Devmountain

I am so happy I chose to go through the program at DevMoutain. I've worked too many dead-end retails jobs, or sales positions that pay commission only. I really didn't know how I was going to give my family the life I wanted. So, after living below the... Read More poverty line for years, I was talked into considering programming.

When I found DevMountain, I was really excited with the prospect of changing my life in such a dramatic fashion. I have a 4 year degree. I was taking on leadership positions, and working my way up with my current company, but the hours and pay were horrible! So of course the life of a programmer was really intriguing. And the success DevMountain has had with their students has been amazing.

Here is what I will say for the school:

OVERALL: I loved the experience! I thrive in the type of environment they have created. You have to work hard, and push through the stress, and the intense, accelerated learning curve, but if you do, the sky is the limit on what you can achieve! The top students are those who are putting in tons of extra hours, and really pushing the limits on what they are learning and doing. And I love being surrounded by people like that. It just helped me to push myself even further!

TEACHERS: I loved the teaching style of DevMountain. We would be taught a principle, then we would have a chance to put what we just learned to practice. It is definitely project-based learning, with a lot of hands on practice and experience. I loved it! It does tend to be a little harder for some people, but in the end, even those who have a different learning style than I were doing really well. It just takes pushing through the stress, and the hard moments when you feel like you aren't getting it. The teachers were really awesome programmers, and even though each have a unique teaching style, I learned so much from each one. I love that we got to learn from some of the top programmers in the area!

CURRICULUM: As I mentioned, the class is project-based. There are new projects everyday to work on to practice what was taught in the morning lecture. So each day I was putting to use what I was learning. The projects are relevant to what is going on in the programming world, and I often look back at my projects now, as a mid-level software engineer with a great job, to see how I solved certain problems, or set up certain things, etc.

JOB SEARCH: This is an area that was really important to DevMountain, and you can tell they are working really hard to constantly improve student success after graduation. I know a TON of grads who are working as developers now, and are very happy with where they are at. I've seen some of the negative posts recently, where people have said that students aren't getting jobs, and that you shouldn't go to DevMountain. I don't think that some people going into a program like this realize that it may take a while to find that first job, and as the time gets longer, if they are not still working on projects, and practicing and learning, it will get really hard for them to find a job. Unfortunately, those people will probably give up, and then try and find someone to blame. From what I have seen, those who are putting in the extra time, and working hard in class, and continue to work hard afterward, and don't get discouraged, find a job within a couple months or so of graduating. That is most of the students, because everyone comes in to the program wanting to make the same changes in their lives. I can go on and on listing grads who are working, and are so happy about their new lives! Don't listen to the haters, and if you come to DevMountain, don't be one of the very few that don't put in enough effort, both in the class and after graduation, and give up on finding a job.

SUMMARY: After my time with DevMountain, I only interviewed with 3 companies, and I got fantastic offers from ALL THREE! I took an awesome job with a really fun team, and I am getting paid about $20,000 more that I expected coming out of DevMountain. I am only a few thousand dollars short of tripling my income. All within about 6 months of leaving my last job! 6 months! I have tripled my income, have awesome hours and benefits, and I wake up excited to work, and do what I do!!! I worked crazy hard to get to where I am at, and I have no doubt at all that anyone who does the same will see the same results. DevMountain gives you the opportunity to be very successful in their program, and afterward. This really is a ticket out. Seriously! You can totally change your life! Here's my warning and advice... Take that opportunity seriously, and give it all you've got. It will totally pay dividends in the end!

I'm disappointed to say the least. I'm also not surprised about all the negative reviews lately. When I signed up for Dev Mountain they had good reviews and things looked promising. My experience was different. The marketing department blatantly lies... Read More and I'm confident is the reason behind a lot of these positive reviews. The lead instructor who I was excited to learn from left a few months ago and the replacement is still trying to get adjusting. Mentors are nothing more than former students and are always busy so it's hard to get their help. Overall I wish I would have come to devmountain earlier on as I think it's best days are behind it.

