Galvanize

The Galvanize data science immersive devotes twelve weeks to teaching a very complex subject at a rapid pace. The program combines lectures with both solo and pair exercises. During the program, the staff will also bring in several representatives from... Read More data science-utilizing companies to talk about what their data science jobs look like in the real world - and to scout out potential hires. At the end, students put together capstone projects and present them to an audience.

Though the material did seem a tad disorganized, I felt that overall, the educational part of the program was solid - if staggeringly fast-paced. Some of the earlier lectures were weaker, probably due to the fact that some of the instructors were new to the program, but these picked up strength over time. The exercises, likewise, were a little disorganized at times, but mostly presented the material in a solid, step-by-step, hands-on fashion. We had a few case studies, where we were presented with data, sorted into teams, and asked to use the tools we'd learned to reach conclusions about the data we'd been presented with. I wouldn't have minded doing more of these, and I also think it would have been helpful for me personally to do some case studies solo instead of with a group: Learning how to work as a group is extremely valuable, but it's not the same skillset as learning how to apply data science, and I felt that sometimes the extra burden of figuring out how to divide up and then combine the work was too much of a distraction from the work itself.
The biggest weakness was simply the breakneck pace: If you can't learn the material on the day it's presented, you'll have to come back to it after the program, because the next day will be a whole new subject.

Having company representatives come in to talk to us was great in theory, but for me at least, didn't turn out to be as useful as it could have been. Their lectures varied wildly in content. Some of them talked about their companies, some of them talked about data science, some of them talked about interesting problems they were working on. One seemed to be trying to sell us on a new piece of technology they were building. A lot of these lectures were uninteresting or downright confusing. It might have been more useful to meet with these people in a more conversational setting - though we did get the chance to talk with them personally after their presentation was over. As for the capstone audience, I was disappointed by its small size. Fortunately, Galvanize made high-quality videos of our individual presentations, which they distributed to us a couple of weeks later, so there was at least the chance to show the presentations off to other people after the fact.

Other than that, the Galvanize career service people are very friendly and helpful and have lots of great advice for job hunting. They did multiple presentations on things like resume writing, cover letters, interviews and salary negotiations, and overall job search strategy. There is also a Galvanize job board that helps connect program alumni with other members of the Galvanize community.

The theory goes that you do your best learning when the material challenges you at the boundary of your ability. That was definitely the case for me with the Galvanize Data Science Immersive (DSI). By the middle of the second week I had the distinct impression... Read More that I had already transformed as a person in my ability and the way I could see the world. I have a lot of good things to say about the program, but I will list just a few that stand out.

I expected there to be a lot of content and I was not disappointed. Data Science requires a very large set of skills so it is difficult to calibrate a curriculum to cover the right stuff at the optimal depth in 8 weeks of instruction. This was balanced very well for me. I had a fair amount of exposure to C, C++, Fortran, Basic, Matlab and Mathematica, but I was pretty new to Python and Github, only having played with them for a few months. Some familiarity with coding and especially Python is essential to be able to absorb material at the rate it was presented in the DSI. The more the better. I was at the low end in coding skill. There is also sufficient depth in the material that everyone I spoke with in the program found it challenging and got a lot out of it. Really everyone. The foundation is built starting with intermediate Python using Pandas and Numpy and there are a number of case studies using real data. There were a few for whom it may have been a bit beyond what they could effectively handle, so if you are considering this be sure you have prepared enough since it is not an experience you want to waste.

I also expected the level of instruction to be high. I was told in advance that the program is optimized to what is actually used in industry and this is pretty much true. The instructors all have recent real world experience. They are entertaining and fun in their presentations and bring diverse insights to the wide range of challenges faced in doing data science. The quality of the people at Galvanize goes beyond the instructors too. I got a very positive impression of the culture within Galvanize as a company. There seems to be a very welcoming, supportive and inclusive manner of interaction that is practiced throughout the organization as a core value, not just a show put on for students. You can tell the people love working there and genuinely care for each other and the student's success.

