LEARN Academy

When deciding on which coding bootcamp there are several key factors when need to consider, and in this review, I will explain those key factors and how LEARN Academy proved to be the best professional educational decision for my goals. 

• In-person vs. online: I started my LEARN Academy cohort in February 2020 and for better or worse was able to experience both the in-class and online (Zoom - remote) version of LEARN Academy as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In an ideal world, one should attend the in-person experience in order to further solidify friendships within your cohort, the teamwork aspect of being able to discuss code in-person with a whiteboard, and just the general fun of being able to walk around the classroom with a Kombucha in your hand and see what your peers are code. Nonetheless halfway through my bootcamp, we pivoted to remote and we didn’t skip a beat. I feel that all aspects of the curriculum were maintained and we were even able to quickly start utilizing important digital tools more heavily (Git, Slack, VS Code Liveshare) that are fundamental for remote dev work in the future anyway. Overall “in-person” I feel is ideal for learning, but LEARN was super successful in replicating the “in-person” experience online. 
• Internship: The internship is a TREMENDOUS value add for choosing LEARN Academy. I had the opportunity to join a company and work alongside 5 developers at a fast-growing startup in San Diego (keep in mind I started to learn to code just 15 weeks prior). My internship was extended and I continued to work for 10 months at the same company gaining practical coding experience every day. I was hired as a contract worker with no benefits, but nonetheless, it was an invaluable experience to work on actual production code. The internship is guaranteed for 4 weeks but I would say ⅓ of my cohort was asked to extend for 1 or more months and they were also paid for their extensions and were able to put actual development work on their resumes. 
• Tech Stack: The tech stack I learned while at learn was React, Javascript, HTML, CSS, Ruby on Rails, and Postgresql. All of these technologies are widely used today and if you are new to the industry they serve as a solid foundation to grow from. My internship was entirely in Vue but I used my React foundational skills I learned at LEARN to rapidly learn the basics of Vue (over the weekend from when my classroom experience ended and internship began the following Monday). 
• Quality of teaching instruction: During my course, I had three daily instructors committed to my cohort ~6 to 1 student to teacher ratio (they pivot the number of instructors based on class size). All in all the teachers I had were able to meet me at my learning level and explain complex concepts into more easily digestible content. They were ALWAYS available to answer questions and held office hours. Like most things in life you get what you put in, so make sure you ask questions all the time and ASK for help when you need it. We also had an excellent Professional Development week, led by the Career Services Manager, and in addition, had access to other developers at several of the dev agencies that were in the same building. If my instructors didn’t immediately know the answer to my question or debug my problem they were able to get back to me with my answer in a timely manner. In addition, we had various guest speakers and panels (from the SD tech scene) which made class each week super interesting. 
• Prep Materials: The best resource that LEARN offers in terms of preparation for the bootcamp is their JumpStart weekend. I highly highly highly recommend you participate in that weekend as that was the defining experience that made me decide whether I liked to code and whether I had the confidence in myself to pick up skills quickly over a short period of time. I went into my cohort with about 2 weeks of prior Javascript training and the JumpStart weekend but it was really not enough. I highly recommend people begin studying at least 3 months prior to your cohort (I fully realize that is easier said than done, with life and work, but anyone who came in with prior coding knowledge in my cohort accelerated their learning 2x-5x compared to myself who just wrote my first line of code 14 days before my first day of class.) 
• Facilities: LEARN Academy classroom was GORGEOUS in Union Co-work near Petco Park in downtown SD. Unfortunately, I could only attend for 8 weeks due to COVID but the surrounding made you feel like a true web developer in the chic industrial glass-lined classroom. Also the free Kombucha, coffee, tea, and beer (after hours) wasn’t too bad! They also have two main classrooms so we were frequently able to do check-out (sharing what you learned) at the end of the day and learn what the other cohort who started before us was working on that day.
• Community: The LEARN Academy Community is the most vibrant tech career pivoter/bootcamp community in San Diego hands-down. Pre-COVID LEARN held bi-monthly meetups in its classrooms, celebratory cohort get-togethers, project demo days, and evening guest speakers. Now the community of course has shifted remote, but the online Slack community is also super active. On Day 1 you are welcomed into the Slack group and tons of people who were in your shoes starting the bootcamp who now have fancy developer jobs in the San Diego area (and beyond) are willing to help answer your questions and refer you to positions. Once you are a LEARN alum you enter a network of tech leaders at major tech companies throughout San Diego/California and beyond. One additional thing (which I think they still do), is if you want they pair you with another LEARN grad to serve as your Mentor. To this day (Jan 2021) I still meet with my Mentor each week and he has been an invaluable resource post bootcamp for skill development, motivation, and job search help..
• Growth Areas for LEARN: 1) Improvements to my experience include a more clear path of what milestones I needed to achieve in my coding skills before being ready for Day 1 of the bootcamp. I was provided resources but had no idea where to start. I believe that they are now offering propriety prep materials to new students (I just haven’t reviewed them as they were not available to me when I started) 2)Focus more curriculum time on unit testing. We learned Jest Javascript testing (for maybe 1.5 weeks) I feel like it is a critical developer skill that I personally did not pick up quickly and should be prioritized earlier.  3)Introduce earlier data structures and algorithms into the curriculum, as many technical interviews nowadays focus heavily on them. Overall at the end of the day with 12 weeks to go from 0 to junior dev I understand it is tough to squeeze it all in, regardless LOTS of personal self-study is necessary to keep up with the pace of the class if you come in with no prior coding skills.

