DevLeague

I'm as "fresh off the boat" as they come when first learning of DevLeague and programming in general. I'm not a gamer, my phone's a S3, prior to DevLeague the closest thing to a laptop was my ASUS tablet, and I had some exposure to html, meaning - I've heard the term and seen it in Dream Weaver at work lol. Fortunately, DevLeague took a chance with me, my instructors and classmates were not only patient but super supportive, and now I've recently accepted a job offer and am switching career paths. Hopefully this reassures any other F.O.B. aspiring coders out there, that "if I can do it, you can definitely do it."

You graduate the program with a solid foundation as a full-stack developer, allowing you to navigate this huge and constantly changing world of tech, which can be intimidating. Yes, I still feel like a small fish in a huge ocean, BUT now I have a sense of direction, tools to navigate with, and an approach and sense of independence to problem solving that I'll be applying to any problem .. code or non-code related. I really appreciated DevLeague's approach to teaching the material, which was usually - teaching us the hardest way and from ground up, then rewarding us with easier tools, shortcuts even. Yes, torture, but super effective. This solidified our understanding of the material. DevLeague makes you comfortable and confident in addressing and learning the unknown, revealing to yourself on whether you have the grit or not in getting you there. If you were hoping for a 'technical' review, at this point, you probably realize you're not getting one. Because what worked for me in learning the material, completing 6 months in the part-time, and eventually landing a job opportunity .. were the non-technical mantras below, explained to me and my classmates early in the bootcamp. I literally have a sheet of paper in my apartment where I would tally each day of code. One day at a time, One month at a time ..

*ATTITUDE: have a positive attitude 
*WORK ETHIC and DISCIPLINE: at least 11 hours outside of the classroom .. and read the docs!! 
*ALWAYS BE COMMITTING

In addition to accomplishing your first step to becoming a full-stack developer, you join an extremely talented and generous community, all sharing the same passion to constantly be learning and solving problems :) I'm very lucky to be one of many to say, THANK YOU DevLeague.

If you are willing to put in the time and effort and learn to be comfortable in a state of frustration and confusion (that just seems to come with the job), Dev League can teach you the necessary skills that you need to start a new career. The curriculum includes all the cutting-edge, in demand skills that will land you a job, or allow you to develop your own app-ideas. Within a year of graduating from Dev League (having started without any prior coding knowledge), I have managed to land an offer as a full-time Software Engineer at Microsoft. More than just teaching me the necessary skills, Dev League has set me up with a community and a support network that has reached far beyond the Hawaiian Islands. 

I was enrolled in cohort 3. Starting Devleague reminded me of watching one of those war movies where a rookie is dropped into the middle of a war zone, is saved countless times by other experienced soldiers from getting his head blown off and at the end emerges as formidable force. This feeling is what made Devleague such a great experience for me. It felt more like an adventure than a class. Every second of instruction was consumed with something important and valuable. No filler time. The pace is blistering (seemed that way to me but I had no prior coding experience) but that's because it has to be. Not to finish the curriculum but to always keep us uncomfortable and guard against complacency (the death of skill building). It felt rushed but ultimately I learned much more than I realized I did at the time.

The instructors are top notch and 1000% dedicated to teaching, helping and are accessible at all times in and outside of class. So much so that I worried about their personal health. All have proven themselves on the field of battle prior to instructing.

Additionally, by attending Devleague I was automatically plugged into the tech community in Hawaii and participated in all of the high profile coding events that happened during my cohort. I participated in StartUp Weekend (my team took 1st place), Global Game Jam and the AT&T Hackathon. We also benefitted from numerous talks by local industry leaders and meetups. Thus there were and are many networking opportunities.

I didn't need any job assistance when I finished so I can't give a first hand account of all the details associated with that. What I can say is that the instructors and owners of Devleague worked directly with all students who did need assistance and all that I know of who wanted/needed a job did get one. I myself was contacted by three tech companies about interviewing for front-end dev positions. This is probably due to the fact Devleague announces to their employer network when a cohort graduates (once said they stubled upon my github profile). 

What really put my Devleague experience over the top however were the other students in my cohort. There were eight of us and all of us made it. Everyone inherently understood that learning to dev is a team effort. No passengers on spaceship Devleague only crew. This really benefitted me because I was the laggard of the group and it felt like I had seven additional instructors. Inspiring stuff.

My only gripe is that I wish they had an introductory class prior to the start of my cohort. A little more formal instruction on JavaScript, HTML and CSS would have helped. Now there is an intro class for complete noobs such as I was so one can test the waters.

