Epicodus

Why did I go

I decided to attend Epicodus in order to switch from game development to web development. I had done some entry level learning myself prior to attending, and wanted a structured, fast-paced experience to capstone my transition. I attended... Read More prior to the new structure (there was no intro class), so I had to demonstrate basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript understanding in order to be accepted. The application and interview process was a breeze, and they put a lot of emphasis on making sure I was the right kind of person for their program, not just capable of graduating.

Format & logistics

The biggest attribute that set Epicodus apart for me was the pair programming aspect. As an extrovert and social learner, this was perfect for my learning style. I was also seeking an all-consuming experience so I could really inundate myself with the subject matter, and Epicodus provided just that. As long as I was willing to show up to class ready to build every day, they were there to ensure that I had the resources and guidance to grow.

The program was also much more affordable than other offerings, and there was a huge emphasis on economic and social accessibility at the school. This led to a very diverse group of peers, which I greatly enjoyed working with every day.

Coursework

The coursework was constantly growing and adapting to industry trends. They realized that their job was to produce work-ready junior developers, and they stayed as current as possible with tools and technology in order to do so. Feedback channels were front and center, and any parts of the coursework that were confusing or broken were addressed overnight, if not the same day.

The day-to-day emphasis was on building things constantly. If you’re looking to get your hands dirty and build, build, build, then this is where you want to be. Everything from multiple small projects a day, to multi-day efforts, to large group collaborations, to solo portfolio items, there was always a task at hand.

Staff & instructors

I couldn’t have known beforehand, but the staff and instructors at Epicodus were by far the school’s greatest strength (Shout out to Mike and Courtney!). Every single person working there had a passion for the success of the students, and not just in a “this keeps me employed” kind of way. They could charge a LOT more for the quality of education there, and they could certainly make more money working for one of those $10,000+ programs. These are people who care deeply about helping people change their lives. Whenever they’d hear about a former student getting hired, they would light up in a way that was telling of people who genuinely care about the welfare of others.

Internship

I had a somewhat unique opportunity to intern with Epicodus right after finishing the coursework. I don’t believe this is possible anymore, but it’s still something I want to bring up because of what I learned about the school through the experience. My passion and professional interest lies in the realm of tech education, so the opportunity was exactly what I was looking for. I got familiar with the technological, logistical, and financial realities of operating a bootcamp, and I emerged with even more respect for the people that worked there. Even behind closed doors, discussions were about student success and how proud they were of everyone. I was constantly delighted by how much the staff cared about the students’ growth and success.

I emerged from the internship with a number of open source portfolio entries and an invaluable experience in the field I wanted to make my career out of.

You should go if:

You enjoy working with others and meeting new people.
You’re ready to be consumed by the experience. They mean it when they say full-time.
You’re ready to meet them halfway and bring determination and discipline to the table.
You understand that their main goal is to teach you how to learn.
You’ve got the stamina and desire to build all day every day for months on end.

You should not go if:

You’re introverted or shy to the point that working with others sounds awful and scary.
You’re distracted by other aspects of your life that might make you miss class often.
You’re unsure of your interest in web development, and this is true of ANY bootcamp.
You’re more interested in theory and computer science subjects than work-related skills.

I took and graduated from the August 2015 PHP cohort. Before enrolling into the class, I had zero professional programming experience, although I had done a little bit of learning on my own thru Treehouse (teamtreehouse.com, a paid site where you can... Read More watch videos on the programming languages you want to learn. Ironically, Epicodus gave free treehouse subscriptions to students which I didn't need or use at the time, but I wish I had now that I am not a student). This is not a review of just trying to bash Epicodus or the opposite of saying how awesome they are. I am going to give my entire experience, a lot of it will be good and some of it not so good.

I heard about Epicodus thru someone I had met at a CodeOregon meetup group. I had expressed interest in going to a programming bootcamp and someone at my table told me that she had done a lot of research over the past few months and handed it to me. Being the beneficary of her research, and with Epicodus being the cheapest and connecting students with an internship at the end, I felt this school was the one for me.