One place where my expectations were significantly exceeded was in the quality and benefits of interaction with fellow students. One of the core methodologies of the program is the pair sprints that happen after the afternoon lecture. There is an individual sprint in the morning after the first lecture, then a second lecture goes into more depth on the same topic. In the afternoon you take turns driving or navigating for 20 or 30 minutes with a partner. Not only do you learn from seeing how they approach the problem and whatever their technical strengths may be, but you also get to know their interests and personal and professional background. I knew I would learn a lot of new things, but it was unexpected how the depth and range of experience of my classmates would open my eyes to new opportunities. You just cannot know what you do not yet know and it is amazing what cool things a group of very sharp, inquisitive people can get into. I think it varies from one cohort to another, but my group formed some strong connections and enjoyed quite a few group activities during and after our immersive. They continue to be a support in my professional network.

Finally, I knew they would offer some help with the job search campaign, but that was not my focus when I entered. I was quite happy with the way they integrated the job search preparation into the program. I felt that the capstone project was well mentored so we could use it as demonstration of what we had learned. They also presented great examples of people who had conducted very effective job search campaigns along with coaching and interview preparation. It is mentioned somewhere in the program description, but I still found it a welcome surprise to learn that we had a continuing membership at the Galvanize campus for 6 months after finishing. It was nice that the connection would continue while we searched for a job.

As for cons, I still cannot say there are any actual cons. There are reasons you might not be a match for this program, mostly if you are not prepared in some way, and there are some ways they might be able to improve the program. Here are a couple points that stand out.

This course is not for everyone. You must be prepared if you want to benefit from your investment in this program. You must be able to arrange your life so you can dedicate yourself to it fully for at least 3 months. If you cannot meet those requirements you will possibly be wasting your money, or at least not getting as much out of it as you could. The most important factor is coding proficiency. If you do not have the mechanics of coding down it will limit how fast you can assimilate the data science component of the curriculum. You can effectively get up to speed with your coding before starting this so it is best if you do not have half your attention on coding basics during the exercises. It is also important to have a good orientation in statistics, probability and math.

As said earlier, data science is a very large bag of skills, so any course will have to choose what to cover and what to leave out. I think the Galvanize DSI is well balanced, but it does leave out or only touch briefly on a number of topics. Part of this is addressed by your capstone project where you can go into a little more depth and use technologies that were not directly included in the curriculum. But people can find fault in their choice of what to cover. We did a day on neural networks as an optional session during our break week, but it was not formally part of the curriculum. To their credit, I know that the instructional staff is never quite satisfied with the effectiveness and content selection and they are constantly working to improve it.

I have also heard some frustration over how difficult it is to find a job once you are done with the program. Maybe they could be doing better with the job placement support? I felt that they already do a lot; provide a lot of services, guide you through the preparation, give a lot of examples of successful searches to model. They do bring in interested employers to see the graduates present their capstone projects, but that could probably be done better. I think the key thing is that the job seeker has to be prepared and put in the effort, and they do a pretty good job of guiding you through that. Here again, I know they are working to adapt and improve the level of support they provide. Their success depends on the success of their graduates. I was fortunate to be employed within a month of finishing, so I did not have to face the frustration that a few of my classmates did with the job search.

In the final assessment I am very happy with the program and the results. It has been critical for me to keep practicing the skills that I learned and continue attending meetups and learning about new technologies. I think that is essential when you cover so much material in such a short time. It won't stick unless you use it. My overall impression of Galvanize and their programs is that they have a great product already and they have plenty of vision and energy as a startup to expand into something even better.

At first glance, Galvanize is a really big commitment. The Web Development course is a 6-month, full-time course; about twice the length (and price) of some of the other coding camps. But as I sit here in my new job as a software developer, I can tell... Read More you it was worth the price of admission (also they partner with skillsfund and offer scholarships to make it more affordable to attend). Making relevant web-development curriculum is a moving target because front-end frameworks go in and out of style faster than most universities care to update their curriculum. Galvanize excels at working with potential employers to define their curriculum based on the most current demand at the time, so students like myself come out having relevant experience to show off to potential employers. They focus on empowering students to explore frameworks themselves, and provide a foundation in both back and front-end fundamentals so that whatever the flavor, students feel confident they can take on new material themselves. While the experience may vary between campuses (newer sites have some amount of growing pains compared to their established locations in say, Denver), Galvanize does a wonderful job recruiting experienced instructors with real-world experience. Not only were our instructors very capable at teaching us how to program, but they were quick to offer career advice and share stories from the trenches. As with any program, a student's success will dovetail with their personal effort and capability, but I felt Galvanize gave back just as much as I put in and much more.

