Galvanize

Stay the heck away from this program.

It's difficult for me to even list all the problems with the program, but just to name a few:
-Most of the instructors just graduated from the course, and have no actual experience working in Web/Software Development.... Read More
-They are horribly understaffed, and instructor turn-over is atrocious.
-The course has no organization whatsoever. They'll keep randomly throwing new ideas into the mix (advisor groups, remedial training, etc.) only for it to fizzle out because the curriculum is all over the place and no one has any idea of what is supposed to happen.
-They don't give a crap about how much students understand the material, they just need to graduate you because they need to make space for the next cohort. We had several people in our class whom they graduated who clearly had learned next to nothing, and they force them out the door anyway.
-They are horrendously overcrowded. Someone currently in the course said they are up to 100+ students in the basement. They've had to convert a break area into a classroom because there are so many people now.
-I would be EXTREMELY skeptical of anything they tell you in regards to job placement. The last set of job placement data they list on their website is from 2016, and in my cohort (and the ones who graduated around the same time as me) pretty much no one has a job. Also, that data is from all their campuses. Maybe the rest of their campuses are on point, but Denver is a disaster.

The only positive I can really say is that Career Services is excellent. They are knowledgeable and hold your feet to the fire and clearly care a lot.

I'm not going to say that G-School is a scam, because that implies maliciousness on their part, and I don't think they're malicious. But, their current product is absolutely broken right now. Stay away from G-School Denver until some serious changes are made. Coming here was an enormous mistake on my part.

Pros:
-The instructors are generally fairly knowledgeable and are nice people
-Campus and amenities are nice
-Career services is actually pretty good, and they clearly care about trying to help you, even post graduation.

Cons:
Pretty much everything else
-Probably... Read More 80% of the instructors are people who literally just graduated from the program, and have never spent a day actually working in Web/Software Development.
-The instructors might know Web Dev well, but few of them have any formal teaching experience. Being a great coder doesn't make you a great teacher.
-I've seen pick-up Basketball games that are more organized than this place. Half the mornings the instructors had no clue what was supposed to happen that day and would just pull lessons and exercises out of their ass. We would frequently be told to do warm-ups that we had done 2 days ago because they were just throwing things together.
-Their attitude towards learning is essentially "teach yourself!". If that's the case, why don't I just spend a few hundred dollars on UDemy courses and not $21,000 here?
-People get pushed through the course with little to no regard as to whether they actually understand the material. During my "final interview", I don't think I answered a single technical question correctly, and they graduated me anyway. Need to get the next batch of people in!
-Accountability for students is non-existent. I told them essentially every day that I had no idea what I was doing and was falling far behind. They kept insisting that "you're doing fine!". Now I'm graduated (see above) and still feel like I know nothing.
-Way too crowded. They have 3 classrooms in the basement, and now they've had to literally take what was originally a break area and convert it into a classroom because there's probably 100+ people in the course.
-Instructor turn-over is insane. During my time in the course, we lost probably 6 different instructors, and the Faculty Director and Lead Instructor both quit (as far as I can tell, they were "asked to leave").
-I don't know what the current job placement rate is for Galvanize, but be weary of any numbers you see from 2017 or before. We had 20 people graduate from our class 6 weeks ago, and I think the only one who has a job had the job before graduation, and he's being paid in equity.

Maybe my expectations were too high, but for $21,000 I expected FAR more than what I got here.

Intro

I used to work as a principal software engineer at a big software company for many years doing full stack Java web development. I wanted a new job but everything in web development has changed from Java/php/Ruby to JavaScript frameworks. I looked... Read More at a few bootcamps in the (Coding Dojo, Hack Reactor, Dev Mountain and Dev League in Hawaii - nice but no time to surf) and was accepted by them all. They are all good schools but Galvanize was 6 months (24 weeks), not 3 months to help us learn more and one of their instructor Josh used to teach at Hack Reactor and gave us a free Saturday course in JavaScript.

