BrainStation Review in 2023

I invited on 4 graduates from the coding bootcamp, BrainStation, to share their experiences with the program - good and bad. Enjoy!

Sorry for the low quality. I used Riverside to record 3 episodes - all of which had audio or video issues. I ended up having the worst technical issues with this one but managed to salvage it.

David Le (guest):
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-huynh-le

Ajay Singh (guest):
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/singhajay
Website - https://www.ajaysingh.ca

Nathalie Barreto (guest):
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathaliebarreto

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Transcript

Don Hansen: 0:13

Welcome back to another web dev podcast episode where we help aspiring developers get jobs and junior developers grow. In this episode, we're going to go ahead and review BrainStations. So you're considering BrainStation as a coding boot camp in 2023. I brought on three real graduates to share their real experiences and, like usual, I have no interest in selling the program and I have no interest in just completely trashing the program right. I want to bring on people that can think through this stuff and give a balanced review. We're going to discuss the pros and cons and hopefully you can find something that's relatable to you to figure out, like if this program is actually for you. So, like usual, we'll go ahead and jump into our intros. David, we'll start with you. I got a few questions. So what industry did you come from, when did you graduate and how's the job search going?

David Le: 1:00

So yeah, my name is David. I graduated or sorry, my background is from life science. I majored in biochemistry. I graduated from the January to April 2023 cohort and I'm currently working as a full stack developer. Okay cool, so yeah, congrats.

Don Hansen: 1:22

Thank you, thank you, how about you AJ? Same questions, my name is AJ.

Ajay Singh: 1:27

I've come from the industry of graphic design, previously in boot camp, and I did the program from April to June. Unfortunately, I haven't found a job yet. I'm still looking and coding. I'm looking for a job. I'm looking for a job. I'm looking for a job. I'm looking for a job.

Nathalie Barreto: 1:36

I'm looking for a job.

Ajay Singh: 1:37

I'm looking for a job. I'm looking for a job. I'm looking for a job. I'm looking for a job. I'm looking for a job. I'm looking for a job. I'm coding fun projects on the side.

Don Hansen: 1:43

Yeah, okay, cool. How about you, natalie?

Nathalie Barreto: 1:46

My name is Natalie. I graduated from Brinkstation. I was in the February to May cohort and my previous experience was pre-med withon the side track, and I just came back from Europe, so I'm still looking for a job.

Don Hansen: 2:01

Where from in Europe?

Nathalie Barreto: 2:03

Amsterdam, france and Paris I mean in Italy.

Don Hansen: 2:09

Vacation trip.

Nathalie Barreto: 2:10

Yeah, just for fun, those trips.

Don Hansen: 2:12

Okay, nice Well, welcome back, let's go ahead and, I guess, just jump into it. So I kind of like to start with pretend like you don't really know what you know about BrainStation. Right, you've had your own experiences, but before you got into it, you decided on BrainStation over all of the coding boot camps for some reason. What was that reason?

David Le: 2:40

I guess I can start. But for me personally, I think I was looking for a career change around I think maybe my third year or fourth year of university and by then I knew like, hey, I wanted to make a big commitment to it. So and I also found that like, for me I would prefer like an in-person boot camp, right, and BrainStation was one of the only ones to offer in-person around like January, and I also had a couple of friends who a word, and knowing that BrainStation was one of the only ones to offer in-person, it kind of made my decision easy.

Don Hansen: 3:26

Okay, yeah, thank you. How about you, guys? I can go next.

Ajay Singh: 3:33

Similar to David. This was the only BrainStation was the only one offering in-person classes. I was supposed to go to a lighthouse lab, so I was interned sometime in December, november, but seeing as there are offering classes online, it made more sense to pay something as much tuition as better to go in person rather than just seeing for the screen for 10 hours for six months, so this was easier to pick something as a person.

Don Hansen: 4:03

Okay.

Nathalie Barreto: 4:05

My reason is a little different. I actually have a full-ride scholarship, so it was free. And since I was going to Europe, I was originally going to go to Coatesmith and I was going to apply for the cohort that started once I came back. But they called me a week before their cohort started and told me that it was completely free and I was like, well, it'll help prepare me, since I had no experience whatsoever in coding.

Don Hansen: 4:29

You said it'll help prepare you. So are you still planning on going to Coatesmith?

Nathalie Barreto: 4:34

After I graduated, pretty much everyone said that the only thing that Coatesmith would really prepare me more for was like algorithms. So, as of right now, I'm doing a lot of self-study, but I think that if I still need it, maybe, but if not, probably not.

Don Hansen: 4:50

Okay, all right, makes sense. I hear a lot like a lot of people just want in-person. You're paying a lot of money and that's a big deal. The experience is definitely higher quality in-person there, and we've talked about this, but I feel like it's very hard to justify some of the prices for remote programs only, and I think that that's where coding boot camps dropped the ball right. We had that pandemic. A lot of people went remote and the prices stayed the same, and so I know that frustrated a lot of people. So I'm glad you got the in-person experiences. All right, let's jump into that. So what do you think about the curriculum?