Worth every penny.

I had zero coding knowledge when I first started DevLeague. I was probably one of the worst students before I even offically became a student to be honest. I had no idea what I was doing and I would send in tons of emails trying to get help on problems I was having. That's how badly I wanted my acceptance into DevLeague. What really amazed me was the amount of help and feedback I received even before being offically enrolled. Then I said to myself, "If I'm getting this much help as someone not in DevLeague, it'll only get better once I'm actually a student there!". It's funny, I think I was so bad that I'm one of the reasons why they had to start DevLeague Prep courses. DevLeague isn't for everyone. If you think you have what it takes, then definitely apply and give it your all because it's going to take everything you've got to succeed. I promise it'll be well worth it though!

When I started Devleague, I had abosolutely ZERO experience with any sort development whatsoever. I tried the prep course before pulling the trigger into the program and from there my life changed. It was not easy, but it was very rewarding. The growth I experienced was exponential. I went from knowing nothing, to speaking code like a second language. One great thing I took away from being here is knowing that I can learn anything now! If you have the proper drive, and belief in yourself, you can make it through and earn the title of Devleague Legend! 

Came from a lucrative career but wasn’t happy. Dev League gave me the skills and support to make a successful career change and couldn’t be happier that I did the program.

tl;dr - In short, Dev League was a great experience, the curriculum was very relevant to what I wanted to do (web development), and although they don’t guarantee job placement like some other programs, a week out of Dev League and I’ve had two firm job offers at awesome places. Email me at ksalcedo.dev@gmail.com if you want to talk more details and I’d be more than happy to discuss whatever questions you may have.

**** Long version ****

General Overview: There are many bootcamps out there that run a pump and dump operation, and as the only bootcamp in Hawaii (at the time of this post), I was wary at first this was a fly-by-night company. This is very much not the case. I have learned marketable skills, the curriculum was great, and I formed lifelong friends & mentors. Dev League prides themselves in the stewardship or their students, and I cannot think of any platform I could have gone into to give me the same results. I would highly recommend Dev League. I have nothing but gratitude for Dev League and the amazing people who make it work.

Bootcamp vs CS Degree vs Self Taught: 
I explored all three options extensively, and going to Dev League made the most sense. The cost of tuition and opportunity cost seems very steep at first, but especially if you are considering going back to school or going the self-taught route, I think Dev League hands down trumps either of those choices. 3 months for the full-time program or 6 months for the part time program, in the grand scheme of things, is short and gets you employable in a nominal period of time. The self taught route is difficult because you need a lot of discipline to keep yourself on track and have little context on industry best practices or scope of basic concepts that have other implications. Also, having no in person support to help if you get stuck on a concept or bug can be frustrating and detrimental to your timeline. There are many great resources online that are free or low-cost, but to get me good enough to be employable in a short period time, this was not an option. Computer science degrees take a long time, are math intensive (which is why I was discouraged to do CS in college), typically are more costly than a bootcamp, and don’t always teach the most relevant material. If you want to do more “computer sciencey” things like writing algorithms or machine learning, a bootcamp is definitely not the right fit. If you want to become a competent practitioner in a short period of time to open up more opportunities to become an awesome developer, you should seriously consider a bootcamp and especially Dev League.

Time: 
You work long and hard hours. I did the full time program because I simply did not think that working a full-time job and going to class 2 nights/1 full day per week in the part-time program was going to give me the environment I needed to ramp up. I appreciate the part-time program, especially for those who really cannot give up working for 3 months straight, but I drank the koolaid and went all in with the full-time program, which I think was the right decision for me. The full-time course consists of class from Monday to Saturday from 9:00 AM tom 8:00 PM, and we would typically stay after hours to hack more. Make sure that you set the expectations of your friends and family before going into any bootcamp, because it will become your life for at least the time of the program and maybe more.

Culture: 
Our cohort was very close and fun. It took us a couple days to warm up, but once we got going there was no stopping us. It is kind of like going to summer camp; you may not know these people for a very long time but you come out with amazing friendships. The alumni network is extensive and has many people who can give insight to whatever you are working on. Many people leave Hawaii and go work from big brand name companies. Others choose to stay in Hawaii and do a wide variety of work. The instructors are nothing but helpful and always have your back. We work really hard, but also had fun so the long days really went by quick. You’d be surprised how much noise, laughter, and music could come from a room full of programmers.