Overall, there are plenty more points to speak about when speaking about LEARN but at the end of the day after three months of classroom instruction, I was successfully contributing to an agile development team at a tech company in San Diego. The process to prepare for the bootcamp, take the bootcamp, and perform at your internship is INTENSE. The skills to learn to code is like learning a foreign language you constantly need to have a growth mindset and practice, practice, practice. 10 months after my bootcamp I am still growing and learning each day and that never changes. You must have it within yourself to persevere, be a self-starter, and make many many many personal, financial, and family sacrifices to have a chance at getting a junior developer position in 2021. With that being said LEARN is the most well-rounded and experienced resource available in the San Diego area to place your faith in to prepare you for a successful life-changing career pivot. 

LEARN Academy is such a great Bootcamp. The way this Bootcamp is run makes learning fun, easy, and stress-free. I was laid off during the pandemic and it was a no-brainer to make the decision to join LEARN Academy and invest in myself. Even though I had to help my kids during the last of their 2nd-grade year in school, I was able to review lectures I missed within hours and be back up to speed the same day. Not only did we learn different programming languages we also learned how to conduct a technical interview and practiced each week, we even had an entire week devoted to professional development that prepares us for our job hunt. But the most valuable benefit is the 1 month guaranteed internship. The entire experience was seamless and enjoyable, it really is a community you want to be a part of. 

Learn Academy is a fast-paced program for getting practical experience with many different relevant technologies in a short amount of time. The immersive portion happens quickly,  students are exposed to Git, data structures, and we were pair programming daily through the day's projects. The curriculum is structured for layering in new technologies, and before you know it, you're familiar with relational databases and doing a deep dive into the inner workings of Rails.

The instructors are fantastic. The student to teacher ratio is very favorable for student-teacher interactions, and they were consistently pivotal in getting me on track with the material on pace to get through the assessments. There is a lot of information, so be 100% prepared to have no life while you're working through the curriculum. I thought 100 hours a week would be an exaggeration, but I was consistently logging 95-100 hours each week studying the material straight through the weekend.

The past four months have been a grueling yet highly rewarding experience. You get out of it what you put into it, and you have to put a lot into it if you want to get through the totality of the curriculum, but at the end, you will have the skills and confidence necessary to land your first position as a developer.

After completing 10 years of military service, I decided to take the plunge and transition into the civilian workforce. I knew that I wanted to go into tech and had always enjoyed dabbling in coding. I also knew that I did not want to invest the time or money to attend a 4-year college to get a computer science degree when I already have a bachelor's. 

I decided to investigate bootcamps. I looked at Origin, HackReactor's online program, UCSD and LEARN Academy. All four were comparably priced and offered some sort of veteran discount. LEARN offered a weekend Jumpstart program as a initial trial. It offered the chance to preview the class style without the daunting pricetag. After attending, I was sold.

The course is based around pair programming. While it may not be everyone's style (quite honestly it isn't mine), it's a great environment for learning. If you're stuggling through a section, your peers can help explain as you work through a problem. If you understand how to solve a problem, you can teach your peers and further cement your understanding of the topic. There is a reason why the instructors stick to the format. It works. 