David Le: 5:32

I can go first again. So overall I actually thought the curriculum was. It was like well-paced in my opinion. So it's pretty standard front-end stuff that we started with. So we started with HTML, then into CSS, followed by JavaScript, into React, into a bit of back-end stuff. But for me personally I feel like the HTML-CS section was a little too long and then just going from HTML to CSS to JavaScript. Javascript is actually a programming language where you have to start using logic, whereas CSS and HTML is like put this tag, it does this right. So I know for my cohort, a lot of us just struggled with JavaScript completely, just going from just an easy HTML-CS-based website to adding JavaScript to it, and I feel like if there was just more times spent on JavaScript, I feel like it would have made our foundation a lot stronger. So yeah, that I can go next.

Ajay Singh: 6:44

Mine's very similar to daily. The CSS HTML was like two weeks, oh, doing JavaScript, and then a week before they were like, oh, this is the hardest thing we're going to have to do in those three months of week camp. So it was a challenge jumping from CSS HTML for JavaScript and then React itself. It was a lot more fun. I generally enjoyed being React the JavaScript part, not so much the function advanced function, higher order function that was like messing with my brain. I'm still doing some self-study to learn them. And the backend stuff. I feel like it was covered, but not a lot. I felt like I definitely done a lot more. I'm still having struggle with that. Where I'm doing my SQL stuff. It's like, oh, there's all this stuff that we didn't do and I'm learning right now. It's like a bit of a challenge to learn. But the curriculum was over all three months. It was very well done and, especially with what they covered, it was all very good.

Nathalie Barreto: 7:44

I think that for the short amount of time that they have, they definitely covered a decent amount, but they definitely focused more on front-end development than backend development. Again, like David said, they spent a lot of time on HTML and CSS and SAS, which is just like plugging in and just playing around with it, instead of JavaScript, where it's like actually using your brain and really coding, I guess and I knew some JavaScript beforehand but the way that they progressed everybody in also my class was freaking out and when I saw it I was like I would have been able to do this if they progressed in that way Okay.

Don Hansen: 8:22

I laughed. I was like damn, because you just said like everyone basically had a user brain once they hit JavaScript. What about all the people that are struggling with?

Nathalie Barreto: 8:31

CSS In a different way. I think that it's easier to figure out.

Don Hansen: 8:35

Yeah, no, I get it. It's different, it's very different. So you mentioned this idea of I guess like you, so you didn't go at the same pace. You said like you. You've heard other classmates basically say like it was rushed, but did you not go at the same pace as everyone else?

Nathalie Barreto: 8:55

We did. But I had taken a JS like intro to JS from Cosmic before, so I had a little bit of knowledge. So I think it was like three, four days. I was pretty set on what they were doing. But if it would have been my first time seeing it, I also would have been way over my head.

David Le: 9:11

I'm most certainly like kind of the same boat as Natalie as well. I like self-studied for a couple months before the boot camp and I spent a lot of time on like because I knew JavaScript, react and the back end stuff would be hard. So I just spent my time. I spent a bit of time just like brushing over those topics before really diving into the boot camp. So I came in obviously like there's a bit of knowledge gap for my JavaScript and React, but I was able to fill in those relatively quickly compared to my classmates because I spent the extra time to study before.

Don Hansen: 9:50

So it sounds like the JavaScript portion kind of surprised a lot of people and you would wish they would have spent less time on CSS, more on JavaScript. So do you feel like when was the point where you feel like you wish they had spent more time on JavaScript? Was it when you were going through a lot of the JavaScript fundamentals? Was it when you hit the back end? Was it when you hit React? Where did you kind of notice like your JavaScript knowledge lacking a bit?

David Le: 10:27

So I think a lot of the examples in class they gave where it's a lot of like oh this, this function does this and you can't, this is the answer when you console out there, right. But then for our assignments and projects we're building like applications right, or websites that actually like come to like we like you see sites in the screen right. So when all the examples they're giving are just like oh, this returns this, like this console of this right, like filling in that gap by herself was like a bit of a challenge. So I feel like I kind of wish they gave more concrete examples rather than just like the console log examples they gave in class. I know that was a big, big like confusing part for me.

Don Hansen: 11:16

Okay, because think about that.

Ajay Singh: 11:19

Pretty much same. I think for me it was week six. That was like struggling that part we covered. Oh, I think week four was JavaScript and there was a JavaScript and then the two weeks by and like I'm still in week, I'm still in week four, I'm still learning. That stuff was like definitely wish they did cover a lot more, especially with the fun console testing stuff, which I did not figure out at first, even though I've been using JavaScript before boot camp to I saw the issues figuring out and to this I'm still learning how to do from I know to functions. Now, obviously, it's been a month and a half, but I'm set a point where I'm still trying to figure the logic and up until my capstone project was like figuring out how logic works and I was asking a bunch of questions in class or my keys. I definitely struggled with JavaScript. A lot of still working on that.

Don Hansen: 12:13

When you said that you finally did pick up functions, do you just mean writing a function or are you talking like, like you mentioned higher order functions, advanced things that you could do with them?

