BrainStation

Wyncode was an amazing life changing experience! That’s what I tell very one when they ask me about Wyncode, because it true. I went to Wyncode not only to make a change in my life but to also start my career in technology. My previous work experience was in teaching; So my background had nothing to do with technology but it was something that always interested me since I was a kid and I got my first computer.

If someone told me, you can land your dream developer job. All had to do is work your ass off and have no life for 2-3 month, then your life would change forever. I would think that it sounds too good to be true. But I’m living proof that Wyncode is no gimmick.

Not to say that completing Wyncode was easy, by any means. But you get what you put into it. If you follow everything the course gives you to be successful and work till you cant no more, you will come out on top and land your dream dev job.

Besides learning to code and becoming a developer, Wyncode also teaches you the soft skills to being a professional in the tech industry. Which is and might be more important than learning to code.

When it came to the education you get at Wyncode, somedays were better than others. But that’s because the Academy is so new and fresh that they are still improving their curriculum daily. I graduated in Cohort 4 in FTL, and as of today Wyncode is in Cohort 6 in FTL. With that said, since I graduated Wyncode it has improved TONS. Wyncode after every cohort try to improve on their course and make the next cohort better than the last. The instructors every week want us to give them feedback on what they did right and what they need to improve to make even every week better than the next.

The computer languages you learn are Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and much more. But the biggest thing I learned coming out of Wyncode was the ability to pick up any computer language out now or that will come out in the future and be able to understand and master it! So you pretty much become an expert in “Learning How to Learn”! In the tech industry things can be out dated within the hour, that’s why this new ability is so important.

After finishing Wyncode don’t think that they are done with you. When you joining Wyncode, you are not only getting an amazing education but you are gaining a family. They will always be there for you for anything you will need in the future.

Therefore overall Wyncode Academy did follow up on their promise that “You will learn the ART of code.” 

Currently enrolled in the Intro to Web Development at BrainStation and am loving it. I have a content website and paid a hell of a lot of cash to have it designed and developed - I'm taking the course out of interest in expanding my skills, and so that I'm not having to pay someone to expand my site in the future.   

As someone with a background in the arts, it can take me awhile to grasp the logical thinking required for coding, but the class has been excellent at giving me the foundation of coding and training me to problem solve like a developer. Definitely recommend for any creatives out there!

Choosing Wyncode was a great decision for me. Being in my early 20's I was going to school and working part-time and was just tired of waiting to finish. I decided to enroll at the Fort Lauderdale location for their 4th cohort. 

The curriculum was well structured and is continuously improving. You dive into code, learn as much as you can, you cant expect to learn everything, but you will learn what is necessary to get started and begin your career. 

The Instructors are there to help you every step of the way and you have this awesome network of alumni you can always connect to if needed. The biggest asset you can have by attending here is becoming apart of this community because Wyncode is in the heart of South Florida tech.

After graduation, I hoped to find a job right out the gates, but I also looked at myself and skills and knew it could take some time. I decided just to continue to develop and learn as much as possible. Lacking any real professional experience, but the business acumen taught really helped leverage my attributes and helped me recieve messages and get interviews. 

My overall experience was great, I learned a lot, met some lifelong friends, and have a direction forward. I am now a Junior Software Developer in South Florida at a company I have been a fan of for years. I could have never thought I would be this far in such a short amount of time. Wyncode was one of the best decision's I have ever made.

I took the UX Design 12 weeks bootcamp in October 2015. It was one of the best investments I've made. The instructors are very knowledgeable and they are always there to help you.

One of the aspects that I liked the most about the course is that you get the chance to apply all the lessons you learn during the class into a project on your choice. The information I received has given me tremendous value, and contributed in helping me to build my own business.