Precourse

I was accepted at all the schools. Hack Reactor had a one month prep course, other schools were easier to get in and Galvanize had an online test with an instructor, Oli. Josh gave me some last minute tips and I passed with flying colors but I would recommend people learn JavaScript first. They also like us to have a pre course project making a web page. I reached out to a few grads who helped me with Galvanize.

Quarters

The course was taught by Nestor and the resident was Michael (a recent graduate). Both were very knowledgeable in the materials.

The first quarter was web (HTML, CSS) and JavaScript. We created an image scraper JavaScript web application. Each quarter we get about one week to work on a final project and etween quarters we get a break week.

Second quarter was on React. This was the first cohort to learn React in the second quarter and probably the first to really deep dive on Redux, Think middleware and JS testing! We all made React web and React Native mobile apps projects for second quarter!

Third quarter was on Node and database development with the project to be integrated with our React projects to be hosted on AWS (Amazon Web Services). We all worked together and got everything done right before the Thanksgiving holiday break week.

Fourth quarter was our final project (3 weeks) and prep work, CS concepts for interviews. I worked on a React Native mobile app and our cohort had the most diverse set of applications throughout the program (5 mobile apps, e-commerce apps, video game for 2 players) and technologies (React, React Native, GraphQL, Python, Socket IO, and many more)! The limited amount of time the students had (1 to 3 weeks) to build full stack applications was truly amazing and inspirational!

As for career services, James encouraged us to go to informational interviews (I met with 18 tech professionals and wrote a blog about it http://siliconvalleycoffeetalk.blogspot.com/2018/03/interested-in-silicon-valley-coffee-talk.html), set us up to interview with many companies and even had follow up interview preps to help us months after graduation. This was free to graduates and we also get six months access to Galvanize workspace and lifetime use of the Alumni lounge.

After graduation, there weren't that many companies hiring and I went to Galvanize interview prep with help from their director Sherif. He gave me a few pointers which I tried at an interview and it got me an offer from a start-up. Overall I received multiple offers two months after graduation, had interviews with big companies (had to cancel a few due to the job offers) such as Apple, Sony PlayStation, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Netflix, Amazon, IBM and many more.

Thank you Galvanize. Even though I graduated and got a job, I still go there to help with the new students and go to meet ups as it encouraged me to pay it forward with people new to tech. I highly recommend this school!

Great beginners-level Python class. The instructor, Chris, was very dedicated. He wasn't only knowledgeable about Python but well-versed in teaching methodologies . I grasped concepts that I couldn't understand while taking online classes. The curriculum... Read More was well-thought-out and jam-packed--I was shocked how much we covered in six weeks. I would absolutely recommend this course for anyone trying to learn Python--if you want to do the work , you will get the support and tools you need here.

Background: Retail customer service and sales in the tech/electronics industry, no prior software experience. Some general education teaching experience.

Now: Just hit 10 months in as a software engineer for an ed-tech company that services students around... Read More the world.

My review could just be those two lines up there and it would speak for itself but that would be an injustice to both Galvanize as a school and it's staff. From the admissions staff to the career services director, everyone there is working constantly to see you, the student, succeed. I went in interested in learning software development and hoping for a career change, I left with those hopes fulfilled and an insatiable drive in continuing my education as both an evolving engineer and a possible instructor in the future.

Contact and communication are constant. Seminars and teachings galore beyond the course material, on subjects as how to get a job as an engineer, how to grow and groom your social network in the tech community, what we're interested in learning, and actual speakers from existing tech jobs. Not to mention the tech employees and recruiters who come during the course of the cohort to see what you're working on and to network/provide opportunities for employment. It's incredible.

