Techmongers

When I decided to study at codaisseur 2 years ago, they advertised their program as "No experience or previous knowledge needed, in 10 weeks become a software engineer". And this is a huge lie. I had no experience in coding before joining the bootcamp,... Read More but I have always been quite tech-savvy. And there I was, just on the first day we learned about git, the terminal, HTML and CSS. All in the span of 8 hours. How would anyone expect somebody with "no previous coding knowledge" to get familiar with all these 4 topics in just one day? The second day we were already busy with javascript, no need to say I was falling behind the program from the first day and that there was a huge gap of knowledge. At the end of the second week we were already busy with React. I did my university years working full time at the same time, and that was not half stressfull as were these weeks at Codaisseur. An insane amount of information is thrown at you, with no time to process it and to properly learn. Learning, especially in coding, must be a process of changing your way of thinking and to "mold" your head. Not to type code without really understanding what you are doing. I decided to stop the bootcamp on the third week. In the exit interview I mentioned what I just wrote referring to the "no experience needed", to which they answered "no experience needed is very subjective", no, my friends, no experience is no experience, period.   I felt like a failure. It took me one year to gather the motivation again to start learning coding, and this time I did it on my own, with Udemy courses and online resources, learning at my own path and really letting the new information sink in and changing my way of thinking code-wise. Now I am working as a junior developer. After doing the online courses I could see the value of the Codaisseur program, but this was because I already had some knowledge about it. And to be honest, if you already feel comfortable with coding, I wouldn't say the program is worth going into debt for it. Just keep learning on your own. Summarizing: + Good teachers - Terrible structure of the program, rushing to learn and you end up learning nothing and hating code before knowing what is actually code - Misleading marketing strategies, or in other words, lying strategies. "No experience needed, but, actually.... "

When I decided to move from digital marketing to web development career, I started looking for a bootcamp that could quickly provide me with the skills I needed in the job market and also that could help me through this transition. Codaisseur exceeded... Read More my expectations. There is a strong community around it and it was crucial to help me get a job right after finishing the academy (very opportunely, I finish the academy on Friday, and the following Monday I already have an excellent offer on the table) . I think Codaisseur structured the course very well and provided all the additional support I needed (eg, specialised career advisors) to make my goal successful and, as I witnessed, several other students. Excellent choice I made.

I focused on wiping out the dreadful experience at Codaisseur from my mind when I received the email from the staff asking for good reviews in exchange for merchandise. Seriously desperate? Nothing good comes out of a bad structure. Class after class... Read More of forcing information down our throats was never a good strategy. And what about the days when we all had to stand outside class for so long because somebody was not scheduled to teach us? Maybe it was a good course when it was first started many years back but now it is just a circus of trying to see how many people they can put into debt after giving them a barely passable education if you can even call it that. Nothing is scheduled properly and exams are not checked properly. The instructors have very little time for the students and we most often have to ask each other for support instead of having assistance from a profesional. The Codaisseur hiring team is overbearing and ironically speak as if they have never read their own contract. They expect that once students graduate that they will jump through hoops to find a job but the hiring team will not do their part at all and get upset if students do not check all the boxes of their absurd checklist. I saw quite a number of responses to the negative reviews here laced with the same false confidence that the team in question interrogated us with every week. Totally ridiculous experience which I would not recommend to anyone who wants to keep their sanity and start a career in an otherwise very stable field of work.

Intense, but extremely awarding. When I decided to switch careers to become a software developer, I wanted to know where to start, the help when I got stuck, and the best preparation to give me a kick-start to launch into my new career. Codaisseur offered... Read More everything I was looking for. The no cure no pay model granted me the flexibility to find a company I wanted to settle down with or move on if I didn't like it, this in comparison with a fixed two-year traineeship. The teachers were wonderful, and I still hear them guide me through the coding challenges I encounter daily in my work as a SaaS product developer. Even though I hardly code in JavaScript/NodeJs, the Bootcamp provided me with the foundation to continue my studies by myself, picking up Java, and the courage to apply it immediately in my work. My c.v. has never looked as impressive after the career preparation week, and I landed my first coding job a week after graduation. Next but not least, I made friends and build my first network in technology.

