my coding bootcamp instructor got fired. | (General Assembly Coding Bootcamp)

In this video, we talk about what is starting to become a saga. My experience at General Assembly's Software Engineering Immersive program. Grab your popcorn, this is a fun one.
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[@jayzg60]

This sounds like an issue with remote bootcamps. Call me old fashion, but learning in person in much more valuable than learning remotely if you can swing it. You are more purposeful when you are in the learning environment. You avoid people who are "phoning it in" (literally). Thanks for documenting all of this, glad I am pursuing an in person bootcamp. Not to be confused with remote work with focuses on output and not purposefulness. Learning and work are different

[@iriel492ki]

Don't take this the wrong way, it's going to be a tough pill to swallow, but if you're going to a coding bootcamp in 2023...you're doing it wrong. The path to success for new coding bootcamp grads is so monumentally low in this market that you're literally lighting your time and money on fire. Most of the instructors themselves are industry dropouts who couldn't hack it at a company. If you're serious about breaking into the industry, save yourself the $15k, live off of that for 3 months and self study with a couple courses you can buy online. Source: I'm a 2016 coding bootcamp grad, working as a senior engineer at a top company. Shit, I'll put together a coding curriculum FOR you to self teach for pennies on the dollar and you'll have 10x the chance to landing a real job. Bootcamps (even when I took it) are more often than not, a complete scam and just lure in suckers. You're better off self teaching.

[@ColbyJaxCodes]

Agreed. That's the way I'll be going. I landed an entry level job while I was at the coding bootcamp so I do have some momentum. Spoilers but they actually ended up shutting this cohort down completely. It was a wreck.

[@jakepyrett1715]

There's a lot of new kid in town/ Jonny come lately mentality..the CS new hires always get the best and coolest projects vs bootcampers or old guys like myself.

[@rl6382]

Only reason I'm going is cause the government is paying for it, I've been self taught for roughly 7 months with a couple react apps under my belt. I'm going to continue becoming more and more proficient until Feb 2024, which is when I plan on attending a bootcamp.

[@K3MPIN18]

I know you're kidding but I would absolutely pay for a coding camp from someone actually in the industry

[@taterrhead]

The times of Coding Bootcamps and online CS degrees are done for ... either teach yourself (&& utilize AI as your senior mentor), OR go to a 4 year school studying hard maths, statistics, physics type ish SO you can then weave whichever way technology jobs go now that we have AI writing so much code ... DO NOT do a bootcamp in 2023 (I did a free bootcamp in '16 ---> finished as self taught))

[@k.iskandar]

Holy smokes. I did not expect this from GA. Im starting to think twice about signing up to GA SEI London.

[@Userforeverneverever]

Don’t do it, I worked for them and it’s such a joke

[@AlejandroSanchez-vg7hf]

I am about to sign up for front end development short with general assambly. Can this course be enough for career change ?

[@ColbyJaxCodes]

Watch my more recent videos.

[@jacobwalus5713]

Hey Colby, Id recommend starting a discord server. I think most of the people who watch you videos are people starting bootcamps or thinking about it, maybe a discord server for people to chat would be helpful? People could gather insight, ask questions, and those who've finished bootcamp can help others, networking, etc. Just a thought.

[@ColbyJaxCodes]

Thanks for the recommendation I'll keep that in mind!

[@YarnGeek]

Been on the fence trying to decide on a bootcamp and stories like this makes me think I should self study until I’m ready to enroll at WGU for the computer science degree.

[@ColbyJaxCodes]

Honestly thinking about going this way myself. It gets worse. Stay tuned.

[@jakepyrett1715]

What's the point of WGU basic computer science degree? I can tell Colby you are gifted and an over achiever with the quality of these vblogs and how articulate you are. You are young enough to switch (upgrade) to a real CS school. It can be top 100 and doesn't have to be expensive. But going to WGU, or Phoenix, devry or liberty univ etc.. just to get the degree. Isn't really worth the time and effort. You need to do it right and find a quality CS program where you will learn (and code) great stuff. Then, during the summers you can co-op and make $45 to $60 an hour as engineering CS intern. Which comes out to be $6000 a month is typical for Midwest as intern. Then, have a job lined up for $80k to $100k which is easy to get offer since folks already know you. I see this every summer. There are some problems with bootcamps .. some you already hit. Classmates slow you down. You paid all this money to learn these modules , but most employers use different stacks. For example, Even if you are Java based cohort, unless you are using Java Spring , Boot, or maven you ( arbitrary bootcamper not you specifically) are missing a lot.. then pretty much everyone runs Java with Linux. And builds from there.. microservices in docker containers etc.. then kubernetes then cloud managed clusters like AKS or GKE or whatever AWS uses.. It gets into data engineering and software engineering more than full stack web dev pretty fast. I was a web dev most of my career and got out of it to do more specialized things like big data , DS, data and cloud engineering and make 2.5x more and so much happier.. So, web dev is great, but it's not really in demand now that AI writes this. It's why CS degree is a better long term investment. I have BS and MS and I borrowed $45k way back when ,but it's tremendously paid off. I've only had about 3 weeks of unexpected unemployment my whole 28year career. There are three facts about this industry: 1) no one cares where you went to school after you get hired. My boss didn't even know my academic background 2) no one cares about your previous job. It's rude to even name it. You should or always say: in my previous life or previously I used... 3) bootcamp programs lie about the amount of coding you do in a good STEM based CS engineering program. They make it sound like you learn theory and read books for 4+ years. No, even the first CS 101 course you code . I taught college level programing C++ and we did ground up stuff .. OOP, but yes it's slower than a bootcamp. I'm not sure what today's CS first two classes are like now in 2023.. You do multiple class assignments, but mostly are solving puzzle use cases. Not just stringing web components together like MEAN or the latest Microsoft Core ASP crap. You take classes, then code a shit ton of weekends and nights.. so many all nighters I did. Picked up a lot of bad habits from college. It was hard. But you do code a lot as a CS major at a good top 100 school..