Instructors: The instructors are well seasoned and care a lot about your outcome even though Dev League does not take a job placement fee like some other bootcamps do. They care about what happens to you after because they are awesome people, and not because a financial stake. We had 2 main instructors who were augmented by 2 other developers who would teach particular subject areas. All were more than willing to help you with whatever you want. They had varied backgrounds from corporate types who built enterprise systems to freelancers, which was good to feel out the scope of what was out there. One of the co-founders of Dev League was a developer, worked in marketing, worked for big companies, had a few of his own companies with successful exits, and came back to Hawaii to help foster the tech community. The other co-founder, who also instructs from time-to-time, owns a good size dev shop, has architected big projects, and is always up-to-date on the most relevant technologies. There is a lot of talent and experience to tap into and more-so they are cool people.

Instructional method: Typically the day starts with a short morning coding challenge, followed by a period for instructors/students to discuss the solution, a scrum to get an idea where everyone is, an afternoon lecture, and then a project for the rest of the day. As the program progresses, there will be less instructional time and more project time. The last 2 weeks is dedicated to a final group project, which is the culmination of all the skills you acquired and you are encouraged to stretch you skills to learn something that might have not been covered in the formal curriculum.

Curriculum/Skills: They focus plain vanilla JavaScript and several frameworks. I appreciate that we would solve problems “the hard way” and then learn different abstractions afterward, so I feel like I understood what was happening better than if I learned it the easier way first. We worked a lot with NodeJS. The database side was not as intensive. Angular was the most robust framework we dug into. There was not too much CS type of content besides some Big O stuff and some other concepts sprinkled in. Again, the hope is to get you up to speed as a practitioner and not necessarily a computer science role. There was also not much time spent on technical interviews which was the portion that made me the most anxious, and which is my only criticism of the curriculum.

Job Support: Dev League sends out our resumes to a strong network of employers who have historically been interested in the alumni. There are many other adhoc relationships Dev League has with employers which has been very useful in job searches. They will go out of their way to make calls or introductions to get your foot in the door. You still need to do your part and clean up your projects, make a legit resume, and study for the interview, but they are more than willing to go to bat for you. The employer network is not only local to Hawaii, but extends to the mainland. Again, not as much time was placed on the technical interview, but many alumni have come out with some very good and lucrative job offers. The Hawaii pay scale is typically lower than in some other large cities, but that is to be expected. There are some Hawaii employers or large companies with a Hawaii office who can pay the bigger salary to a junior dev, but if you are staying in Hawaii you should temper your expectations. There is also remote job resources which is also a possibility and I have known other alumni who have been able to secure remote work right out of Dev League. I had 2 solid job offers a week after graduation, and a number of other very interested employers that I are compelling.

Conclusion: Like most things in life, YMMV (your milage may vary). If I had to choose Dev League or another route, I would do Dev League all over again. I came from a great and lucrative career, but I really wanted to get into web development. Dev League was the perfect solution and I have made a successful career transition. Again, if you need a little more insight of whether or not Dev League is for you, you can contact me at ksalcedo.dev@gmail.com. Cheers!!

It's been a solid six months since I graduated Dev League, and 'till this day I can confidently say it has been the best decision I made in my life.  

Coming from a not-so-fortunate family, paying for any education after high school potentially meant a massive amount of debt.  I had considered the two standard post-high school plans:  Spending two years at a community college only to transfer to a university to get my B.S in Computer Science, or taking out a massive loan to attend a university that could potentially last for more than four years.  Neither one of these options sounded appealing at all, but for two years I had been biting on that bullet.  The pace in which the classes covered material left me unsatisfied, and hungry for more knowledge.  Then in January of 2015, I had found Dev League.

Anxious, nervous, and a mixture of other feelings, I decided to jump ship on my initial plan and go all-in on Dev League, and in May of 2015, I started my journey to becoming a web developer.  The first week started off as a refresher, but the courses quickly accelerated.  There was very little problems that had stumped the instructors, which made the onboarding process for everyone’s development environment incredibly smooth.  

Although there had been moments throughout the course where I had asked myself: ‘Was I overzealous in thinking I could handle this?  Did I make a mistake?’, the amount of knowledge that not only the instructors had, but also the entire community that surrounded Dev League was incredibly inspirational, and enough motivation to keep me swimming in the deep end. 

The lead instructor Jon(as well as all the TA’s), did an amazing job on giving you just enough information to solve your problem without ruining that ‘Aha!’ moment for you.  They were very strict in making you understand the WHY your code works and HOW it works the way it does, and frowned upon ‘copy-pasting’ any code that you did not understand.  Without such caring and passionate community, I highly doubt I would have been able to have this level of confidence in my Javascript abilities.  