I was a student at Devmountain in 2014, I had high hope for employment and honestly Devmountain made us think that. Going into Devmountain I knew nothing, I did the precourse work which helped but didn't really get me going, it basically just got me familar... Read More with tags and what not. During my time at Devmountain the teachers didn't really teach. Most the time they would live code in front of us and we were expected to catch onto what they were teaching and I felt if we didn't catch on they blamed it on us not trying hard enough on our personal time to learn.

When I applied for Devmountain their website said 95% hire rate, I know for a fact only about 5% of my class actually got a job, many of us felt cheated decieved. I even had a teacher during one of my classes tell us " I don't think Devmountain would want me to say this but majority of you are not going to get a job". For just spending close to 5,000 bucks not to mention quiting a job and relocating to Utah, that wasn't something I was wanting to hear. Also they would have us do stuff to help us gets jobs, one example was writing up a resume and they would look over it. I sent it to the teacher and he never looked over it, and honestly most of the teachers were that way. I had one teacher that would avoid me, because I asked to many questions. Devmountain is a 75% teach yourself school, a lot of the time the things I learned were from watching youtube or figuring it out my self. Half way through the program I was wondering why I need Devmountain when I felt like I was teaching my self. I felt I should have just took 3 months off of work and taught myself vs spending the money. Most of what Devmountain had us do was watch youtube video or google it. I had one teacher that would sit in the back of the class and any time you asked a question he would say google it, and when you did and still couldn't find the answer he would repeat his google it phrase.

Do I think Devmountain is worth it? No, I do not. If your thinking about going to get an awesome paying job and sweet career then think again. In the words of my Devmountain teacher "Majority of you will not get a job from this". So take it from a Devmountain teacher and don't come if you expect a job unless you all ready know how to code then it will probally help you get a job, if your starting off fresh with no skills then stay away if you think its the path to $40,000 + a year. If your just going to learn some new skills and nothing else then you will probably enjoy it(maybe not for the thousands of dollars you will put into it). 75% of Devmountains coding is self taught the other 25% you do get help so its up to you if the investment is worth the 25%.

Teacher help--- D- (the owner and maybe one other were the only teachers worth your time, everyone else wanted to show how smart they were and ended up not making sense.

School ----- c+( there were some good things about it, mainly the professional photos they took of us!)

Price----- f+(You spend more time teaching yourself then they do helping you)

I did like my time at Devmountain, but all these problems were real and I wanted to let people know whats it really is like before they decide to go to Devmountain or not, I hope it helps.

I literally knew nothing about code or development. All I knew was that I didn't want to work in a call center for the rest of my life. I looked around and interviewed every single code camp in Utah. All of them. DevMountain was by far the most personable,... Read More knowledgeable and real out of them all. They don't accept everyone, but they do believe that everyone they accept has the potential to learn and grow into a developer.

DevMountain taught me more in three months than I learned in a whole semester at the community college. Since completing DevMountain I have reccomended everyone I think would be a good fit to go there. A few of my friends, who just graduated with four year degrees, will be attending DevMountain and I hope that it changes their life like it changed mine. I doubled my salary in just three months and now work for one of the largest online retailers in the world. Life isn't good, it's great.

I am currently in the iOS immersive cohort and one word that would describe my experience is intense. Coming from absolutely no coding background from even before the program we were learning the basics and expected to cover about 50 hrs of pre-course... Read More work. We are in class 40+ hours a week, half of that is instruction and the other is projects that are related to the daily curriculum. Overall its been a GREAT intro into iOS its impossible to cover everything in the 12 weeks but after the program we can build and app and more importantly we learn how to LEARN and use documentation and online resources to solve problems and continue developing as a developer. DevMountain is an excellent way to start the long journey into the coding world.

