Epicodus

Attending Epicodus has been a pivotal experience in my life. I had the time of my life: learning to program, getting to know my wonderful classmates, and having great support from the people who work there, but it wasn't a walk in the park. There were... Read More times I found it difficult struggling with new material every day, over the course of four months. However, by following the instructions in class, doing the homework, and ask my classmates for help, I have come out the other side with more than I ever thought I could learn.

In class, we learned some of the industry's tools and techniques. The prominent of these was pair programming, programming with a partner. At times, it was the most challenging and rewarding way to program. Learning from each other and helping each other every day has made everyone a better programmer. By programming with others, I have built relationships that will last the rest of my career, too.

After my class ended, Epicodus offer lots of help for finding jobs and practice for nailing interviews. I have never felt so prepared for an interview as I do now. It has been over a month out from our internships and most everyone from my class has a great job. I, myself, have had several promising leads and am currently expecting to receive an awesome opportunity with a great company by the end of this week.

I truly feel lucky to have been a part of Epicodus and I would recommend it to my friends, family and anyone else looking for a positive, supportive place to make a big change in their life.

My experience at Epicodus was great, it’s one of the best decisions of my life. I came in with a few tutorials and online classes in Javascript and Python and a foundation in HTML and CSS, by no means hirable at that point. Epicodus was the only bootcamp... Read More I could afford, and I did my research and found a lot of happy alumni, so I saved up working as a server and signed up for the Spring 2015 Ruby/Rails class. Once I got there I worked like a maniac and learned a ton. If I was confused or wanted to learn more, I did that here and there on the weekends (I wouldn’t recommend working a job if you can help it). I ended up with a good internship and 3 job offers (1 from my internship and 2 of them from the job fair). I prepared to be out of work a few months after just in case, because Epicodus doesn’t get you the job, what they do well is teach you a ton, make you hirable a LOT faster, and give you some connections from job fairs, talks, and sometimes internships. The teachers are past students so they’re great support, but that doesn’t mean they’ll always have the answer, and that’s just fine because a ton of what you learn when you code is on your own or with your peers. Michael, the owner, does a great job keeping Epicodus affordable and diverse, and I’m grateful he started Epicodus because I had a job as a junior web developer within a month and I’m loving my work for the first time in my life.

If you're someone who wants to get into web development but don't know how, Epicodus is the place to be. The transition from learning the materials, to internship, and transitioning into the web development world has been smooth! But do note, you get... Read More what you put into it too! If you're only here for a job and not putting effort with what you're learning, then you're going to have a tough time looking for jobs and learning the materials! Employers will see that in your work/portfolio. Networking has also played an important part of my succcess. I met people who were in development during the course, volunteered to work on projects and etc..this helped strengthen my skills as an applicant for jobs. I had a nice fancy portfolio to show with my proven skills - my current employer told me my application was on top of the stack! So don't forget to be driven and keep up with your skills no matter where you are. Even with my current job, I still code and keep up with other skills I don't practice at work. I'm just that driven! :) I am happy with where I am now compared to 6 months ago before Epicodus. I work close to home, great hours, have a nice and professional team! I am forever grateful to Michael and the Epicodus team! :) Thank you and I'd recommend this to anyone!

I applied to only one program, Epicodus. I loved the value, the duration and that there was an internship at the end. I loved Pair Programming, which allowed me to meet and work with different people. Loved the teachers. Even though there's only one teacher... Read More per thirty students, it teaches you to find the answers on your own, much like in the real world.

Pros: Price/value, network, internship

Cons: Job market is tougher than expected, no fault of Epicodus, but there are many grads coming out and not as many jobs as I can see.

I've started learning programing (PHP track) at Epicodus starting August 2015. Both instructors (John and Diane) are super helpful and the curriculum is very hands-on and project based. Whenever I have questions, they will always be here for me to answer... Read More and they seem very experienced. The projects we are doing are very down to earth real life problems so that you can easily apply the skills learned in actual job in the future. Epicodus also provides 5 weeks internship opportunity with local companies after we finish the program successfully. Comparing the price with other boot camps in bigger cities like nyc and sf, Epicodus is a much much more affordable. So overall, I think it's definitely worth it if you are thinking about going to bootcamps to switch fields but don't have too much extra funding available.

Epicodus has a lot going for it and a lot that could be improved.

The good:
--------------------
The price of Epicodus for what you get is fantastic compared to other offerings. I spent about three years learning web development on my own, and eventually,... Read More I was ready to get on the fast track, so I chose to attend Epicodus. When I entered, I was way ahead of the pack; most students didn't seem to have a lot of experience going in. Nothing wrong with that, but just something to keep in mind. After a month, I was glad to have development experience going in because it really ramped up. It is definitely a tough program, which is good imo. The founder, Michael, is humble, charismatic, and overall, a cool guy. Most of the staff are friendly and happy to offer help. The big screen iMacs are great to work on each day. Epicodus is a great investment for someone wanting to get onto the fast track to being a developer or QA.