Ajay Singh: 12:27

I got like a I don't before, I don't react stuff I order functions were still a struggle for me, even with react after that, where to a point where I was googling so much like every small thing I was googling typing how it works. I understand it. That stuff was a bit struggle to do and they were kind of like rushing. I mean, given what they have weak, but like I felt like they were teach something and then we had code alongs, record along. They were just like super rush so just typing on fast out the time I class my court, just close the laptops down because we couldn't follow along with them.

Don Hansen: 13:05

Huh, okay, I saw you smile when he said that.

Nathalie Barreto: 13:10

Yeah, we had a couple of days that would do the code alongs a little too fast and no one would be able to follow along. But we actually expressed it to the DA's and they had one person who was great at talking one person who loved typing slow and then it kind of evened out. But there's definitely a gap of our like we all have a good note area and there's definitely a gap of when we started JS and kind of middle react and some of the back end stuff, because they were just going too fast and no one really could time their ability to keep up.

Don Hansen: 13:42

Okay, three months. This is about what I would expect. With three months, you're teaching full stack JavaScript. With three months, this is I usually recommend like four months. Or if you go through a three month coding boot camp, expect a supplement afterwards or heavy supplementation beforehand. Get a solid foundation down.

Don Hansen: 14:03

That seems to be kind of like a common recommendation with brain station to just better serve you right. Like the whole idea of this is like, if someone does decide to go to brain station, like, okay, there's gaps in this program, how do we fill those gaps? There's just before, sometimes it's after, but what do I do to make this experience like as successful as I can right now spend a lot of money, so I mean, that's that's my big recommendation. Three months is not a long time. If they're doing heavy CS and I'm talking about like a heavy JavaScript coding boot camp You're saying they're spending more time on CSS, which a lot of coding boot camps don't spend enough time on to prepare people for front end positions. But this one, spending more time on CSS, that's more time sacrificed for JavaScript I feel like the JavaScript skills are going to be pretty shaky and I can see like, give it like one to three months heavy project work, like really dig deep and dive in afterwards and then you can slitify stuff. Does that sound reasonable?

David Le: 15:01

Yeah, for sure.

Don Hansen: 15:03

Okay, what do you think of the instructors?

David Le: 15:09

Oh, I thought the instructors were actually great. So they all like, first of all, the all the instructors came from a background of like, like most of them were like senior software engineers, so they had a couple years in the industry. Not only did they like really know their stuff, like they, if you had any industry related questions, like they were able to answer it quickly. And, yeah, I think that's the one thing that I really did, my research on my presentation was that their instructors were very high quality, because I've heard like stories of other boot camps maybe taking like fresh computer science graduates or maybe just like, maybe even like like I think they were really graduated boot camp students which I personally don't feel comfortable paying that much money for. So the fact that they were able to bring in such experience developers who were also able to communicate their ideas really well was was something I was very satisfied about the program.

Ajay Singh: 16:13

Okay, so my answer is very similar to David. They were very well taught and very well machining, especially the questions we had, and my cohort doing a lot of questions. I think like have with him to us no more questions, we're going to teach us stuff. But they were very understanding and very helpful and many times I had to go off the top. So middle classes, that's the questions, and just to figure out how this works. I couldn't get this out, figure it out. I feel like instructors are very well good and I will definitely recommend them going on.

Nathalie Barreto: 16:51

My cohort had ETA and two TAs and three teachers and if there's ever a question that more than could answer you, so I never really felt like we were lacking in that time Gotcha, okay.

Don Hansen: 17:06

So it sounds like overall the instructors are really good. I'm glad that they have previous experience. I don't expect TAs, obviously, to have previous industry experience, but it sounds like when you needed help you could get that help. Okay, um, hmm, do you feel like the curriculum given a time span? I guess like hmm, I don't want to phrase this, I guess like do you feel job ready once you come out of this program?

Nathalie Barreto: 17:42

No.

Ajay Singh: 17:44

Not at all. There's a stall, there's still a lot of stuff to bring for like a thing you want to. I'll be two days ago just to pick up a book up on SQL. I'm like we did not learn this stuff at all. We just we'd learned like maybe one lecture and then we moved on to next stuff Masking, looking at job requirements and such. I'm like I don't know how stuff that's going to do, so that I mean I do get that three months was not enough to teach all this stuff, but I definitely don't still feel job ready after three months. I'm still like doing a lot of self study, a lot of spending hours every single day, but I'm not feel ready.

Don Hansen: 18:22

Okay.

David Le: 18:24

I think I have a different take here, where I personally think if which is kind of what I did, where I use kind of use the bootcamp as a supplement to fill in the gaps for my self studying knowledge, and that I think, in that sense, personally I found the bootcamp to make me job ready, which is kind of how I was able to get my current full-time position, because any, any gaps in knowledge, I would ask my knowledgeable instructor instructors, and then we even had like whiteboarding sessions where I was able to, like I was able to like just go over the interview process, got more comfortable. And yeah, I'm going to say like, if you were, if this is, if this bootcamp is used as a supplement to your self studying knowledge, then I would say, gets you job ready.