Of course, all of that is a side to the meat and potatoes of the main curriculum, so no review would be complete without mention of the instructors. I wish I could look you, the reader, in the eye as I say this; despite its clichéd nature: I've never had a better teacher than I had while I attended the Austin Galvanize location. Zubair Desai is the instructor you should look for and the teacher I aspire to be. Having some teaching experience I know how difficult the concept and act of teaching.....anything really... to anyone is, it might honestly be the hardest damn thing to do. Bar none. Zubair handles it effortlessly. It's honestly almost wizardry at how much he knows but more than that, how much knowledge he can impart on another human being.

He can take a classroom from nothing and turn them into accomplished software engineers. Period. Every single person in my cohort is working in the programming field as I write this, a literal 100% success rate for my class. It's insane. I hope that I can get this across in words as vehemently as I would if I were in front of you, he doesn't just teach you how to learn Javascript or Rails or Java or sorting algorithms or any of a million other things, (Spoiler Alert: he does), he teaches you HOW to learn these things. If that doesn't make sense I implore you to enroll and see how you go from knowing nothing as an aspiring developer to being able to teach yourself an entirely unfamiliar language WHILE learning the languages and frameworks that make up the Galvanize curriculum. He's a credit not only to the tech community, in shaping the developers of tomorrow, but a credit to teaching as a profession. Learning from him is a means of unlocking your full potential as a software engineer and I honestly don't know to give higher praise than that.

During my time there we had the pleasure and privilege of working with a pair of assistant instructors as well, Oli and Louis; that brought invaluable skills, experience, and humor to the class. From learning the intricacies of Ruby on Rails with Oli to the finer workings of Swift with Louis, ALL of the instructors at Galvanize put the time and effort into making sure you succeed. If you have questions, they're there to make sure you have answers.

Every moment of my time at Galvanize was spent learning something. It was frustrating at times and blissful the rest but every moment made me the developer I am today and I have this school to thank. For those on the fence, do it, you won't regret it.

If you are going to a (data science) bootcamp to pivot careers, be open to opportunities along the way. Despite encouragement from and within the program to stay in San Francisco, I had to move back to Chicago after being offered a teaching position for... Read More another semester. I did not plan on not being hired on hiring day and spent about a month figuring out what I wanted to do. When I got back to Chicago, I applied to teach data science and Python at General Assembly. I was hired due to my previous teaching experience. I found myself teaching Python for data science to people saying that they were data scientists at Google! Then, I was hired at my current company as a data scientist by the COO. He told the CEO on my first day that I taught data science. So goes the winding road. May your path to enlightenment minimize the distance metric of your life manifold.

Back in the day when data science was a new a shiny object and every company was trying to build up a data science group, graduates of the Data Science Immersive were able to find jobs in no time. I was lucky enough to have finished the course in time... Read More to catch the tail end of this wave, but I realized my shortcomings when I arrived at my new job feeling completely overwhelmed. Luckily I had a tolerant manager and thanks to her I have been able to fill in my knowledge gaps.

However, others are not as lucky as me. Around the summer of 2016, it became evident to the employers that these DSI graduates only had very superficial knowledge of data science because (surprise!) they had to cram 1 year's worth of course work in 14 weeks. Their job placement rate has dropped precipitously and now many of them have settled for becoming a "data analyst" which is basically just writing SQL's all day at a company. They could've easily taken a class at a local community college for a lot less than $16k (and came out with more experience in SQL). My advice: Don't take the short cut! Go do a Master Program at a legitimate university and you will learn your data science well and both you and your future employer will be better for it.

I went through Galvanize's Web Development Immersive (formerly full stack immersive) program last year, graduating in mid-December. The first thing that I'll say about them is that the classroom environment was excellent. My instructors were intelligent,... Read More knowledgable, funny, and friendly, and I can confidently say that I learned a lot from the course. That said, Galvanize's stated end goal is to get it's graduates jobs, and in that endeavor they have failed pathetically.

When I applied for the program, one of the aspects that most interested me was the fact that the course culminates in "hiring day." I knew from friends who had been through gSchool previously that hiring day was an incredibly important event wherein a huge number of graduates found jobs immediately after graduating.

