I finished the Ruby-on-Rails apprenticeship about 2 or 3 weeks ago.  Right now I’m also finishing up my MBA at Babson college outside of Boston.

Turned from a marketing manager to a support engineer

I became a full-time web freelancer after going through the Thinkful program.

I went through SkillCrush 101, and I’m currently enrolled in their web developer blue-print and I’m struggling with it.

I went from being a relationship manager at a company called NPlug to a product engineer there.

 Currently, I’m a software engineer at a company called RampPath out of Georgia.

I was an English teacher before without a technical background. I went through a couple books, and Treehouse, but found I needed something more comprehensive.

I had taken attended some beginner Web Design classes, Codecedemy, and a Coursera course. I certainly didn’t have a great deal of prior programming experience.

I understood the basic technology, but had no programming experiences.

I had a technical background and used Codecedemy. What I found, with Thinkful, they pull all their curriculum, from all over the net.  They pick the best resources, and curate it for you.

Firehose is completely original.  I remember, Ken, one of the cofounders, told how long it took before he got it just perfect, and just right to deliver it to students.

Bloc is all original content.

I needed to find marketable, technical skills.

 I was doing client relationship at nplug and I wanted to move into a more analytics role.

 It wasn’t really a consideration, the main thing that attracted me was the school was so effective and fundamentally different.

I needed to work full-time in order to afford to live in San Francisco, so I knew I wasn’t able to quit and spend 3 month  and $15,000.

Tealeaf has TA’s all over the world, and you can get help at any hour.  I needed something that was very flexible on time and I could do on my pace.

I started to do an in-person bootcamp with StartupInsititute, but I dropped out because it wasn’t effective for me.

I live in Idaho, so there’s not really any local bootcamps where to go to, and I wanted to spend more time with family.

I was pretty skeptical of the whole bootcamp idea.

I was working and while I was doing the front-end course I was able to start picking up freelance clients.

Yes, and people I worked with didn’t realize I was doing it.

 With bloc, there was a short application process.

I setup a short phone call with someone before I was in.

I liked how Chris and Kevin at Tealeaf run their site, and the whole process.

Jesse and John took hour to an hour-and-a-half Skype or Google Hangout call before-hand.

It’s super custom-tailored to whatever you want to get out of the program.

They have designated mentors to answer your questions, and you can get answers from classmates as well. They also have office hours.

My mentor was a SysAdmin and I could ask him questions.

On the rare occasion that I asked for things that weren’t exactly on what the material my mentor, Trevor would help me out.

 I had a couple of 1-on-1 sessions with John. They also support us via slack chatroom.

At thinkful they have a Google community chat and they do the office hours too.

We had office hours as well, and they always had a mentor on deck. Bloc is working on a Facebook Group as well.

 I was talking to other students all the time. We have also gotten together, and I’ve gained a lot of friends.

Depending on if you’re looking to land a job, or launch a startup, the mentorship will be custom-tailored for that.

Tealeaf does not customize their curriculum.

Any customization comes from your mentor.

The mentor is that customization bit, and help you develop good habits.

SkillCrush is a bit softer, than many of the schools discussed about here.

Tealeaf does a good job of getting you unstuck quickly.

I think that everyone experiences a bit of stress trying to balance work/life with something they’re really passionate about pursuing.

Thinkful’s flexibility helps you so you don’t have burnout with them.

I also got off track around javascript, so I just skipped this part.

My experience was it was really self-paced, you can scale it up or down depending on how much you wanted to tackle.

I was 30 hours a week. It’s a lot, but when you really enjoy what you’re doing, it doesn’t seem too long.

I did 10-12 hours a week of focused work.

I would say I was probably between 20 and 30 a week.

Typically 15-25 hours for the entire week was about what I needed.

I’m building an on-demand delivery application for marijuanna. So like Uber for medical marijuanna.

I’ve competed in 2 hack-a-thons, YCombinator’s first hack-a-thon.  One the hack-a-thons I won. I’m working on a passion project about getting software releases out to the rest of the team.

I’m a full-time freelancer and I’ve done stuff for the company that does the CG for Jimmy Fallon and Game of Thrones.

I’ve competed in a hack-a-thon, and had 3 web-site side gigs.

For me, before I graduated, I was 2-months in, I was able to quit my job, because I was able to locate freelance clients.

I personally wasn’t confident enough.  I think that’s more of a personal thing, but it’s probably possible to take the first two and find work, I don’t think it would be that hard. But I also think once you take the first two, you probably just want to take the third one.

I can email them pretty much any time.  I’m done with the official program, but I can email them with any questions or help I need, which I did just the other day.

Not right now, Bloc is building that into their course.

They have an active alumni network at SkillCrush. Also the CEO of SkillCrush, has helped me with contacts.

 They have a Slack channel for people who are in the course, and people who are alumni, like myself.

Not yet, thinkful is building the same type of alumni network bloc is working on.

I’m absolutely going to say yes.  It really worked out. I encourage, even if it’s not bloc, check out all these programs.  It’s amazing if you really try hard, you can change and be who you want to be.

It was totally worth it.  The cost of the course for me, was equivalent of me landing one client.  It let me live my dream, of working from home, being with my family every day.

 It had a huge impact. Like Cody said, the first paycheck from my job paid for my entire education. The value is so high, it’s unbelievable.

 I’d do it again. Just looking at every other teaching experience that I’ve went through. They’re all basically the same. With Firehose, it’s totally reversed, they just plunge you into the deep side of the pool, and pull you through building an entire complete application.