

I was a salesperson stuck in a job I didn't want and always feeling limited by not being able to materialize my own ideas. I tried learning coding online and there is no doubt that it's a frustating experience for myself and many other people.

Under a recommendation of a friend, I started looking at web development bootcamps. I was afraid that by being 1/3 to 1/4 of the price of bootcamps offered overseas, it won't be as good - but I was wrong. 

The bootcamp gave me a new choice of career that I love, a fantastic place to learn a new set of skill, wonderful people to learn it with together and great support since day one. My batch, October 2015 even accomodated for students that learn at different rates. 

This bootcamp will not be easy, because nothing worth going for is gonna be easy. 

Professionals spend years of hardwork and dedication to be a good developer, asking for a 9 week course to put you at the same level is plainly unrealistic and egoistic. But what this camp can do is propel you to a level of competency at an unbelievable speed if you're willing to work hard, good enough to be a junior developer.

This camp is not for you if:

• You like to be spoon fed
• You think programming is cool but you are not truly interested in coding
• You don't like thinking about how to solve difficult problems and challenges
• You give up when things get hard

This camp is for you if:

• You love to be ahead of the curve
• You are willing to take things into your own hands
• You want to be a survivor and eventually a pro without someone constantly spoonfeeding you
• You love the feeling of cracking a problem with smart solutions

NEXT Academy will help you be that coder you've always wanted to be. All you need to do is work hard, stop whining and don't give up. 

They do not spoon feed you, they do not teach you to rely on someone else, they promote independent learning. There will be no teacher in front of a chalkboard telling you what to write in your code. 

The tech scene is a rapidly evolving environment, if you cannot cope with learning new things independently, you will never be a good developer anyway.

For me, the bootcamp was fun, challenging, exciting and spectacular. By learning with a group of people with common goals, I met a lot of brilliant people along the way and forged real friendships. Now I work as a developer and I couldn't be happier. I am confident that I can build something that I want to build now and I have no problems learning new things independently after the bootcamp.

At this price, this camp is a steal. If you're on the fence, just go for it. There will always be whiners, people who complain anonymously because they refuse to accept that education is not spoonfeeding. Time to own up to the challenge and make things happen for yourself.

You change yourself, NEXT gives you a helping hand. 

Seeing all these bad reviews intrigued me to write this one, many of the bad reviews are left by people who are expecting to join this bootcamp - not work hard - and become a kickass coder. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way, if it did programming won't be in such demand.

Yes - HTML + CSS is taught in a day - JS is taught with material from Codecademy, but it's relevant. If NEXT extended the learning and taught extensively on all domains - you will be paying at least 2x the price, and slapping 3 more weeks on. HTML + CSS is easily improved upon if you are genuinely interested. (i'm now a frontend engineer) 

I have the same thought about learning it myself at home, but I chose to go to NEXT for the peer pressure & focus. If you could've learned it by yourself at home you would've done it, stop bullshitting.

Job assistance - NEXT exposes graduates to a tons of job opportunities, and naturally, bad coders never get hired. It's all darwinian.

The lack of mentors is amazing. It separates the losers from the winners, losers will turn to mentors 24/7 to ask for solution; winners only turn to mentors when they are stuck for 2 hours. You're destined to drown, you should drown, but you shall not die if you want to win.

The connections you make at NEXT is incredibly helpful. My batchmates came from all walks of life, and some have already helped me in ways that I cannot appreciate enough. 

To conclude, if you have the drive - join - work hard - win. It won't be easy, if it was you're probably gonna write a bad review. 

I'm a former Next Academy student of the Nov 2015 cohort. It's been more than a year since I graduated from Next Academy (formerly Code Division), and I'm still constantly grateful at the opportunity that this bootcamp gave me to venture into the world of tech that was quite far reaching and impossible to me before. 

I've read all the comments and previous reviews. And I'd let to share my own experience. Like a lot of the reviewers, I too left my secure job in the Corporate Finance sector to pursue this course, and I too had zero coding experience. I wanted to pursue my passion in working in the tech startup scene but back then, tech courses with a focus on an entrepreneurial element were next to non-existent in KL. It wasn't until I found Next Academy and met Josh Teng (the Founder) that breaking into the tech scene from a non-technical background seemed even possible.

Those 9 weeks were some of the best 9 weeks of learning and empowerment that I've ever experienced. This is what Next Academy offers you:

1) The opportunity to immerse yourself in a coding environment with the support of passionate mentors who have been through it before, and have industry experience freelancing/ working with tech startups. Shoutout to Josh/You Jing/Rizal my ex-mentors who were so patient with me all this time.

2) Pair programming (something that you cannot do online or via coding courses). Being able to struggle through the learning process with multiple coursemates and mentors enables you to learn from the strong and guide the weaker. This also simulates an actual working environment where you have to learn how to work through code with your team members. It's an opportunity for peer knowledge sharing and trains you for the real world of working with people.

3) Exposure to more than just code. Students join Next Academy because they share a common life view and life goal of wanting to effect change through technology. It's from this shared purpose that we strive and grow together as an enlarged family in the community. Til today I still value the friendships that I've made with students from my batch, most of them are now developers, entrepreneurs, founders, dreamers that are doing great things. 

Some of the previous reviews claimed that they were left behind, this is my advice to future students:

---a) Ask questions relentlessly (be it to other students or mentors), but also make sure that you are trying as hard as you can to solve it yourself first. Mentors won't know you're struggling unless you say something. From my batch experience, there were students that were struggling, but it amazed me how mentors took extra effort to sit by the students to guide the through.