I highly recommend Brainstation classes to anyone who plans to move up to the next level in their career, start a new career, start a business, or simply just wants to learn something new

Learning technology skills such as mobile development, web design, and coding was the main motivation of submerging myself into this program. It was not an easy choice since there are a ton of coding boot camps out there with great reviews. However, Wyncode offered what I was looking for: majestic curriculum, outstanding classmates, incredible job placement rates, unlimited teaching assistance, and prolific instructors. You can not go wrong with this program. I traveled all the way from Houston to take this course. I wanted to be dangerous, and confident enough to land a job in the IT world. My recommendation is put your time and focus in class since all this knowledge will payout. Another important segment of this curriculum is the development of your soft skills. Get ready to be challenged, and more important, this boot camp will help you to establish your network, advance in your coding skills, and obtain a job in the software periphery.

I had very few doubts initially that Wyncode would be a good experience. At first, my toughest decision was which campus to go to. In the end I chose to attend the Ft Lauderdale cohort. It ended up being an awesome experience. My instructor at the time, Auston, is superb and really shows a passion for teaching. I think that if anyone is looking for this type of career change, this is the way to do it. Immerse yourself in a program like this, and you will realize that this is the way you truly can make changes in your life. The people at Wyncode do this for a living, they are not just teaching you to code, they are giving you the tools to make a change in your life for the better. It is tough, but if you believe you have the dedication and desire you can make it through and come out feeling like you have made a significant change in your life. Make no mistake, you have to really enjoy writing software so it's best if you have at least tried some preliminary online course first. They have a very good curriculum and they do a good job teaching. They also offer plenty of assistance, TAs, and assignments, but you have to be ready to work hard.

After the program, Wyncode really does make a concerted effort with job placement. Some people get placed quickly, others take a few weeks. It obviously also depends on the situation with the current job market. If you look nationally you'll have a good chance to get placed quickly. But one key advantage is how connected they are locally. So if looking for placement within South Florida is important to you, Wyncode has an invaluable network that helps to increase your odds significantly. 

I made it throught the program and I got placed in about a month in a DevOps position here in South Florida. As far as coding bootcamps, my opinion is that they are the best in the region.

Like most other people I will start by saying this is an honest and objective review, it is (in my opinion anyway), the only thing is that everyone’s experience is different.

If you do choose to attend Wyncode then you will hear the phrase “You get out what you put in” or something similar, which is true, not just for this course but in life. If you are not ready to fully commit then you may not get what you need or want from this course.

You have to understand that this is the basics being taught, it is a good foundation but you will not leave the course knowing everything there is about programming, I don’t think that will ever be possible and definitely not in just 9 weeks.

Overall Experience:

I did enjoy my time at Wyncode and met some great people while there and honestly believe that I would not be in the position I am now without it. I have learned to code the basics and can grow my skill and knowledge from what I have been taught.

On the other hand, there is a lot of fakeness surrounding the tech scene which can be hard to navigate and Wyncode does you no favors in this area.

I think the best way for you to know if you enjoyed something or if it was worth your time is to ask the question “would you do it again?” and in this case I think I would!

Curriculum:

People have differences of opinion on the curriculum, is Ruby the best or most relevant programming language to be taught at the moment? Most companies I looked at did not think it was but the majority of my cohort that were hired as dev’s do work in Ruby so it’s not an easy subject to resolve.

They do also teach Agile which some of the class thought at the time, was pretty boring or pointless but on the first day of my new career half of that days training was around Agile. Some subjects you may think are not relevant but they are so make sure you take in as much as possible.

Some other classes were, in my opinion, completely pointless, such as “Twitter and LinkedIn power using”, in other words if you want to search anything on these sites put it in the search bar, if you can’t figure that out by yourself then this course is probably not for you anyway.

One of the issues is the speed in which the lectures go, it can be very hard to keep up, especially if you are trying to code along with some of the instructors, sometimes you are best to just take notes and go over everything after class. Also sometimes what you would learn in class would have no relevance to the homework you would be given for that evening this forces you to look for references and teach yourself, this may work for some people but not all. This frustration was heightened when you ended up being taught it in a future class, after you figured it out.