It’s no surprise why past Dev League graduates frequently visit the Dev League campus after finishing the course.  The amount of information being passed around by everyone is beautiful, especially considering the fact that Hawai’i has such a small tech-community.  There are very few elitists, and for the most part everyone is willing to help each other out.  

For the most part, It all boils down to how bad you want it.

Coming into Dev League, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. I knew that the hours would be long, the work would be difficult, and hopefully, I would learn enough to land myself a job after graduation. The program did not disappoint. Classes are taught by amazing instructors who are incredibly passionate about the software industry and the work that they do. They make every student's success a priority and you could tell that they genuinely wanted us to become great developers.

In the beginning, the amount of content that we had to digest was staggering, almost to the point of being overwhelming. The Dev League learning environment allowed me to take it all in though and apply the knowledge in meaningful ways. I am astounded by my skill level now. Given that most students had minimal experience prior to Dev League, it's truly mind-blowing how much we all have taken away from this in a mere 12 weeks.

I feel far more confident in my programming ability now. Dev League has provided a springboard of dev skills that prepared me for the road ahead. I can't say that I know everything about software development after only 3 months, but I feel capable of learning anything dev related now, whereas before I would have been completely lost. I would recommend that anyone interested into diving into the world of software/web development join a Dev League full-time cohort. You'll learn more useful, applicable skills than you did in 4 years of college, make great friends, and possibly learn what it feels like to sleep on a cot multiple days a week.

Initially, I had serious doubts about joining Dev League. I thought "Web Development? Hell no. I want to program games." This was coming from a weak background in Unity C# programming - if you could call it programming - and I was extremely nervous about wasting time and money. I explored other options including art or returning to traditional schooling (University), but I decided to dive in, considering the bootcamp being in my native state.  Best decision I've made in a long time.

When first entering the room I'd spend the next 3 months of my life, there was a mix of excitement and nervousness that all of my classmates were exuding. Tables lined the room, paired with smart-looking monitors and comfy chairs. I took my seat and pretended to look busy checking my email. My busy-making was cut short, thankfully, by the lead instructor and co-founders walk in and starting the round of introductions. After quirky introductions from each classmate (shout out to B-ROCK), we talked about expectations and realities of the course. To be honest, much of the talk  about what were going to learn went over my head - like a fire hose to a balloon - but I tried to retain some of the buzzwords like 'asynchronous' and 'node js'. I had no idea what to expect from the course or any prior knowledge about the industry - but I held resistance  of my expectations because of my perception of web development.

Throughout the course, everyday got more and more exciting, we were building skills that were tangible and applicable. For each new thing we learned, it was just a step further into the big, big world of software-engineering, and every day that I learned something conceptually new, I could see application and parallels elsewhere. The further into the course and the more I learned about the beautiful Javascript language, the more I realized how little I knew - and it was the best feeling ever. I felt like  there was an endless supply of new things to learn and apply your knowledge to. Looking back now, I still don't know as much as I want to, but the disparity of knowledge from when I first started is incredible.

The course has a nicely structured learning plan that holds your hand in the beginning, but weens you off slowly, until at the end you are making  decisions about architecture and  tools that are very much a part of professional development. The course concentrates on fundamental  (vanilla) Javascript, then exposes frameworks and libraries that companies are currently looking for - I've found a personal favorite in Angular. Material covered is taught along side with best practices for implementation and repeatedly stressed as important - but not as important as simply  finishing the application or project.  There are almost always 2 or 3 teacher assistants on staff at any moment in the course time (9am - 8pm) and class communication is 24 hours a day, resources which are invaluable when you are stuck on a hard problem or bug. 

Dev League (like most bootcamps) is an accelerated course, which means the content moves quick. Real quick. It sometimes feels overwhelming when hopping from complex concepts and implementations to the next every day, and it can make you feel inadequate when your grasp of the concept isn't as strong as the other students. While the Dev League team is supportive and tries to adjust to the general ability of the cohort (which is anywhere from 5 to 15 people), it does not slow down too much because there is so much to cover. I found the pacing daunting at first, but grew to love how fast we covered advanced topics because it forces you to focus and  improves the ability to think critically.