When I contacted them, I was excited to find out that they offered a Java/Android class, as I really wanted to make apps. But later, that excitement turned into discouragement because, being a male, I was excluded from that opportunity because they only let women take that class (I don't believe that is the case now, so don't worry Android enthusiasts!!). On a side note, while I think it was a good intention what they were trying to do, make women not feel intimidated to code, but I wish they would have done it when they grew the class out so that men still had a co-ed class to take when women could take the women only class (anyway, end rant). Also, the Ruby class was full (I was told it filled up fast the last few cohorts), so my only option if I were to goto Epicodus was to take the PHP track (I believe they now offer a c# class, but that wasn't availabe in August 2015).

So they gave me a coding challenge, which was super simple. I literally did the javascript part of it (ping-pong challenge) on my phone while watching tv one night and the css part the next day on my computer. Not that I knew that much about javascript or css, but it was really, really simple. I read below other reviews and find out that Epicodus had a problem with people turning in the coding challenge and still not understanding anything about programming, maybe this is the reason why? It was too simple? Other code schools had much harder coding challengess. But I believe this is an extension of what Epicodus is trying to do. They are trying to make programming as non-intimadating to people as possible so that all who are interested can succeed.

I remember turning in my code challenge and couldn't wait to hear back if I were accepted or not. I kept bothering Audrey, one of Epicodus' employees, if she heard any word back on my acceptance. She probably was sick of hearing from me!! But she was very professional. Looking back now, maybe they accept everybody and make it seem like you have to be approved. I don't know if that is the case or not, but the PHP class didn't quite fill up so maybe they did?

When class finally came, the experience was positive, but it took a lot of learning and it wasn't easy. Programming isn't easy. Well it is easy in the sense that I believe anyone who wants to do it can learn it, but it is tough in the sense having to think like a computer, constant problem solving, and dealing with the frustration when you don't understand why your program isn't running the way it should be. Our class size was almost 60 (I don't think the PHP class acutally completely filled up to 60 but I am not exactly sure), and we had 2 instructors. One of the instructors had a lot of experience in the industry and the other was literally a student from the last PHP cohort. The lack of experience of the other teacher and some of the negativity of some of the students from the ruby class who I talked to made me a little scared in the beginning. But for what I needed the teachers for, which was the motivation to learn and for help when I am stuck, both teachers did great.

While both teachers helped everybody during class time, each teacher got half the class to mentor and talk to individually. Every week, they would sit everybody down individually and privately and ask how things are going. I remember explaining my nervousness every single week of being able to find a jr dev job after the process was over because I heard so much about how the market is flooded with jr devs and it appeared online that most jr dev jobs were asking for 2 years experience. My teacher told me not to worry and that almost all of the students that make it thru to completion end up finding jobs. Although, looking back, I don't know how much I trust their statistic on their website of how many students found jobs after class. I am not saying I know for a fact it is wrong, but I say this because while the three August 2015 cohorts were still in their internship, they updated that stat to include all of us as finding jobs when almost none of us found jobs yet. I wonder how they are coming up with that data when they did that and then after the process was over they didn't even talk to all of us? Please don't misread me, I am not saying they are lying, but I do have doubts about it.

Every week they had a guest speaker come and talk during lunch to whoever wanted to come. I never went to any of the guest speakers because my brain was feeling overloaded doing programming 40 hours a week plus some homework that I wanted a break during lunch hour. Also it didn't help that the speakers always spoke in the ruby class. While everyone is in the same building now, the ruby class was a few blocks down from the php class.

During morning standups, they talked about what that day was going to look like and how the preceeding day went. They also talked about meetups going on in the area, who went to what, what experience they had there, and what meetups were coming up. I feel Epicodus did a great job of giving everybody the opporunity, even to the point of strongly encouraging people, to get connected with the local tech community.