Don Hansen: 19:22

I think that's really good advice. How much time, realistically? All of you were full-time, so how much time did you actually spend to get to the program without falling behind?

David Le: 19:42

I would say outside of class probably maybe an extra 30 to 40, I would say to keep up with the pace of the weekend.

Don Hansen: 19:51

What was OK? What was the hours of class?

David Le: 19:55

So it was like 9, 30 to 5, 30, something like that. Ok, and so that's for the weekend.

Don Hansen: 20:03

Are you saying 35 to 40 extra hours?

David Le: 20:06

Yeah, or that's that's kind of how much I put in. I can't speak for other people, but it worked out for me during those three months. So that's that's my take on it.

Nathalie Barreto: 20:18

OK.

Ajay Singh: 20:21

I'm not sure about the hours, but definitely I would come home, spend 9 to 5, same time schedule and get home at 7, study until noon, midnight or something. Get up weekends would be dedicated to studying the assignment. So definitely a big chunk of my time after coming home was spent reading the lecture, just to just to keep on track. But not sure what the time, but I'm guessing it's all the same as I did spend, I did cancel. A lot of sacrifice, a lot of stuff, no TV, you don't know, they just come home, study, repeat study, repeat study people every month. So definitely.

Don Hansen: 20:59

OK.

Nathalie Barreto: 21:02

My cover. At least. We all hung out after our classes, so it would be like two hours afterwards we go all the way to a cafe and like study together, and then on the weekends some of us would meet up. But, usually Sundays because I did the things for last minute projects, so Sunday they'd get the most hours. Yeah.

Don Hansen: 21:22

All right, so essentially seven days a week.

David Le: 21:26

Yeah yeah, I was there.

Don Hansen: 21:30

Um, I would burn out. How do you guys do it?

David Le: 21:37

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't recommend this to everyone. For me I kind of I don't know I can't speak for anyone else but myself but during university I was kind of a bit of a blast. I was a big procrastinator, I would spend too much time on like assignments. So, knowing this bootcamp was coming up, I kind of had to build up my work capacity. So, like from the moment I graduated up into the bootcamp, I kind of like started with like 20 minutes a day into 30, into an hour, into two, into four, and then, once I was able to develop that routine, I think, come bootcamp time, I was able to like handle those hours, if that makes sense. Also, knowing that it's temporary as well and because, like I was like okay, april I graduate, after this, I'll take it more chill and then just focus on the job search and focus on my job.

David Le: 22:28

So I definitely wouldn't recommend doing this from zero to 100, because that's the recipe for burnout. Don't do that. But I think if you kind of like I don't know like going to the gym like building muscle right, it takes time you got to like work your way up. You can't lift a couple hundred pounds right away. You got to build up.

Don Hansen: 22:48

Okay, that's good advice. How'd you two get through it?

Ajay Singh: 22:56

Mine was kind of the opposite of David's, where I had the same procrastination habits in college and then work kind of got me a bit lazy for the past year and a half before bootcamp, where I would just finish work and then do a little stuff, study, come home and just chill. But bootcamp started definitely was a challenge to build myself up to keep on working, keep on studying, assignment stuff. I still procrastinate a little bit, but definitely was a challenge. And then I feel like when I graduated I'm like, oh, this big relief on my shoulder, I could just relax, put my belt down, relax a little bit with pressure again. But it was something that was challenging for me to do, just to build the habit of coming home and studying and then working assignments where before, where I would leave school, I would just come home, finish my assignments on Sunday.

Nathalie Barreto: 23:45

That's something I was used to, where I had to build this habit of studying beyond what I can normally do Okay, I think it definitely helped working with people in my class because since we were all struggling together, we were all suffering together, it just made it easier, I think, to do it as a group than to suffer alone and just having whatever free time you have to decompress and not overstress yourself.

Don Hansen: 24:14

Okay, If you wanted to keep up with the program. Eat a healthy diet, keep up with your workouts and just keep your mental health good. Is that attainable for the average person at Brain Station?

Nathalie Barreto: 24:37

I think it's possible that I just think it depends on, like, what we value, because I know a couple of people in my class that were like going out and still like trying to be social but they did not sleep like at all and they probably, towards the end they were pretty burnt out. But I also know the people that were like working out all the time. They would go on runs, they kept to their workout routine, but they would work out before they went to class.

Don Hansen: 25:01

Okay.

Ajay Singh: 25:02

I think it depends on where you live. Also, we had some people in my class who live like five minutes away but then going to a gym, morning stuff was a lot easier, Whereas a couple of people including me, we live like an hour and a half away. So I would leave the house at like 630, and then I would get home by like 7. So it was a bit hard to do all that stuff, but it depends on how far closer I can to see you are to.

Don Hansen: 25:27

Okay.

David Le: 25:28

So for me, I kind of I committed to the couple of three months and I found a Airbnb to stay at near the campus, so I kind of bought myself that time to like yeah, like like be able to eat healthier meals and have an hour in there to work out, and I think it was well worth the money in the end to move closer just so I could, you know, focus on my studies while also maintaining my sanity.