Overall my experience was pretty good. The curriculum is geared towards having students be able to create a full stack web application at the end of the bootcamp. It works for most people and even though the pace is fast, it is manageable. The teachers... Read More are generally very good, knowledgeable and will do their best to help students. Of course, there are moments when the teaching staff is very busy and it will take a lot of time to get some help but I would think this is the case in most bootcamps. How much students learn depends mainly on how much they know before the bootcamp and how much work is put in during it. By this I mean that students who knew some programming before starting or did more than what was asked of them before the first day of class clearly had an advantage and had a more pleasant time. I would argue that the prep work they ask students to do before starting is not enough. Some negative points: - the curriculum and tests change quite often. For the curriculum it is generally ok but I had a feeling my class had to "beta test" a new assignment which led to students failing the course after 1 week. Most students felt the staff downplayed the difficulty of the test (they explicitly told us it was not necessary to study for it) resulting in most of the class not being adequately prepared. This tarnished our relation with part of the staff for the rest of the curriculum. - The fact that students can fail the bootcamp if they fail one test does add some stress. To be fair the assessments are not hard if you prepared adequately but it is a factor of stress. However it somewhat guarantees that all graduates are able to create simple web apps by themselves. - In my opinion there was not enough feedback on the quality of the code we wrote. As long as the code works, not a lot of feedback will be given. That's fine when learning how the frameworks work but I think a couple classes on simple good coding practices would be valuable before the job search period. However, if you are looking for a way to get a developer job fast, Codaisseur is a good option. They also have a reasonably good network in the Netherlands which helps when job hunting. All I would say is to prepare as much as you can before starting. It will greatly improve your experience there.

I give a 5/5 rating because I think the course is well structured, with great teachers and great support. I liked how the reader builds up the material step by step and that every week you can already see what this week has in store for you. The teachers... Read More always teach what is relevant for that day and even if you have new teacher the next day they were able to find out where we were at and adapt really quickly. Everything we have learned felt really relevant to the job market and by doing the course you get a complete picture of web development both frontend and backend. The course has been the most intense but also the most pleasant learning experience in my life. I managed to get a job in 2,5 months after graduation and I think that really says something in covid times. Codaisseur helps its students by organizing speed dates between them and companies every month or so and also attracts real world software development projects where their students can get real (albeit unpaid) experience after graduating to improve their chances on the job market. You can also always have individual talks with a job coach if you have questions or want feedback.

I wanted to make a career switch and becomes a developer, but I was looking for something quick as I didn't want to spend months learning it. I read review about Codaisseur that it was short and very intense. That was what I wanted, and that was exactly... Read More what it was. I had to work very hard for 11 weeks - it is intense, but I learned a lot in a short time, and I was able to find a job quickly afterwards. If you want to learn how to be a software engineer quickly and are very motivated, you must be to go through the course, then Codaisseur is for you.

I followed the 11-week intense bootcamp on site and graduated in december 2020, so I don't know how it is during Covid. From start to finish I had a great experience. The teachers and other people from Codaisseur were great. They were nice, willing to... Read More explain problems more than once and it really felt like they cared. They cheer you on and what I found was that, they really wanna know how you are doing. My classmates were nice and willing to help out (it does depend on what kind of classmates you get of course). We sometimes drank a beer after studies on friday at the campus. The bootcamp is hard and it is very challenging. I do think it's best to come prepared, the pacing is high and it's no fun when you start lacking behind. So my tip: know what the basics are and get a little comfortable with it. Like, what is a string or what is an array? And try to do some small exercises at home (for example some Javascript tutorials on w3schools.com). The more the better. I had zero programming experience and I did think that made it hard for me. It also depends on how well you get the hang of things. Make sure that you have the time to fully commit to this. I actually had to go to another class because I was lacking behind and re-do 2 weeks again, but they saw potential in me and had the confidence I could do it. And I was SO proud when I graduated and actually did it! The (online) reader that is being used for all the exercises is good overall and always accessible for graduates, but it's not always clear or easy to navigate through. And because of it being a 11-week bootcamp and the high pacing, it sometimes feels rushed and I left code exercises untouched. The last week of the bootcamp is also important. They have a dedicated and knowledgeable instructor who helps with getting hired. You'll get lessons in optimising your LinkedIn profile, your CV and you'll also practice job interviews and such. This was very valuable and I learned a lot from this. I found a job within the first month, which was very fast. Finding a job can be challenging in any area of expertise. I did all the work for it but it also felt like I got a bit lucky to be that fast. Other classmates found one later than 1 month or none at all within the 3 month period. At the moment of writing, I'm working as a developer for a year, something I couldn't have done without Codaisseur.