Throughout the weeks and talking to other students, I was very suprised to find out that it seemed like almost every student had moved to Portland from out of state. And from all over the country. Florida, California, New York, Philly (they didn't have a philly school at the time), to new a few places. Many of these people researched boot camps throughout the nation and landed on Epicodus, packed up and moved here. Many were struggling finding housing (there is currently a rental housing shortage in Portland), while others were moving from couch to couch via AirBnB while studying here. I felt lucky as someone to accidentily land on this school doing no research of my own and living in the area (I live in West Linn, so commuting to school everyday wasn't fun for me but I didn't have the housing problem that many had).

They also helped us set up our LinkedIn profile, prepare resumes and cover letters. This was from someone else who specializes in that and was not one of our instructors. Further, our instructors did two mock technical interviews with us. Additionally, on Epicodus' student website that is open to the public (learntoprogram.com), they have a list of things to study and make sure you know before you go out on interviews. I was advised to look at it by my instructor before going on the internship interviews and I sorely regret being lazy and not doing it, because one of the places I really wanted to intern at asked me several of those questions and I did not know the answer. Sad to say they didn't want me, but everything turned out good.

Monday thru Thursday, we pair programmed. Meaning that we would find a partner (the first week they assigned us partners to give us a chance to get to know each other), and we would work on the same computer doing the problem (the computers were huge Macs, I wish I could take one home with me!!). Pair programming was a great experience to learn to explain what you are trying to do in regards to writing your code and/or your plan, because this is what you do in the real world, and it is also a good experience to learn from others and their points of view on the problem. Because there is more than one way to do most problems.

Every Friday was a code review. Instead of pair programming, we were given a problem to do on our own and we had to turn it in to the teacher. The code review was the same type of problem as we learned during the week. The time to ask for help is Monday thru Thursday, because we weren't allowed to ask for help from teachers or other students on Fridays. In fact, after the first week, the teachers didn't even show up on Fridays. For that matter, most students didn't show up on Fridays either, they worked from home. If we failed the code review, we had to turn it in again. The program was very relaxed and you don't need to worry about grades, but you need to make sure you are getting the material if you want to move on. If you are not, the teachers are availabe for extra help.

As I mentioned the teachers there are casual and make the process non intimidating. If you want to take a break, you are more than welcome to do so. Me and my partners had a habit of taking 3 or 4- ten minute breaks each day and it worked out great for us. There was one student in our class who came, laied on the couch all day long and just had his music headphones on. I remember one time the teachers were talking sternly to him that he needs to finish whatever material by the end of that day, but he was an extreme example. That student, by the way, while he finished the class, he did not end up with an internship and he is currently not coding.

Three times throughout the course, we were given a week to pair up into groups and make a group program or app. This was a great experience to learn how to program as a team (which you will be doing when you are actually working in the real world). I definately had problems stepping on the code of others and them to me during this time. I was glad I got this experience during a school environment instead of at work.

Regarding their internship debacle that many other people below have complained about. Yes, it was a setback that many of us didn't get to do internships in Decemeber and had to wait to January. But, I am satisified with the way things turned out and how the company handled it. Let me tell you why. First, early on (I want to say late October but I could be wrong on the date), when it became apparent to Epicodus that there was going to be a shortage of internships for the students, Michael (the owner of Epicodus) was upfront about it and told everybody right away. Next, he gave everybody an option, either take the internship in December as planned or take it January and you can take a free class in December. I am not sure about the other classes, but everybody in the PHP cohort that insisted on doing their internships in December, did their internships in December. There were still lots of internships, just not enough for everybody. And there was more than enough internships in January. I decided to take my internship in January and take an Android class. I really wanted to learn Android and I got the opportunity to make some Apps in December, so it worked out for me.