Instructors:

The instructors and TA’s were great and somehow always seemed to be on hand to answer any questions, even at 2 am, if they were not there in person they were only a slack message away.

Now they say “there is no such thing as a stupid question” but every time you approach Ed (Head Instructor) with one it will feel like you have asked the most obvious thing in the world, he seems to know all the answer’s (well about programming anyway) and you would be best to try and use this to your advantage, he is a fountain of knowledge, so ask as much as possible.

The only thing that annoys me was the buzzword’s (I hate buzzword’s). they are so disingenuous; I would rather you just didn’t say anything. I was going to write a few as an example but I even started to annoy myself even thinking of them!

Job Assistance:

This is one area, in my opinion, that failed completely. There was no real advice given here or that much help at all. It was more like you do all the work job hunting and when you tell them what you have found each week they would steal your ideas and leads and tell them to everyone else.

I know, on no less than three occasions, when one of my cohort applied for a position and mentioned this at Wynwork or to the hiring partner or a founder, everyone else from my cohort (and every other cohort that was still not employed) was advised of this position. This meant that the company would be flooded with resumes and would then reject the idea of hiring anyone from Wyncode.

During my cohort, one of my class asked what the tech scene was like for employment in a certain industry and they were advised that it was up to them to find out.

Since my cohort there has been a change of staff and I have heard that things have improved immensely but cannot vouch for that since its just word of mouth.

• Post clear, valuable, and honest information that will be useful and informative to future coding boot campers and what could they have done better.

I can only tell you how i see it and what i when thru. I took the Miami cohort and i did my research just like you are doing now i may have done it a little more than you since i actually moved from another state to attend the Wyncode Bootcamp. The pre-work was challenging time-consuming & i didn't do it all, ontop of that i set up parts of my environment wrong (Ed, the instructor, will say this the first day "there is always someone that doesn set up things correctly" yes, that was me!). The course starts out hard the first week and gets harder the second, am a pretty slow learner so it was hard for me the whole time!! get use to this rhythm. the teaching style that Wyncode has frustrated a couple of my peers but like all things, there is always and explanation and a reason for doing things.

learning style: Wyncode is gonna push you to your knees and expose you to things you do not know and that they have not YET cover they will not tell you "we will teach you this later" so it adds to the pressure of you trying to figure it out literally the entire day!! (class ends at 4 work ends at 1am 2am perfect for the waking up at 9am to make it to class by 10am). this worked out for me perfectly casue jumping without a parachute and knowing that feeling of not knowing shit! made me remember things better once they actually thought this it made it stick more and i for sure know how important that parachute is now. i feel if people dont understand this its gonna actually fuck with them so https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful-Learning/dp/0674729013 here is the book where i learned this. audible that if you end up taking Wyncode.

INSTRUCTORs:  ED Toro MIT grad and exelent instructor will throw as many references to you so that you can relate things you already know to the new things he is teaching you one of my roomates mr.sean G give me this insight casue ofcourst i had no idea what he was talking about when he talked about the other things either lol so i used the jokes he told tp relate them to the things he was teaching overall ed is as real as they come and straight to the point if u have a chance to talk to him milk him for as much knowledge as you can as he is always ready to share it. TIM Reen, Joe Ciancio and Bryce joe and Tim are wyncode alumns that know how to teach you since they know where your coming from you see them face problems and solve them infront of you i love there teaching style they will all ask "those this make sense?" and the only person that can stop you from learning is your ego my answer to this question is NO once i got to know them i didnt even wait for the question i just when PAUSE i dont understand this or i lost you here .. ask for help ! they want to teach you and sare there knowledeg with you!