Codaisseur was the most intense experience I’ve ever had. It was stressful, difficult, tons of new information everyday but it was exactly what I needed to become a web developer. If you want to succeed, you need to go all in, no distractions, no social... Read More life for 11 weeks, it’s really hard and in order to keep up, you need to put in a lot of work yourself. The curriculum is amazing, but don’t expect the teachers and their resources will do magic and boom you’ll become a great developer. This comes with time. They prepare you for a rough career, they give you the confidence and independence you need after you finish the bootcamp. The teachers are all cool and experienced but they always push you to find the answers by yourself. And now I appreciate it so much that they didn’t just give me the answers to my questions, I had to work and look for them myself. That’s such an important skill to have as a web developer. I was lucky enough to find a job within a couple of weeks after graduating so joining Codaisseur was the best decision I could take. :)

When I received the email from Codaisseur asking us to write them a review, I was surprised. Why would a school ask their former students to write reviews for them? Their reason: they lost students because of bad reviews on Switchup. When I looked, scrolling... Read More past the first few reviews that gave them all 5 stars, I saw several negative reviews that struck me because of how alike our experiences were. The same tactics used repeatedly when things didn't go Codaisseur's way. This angered me, and I felt compelled to write this in the hope that nobody repeats my mistake and chooses Codaisseur. . I joined Codaisseur this year. I did not do too well in the interview, but I was selected anyway. Their seemingly strict application rules where only 32% of students were accepted, did not seem to apply to me. From the first week, it became clear to me that the main objective of the curriculum is: throw all the world's information at the student and see what they remember. Every week there was a test that eliminated students. The teaching staff, bless their hearts, they had little idea of their own schedules. Sometimes we would be sitting in class for a while with no teacher. Much later, they would appear, citing apologies, saying they didn't even know they were taking the first lesson of the day. Strangely enough, after the fourth week, we began to sympathise with the teachers. . In the fourth week, we were introduced to the 'new batch' of students. There were almost 40 of them. We were around 25 in a class, and that I thought was already too many. It felt like the production of developers was more factory-like for Codaisseur. Quantity over quality seems to be their norm. Numbers don't lie, but do they tell you also how many students are dropped by companies during or after their trial period? That number seems painfully high. Anyway: The teaching staff could barely devote attention to more than 10 students in a day. The rest of us had to rely on each other. As expected, it was chaotic. . The 'reader' is the online course material accessible to a student. Every week we would go through course material at surface level, leaving giant holes of information and code untouched. Asking a teacher seemed like we were taking too much time away from them. They were managing multiple classes at the same time, thus educating neither. . The final examination was the first time I began to doubt the Codaisseur modal. They advertise themselves as 'no cure, no pay'. Which should mean that if you do not pass the examination, you have failed the course and should not be paying the 'tuition fees' of 11520 Euros. However there are some members of the administration at Codaisseur that I rightfully despise, because if these people determine that you failed the exam on purpose, or did not try hard enough, you will be asked to pay the fees anyway. They will send an email to you, informing you that from the next day, your payment obligation begins. Without graduation and without a job, who has the money to pay them back? . Our job search period began as Covid began. It was a difficult time for everyone. Once we graduated, we had to attend a week of career counselling. As many of the reviews have mentioned, this week is poor quality counselling at best. A week of my life I will never get back, spent reading motivational quotes and thinking about our talents. I hoped that my CV would be reviewed by a professional, but all I got was "Change your picture, and change the layout, make it more professional." What sort of feedback is that? They recommended me a website that generates free CVs. So I used it, and sent in my CV during applications. A few months later, a company responded saying "Students from Codaisseur always have the same CV, and you do too." That was their reason for not going further with my application. Immediately, I changed my CV to the old one and send it in. I had much more responses after that. . There was a video call scheduled for all students, where the same administration team spoke to us, proposing a new contract. The new contract would be for 5 months instead of our original 3 month contract. This means that during those months, it is required of you to actively search for jobs, and submit 6 applications per week. Due to Covid they wanted to extend this period to 5 months, cutting the tuition fee down to about 9000 Euros. They also told us that they would give us additional job search