Another thing that the instructors will stress is learning how to solve problems on your own. They will try to lead you to where you can find answers but try to put the onus on the student to actually solve it. This style can be understandably frustrating for some people initially but it is hands down the best way to become accustomed to the reality of engineering. In this job you will constantly be faced with new concepts and no instructor. Becoming a pro at understanding documentation and tracking errors through your code is an essential software engineering skill. 

As to the price tag... you have to think about what you are paying for. Can you learn everything on your own online through practice and tutorials? Absolutely. Could I have gotten to where I am today by doing that? Definitely not. I needed the focus, immersion, and guidance provided by LEARN. I needed a place to go every day which pushed my learning pace forward. I needed peers and instructors who held me accountable for the effort I needed to put in. I also needed the internship to solidify what life looked like as a developer. 

I would highly recommend LEARN to anyone wanting to pursue a software engineering career. I would also encourage everyone to do their due diligence to learn what that career is really like. Go to Jumpstart. Do some tutorials online beforehand. Make the commitment to put in the effort. I got hired by my internship company and work on some really cool stuff now as an engineer. I love my job and I have LEARN to thank for making it possible.

Being at LEARN Academy not only kept me motivated to cram months and months of full stack development knowledge within a short period of time, but the staff and leadership shared past experiences and lessons learned as a developer, offered mentorship, and provided access to the invaluable network within San Diego. I cannot thank LEARN Academy enough to allow me to switch from being a healthcare management consultant to a data engineer within a few months, which ultimately allowed me to achieve my goal of being within the software industry and actually making a difference. While I am done with my boot camp experience at LEARN Academy, I know that I will keep them involved in my current and future plans and help them continue their amazing efforts within the San Diego community.

I attended LEARN Academy in 2018 or their Alpha cohort from January to May. Two days before starting LEARN I had my last shift at the deli I worked at the time. Four months later I was signing an offer letter with the words 'Software Engineer' in the opening paragraph. LEARN can absolutely change your life, but only if you jump in the deep end.

MY STORY
I started LEARN with about 50-60 hours of self study, much of it directed by the prep work for the course. I knew that I had to dedicate as much time as possible to the endeavor much because it felt like my last chance to really change my life for the better. I said goodbye to most of my friends and told them I'd see them when I had accomplished my goal. I saw my family once a week, and did yoga twice a week, and those were my anchors. Everything else that I had to give went towards class. It didn't happen overnight, but every week I put more and more time in.

By week 4 I was going to events 2 to 3 nights a week. By week 7 some classmates and I attended a 12 hour hackacthon on a Saturday, and placed. We won 'Most Innovative'. Nearly every Saturday thereafter a group of use went to study at LEARN for 4-5 hours.  

When it came time for internship placement I gravitated towards an internship at Kitu Systems, a green energy company looking for a intern to do primarily functional testing in Cypress. On the fourth week of my internship they offered me a position. I'm now officially a Software Engineer (at least that's what it says in my job description).

I'm writing this review two weeks into my new job, and frankly I walk around my office with a big goofy smile half the time because I'm so grateful to have 'made it', but the truth is that I'm not done, no in this field ever is. You will always be learning and improving on your craft (I spend an entire workday last week just reading AngularJS technical documentation).

Not everyone will get a job right out of the gate. Many of my classmates are still looking, and from the few dozen alumni I've spoken to I can tell you that some people more naturally gifted that I might have as much as a two month job search before they find their first position. This is not meant to be discouraging, it's just a fact of the industry that job hunting can take time.

DO THE WORK
LEARN Academy provides you all the tools necessary for a sucessful career as a Software Engineer, but they will not force you to use them. 
- There is about 40 to 60 hours worth of prep work to do before the class starts, but they won't turn you away if you don't do any of it. 
- The actual class day at learn goes for 9am to 5pm, and there are no grades and no penalties for being late. If you show up early you can read the days lessosn before hand, and if you stay late you can review it. 
- There are night-time learning and networking events in the LEARN space nearly every week, and in the general downtown area nearly every night, but you are not required to go.
- There are myriad opportunity to take on extra projects, or continue class projects after school and into the weekend, but you are not required to do so.
- If you ask the instructors for code reviews of personal projects you do on your own time, they will find a way to get you one, but they won't just offer them  left and right.  

CONCLUSION
LEARN Academy will give you the opportunity to start a career in an ever growing, lucrative, and fascinating industry. It is hard, tiring work, and requires a lot of time, far more than just the 40 hours a week on in-class time. If you can give it %100 of everything you have to give, it will change your life.