I wanted to learn a new skill-set. I was employed at the time, but wanted to level up. As someone with an extensive background in Academia, and who had taught for years, I was mostly disappointed in the pedagogy. Many of the technologies covered are very... Read More useful and important, and many of the topics were well thought out. But the organizational planning of Galvanize is horrible. The TA's are comically unprepared(basically just Galvanize students who failed to get jobs--so self-selecting the worst of the previous cohorts) to help with anything, the teachers don't have time to 1-1 with anyone, and the labs are often so easy that they border on useless. I already had a job lined up for after the program, so I had far less skin in the game, and I was still in the top percentile of students completing projects.

Galvanize accepts anyone who can copy and paste code from Google. This shows as they're flooded with idiot students, and by extension, idiot TA's. Their performance numbers are artificially inflated--check it out, look when their stats are from ;-)--to delude you into believing that you'll actually get a job with the mediocre training they provide. Galvanize needs to increase their standards or down in mediocrity.

I was skeptical to join a bootcamp because of some of the stigma around the short program times and nature of the industry. I haven't regretted my decision for one second. In fact, I would do it all over again! I learned and retained more in 6 months... Read More at Galvanize than in 4 years at University. My instructors were patient, compassionate, and brilliantly intelligent. I had a close cohort of peers who helped each other and inspired each other to stay the course. The Galvanize team helped me to stay motivated and ultimately helped me land my first job through insane networking opportunities. I wouldn't be where or who I am today without Galvanize and the incredible team of instructors, career services, and employees. Everyone in the Galvanize family is truly amazing and passionate. I recommend Galvanize to everyone I know - whether it's for and education, a workspace, or partnership.

I was a student in the Galvanize Full-Stack Web development program in 2015. I really enjoyed attending this program and felt extremely privileged to get in. It was an incredible learning environment that fostered intense sense of community and facilitated... Read More an amazing level of learning. So those are some of those pros!

Now on to some other pros...the breadth and depth of topics that are covered in this program is incredible. It is extremely intense but highly rewarding. Probably the best educational experience I have ever had. I have attended undergrad and grad school and this was very similar in my estimation to my grad school experience. You had to manage your own time wisely and apply yourself. They provided lots of resources, lots of exercises lots, lots of direct 1:1 support, projects, experientials, mentorships...tons and tons of things. They also covered the latest technologies at the time. They provide alumni workshops after you graduate that are essential in my experience of getting hired. I think the best thing about Galvanize was not the curriculum or format as much as it was the quality of people there. They are invested earnestly in you. You form real relationships that are the foundation of everything you learn. They also are committed to building a learning community, I learned just as much from the others in my cohort as I did the instructors. I can only speak to my instructors, but they were all incredibly gifted and wonderful people. You also have to recognize quickly that everyone brings different skill levels to the table at the beginning. Comparing yourself to your cohort colleagues is not helpful. You must compete against yourself. Everyone brought value to the learning process. Some of these people have become some of my best friends. Everybody in my cohort had a job within 6 months.

So now to cons, the cost is high. You cannot really have a traditional job while doing this either, it is a full-time 40-60 hr/week job. You also will not see your family much during this program. The pace and intensity are incredibly high. You do get more out of it the more you do and the more you immerse yourself in the development world. I would say another con was that during my time there, there seemed to be continually modifying the curriculum and changing it. Alas, this is very much akin to the world of software development so it might be a pro also. Keeps you limber and flexible and adaptive. At times, disputes occurred with colleagues during group projects, but this was good practice for having "fierce conversations" that are necessary in the real world. It was definitely frustrating at points, but that is bound to happen when so much is being thrown at you. It is hard! But highly rewarding. It was worth so much more to my life and my family's future than the dollar cost. I would attend again in a heartbeat.