I came in to the course with minimal knowledge of coding. DevMountain taught me quite a bit in three months, through rigorous work and forced frustration. There's no way that I could be proficient to the level that I am (which is still an admittedly "junior"... Read More level) without the instruction I received at DevMountain. I liked the format of lessons and associated projects, as well as having teachers and mentors available to drill through the information and help with the inevitable problems. I chose the immersive course, which I believe was very beneficial.

The curriculum is still evolving. It seems fairly comprehensive in comparing it to other beginner books and courses. Definitely foundational, which is what one should expect. Pacing was not always consistent in my cohort, and not always were the examples and lessons presented in the best way to digest the information. The instructors in charge of the curriculum know this and are working hard to improve it. I imagine in another year (the age of the base curriculum as of this writing) things will be pretty impressive. One other criticism that I would mention is that some individuals and marketing materials from DevMountain make some lofty claims about employability when exiting the course. While job support services do exist at DevMountain, they too are still evolving. It's important to keep in mind your individual skill level will be the real factor in how marketable you are, and not simply by having made it through a bootcamp. Being a bootcamp graduate may even lower your status in the estimation of some employers. Again, this is a bootcamp: what you learn here is foundational. The field of software development, even in an Apple niche, is enormous!

Overall, I'm happy that I attended DevMountain. The value compared to other bootcamps around the country definitely seems top-tier. The skills that I've learned are exciting and building my own software has been extremely satisfying. A friend of mine who recommended the course to me called it "the best money he's spent." I would say that's pretty close.

When I say Kickass, I mean it in two ways. 1) It will kick your ass. 2) It's totally kickass.

The course was extremely intense (don't even think about trying to balance a job or side project while you're there if you're taking the immersive course, you... Read More won't have the time) but I learned so much that it was worth every minute.

I honestly don't have a negative thing to say about the school. They were growing at a rapid pace when I attended, so there was some small scheduling and logistics conflicts that popped up because of it, but nothing that I could really say anything negative about or that negatively impacted my learning. The mentors were 100% there and gave you as much 1-on-1 time as you needed as long as you were putting in effort on your end, too.

Dollar for dollar, it's the best investment I've ever made in myself and my skills, and I landed my dream job the Monday after I graduated. The team rules and I had a blast making some lifelong friends and connections in the process.

When I came to DevMountain I was completely new to coding. I had been waiting tables and teaching fitness classes… I have never been to college either. I was nervous I would be lagging behind in the classes. But No, after the first week it felt like everyone... Read More was in the same boat. The work was very challenging but the mentors were there to answers my questions and guide me along. Now, at the end of the course I am in shock at the amount of knowledge I gained at DevMountain. I now feel confident in my abilities and capable of getting a job.

Some of the things I learned here:
Github
HTML
CSS
Javascript
jQuery
AngularJS
Node
Firebase
MongoDB
A bit of React
REST

One of the reasons I choose DevMountain was the location. It wasn’t SF or NYC… I knew that I would be able to focus on the work in a quieter location. Also, Provo is surrounded by mountains, lakes and a ton of fun places to explore. Environment is everything for me and it has been great.

The town is mostly mormon, which I thought could be a little weird. But besides the fact that everything is closed on Sundays … all is normal, maybe even better than normal.

They include housing for out of states students which is amazing! The housing, gym, train and closest grocery store are all within a mile away. I didn’t have a car and I was completely ok.

Basically, I loved it. One of the best decisions of my life. Its worth the money and time. Do it.

I love DevMountain. I was in the Immersive Web Dev cohort at the beginning of this year and I am so happy about my decision. The learning environment is designed to keep you engaged and moving forward. Around every corner is a new challenge but the mentors... Read More and instructors provide plenty of positive reinforcement. These guys taught me how to write code, but more importantly, they taught me how to learn new technologies. I now feel like I stand a chance in an industry that’s constantly changing.

There are many ways one can learn to code. But because of DevMountain, in three months I was able to learn a MEAN stack, build my own applications, make some amazing friends, and get into an entry level position at an awesome tech startup. Keep in mind six months ago I was making minimum wage as barista, without a degree…