About halfway through my cohort, our lead instructor made a comment about how Galvanize no longer does hiring day, and every student in the class looked at him with a baffled "what do you mean they don't do hiring day anymore" look. He informed us that career services had decided to replace hiring day with "Capstone Showcase," and nobody had bothered to tell us, despite the fact that we had all spent $20,000 on the promise of hiring day. It's worth noting that at that point, I went to galvanize.com and found that they were STILL advertising hiring day as a major component of the course.

Once capstone showcase rolled around, it was painfully obvious that it was NOT a good replacement, and that career services had put little to no effort into organizing it. First of all: they combined my cohort with another one from a different campus, meaning that there were somewhere between 50 and 60 presenters in one day. In a not at all shocking turn of events, most employers who came to see the presentations left long before the day was over, because who the hell wants to sit through 50 presentations? This meant that my capstone presentation was done in front of a room full of fellow students, which isn't exactly the most productive way of going about trying to get a job.

Speaking of employers, it's worth noting that there were almost none at the event, and there was only 1 person between the two cohorts who managed to get a job as a direct result of capstone showcase. To call it a miserable failure would be a massive understatement, and it's certainly worth mentioning that one of the people from career services was actually fired as the result.

We are now less than 2 weeks from the 6 month since graduation mark, and there are no jobs on my horizon. I've attended the "alumni anonymous" meetup that Galvanize holds for graduates looking for jobs, and it's nothing more than a couple of overpaid people endlessly editing resumes and giving you deep insights like "just keep applying!"

All of this is to say that anyone reading this should not attend Galvanize. I learned a lot, sure, but I'm out an awful lot of money with nothing whatsoever to show for it, and have received little to no assistance from Galvanize post-graduation. I constantly regret not screenshotting the "hiring day" portion of their website when it was still posted, as I would absolutely be pursuing a lawsuit against them at this point if I had. Galvanize lied to me, promised things that they had no intention of delivering on, and has left me in the dust, endlessly applying to jobs that have no interest in hiring a bootcamp grad.

Do not attend Galvanize.

Galvanize is the worst way I have spent money to date. I have to admit that I fell for all the marketing here. I attended a bunch of free events, got to know the teachers, fit in with the community... I've heard mixed things about different bootcamps... Read More so I wanted to try the Introduction to Python course and ensure my bootcamp investment would be worth my time. I went in pretty excited, my faith blided by their great marketing. I should have seen the red flags when the instructor of the class snipped at everyone and dodged questions on the first day and Tara MacSomething would wait entire WEEKS before responding to my email with a simple question (other students complained of the same experiences, apparently I am lucky I got a response). Did I make it through the class? Yeah, but mainly due to my prior knowledge of the subject matter and work I put in outside of class. I hardly learned anything from attending the classes and would have been better off with an instructor who actually teaches and explains the steps and reasons behind them without acting like you're just an inconvenience. I will not be attending any other Galvanize classes now that the Python class is over, seeing as I came out of it all with little value. Wish I could have my time and money wasted back. They spend all their free time pitching you their bootcamps, which our instructor of course perked up for and suddenly became enthusiastic. No thank you.

The pros of attending Galvanize were their ability to remain organized and methodical despite being very agile and fluid. The community aspect was huge. The networking opportunities were real and constant. This is a place where people want to connect,... Read More want YOU to succeed and make sure you know it every step of the way. You absolutely get out what you put in, and if you give it you're all, you're sure to succeed.
The cons of attending Galvanize were surely the time required, and thus, the time neglected in other areas of life-For example, your relationships, ability to stay up to date with other life matters, like laundry, often fell by the way side. Every cohort is unique and the mix of specific personalities-both teachers and students is the gamble you take. From one cohort to the next major swings can occur down to how supportive and collaborative vs. competitive the environment is, how available and communicative the teachers are and how talented/motivated/positive the students are you're working with.