Don Hansen: 25:59

How do you mind sharing how much you paid for the Airbnb for that three months?

David Le: 26:03

Yeah, for sure, I definitely lived in a shack, but it was like a thousand a month for downtown Toronto, so it wasn't too bad.

Don Hansen: 26:14

Hmm, okay, um, so I think the advice that you guys gave to really prep for this is going to be very helpful for a lot of students. I'm curious how they choose to select students. Do you feel like they have a rigorous assessment to be able to not let students in that aren't prepared just yet, where they say, hey, okay, you guys are shaking your head now, no, how do you? So? Do you have any, um, any assessment to get in?

David Le: 26:58

Yeah, it was very. It was very simple, though I would say. So it was just um, just like put a couple HTML tags in here, do a bit of CSS on it and then for the JavaScript portion, it was just like right before loop and right a some function, and I think that was some pseudo thing.

Ajay Singh: 27:16

I wasn't real kind of just your lines of the JavaScript Okay.

Nathalie Barreto: 27:23

I know a lot of people are sitting and completing correct, and they were there.

Don Hansen: 27:30

Huh, okay, I like that's just going to cause problems. Um, like, yeah, I can't say it any better than you guys have. Um, if you don't really have, like JavaScript is really, it takes a while to get the foundations down. It's different than learning HTML and CSS. It's programming, it's a lot, it's very logic, heavy Um. And if you're not even solving problems with JavaScript, you're not really doing a good job at reinforcing those foundations to begin with. So they're really just testing you on, like, can you do a function or a loop or something like that, and then they change their assessment. Maybe it's different. I think that's an extremely poor assessment.

Don Hansen: 28:13

So I'm a big believer in having a rigorous assessment. It's not saying you are not allowed into our program. It's saying you are paying a lot of money. We don't think you're ready to get the most value out of our program just yet, so we're going to go ahead. And then you give, like, free materials or a cheap course to help prepare for that or something like that.

Don Hansen: 28:34

Um, yeah, I can't emphasize this enough Like, please take their advice seriously and prep for this. Um, because I can already say three months is not enough to teach this full stack, especially if they have an emphasis on CSS. Um, but damn like it. Just I would say, out of a lot of coding boot camps, the amount of hours that you guys have spent, it's on the higher end compared to a lot of other coding boot camps where you're probably going to come out with a more solid foundation of JavaScript. Sometimes it means they just have a rigorous assessment. They wait until you're at a certain point, or they have four months, five months, six months of a program and you have time for this to slide by, so you don't feel like you're constantly behind trying to catch up. Um, but yeah, I'm just going to stress that again Prepare for this Please do so.

Don Hansen: 29:26

We kind of went over the curriculum, we went over the instructors. What was the career services like?

Ajay Singh: 29:40

I think of. First, because I just said I've been eating up for the past few weeks. I just graduated Um and they're kind of helpful in a way. You can ask questions a lot and they do post a lot of the Slack channel definitely, which I'm applying, and my instructor, emma. She's really helpful just to reach out to her, ask any questions or advice they can give. But like that's about it. You can ask questions. We have weekly stand-ups and you can schedule one-on-ones to more helpful tips and get advice on what to do in preparation. Well, like that's just about it. So they're still, like you know, to my co-worker too, a lot of first-person spending six or eight hours of time jobs, and I think they mentioned before that they would pass on the reserves and profiles to their career partners, which I'm not sure what happened to that part yet. But that's, we haven't told anything about that. We're just, you know, offering this job posting on Slack channels and just offering one-on-one or group session.

Nathalie Barreto: 30:43

Okay, yeah, I agree, I think that they are definitely trying their best. My person's a net and she reaches out all the time. If you don't show up to stand up, she'll send you guys an email. She'll do one-on-one meetings with you. If you need help with your resume, you can send it to her and she'll like cater to whatever job you're applying to. So I think that she tries very hard, but it's also kind of like what you work with into it. I know a lot of people gave up on applying and are just going to go ahead and get another master's or they're just scared that they're not really prepared enough. But yeah, it's not like they have a hiring network. From what I know, that's actually benefited anyone in the cohort.

David Le: 31:31

So for me, I didn't really have the chance to use the Post-Buccan Career Services that much because I got my job. I started my job in May, but during the boot camp, though we had a couple, maybe once every two weeks we had an hour or two sessions just about brushing up your interview skills or your resume work, and I found those really insightful and I definitely applied those concepts to my resume over the course of the boot camp and I think I was able to have a very solid resume before I got my full-time job.

Don Hansen: 32:13

What was the best advice you got, David?

David Le: 32:19

I think it was like don't be asked the interviewer because they will sneak you out almost immediately, and I definitely think that helped during my interview. So I would say, yeah, that was the best one for sure.

Don Hansen: 32:34

Integrity. I like it. A lot of coding boot camps have sorely lacked that, to be honest, because they're so scared of their placement rates going down. And you're right. Interviewers have been dealing a lot with that and it does not look good, and they've learned to catch it. Okay, what's your favorite thing about the program?