At the end of the class, they had a Demo Day. Basically, students got to show off a program or app they had to actual employers. Think of it like a job fair in reverse. Instead of the employers setting up a station and the job seekers going to each employer, the students set up a station and got their app up and running to show off, and employers went to them. The location you are at while at this demo day is very important. Some people were overwelmed by the amount of traffic they got while others were lucky to have one or two employers step up to them the entire time. I think I got somewhere in the middle. It is a big room and they had lots of students demoing from all three cohorts. While they segregated us by cohort so employers could go to a section that they wanted to fairly easily, I think it would have been better if they had a demo day for each cohort because I think most employers start out thinking they will see all of the students no matter what type of student they are interested in, and then leave without seeing everybody because there are just too many students for any one employer to look at. It was a great experience, though, there were lots of people there that day, including prosepctive students who wanted to see what the end result was. I noticed they also had students from the prior cohort there who were having a hard time finding a job, also demoing an app. It was comforting to me to see that Epicodus was still involved in the process of helping them find a job even though it had been 4 to 6 months since these people had finished their internship and Epicodus was no longer receving any more money from these students. Actually, as I am typing this I remember a student from the previous ruby cohort that was struggling to find a job, they gave him a free php class to continue bettering his skills to help him out (so he was in our class for 5 weeks). They don't guarantee you will find a job and they don't want to be on the hook for it, but I have noticed, not from them saying anything to me, but from seeing other people they are helping, that they do a lot to help you if you are struggling.

Two of the technologies that the PHP cohort learned was PHP and Drupal (among other things, but they don't pertain to what I am about to say). The ruby cohort learned ruby and rails. The java cohort learned java and android. Rails is a ruby framework. Android is a java framework. Drupal is not a PHP framework, but a CMS. I really wish that they followed the pattern of other cohorts and taught us a PHP framework like Laravel, Codeigniter, or CakePHP, instead of teaching us a CMS like Drupal. I also get that they cannot teach us everything in 3 months.

The internship process started off by giving everybody a list online of all of the companies and a description of what we were going to be doing at each company. We were instructed to assign each company a color indicating if we wanted that company: red (no way!), yellow (meh), or green (please this company!). I think it was a requirement to have a certain number of greens but I don't remember what it was. After turning that in, I got four interviews to go to. Two of the companies I had placed as red and the other two I placed as green. When I went on the red interviews, it made me more convineced I didn't like those companies. One of those companies was a joke amongst the students and others of us we telling our interview stories of that company. I don't believe anybody ended up interning at either of those two companies but I could be wrong. The other two companies I had placed as green and had a positive experience about both interviews (although one of them didn't like me because I wasn't able to answer some of those questions I had mentioned above!!). I made it very clear to Melodie which companies I wanted and was very involved in talking to her about it. She was super helpful and did a great job making both me and the companies happy during this process.

My internship was at Multnomah County (one of the companies I placed as green). We were part of the process that built their bridge app that tells the public if one of the four county owned bridges (hawthorne, morrision, broadway, and burnside bridges) were either up or down. I worked on their drupal backend. It was a great experience to learn to work with a dev team while not too intimidating because there was another student intern from my PHP class (this is by design, Epicodus requires companies to take at least two students so we can feel more comfortable being together. Epicodus really wants to make people not feel too intimidated and it shows but a lot of what they do).

I learned a lot from this experience at the county and it helped me to get my first dev job, which I got my first dev job from the epicodus jr dev job board that they compile from many different sources. The specific dev job I got was put on that board because the employer called Epicodus and said they had a good experience with prior Epicodus students so they wanted to hire another one. This employer didn't even post the job on any job boards. I had only worked at this job for three months because of something bad that happened to his business, but I got some good PHP experience on the job (also working with the PHP framework: Laravel). My second job I got from knowing a student from the ruby cohort, which I met that student at the Epicodus demo day (and knowing Laravel helped me get that job too). Do you see a theme there? It is very important to be connected in this industry. Epicodus does teach you to code, but they also help you to get connected. They don't make you do this, if you do not take them up on things you will not be connected and have a harder time. This will not be Epicodus' fault, but your own.