---b) DO THE PREPWORK. The prepwork is there for a reason. This is a very challenging course, but what isn't difficult isn't a worthwhile venture. You have to venture in this course knowing that this isn't going to be easy. Students who tend to fall behind are those that don't do the prepwork.

---c) It will be a lot of self-learning, because that's what real life coding is like! If you join this course expecting to be spoon fed - this is not for you. This course offers you the tools to learn, the mentors to support and the environment to strive, but the key ingredient to the success of this course, is your determination.

As for students who are sad that they are unable to find opportunities in development after Next Academy: Firstly, much like universities, you cannot blame a university if you do not get a job after graduation. This course is an opportunity to grow and develop yourself towards that dream path, as well as the opportunity to be exposure to a close-knit tech community for your next step in life. Secondly, look towards what else you can do to build on top of this course and upskill in order to pursue your dream of becoming a developer/entrepreneur. After Next Academy I freelanced and co-founded a web dev studio to build many different web apps for 6 months before I landed my current role as a developer at a tech startup. And I thoroughly enjoyed the process.

Success is a many step process, and Next Academy for me, was the first stepping stone towards it.

I am a very grateful graduate of the program from the February 2015 batch. I was just scrolling through the posts before this and want to add my two cents. I want to do this in the fairest way because yes, I do care about your RM10,000, probably more than Next Academy.

I urge you, as future students to evaluate yourself, your want and your willingness to sacrifice before enrolling to the program. Why? because it truly is hard work, it is frustrating and it is painful but when you get it, it is fulfilling, and very very enabling. If you want to join a class and be coddled, this is NOT the place for you. Most of us, at least my batchmates, actually go home and it's 1 hour for most of us back and forth Cyberjaya daily, watch YouTube videos, read up, stay back till 10pm to do this. I'm probably one of the average students. I never completed everything, but I embraced every new day and new challenge without looking back. Because it's another very intense day. For someone who is formally an investment banker and living the mundane life, this was a breath of fresh air. For once, I'm learning daily. Even the smallest details of the world of coding excite me. (Think, do you really really want to learn? Or you just don't know what to do with life and want to be cool?)  

Few things to note:  

1. There is never enough time to learn everything! It's a bootcamp! Before this, I didn't even know what is a database. The bootcamp enabled me to be independant, to find answers when I get stuck, to even know what to search for? (I believe this is the most important thing of all). You will not learn everything in 9 weeks but at least you know how to find your answers. 

2. Prior to the bootcamp, I actually took me 6 months of blindly searching around the internet, trying to code random things on my own attempt, taking blind advice from random blogs and download a gazillion environments, crashing my own laptop a few times, and still leading no where, to be so grateful for the structure and syllabus set by Next Academy. I finally know what I'm learning and in sequence that I can connect the dots. I found also, that it was the only one in Southeast Asia at that point in time. Thank God I got in! 

My batchmates, one of them is my co-founder today, one ended up in MindValley, one worked for Says.com and now in a dev house, one in Carnegie Mellon pursuing her tertiary education and one running a business in Penang. On the 6th week, we even participated in a hackathon in Singapore and came in 3rd - something I never ever ever ever thought I could ever do. That was huge for us, none of the can really really code then and now still kinda work in progress but life is a WIP after all. 

I have worked in three different startups, in two investment banks, as an actress and a performing artist. I am passionate and hungry for a life with impact, I knew the past jobs I had isn't my final destination but I didn't have the conviction to start my own before this, because it was hard to find a tech co-founder and I didn't fully understand how it works. I also lost a lot of money paying freelancers to just put one line of code in my project because of my ignorance. I had a goal - to start my own company - Next Academy gave me the confidence to do it. Know your goals.

I learnt so much in 9 weeks. I learnt so much more than just code. Before signing up for the NEXT Academy, I signed up for many Udemy courses and I've also tried Lynda. I find learning online to be pretty difficult for me. It was easy to follow the step-by-step guides in these online courses but at the end of these courses I didn't feel like I understood anything. I spent a good 9 months trying to learn on my own but I just didn't feel I was learning fast enough. The biggest issue was that I didn't have anyone to ask questions immediately.

After much contemplation, I decided to take the plunge and joined NEXT Academy as a student. I really liked the way the curriculum is formatted. At first, the lack of teaching was intimidating for me, maybe cause I'm so used to the education system we are familiar with. But after 5/6 weeks in, I love that it wasn't lecture based. I realize the huge difference between bootcamps and learning the 'traditional' classroom manner.

I feel like I was taught to be independent in a supervised environment with mentors to guide me. Many of my peers expected a traditional classroom lecture but after going through this hands-on guided format, I do agree that it creates a more independent worker who is going to end up being better entrepreneurs. Maybe NEXT Academy should make hands-on learning more prominent on their site so that people don't come in with the wrong expectations.

I do wish that there were more mentors available but I did some research amongst all bootcamps and NEXT Academy does have one of the better mentor-student ratio. We had 1 mentor to every 10 student. Most other bootcamps seemed to be the same including the one I was comparing to in Hong Kong and San Francisco.

The bad reviews are a little unfair or perhaps my batch (July 2015) was a little different. But I can understand why. My biggest issue is that NEXT Academy should do a better job filtering out certain candidates. I applied to several other bootcamps and I had to be interviewed before I could enroll. I think the 'bootcamp' model will not suit individuals who wants to be spoon fed and are too stubborn to try a new way of learning.

The team at NEXT have been actively bringing employers to us on our graduation day. And recently they brought executives from big and small companies to meet and share with us.

All in all, at MYR9540, Next Academy is one of the more affordable bootcamps in the world. I'm very satisfied with the fact that I can confidently build things now.