Nathalie Barreto: 33:04

I guess the community. I really enjoyed that my cohort was as close as we were, we didn't know each other a lot, and that we got really close to the TAs and that just in general we were all pretty close.

Ajay Singh: 33:16

Okay, yeah.

David Le: 33:17

I'm going to have to agree with Adelaide here. I think the community and the instructors made the program worth the tuition fee alone. Quality of instruction how everyone wanted to just get through this program together yeah, it was more. I think it was more than worth what I paid for because of it.

Ajay Singh: 33:40

Same here? My answer is the same as those. I feel like the community was really good together and my cohort got really along really well, to the point where we're still meeting up after graduation to work on projects and such. It definitely helped with people who like minor people and people who got along great. I mean they're really easier to finish those big months.

Don Hansen: 34:03

Okay, unity is a big one. What could they improve?

David Le: 34:15

I think for me the two biggest things were kind of like you brushed up on earlier, like the admissions test being harder and, I think, fix making the back end curriculum a little, maybe just give us more to work with, because we kind of brushed over I think we brushed over SQL connects node, all in like a week or like two or something and so you can imagine like the breath or the how much we learned was like there's no way like a lot of that stuck with us, right.

David Le: 34:51

But yeah, for the admissions, I just feel like there were a couple of people in our cohort that just like like we all wanted to obviously help the people who are struggling, the ones who the people who like, who had a bit of a background, but I think the knowledge gap keeping up with the pace of the course was just too much for certain people and I think it come like project time or like peer programming time.

David Le: 35:22

It's just sometimes like when you work in a big group of people and not everyone's pulling their weight, it becomes. It becomes really hard to finish tasks, especially your own, when you have to make sure your, your teammates tasks are like working as well, right, like like version control was also like another big thing. That like like if you, if you never like touched a project before, like you wouldn't know how it works Right, and merge conflicts like yeah, you can spend like a couple of hours fixing that Right and yeah, it's just, there's just too much, too much to learn. And I feel like if I mission test was like a bit harder, people would come in a little bit more prepared and have more realistic expectations of the bootcamp. My opinion and yeah, I guess that kind of ties into the back end curriculum as well, because I just feel like, yeah, the back end part was just super weak and they didn't even give us an assignment for it too, so like we didn't really get to solidify any of the concepts we learned.

Don Hansen: 36:22

Okay, you didn't get an assignment. How did you learn the back end?

David Le: 36:29

So then they gave us like a group project, right, but it was like a couple. It was just like a couple like you could tell, like who in the group was just like who could really understand the stuff and just kind of working through it, whereas the people who were still struggling with JavaScript were just like not like understanding the project at all. So because that was an individual assignment, the back end knowledge gap compared to the front end knowledge gap for most people was just enormous and I feel like that was a bit of an issue.

Don Hansen: 37:03

Okay, what about you two? What could they improve?

Ajay Singh: 37:08

Definitely the back end part. I think in my case we had an individual assignment where we had to use a back end to make it a state API, but not much really covering my SQL or next stuff and that was only group projects. So definitely I would like emphasize on putting more effort on back end stuff rather than front end stuff. But also it's my own advice because I have some experience with finance before. That was a bit easier for me to understand. But the back end stuff when I was like, oh, a week goes by, we've done everything where it has a group project working on, like, oh, I'm still learning on day two, so that stuff. I feel like they should definitely cover admissions tests.

Ajay Singh: 37:48

I think when I did mine, they gave me some material study for it, which is like random YouTube videos, which again they were really helpful, but not they were not really part of the institutions on curriculum. They were just oh, here's just a YouTuber watches video on HTML and CSS and JavaScript and prepare yourself. I think they could definitely provide some slides or some readings to do beforehand, before at least a month before the work starts. Just some readings are the own study materials bit rather than some other YouTubers.

Don Hansen: 38:18

Okay.

Nathalie Barreto: 38:22

I think they could have really improved on their grading scale, At least for micro-court. Every time we turned something in, we weren't 100% sure what we were being graded on. We had a list of requirements.

Nathalie Barreto: 38:32

But there was a lot of times that there were the two people that had the exact same code for very similar codes and got completely different scores, like one person passed and the other failed. So I think a little more clarity on that. It wasn't until the second or third sprint that we already saw what we were missing or had, or there would be times that we would fix it too and it would still be counted as wrong, and then the keys really helped us much or the teachers really helped us much to change grades. Again, I think it's a big class so it's hard to keep track of everyone. So that's probably part of the problem.

Nathalie Barreto: 39:03

Also, back-end we never had our own project for back-end In actual use it was just the in-class code along or the lab for the day, and then we had the group project which the person who knew the most about back-end was going to take over, and then there was an assistant that would help out with that and then everybody else kind of did the front-end stuff, which it sucks because then everybody else would have to put the practice. But I think that if they maybe would have done group projects for maybe the first sprint, which was just pretty much all-styling in HTML.

Nathalie Barreto: 39:34

I think would have been beneficial because then we would have all learned how to use Git and not miss a 3-pole all the time. Yeah, that probably would have been best and then later on do more individual projects for back-end.