CURRICULUM: You will not have time to learn everything and you never have enough time (this is still true now that i actully do this for a living) they pick out the things that they feel are relevant to the job market and teach them to you, you will absorb what you choose  and look back on everything else to recall it (notes are your friends shout out to SANTI for lending me hes notes !). i used everything i learned and continue to revisit what i thought i had learned. if you choose to go to a bootcamp and your reading this go to treehouse right now ! while you have time! trust me!!!(wish someone would have screamed at me like that.)

JOB ASSISTANCE:  they will assit you give you the openings and the tools to show up to a job without feeling like and idiot the assistance is seen on slack they pretty much act as a job search engine and will put a good word for you so you have better chances . i cant really speak much on it since i gota job almost 2 weeks later with out using much of there network. KEEP IN MIND JOB ASSISTANCE DEPENDS ON THERE BEEN JOBS! THE LESS JOBS THE MORE COMPETETIVE IS GONNA BE. GET EXPERIANCE Wyncode will give you some by hireding you to be a TA but aside from that you gotta come up with more real world experience. 

Overall Experience: FIRE ** 808&codebreaks Wyncode & Wynfam4life!!!! this was and amazing experiance with and amazing group of people i dont know where they all are right now but i will say i love you all!! step back i just put my whole c8 clan on a pedestal! BLess! ^^ 

DONE BETTER: every great meal deliciouse slice of cake end up in the the toilet smelling like shit so here is something that i feel can be improve in wyncode. LONGER cause hey i alwasy want more for my money!!!! more hiring partners cause there can never be enough! better mechanisam for picking groups i felt i got bambusol in my group am lookin at (retracted) and (retracted)! people should work on what they choose to work on at the end it worked out but it couls have end it bad! Wyncode does adapt what we give in retro but most of the big changes come in for thenext cohort (am jelouse of you already), i know you cant change a system you have set up right away but maybe make it more object oriented and where you an make a change in one place and apply it faster. 

conclusion if you wanna change your life and by that i mean your career then Wyncode will transform you and give you the tools to modify yourself. now i hear this other bootcamp is better well idk what to say to that cause i didnt do those other bootcamps i did this one.

If you are debating on doing a bootcamp over the question of "can you really learn everything you need to be a developer after 9 weeks?" then you are looking at it the wrong way. Even people who have been in the field for 10 years still have more to learn. So what makes this bootcamp worth 10 grand?

This isn't a factory that is going to give you the most common 100 steps you need to learn to build a web-app and get hired. They try to introduce you to as many technologies and concepts as they can so you can break down a problem and figure out how you want to solve it. You learn that there is no one "right" answer to approaching a problem. The lectures cover a wide-range of things you should learn to become a junior dev, and it is a ton of information shot at you in those 9 weeks. The point is they teach you how to use the free resources out there to teach yourself so you'll be able to grow with the industry for the rest of your career in tech.

Is it hard?

They have a motto: "You get out what you put in". I'd say they do that plus a bit more, but you have to put in the work. You definitely need to dedicate hours of undivided attention to learning the material. However, the resources (TA's, projects, and networking) make all your hard work flourish. Sure, you could use all the free resources out there to teach yourself, but Wyncode gives you the structure to achieve that in less time, plus connect you with companies and classmates who also can connect you to companies. Wyncode is as hard as you make it.

This bootcamp was definitely worth my time and money. I wouldn't have been able to push myself on my own. They won't hold your hand. You have to fight for the job, and fight to learn, and get help. However, in the end that will help you make the most of what they have to offer.

I was hired 1 month after the camp was over by one of their hiring partners, SapientNitro. This isn't just a boring, build-a-simple-website, sort of job. It's an exciting ad agency that wants their workers to continue to grow and learn. Did Wyncode hand me the job? No. The set up group interviews and then I had to put in the work to follow-up, interview well, and show my skills. Wyncode was valuable because I wouldn't have known about SapientNitro if it wasn't for Wyncode, and vice versa.

I love Wyncode and the people behind it so much that I am also a part-time TA for them now.