Honestly, I could write a short novel on my experiences over the past 3 months at Dev League. I won't, because that's boring and has undertones of masochism. I will express my gratitude for the course and the people who helped throughout the process. Because of the awesome culture and friendly attitudes, I have a a new-born confidence in not only my Javascript development abilities, but also in my learning and professional capabilities. 

TLDR; Highly reccommend 

Going through Dev League was definitely one of the top choices I made so far as a young professional.

As I was approaching the end of my time as an undergrad student in mechanical engineering, I wasn't satisfied with the direction I was going in and really wanted to work in tech. With my qualifications, a lot of the employers weren't biting. I also really wanted to learn what really went into building products. With that intent, I enrolled in the part-time Dev League class.

Curriculum

During my six months there, we had so much thrown at us but I enjoyed every moment of it. We weren't just taught to be code monkeys. We were taught everything from client side development, server side development, and databases. Besides just the coding aspects, we were also taught best practices from version control to pair programming to working in teams and even security in the apps we build. I really feel that the things taught to us were practical and prepped us for our first jobs after the bootcamp.

Instructors

The instructors were probably the best part of Dev League. They were always willing to help and you could tell that they really cared about us learning and grasping the material. They did a great job attracting such motivating instructors who could get us excited about code.

All in all, if anyone is interested in becoming a developer, I have absolutely no hesitation recommending Dev League. 

Reflecting upon everything that I have learned from this year as a working professional is but an extension of what I had already learned at Dev League.

It's been nearly a year since I graduated Dev League and I can confidently say that it was because of my experience there that prepared me for such a huge career shift into software development. I'm not saying that I came out a master at Angular, Express, RDBMSes, or NoSQL, but it gave me enough exposure and hands on experience to allow for momentum to become competent enough to utilize such technologies in production environments.

Another powerful asset that I have utilized extensively throughout the year is the community/network that Dev League is building in Hawaii. A community consisting of not only the instructors, students (past, and current), but even well experienced senior engineers from all around the world that now reside in Hawaii and attend the same meetups, and or come in to Dev League to do a talk or workshop. It is through these relationships of common interest and enough rapport, that I can comfortably ask for help and assistance when I need it. I can't emphasize enough how powerful it is to have a resource of a wealth of people who you may turn to when learning and developing with an unfamiliar technology, it is a real time and sanity saver.

I am grateful to have found that Dev League was being established around the same time I was considering a career change. In my previous job I had the responsibility of maintaining my department’s intranet site built with basic HTML, and I was interested in diving further into web development. However, being lost with the multitude of “learn web development” tutorials online, I decided that I needed something much more structured and with in-person guidance. After hearing about Dev League, I decided to take the plunge and give it a shot. I am definitely glad that I grabbed at this opportunity.

I was a member of the first full-time cohort, with classes going on Monday through Saturday, 9am to 8pm for 12 weeks. From the start it was definitely fast-paced, starting with computer science concepts to build our foundation, then moving to HTML/CSS and then ultimately to building projects using Node.js and various full-stack Javascript frameworks. As expected, it was very overwhelming and challenging in the first few weeks. All these new concepts were being drilled into my head and I felt that I barely had any time to digest it all. But as time passed, everything just clicked. Our instructors Jon and Kelli, as well as the founders Russel and Jason, were invaluable in their support and were glad to sit down with you if you have any problems or feel blocked in some way.

A typical day in class when I attended the first cohort started off with solving a problem from Project Euler, followed by a round of technical interview questions. This helped prepare a solid foundation for us once we completed the course and moved onto job hunting. Then we would learn a new concept, such as being introduced to a new framework like Meteor or a tool we could utilize. For the rest of the day we would work on projects. For projects we utilized the Agile Scrum methodology and had fun collaborating on git. For community events, we were heavily involved with the start up community, where we participated in events such as Start Up Weekend, Maker Fair, and Civic-Celerator.

After graduation Russel did an excellent job connecting us with potential job opportunities using Dev League’s expanding employer network. I was one of the few students who moved to the mainland after completing the course, but I still received a great deal of assistance in getting job leads and support. I ended up getting a Front-End Developer job specializing in Responsive Design, and I owe it all to Dev League for giving me all the skills necessary to land my first developer job. Though my job uses PHP instead of Node for their server-side language, I was able to transition to PHP quite easily due to the concepts I had learned from Dev League.

If you are in Hawaii or are considering moving to Hawaii and have an interest in learning web development or making a career change, I highly recommend you give Dev League a chance. You’ll come out of it with the skills of a junior developer, a taste in the world of start ups, and an increased thirst in attaining more knowledge.