Don Hansen: 39:49

Okay, I think that all sounds reasonable. The previous review I did. I think the conclusion I kind of came to was front-end week, back-end. I feel like it's not very different. Natalie, honestly, if you didn't get the scholarship, I think the program is $16,500. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Would you pay for this program?

Nathalie Barreto: 40:18

Probably not from just reviews that I've heard from other people and I know a couple people that went to the other coding school that I was going to go to and their review is completely different from mine. I mean, I think, granted any boot camp, you're going to feel overwhelmed and it's going to feel like you're jamming a lot of knowledge in there out of nowhere. But I do think that I would have had a little more overwhelmed experience for knowledge based, at least a little bit from.

Don Hansen: 40:44

What would they need to improve to make that price worth it to you?

Nathalie Barreto: 40:49

I think the back-end development a lot, the jobs troops entirely because we didn't even get into recursions when we were doing our JavaScript stuff. I was getting pretty okay at recursions at the time and I felt that at the end of the boot camp because I wasn't using JavaScript really much at all, when I went back to do the practice problems that I had already completed. I couldn't, because I just lost over the three months.

Don Hansen: 41:19

It was $16,500, right.

David Le: 41:24

I also got a $3,000 scholarship, so I was able to bring it down a bit.

Ajay Singh: 41:31

Yeah, they do offer a diverse scholarship too, so they did bring it down to $13,000 or something.

David Le: 41:38

Yeah, I paid around the same price as they do.

Don Hansen: 41:41

Would both of you be willing to pay $16,500?

Ajay Singh: 41:47

for this? Definitely not.

David Le: 41:51

I think when my university tuition was $5,000 a semester and this was maybe three semesters of school, I would say no as well. It's kind of hard to say because I was really satisfied with my experience, but at the same time it's just like yes and no, which is hard to say.

Don Hansen: 42:09

It can be a hard question to answer especially, you got a job afterwards right, but the big recommendation is heavy supplementation beforehand.

Don Hansen: 42:22

I want to sum up my experience of what I've heard and correct me at the end if I'm wrong or if you want to add anything, and I'll give you guys a chance to basically add anything. We didn't touch on With BrainStation. It sounds like they haven't. I don't even remember the last survey. It was so long ago, but I have it in my thumbnail right now strong front end, weak back end. It sounds like they haven't really improved the back end much. It feels like the assessment is poor.

Don Hansen: 42:56

A lot of people are coming in unprepared. A lot of people are playing catch-up and they're just truly struggling and sometimes they wouldn't be able to follow through a lot of the tasks of the project work and some people are having to pick up the slack. I'd argue if you're someone that's really hustling, that's going to be advantageous to you. To basically supplement whatever people are doing, that's fantastic. You're going to be a very highly desired developer where you're going to experience this on professional teams too. Some people don't do their tasks and other people will pick up the slack. I'd argue that is an advantage, while very frustrating. I've had my own experiences with that in my coding bootcamp it sounds like front end. I love that they're touching more on CSS. I think a lot of front end developers severely lack that and they're leaning on something like Bootstrap or Tailwind. And then they get into the job search and they realize really fundamental CSS skills are going to make them stand out and be able to learn that CSS framework. Anyway, when you just lean on one single framework, there are some jobs that will hire for it, but when the CSS fundamentals are lacking, I've talked to different hiring managers and they're just like, yeah, with coding bootcamps they're just not teaching CSS. I actually do love that they're spending so much time on CSS, but the program isn't long enough. They need to extend the program. That's my opinion, extended to four months and I think that might be worth $16,500. If you get a big scholarship or even a big portion, around $3,000 is a lot of money taken off of it. Maybe you could consider a program like this if you do a lot of prep initially or you're prepared to spend heavy three months afterwards like really dive in deep into project work to reinforce everything.

Don Hansen: 44:48

To be honest, I'm kind of tired of coding bootcamps calling themselves software engineering bootcamps. Most bootcamps don't even prepare you for back end at all. I mean, technically, I do think you are a software engineer learning JavaScript and being able to be a front end developer. I don't really care about those labels, but the problem is, if you advertise yourself as a full stack program or anything like that, if your back end sucks, that's just an inaccurate advertisement.

Don Hansen: 45:15

A lot of coding bootcamps fail at this terribly. They produce terrible back end engineers and they'll just lean on basic hosting like Heroku. They won't even have a cloud setup. The programming is just terrible. The architecture on the back end is just horrible. A lot of junior developers will dive into conventions for convention sake, but they have no idea why it's organized a certain way. They have no idea why these conventions exist. They have no idea why React exists. They don't even have the idea of building some fundamental app without React. But they don't really understand the advantages of this abstraction. They're just like I need to learn React. I'm going to do as best as I can to learn React. They think they're going to be very marketable, but there are a lot of bugs that can happen with React. When you don't really understand JavaScript well and what's happening under the hood, that can be. Really it takes a huge ramp up time to get people's foundations enough to be able to pick up anything they need to in a professional setting.