Needs improvement:
--------------------
A big drawback, for me, was that Epicodus did very little imo to match up students at compatible skill levels. This incompatible pairing was often frustrating. Another big opportunity I see is refining the curriculum. The lessons are typically the 'online exercise' form, and some of them could use major improvement. I experienced mistakes in the curriculum fairly regularly, and a lot of the lessons could be rewritten and better explained. The lesson quality, to me, seemed just average. Also, the section on 'Ember' development which lasted around a month could have been much better.

Epicodus staff asked on at least two occasions for help from students to volunteer their time moving and setting up rooms. Epicodus students are clients that paid sizable sums of money to attend the program -- Epicodus needs to stop asking students to do work for them.

All-in-all
--------------------
It was a pretty good experience. If you have development experience, I'd suggest putting together a portfolio on your own and skipping Epicodus. If you're a beginner, I'd say Epicodus is a great investment.

Disclaimer:
The above review is simply an *opinion of my experience at Epicodus.

I moved across the country to attend Epicodus. Not because I was 100% sure it would be the stepping stone to a fruitful and fulfilling career, but because I had a feeling it would be a great place to grow and work on my programming chops. And it was.... Read More Epicodus isn't in the business of teaching you how to be the next "Rock Star" or "ninja," it's invested in creating a coding community of equality and kindness. There were a number of things that I especially appreciated about Epicodus and its team, including:
1. the emphasis on growth-mindset. You will never, and are not even able to know everything about programming. What's important is that you feed your curiosity and know that you're always capable of learning. To start learning with that mindset, and be surrounded by people who share it is incredibly encouraging.
2. the emphasis on kindness. In their code of conduct they point out that you will be working with people all day long, and should be able to handle that well. I'm an introvert, with a touch of social anxiety, but when I read about pair programming, I believed everything people said about learning more and learning quickly. Their call for people to at least try to be kind helped relinquish anxiety about being out of my comfort zone 40 hours a week.
3. the diversity. As a minority (an Asian woman), not being in a room full of homogeneous people and minds was important to me. Epicodus makes it a point to have a variety of students (in terms of coding backgrounds, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic backgrounds, race, and age) which makes for a welcoming and inclusive environment.
4. the team's responsiveness to feedback. In college, we would fill out end of the semester reviews about a class and its professor. At Epicodus, there was a survey every week about that week's curriculum and our teachers. Plus weekly one on one check-ins with the teachers. Epicodus is experiencing a lot of growth right now, and probably some growing pains, but I'm sure changes they make will be led by the relevant feedback provided by their students to better the program and grow right alongside them.

Epicodus is not a sink or swim program. They don't expect you to have a background in coding. They do expect you to wake your brain up and put it to work! And along the way, they can help you actually understand how to be a coder, a student, a mentor,... Read More and a member of the tech community.

I started in January 2015 with one (traditional style) intro class and one unix class under my belt, and no computer to do extra research or projects(I had to borrow one to do my preliminary work). I quit my job as a property manager and dove right in. (Because of the nature of my job at the time, I also lost my housing. That's right, I did Epicodus as a homeless person. A very resourceful, couch-surfing, house-sitting homeless person - As of the moment of posting this, I am about 4 hours away from putting a deposit on my first apartment in over 8 months, and I have a 5 year action plan to buy a house!)