I went from working at a retail store making less than 10k a year to making close to 6 figures annually. Galvanize changed my life.

I spent the vast majority of my 6 month full stack boot camp practically living out of the Denver Platte campus. I would... Read More be there from 8am-9pm Sun-Sun studying and pushing code. I should point out that such harsh hours are not required, as most of my peers were there from 8am-5pm Monday - Friday and still did fine. However, I felt that I needed to stand out from my peers because at the end of the course, every student gets to present a capstone project to hungry employers. So, I worked hard to deeply understand the concepts and technologies that were being presented to us and it paid off in a huge way.

Galvanize is great, not because of their outstanding curriculum and atmosphere but, because it gives students a chance to study code and programming concepts for 8+ hours a day. The crazy thing is, most of the resources that they use to teach can be found online for free. It's just that they present it to you in such a meticulously curated fashion that it jumpstarts your learning in a way that you would never be able to do on your own.

One of the major cons that I have with this bootcamp isn't about the course itself. It's a fear that I have for future students of all bootcamps. The Platte campus alone has 3 cohorts running concurrently (with slightly staggered start dates), each with 25ish students. That's just one Galvanize campus out of the 4 in Denver that is constantly churning out new hires. My fear is that there will soon be an over saturation of junior developers, making it exceedingly difficult for graduates to land a decent job. Their website even shows a 10% decrees in placement rates from 2014 (when bootcamps were relatively new) to 2015 (my graduation year).

The point of all this being, Galvanize is great and if you're thinking about taking their full stack program, I would say go for it! Be warned, before you join any bootcamp, look at the stack that they teach, check their placement/salary rates, and hunt around on some job boards to make sure the market matches what the bootcamp is promising.

I graduated college with degrees in Molecular Biology and Neuroscience. I planned to continue in academia with a project I started in my undergrad, when my advisor was forced to resign from the university before being arrested. Needless to say I had to... Read More pivot my career in order to find something sustainable. My friend had gone through the Galvanize program and got hired before the program was complete. The evidence of his new Audi a4 made an impression on me and I decided to give it a shot.

Prior to Galvanize, I had not done much software development, aside from writing R scripts for a behavioral genetics lab I was working in. I found the program adequately prepared me for the job and I was hired by a company at our demo day.

I am so glad I decided to shift careers and attend Galvanize. While there are plenty of resources available for self-teaching, there's no way I could have picked up anywhere near the same amount of information in 6 months on my own.

I went from barely... Read More knowing HTML to knowing CSS, JavaScript, PostgreSQL, Node, and Angular. By the end of the program, I was also building projects with Go, Java, and C#.

Like any undertaking in life, you get out of it what you put into it. But if you can take the dive with Galvanize, your efforts will definitely pay off.

I thought that the meat of the Galvanize program was really wonderful - we learned a TON of material in a very short time. The instructors were top-notch and deeply cared about their student's success. If I was rating this program on the content alone,... Read More I would have nothing but amazing things to say. A couple months out, and I feel like a real Software Developer.

However, my cohort's job support was sub-par. Many cohorts before mine had a robust "hiring day" at the end of the program, where employers would come in, watch students present their capstone project, and then "speed-interview" each student. Our cohort was the first to experience a shift in hiring day, void of "speed interviewing," and as it turned out, void of many quality employers, too. Many in my cohort felt that the change in format of the hiring day was a huge misstep by Galvanize career services. I'm sure they realize this, and I hope they put together a more meaningful end-of-program hiring event for future cohorts. Granted, it isn't the end of the world - most students will get jobs, i'm sure - but more onus is being put on students to network and carve their own path.

All in all, I'm really glad I did the program, though. It boosted an interest in coding to a career. For those considering this program, hold Galvanize accountable for job support when you're interviewing, but if they get their act together, this is a really great program.