The school obviously had growing pains. As any business that doubles or triples in size, it is expected that they do not do everything perfectly. But they still treated me good, taught me to code, and helped me find a job, which is all I needed. And for $3400 (they might be a little bit more now), that is dirt cheap. At the time, I was told that other Portland code schools were charging $8k-10k (which I think they are a little more now too, maybe closer to $12k).

Another thing I wish to mention, during the time of my classes, another code school in Portland closed down. They did so without telling anybody over night. The teachers came to school surprised their keys didn't work. Many people who paid a much higher price than me (because that school costed more) now found that they didn't have anymore classes. Epicodus provided facilities for their teachers and students to still conduct class but over at Epicodus. It really made me feel proud to go to a school that would help out a competitor like that.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me at epicodusgrad@gmail.com.

I can't say enough about Epicodus. I shopped around a fair amount for other boot camps before commiting and truly believe I made the right decision. The atmosphere is very friendly and welcoming to people of all walks of life and I'm happy to have such... Read More a diverse network of fellow programmers now. The location was perfect as well, right in downtown Portland so we were in easy striking distance to lots of tech meetups. We also had lots of speakers from nearby tech companies come in and speak about various topics.

But the most notable thing to me is that Michael (the founder) actually believes in this as a cause and is not in it purely for the money. He could be charging triple what he charges but wants to keep the costs low so it's accessible to everyone. I believed him when he said he wanted to lower prices even more. I actually had a unique experience in that I attended Epicodus twice, the second time for free! (Sorry, that was just a temporary offer to recent graduates to fill spots where people had dropped out). But it highlighted the fact that this is a unique company not all about making money.

The only thing I would be sure to think about though is if you really want to be a programmer. Epicodus has a very well designed curriculum but if you don't have a passion for learning the craft, it can be easy to get overwhelmed. But if you're dedicated and like learning in a friendly environment, believe me, your portfolio will have some shiny stuff to be proud of in it by the time you're done and you'll end up a happy developer like me!

Hi, I am very glad to have attended Epicodus. It was affordable for me and I liked what I had read and heard through my research. I moved sight unseen to the city and was happy with the location and school.

We had daily stand ups, pair programming, projects... Read More and internships. The school curriculum changes through each iteration/cohort but its changing for the better as they work out kinks from student feedback. They are also growing and adding more courses. For example, part time classes versus full time or courses broken into 5 weeks so you can mix and match rather than follow one specific track.

After my time at Epicodus, I worked with a wonderful company as an intern and short term employee. Many different things spawned from my experience. I started learning pentesting and got certifications in that, so that I could code more securely and become more cyber aware -- especially since there is news of breeches all the time. I moved abroad and randomly had an idea for a start up. I was accepted to a startup pre-accelerator and just completed that one. I also just finished a small crowdfunding round.

My path was to work in a tech company, not start one. But I am much more creative now so I have a bunch of ideas for applications these days. Even if nothing works out, I have offers to work as a developer. Code - Job - Startup: You have options. Epicodus can prepare you for the basics and the rest is up to you so be prepared to focus, work hard and put your energy 100% to make things happen. Also be prepared to move. Don't just look to only work in the location of the school.

Epicodus was a great way to dive into coding as a beginner!
A big piece of advice I'd give to potential students is to make sure that coding is what you want to learn, and what you want to do as a career. It's tempting to apply for a bootcamp because of... Read More the opportunities (and $$$) out there for web developers, but you won't be able to take advantage of those if you don't like to code or really want to excel at it. Epicodus gives you everything you need to achieve your goals as a beginner, but you have to also really go for it!