assistance if we chose the 5month contract. Naturally, most of us did. I did not, however, since I was already hearing a lot of bad things about Codaisseur from alumni. In either case, I was required to look for a job for 3 months. . Every week a student is to report to a career counsellor from Codaisseur. The call lasts 15 minutes, but can go on for almost an hour. For the first 2 months, all I was asked is, how many applications did I do, did I hear back, etc. No advice was given. At the end of the 2 months, I received a message saying it was my last month of the job search period. This is when I realised Codaisseur's true nature. . I had a few first interviews, where the companies had not heard about Codaisseur. I was told by the administration members to explain the Codaisseur model. You pay 800 Euros upfront as an admission fee, then your education is free until you graduate, and once you get a job the company pays for your fees. What they don't tell you, is that the money for the fees is ultimately taken from your salary. Which company willingly hires juniors, paying them the minimum (about 2300 Euros) for a developer and then still can afford to pay 300 euros per month additional, to the school? That is 2600 euros they would rather spend to hire a medior or someone with more expertise at least. During my first interviews, I heard a lot of this. And they were right. If they were to actually pay you 2300, minus the 300 that Codaisseur asks for, you would receive 2000 before taxes. Not to be harsh, but that is the salary I was earning while working in the catering industry. And I truly believed that being a web developer is a step ahead of that. So why should I work a better job for the same money? . The kicker comes with the last month of job search for me. The case of a few people from the class before me, as well as in my own class: - You received a job offer that was paying you less compared to the average developer salary. They told you that you could accept it once you are done with the contract with Codaisseur. But Codaisseur has in their contract that any job offer received as a result of job searches during the job search period (3 months in my case) would have to pay the fees even if the job offer was made or accepted after this period ends. Since the salary offered was too low, you declined it, and told the administrative team at Codaisseur the same. What followed was calls from certain members still working there, they pressured you into accepting this offer even though you already told them you would not. If you had accepted , you would have to pay 300 Euros from an already low salary to Codaisseur, and so you told them you would wait for the next job offer. But the pressure did not stop, and ultimately you received a warning, that if you did not accept the job offer there was a good chance you would be fined the entire amount of the tuition fee. It is very easy to see from the responses to the reviews that the team responsible for this behaviour would rather pretend that it never happened. . Codaisseur does mention in the contract that they will do the best they can to help students get a job. They shouldn't have lied like that, because I can quote them pretty easily in the review they ironically asked for. In all the months of the job search period, they organised 0 job fairs. It should have been easier to do since everyone was online. For my classmates with the 5 month contract, in 5 months they had one job fair. How did it work? The administration team matched students to companies and scheduled calls as interviews. A classmate was part of this, they were interviewed by a company, and then the company wrote back to them saying they were not accepted because they did not speak dutch.What sort of research went into matching a Dutch speaking company with a person that clearly did not have Dutch on their CV? . Another thing, they mention in the contract with students that a trial period for a job position can only be maximum one day. In the whole of the Netherlands, a one month probation period is quite normal. In this month, you can be terminated for no reason. But Codaisseur still takes your monthly instalments! So if you lost your job due to Covid, they delay the payments by 3 months, and then start again even if you didn't find a job. I know classmates who haven't been with a job for months due to unavailability of jobs, and who are still paying Codaisseur. They have debt on them which lasts for 2 years, with legal consequences if they choose not to pay. . I want to summarise by reflecting on what the definition of school or university is. It is a place where you can make mistakes and learn. The people responsible for my negative experience were those who were running the business aspect of the school. Where people were being churned out for companies to try and spit out if it did not work. Where students accrued debt and were left hopeless by a contract that works to trap them for 2 years. To Codaisseur, I hope your quest for gaining more reviews spurs more revealing details of your true nature and results in more loss of students. To be honest, they are better off without an education with you. 2021 will hopefully be a year of better choices, not only for me, but for all aspiring developers as well. If it is education you seek, I recommend looking through online courses which are completely free. Real development takes time, and in the very least, should not leave you with a huge debt for no fault of your own.