So here are the highlights: First of all - you got a seriously humble, pragmatic, well-spoken and politically conscious leader. Epicodus is truly queer and trans friendly and Michael is on the front lines of bringing and keeping women in tech. I am not a person of color, so I can't speak to the experience of folks that are, but basically, the code of conduct pretty much says that rude jerks will not be tolerated, (I am paraphrasing there...) and Michael means it. If you are feeling excluded or picked on, tell Michael and he will end it. Beautifully.
Pair programming daily is a part of the deal - and that can get really tedious eventually. Not everybody matches up personality wise, BUT it also means you have an opportunity to see so many different points of view and work with all kinds of different ideas, and get better at doing it. (HINT: Always partner with someone new! It's very comforting to pair with folks you work well with, but you will learn way more from the diversity of switching it up as often as possible.) Luckily, they give you a break on Fridays to just focus on processing what you've learned all week - that's pretty nice too.
They throw dozens of different technologies at you throughout the course... Scary right? Why don't they just teach you one language, in depth, so you can feel confident about knowing something like javascript really well when you are done? The Answer - Because you would be completely useless in most tech companies. The company I work for now, has no less than 20 different (and often changing) technologies that I touch every single day. If I was unable to adapt to the pace at which things change - I never would have gotten the job in the first place. I impressed my current boss during my internship by taking on a project they expected to be done in 2 weeks. I did it in 2 days. They extended my internship to give me a taste of a new department that was thinking of hiring me. 4 projects needed to be completed in 4 weeks, and I did 3 of the 4 inside of 2 weeks - plus, 7 other side projects that happened to come up. My job offer was in by the end of the 3rd week. All because this program kept us hopping from project to project and tech to tech. I got used to being adaptable, thorough, focused, and communicative. Those skills, and a serious passion for programming, is all an employer needs to get a junior developer started.
Finally, I appreciate that Epicodus really really wants you to get a job when you are done - and they do everything in their power to make it happen. They reach out to the community and they let folks know that the pipeline problem would end - if they hired folks out of bootcamps. (HINT: We seem to have more relevant coding experience than folks coming out of PSU with CS degrees (subjective, I know - but a senior dev in my company is the one that said it). This does not include folks who make it through the PSU internship program. We are not that far behind those folks either though.)
They make the internship thing happen for 60 people at a time. They host meetups. They bring in speakers from the community. They even brought me back as a speaker to talk about the internship process!
I recommend this program to all of my friends, and I will happily personally speak to anyone interested the program. I am a fan, obviously, but if you have concerns, I will be perfectly honest about the struggle side of things. Nothing this good comes without a price, and mine was a few moments of mental and emotional exhaustion (which had a LOT to do with outside factors -which of course everyone has at some point and you should reasonably prepare for). I was fully supported by the staff and my peers through those moments though, for which I am eternally grateful.
You can find me on linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/karvari- if you would like to chat with someone who's been through it. Good luck!

I had a really great experience at Epicodus. The curriculum moves very quickly and helps you prepare for the ever-changing technology field. I went in with very little experience and found it a little hard to keep up. I'm somewhat of a slow learner, but... Read More to my favor, Epicodus offers a restart program about a month into the course. This gave me a chance to solidify a lot of the concepts that were still a bit rocky in my mind. The downside to this, was that I missed out on a months worth of information as well as becoming isolated to working with a much smaller class size. The only thing I would like to see is a better structure for a restart program. The instructors were all really great and supportive. Overall, attending Epicodus was a great decision and helped me jump start my career as a web developer.

Epicodus is one of the single best decisions I have ever made. My new career is more day-to-day enjoyable, more rewarding, the environment more relaxed, and yes, the pay is better, too. Meanwhile, I still regularly get together with my classmates, a remarkable... Read More network of friends. To understand just how wildly successful Epicodus is at what it does, there are a number of things you need to know, things that I personally found helped me.

Without their deferred payment option (pay $200 up front, the rest after the class is done), I simply could not have attended Epicodus. While the intellectual diversity of the class is something Epicodus intentionally aims for, it's the follow-through of things like deferred payment that actually make it possible for the school to cast a wider net and allow more people to attend. The pre-class work online gave me specific, actionable goals so that I would know I'd be ready for Epicodus. Before that, I'd been going it alone, having more trouble figuring out what to learn than actually learning it.

Epicodus takes advantage of a "flipped classroom," where your homework is to watch a class lecture/introduction to new material, and your classwork is the actual coding, right there where you can check in with instructors and other classmates. Pair programming helps accelerate everyone's learning. On my very first day I paired with someone who understood the command line and took the time to teach me; I was soon passing that information along to others. Ideas and discoveries ripple through the class as the environment allows for an easy dialogue. And this is where the diversity of the class really adds something special, a magic that I can't very well describe here. Where else can a writer and an MBA pop over to ask the meeting planner and mechanic how they solved that code challenge? Growth mindset is something you'll hear about a LOT at Epicodus. Taking a cue from the growing body of research that talent is more of an illusion than we realize, Epicodus has the attitude right to help you fight through the frustration of tough days (which everyone will have when learning something new). The best part for me personally was that the instructors have taken this to heart; when they come to help you with a problem, they're not really concerned about getting you an answer for That Problem. Instead, they use the problem as an example to help you figure out HOW to figure things out. They are constantly adapting/evolving. You'll have weekly one-on-one check-ins with instructors, and they're actually listening. The Epicodus team is constantly revising the curriculum to improve the experience, so each new class benefits from the one before. Some of those changes can be immediate; our class began to have more two-day projects during our Rails unit due to my and others' feedback that we wanted to dig deeper into some of our projects.

The internships offer direct, immediate experience as the final quarter of the class. (Mine led directly to my job!) Epicodus is constantly growing its web of connections within the Portland coding community, and this means they constantly have a number of partners who take interns, come to job fairs, speak at events, and co-host other events. There's a team dedicated to helping place students into both internships and, afterwards, help them on the job hunt. In an industry where job openings for senior developers are sitting unfilled because there simply aren't enough experienced people, Epicodus is helping companies figure out that they're going to have to grow their own...and providing a number of us a leg up as we step in and say, "We're new, but we're ready to learn." Quite simply, Epicodus was a remarkable, positive experience, and it set me up for my current success, and more.