Don Hansen: 46:15

I feel like with this I do want to touch on this instructors it sounds like really good experience with that. That's awesome. I think instructors can make or break an experience. Quite frankly, it sounds like instructors are just handed a little bit of a crappy experience and they're making the best of it and creating a really good experience for students, which is awesome. Hiring good instructors that care to do that, that actually care, that had that previous experience that's fantastic. I would argue. If you have bad instructors with this program, that is just a horrible idea to sign up for this. At least they are making it a good experience. They're providing that community AG you mentioned. You had a good cohort where you're building projects. Afterwards it sounds like they really focused on that community building and pairing. That's fantastic. Then, career services it sounds like they're willing to help you. It sounds like the staff are willing and caring to help you out when you need help and they are there for you.

Don Hansen: 47:13

I just think the design and the structure of the program is extremely lacking and it's causing a lot of the. You can fix a lot of these problems by changing the structure. I don't know the business side of things. I don't know what they're paying instructors. I don't know these details, but I can say across many coding boot camps, my recommendation, extended to four months keep that price the same. If that means you can't offer as many scholarships, I don't know. I really don't know the business side of it and I don't know where they're lacking so much money. They're trying to cram so much in in so little time. I just don't know. Maybe it's more contracts with government to be able to. I don't know what contracts they have to get grants in. Anyways, I'm ranting with that, but I feel like it just needs to be extended a little bit, because it's not try to get that discount, huge supplementation on the front end, beforehand back end, and I think this program might be something to consider. It sounds like you're going to have to do a lot of supplementation on the back end though. If you're looking for a heavy back end, reduce strong back end.

Don Hansen: 48:12

Engineers. You're like I love note right. Maybe this program isn't for you. Maybe there are better programs that will better prepare you. Unless you're willing to supplement. I would say that's kind of the impressions I got. Do you feel like I'm wrong with anything? Would you add, remove anything from what I said?

Nathalie Barreto: 48:36

Okay.

David Le: 48:37

I think you hit the nail bed. Yeah, oh, perfect.

Don Hansen: 48:40

Cool, awesome. Is there anything else? You feel like I didn't touch on that you think is important for prospect students to know? You don't have to answer this, but if you just, you were kind of just waiting.

David Le: 48:54

I think I think, for people who are like on the fence about this, maybe like really think about what you want to accomplish, I guess, in the bootcamp, and set realistic expectations, because, like three months from to go from zero to 100, despite what the YouTube videos might say, it's not realistic. You need to spend more time like figuring out what everything does, how stuff works under the hood. Like some people don't even know what clients and server are, right, like coming into this, like at the end of this program, right, which is kind of like ridiculous in my opinion. So, yeah, just like. Yeah, just set your expectations to be realistic.

Don Hansen: 49:40

That's good advice. If you're watching on YouTube, can you start linking just in this? Don't link it everywhere. Can you just link? If you see a YouTube video that says you can become a developer in three months, or like you know you can get your first job, like 100K like, can you link it in the comments, like I like? Honestly, I just want to start roasting some of these videos Like this is ridiculous and this is like everyone says they've seen a video like this and I'm like how does this type of video still exist? Like having enough software engineer shut this down yet but he's popping up and then they're on TikTok or Instagram reels and it's like I just link it.

Don Hansen: 50:20

It'll go to my held for review. I will approve it, just link it. That's kind of my call to action, but I think we covered everything. I think that's it. I really appreciate you guys coming on, so before we head out, we'll go ahead and start with you, david, but if people want to reach out with you and anything else you'd like to share, what would you like to share with us?

David Le: 50:42

Yeah, if you guys have any questions about my experience or like maybe wanting some advice, you feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I kind of forgot my LinkedIn handle but I can maybe you can put that you know, link it in the description below and then, yeah.

Don Hansen: 51:02

Sounds good, how about?

Ajay Singh: 51:03

you.

Don Hansen: 51:04

AJ.

Ajay Singh: 51:05

Yes, if anyone wants to reach out and contact me at LinkedIn, my link is the same as in GHA. I also website agcch. Contact me at agcch, my email, for any questions, advice or any projects you want to build. Let me reach out, Cool.

Nathalie Barreto: 51:24

You guys can reach out to me on LinkedIn also Natalie N-A-T-H-A-L-I-E, pareto B-A-R-L-I-E-T-O, and I'm more than happy to talk to anyone and offer any advice. And also the program is kind of what you make of it, like there's people that did it really well, there's people that still don't know anything, so the ball is really in your court. But I think that's all the software engineering.

Ajay Singh: 51:45

So Okay, cool.

Don Hansen: 51:49

We'll wrap it up with that. I appreciate that. All right, that's it. Let me know what you thought in the comments. If you are a BrainStation graduate, or if you've considered the program or you're considering it, definitely let me know what you thought of this episode. Is there anything you'd add, anything you'd remove? Seriously, I want to know. And yeah, we'll go and wrap it up there. David AJ Natalie, thank you so much for coming on.

David Le: 52:12

Thank you, bob, thank you Bob.

Ajay Singh: 52:32

Bye.