[@jakepyrett1715]

And meet people who will lift you up and network for life.i couldn't have done it without CS background

[@YarnGeek]

@@jakepyrett1715 not everyone has time to go back for a four year degree. I already have a bachelors and I feel like taking all those gen ed classes again is a waste of time. Not to mention the cost. Also from my research wgu isn’t like those other schools you mention. It’s accredited and nonprofit. And people have been able to get tech jobs after getting a degree there. I’m just looking to get past the HR filters that remove all the resumes that don’t have CS degrees.

[@ColbyJaxCodes]

@@jakepyrett1715 Thanks for this incredibly insightful comment. I really appreciate you taking the time. I am considering college but am not sure it is the best route for me at this time. The main reason I have considered WGU is that it can be done in less time. I have 3 kids, a part time dev job at my entry level position and will be finally transitioning out of my self-run business when I go full time as a dev in a month or two. Not sure if adding a CS degree worth of studying is worth it at a top 100 school or uni of in general given the amount of time I have. Also wondering if the 4 years of schooling really makes sense when I could pour that extra time into self studying and advancing in my career...

[@KTKettler]

Dang man, this whole situation sucks so much. It seems like the big boot camps are starting to be run more like factories than schools. Hope it works out in the end.

[@ColbyJaxCodes]

Hey man! Good to see you back. Thanks for the encouraging words. It'll go fine. Spoiler alert but my next video is about me dropping the course. To give you some insight into the next couple of videos, I dropped, then all but 2 of my cohort followed... Then GA shut down the cohort and made everyone sign NDA's in order to get a full refund. I decided not to sign so I could still make these videos. Super sketchy.

[@paullopez2021]

I wanna see those follow-up videos. I almost went into the SEI program with GA - bc a friend went thru it. But six months later, I was told by that same friend that they no longer recommend GA. And I can see why.

[@atoms.channel]

Hey Colby, sorry to hear your journey hit a snag. BTW I don't recall seeing any screenshots of his comments (ref what you said around 8:00 ), would still like to see those. Anyway, good luck with your next steps... for what it is worth and it sounds like you might just be continuing the self-study route, App Academy offers their online course curriculum free, but it might not be a stack or tools you're interested in. Also, I think WGU is not a bad route for just getting a degree to offset the degree gatekeepers - they are regionally accredited which is better, rather than nationally like the degree mills, they let you complete as quickly as you can, so if you only need 2 weeks to finish a course, that's it then you're onto the next (you do one course at a time) and get as many as you can in their 6 mo term. You also get assigned a school long mentor as well as each class has their own instructor/mentor, and if there are any certifications needed for the class I believe they are already part of tuition which is rather reasonable [ for transparency, I attended WGU but for Cyber Security, did not finish due to my own reasons, but looking to go back ]

[@leonredman9317]

Sorry to hear that is your experience. I am a GA alumni and found the instructors very helpful but that was 2018.

[@kaylove4507]

Hello. Is there a way to get some of your money back, like a pro rated rate?

[@chrislaurie1684]

Do you have any advice for people going into tech and coding or trying to? Please cause i’m really trying but i already fell for a boot camp and now idk what to do

[@ColbyJaxCodes]

Reach out to me on LinkedIn if you’d like to chat.

[@lupitacontreras6473]

The blue jeans!!!!

[@kaylove4507]

Out of curiosity, what made you choose general assembly? I looked over the curriculum. It looks decent but the price was so high.

[@ColbyJaxCodes]

It looked great when I looked into it. I was between GA and Flatiron when i chose and I went with GA because they offered live lectures. That said they are getting away from live lectures from what I've been hearing with current students so I'm not sure if I would choose it again if I was deciding to go now.

[@kaylove4507]

@@ColbyJaxCodes yeah I heard that as well that some boot camps are getting rid of live lectures but they're going to keep the teacher assistance. They're going to keep tutoring and career services but they're going to do away with a live lectures and you guys can just watch the videos which isn't bad I guess. But it just won't feel like school and you won't have that interaction or collaboration. But it's not really a bad thing but I would say that they need to lower their prices for that trade-off to work or even be considered

[@ColbyJaxCodes]

@@kaylove4507 Yeah I mean for the $16k they want to simply answer questions you're better off getting an online program started and hiring a private mentor for $200-300 per month and get your questions answered by them IMO.

[@kaylove4507]

@@ColbyJaxCodes yeah I think that would be a much better idea to find a mentor. But honestly I tried to do the mentor thing and it didn't really work. He was juggling a lot and so it just comes down to the type of person and if they're actually willing to do it and they want to do it.