I loved the environment at Epicodus. It's a combination of providing a good structure for learning on your own and reinforcing that knowledge with others. Nobody gets left behind and nobody gets too far ahead. So you're either learning because peers are... Read More helping, or because you're teaching peers. At the same time, you get tons of hands on experience while building apps. In general this place gave me a great platform to learn how to program. That along with hard work and some persistence opens the doors to a great career in programming!

I loved my time at Epicodus. Being new to programming, I relied on my instructor for help, and she went out of her way to assist me whenever I needed help. I enjoyed the pair programming learning style, good for students who talk their way through challenging... Read More code - and found the curriculum to be relevant to industry demand. After I finished Epicodus, I got a chance to intern at a web agency where I participated in a team sprint and worked alongside senior developers. Epicodus continues to help students after they graduate- while applying for jobs, I got regular assistance with my cover letters and resumes, job leads, and help with interviews and salary negotiation. One of the most helpful things to my web development career has been the Epicodus alumni network, which I still keep in touch with. We formed close friendships during our time in class, and we continue to get together often at meet ups and to catch up with each other. I would recommend Epicodus to anyone wishing to start their web development career; it is an excellent investment and also a lot of fun!

TL;DR: Epicodus was a fantastic experience for me, and I would wholeheartedly recommend the program to anyone looking to learn how to code, up their skills, and/or make a career change.

I started to write my review of Epicodus, then scanned the reviews... Read More already posted here, and pretty much all the positive things I wanted to say have already been said! Brace yourself for some repetition....

I came to Epicodus mainly in order to change careers. I'd always liked programming but hadn't been able to study computer science formally in the past. I was on another career path entirely, but hating it the deeper in I got. A year ago, I decided to take a chance and pursue programming and software engineering on a 'non-traditional' path. I was certainly impressed initially with Epicodus's very affordable tuition and payment plan options, but wondered if the quality of the program could truly be so high for such an affordable price.

After completing the program, I can definitely say that the quality of the curriculum and teaching was great overall. I also feel that the school makes a genuine effort to foster diversity in the program and bring in students from a variety of backgrounds, which was awesome. My class of 30 students was nearly half female, had several students who were visible minorities, and several who were non-visible minorities, including myself. There was also diversity in the ages of the students; I would estimate that the range of my class was early 20s to mid 40s, which was also a great asset.

In addition to the great curriculum and classmates, the Epicodus internship program is an especially strong and unique aspect of the school. Epicodus has worked hard to make strong partnerships with companies that can provide real-world programming experience. In my case, I was especially fortunate. Only seven months ago, I had pretty much zero professional programming experience and knew only very basic HTML, CSS, and the tiniest amount of JavaScript. After three months of (intensive!) full-time study at Epicodus, I began my internship. And after four months as a full-time intern, I'm about to transition into a salaried, full-time software developer position at my company. I've certainly had a good deal of luck, and this is not the experience of every Epicodus grad, but I definitely feel that Epicodus has been a great springboard to opportunity for every member of my cohort. I really can't overstate how happy I am that I took the leap and that I chose Epicodus. There's no way I'd be where I am without the curriculum, support, and connections that the program provides, and the tuition is more than reasonable for all the benefits that come with enrolling. Do it!!

You will find a new passionate at Epicodus like hundred students have done. This fantastic course just takes 4 months but give you all necessary background and sharp tools to jump into the coding market. After the course, they will help you going through... Read More processes of preparing for interviews, joining an internship and then finding a job. Epicodus is one of the best decisions I have ever made.

I started the course without any coding experience. I was overwhelmed at first 2 weeks but then I fell in love with coding quickly. Their lessons are easy to learn and upgrade my coding skills by days.

I definitely introduce Epicodus to friends who are looking for a place to start a new great path.

The Epicodus web development program has changed my life. Epicodus emphasizes not only technical skill, but other desirable behaviors like pair programming, git and test driven development. I particularly enjoy bringing together all of the parts of a... Read More web application: testing tools, database, ruby and the front-end development tools to produce a well-running, efficient, and beautiful web application.