Attending LEARN Academy was one of the best, most satisfying decisions I've ever made for the growth of my career. I spent a few months researching the coding bootcamp I wanted to attend. I remember scouring the internet for reviews on every possible bootcamp. Some seemed too focused on just shoving people through the curriculum or not being worth the money in one way or another. Online bootcamps seemed way too shady and disconnected from the student when this is something where a student NEEDS a mentor to help them get unstuck. Learning on your own can be done, but can take two years when a person could attend a good bootcamp and get it done in 3 months and pay it off before those 'would of been two years' are over, and now you have a job and experience already before you would of gotten your first job.

Every day I attended LEARN I was completely satisfied with my experience. The instructors and owners care about the success that you want to get out of it and will do their best to help you reach your short term and long term goals. If you request additional help, the instructors will without hesitation help you during lunch or after class. They truly care about the student - especially the student who takes their choice to attend seriously. It's hard to help someone who doesn't pay attention in the first place, or who doesn't put any effort in.

There is a lot of hard working successful students that come out of LEARN that land in awesome jobs that wouldn't be possible if they hadn't attended LEARN. If a person does the suggested pre-course work, attends LEARN, works hard to understand the material everyday, asks questions about what they don't understand, there's no doubt that they will land an awesome job and career. A person should go into the school humble, willing to constantly learn (because that's what a developers life will be), and to take it serious. You will get out of it what you put into it. I would gladly answer any questions about my experience and recommend it to anyone who wants to be a developer. A coding bootcamp won't hold your hand as they magically transfer skills into your brain. But they give you the network of people you need, the environment you need, the mentors you need, the internship you need to get some experience, the encouragement you need, and the right direction you need to be successful.

There is absolutely so much to learn when you are just getting started in web development, and I thought Learn did a great job easing into it the first two weeks and then going full force. It was extremely challenging and takes full-time dedication to get through, but they are there to help you the whole time through. I had a great experience and made awesome friends. I definitely recommend this bootcamp, but only if you are willing to go in 100%. You get what you put in. The one-month internship is also a great way to get started, but it's really up to you after that to put in lots of hard work to get an actual job. They will definitely help and support, but you have to put in tons of time and effort - the first job is the toughest to get! But, as far as bootcamps go, this one is awesome. Highly recommend!! 

Here’s how it happened: With 2 BA’s in the humanities and some tinkering with computers every so often, I really had no knowledge of what computer programming was.  But I’d just been through 10 years of sales to try something more ‘creative,’ and then 7 years working for myself, and now I needed a new career, again.

 

I’d looked at LEARN Academy once before, and balked.  Fast forward 2 years, and I made the decision to pay the tuition and get through the 16-week JavaScript Web Developer Coding Bootcamp at LEARN, and see what’s what.  Why?  Because I knew that it was something that I wanted to do before I left this Earth.   I’m not (too) old, and I’m not sick, but if not now then when?  When I’m 70?  Sure, maybe, but stars had aligned and it was time.  So I pay, and I go, and I graduate and now it’s late on a Sunday night and I’m typing into my laptop when I should be doing a million other things, but I wanted to write this review so others could know…..that I loved it, and though I am still on my journey to become a software developer, I know in my brain and in my heart that it was the right decision for me.

 

And now I’m going to speed this up:

 

Pro’s:

• Instruction was engaging, relevant, current if not bleeding-edge
• Instructors I had were naturally gifted teachers (knowledgeable, patient, encouraging)
• Room space was small enough to keep me focused, but big enough to be comfortable and comfortable enough to enjoy it and not view it like a “training” or “being in school.”
• Other staff were always friendly, available for questions, and basically seemed to enjoy their job of making sure we had what we needed to not only get through the cohort, but then get a job when we were done
• I loved the downtown location for getting outside for fresh air, coffee, food, whatever
• Cost - reasonably competitive with other offerings (that don’t include a month long internship to complete the training (non-Jedi, sorry)

 

Cons:

I honestly can’t really think of any.  In a effort to be as transparent as possible, I know one of the owners and he is a friend, but what I write here doesn’t affect him nor LEARN one way or the other.  I feel like I made some good friends while I was there, but I don’t see these people socially and I’m truthfully not trying to curry favor with anyone.   

• We had a few technical glitches - and turned it into a real-life learning event of “something is broken, what do you do now?”
• Not really a negative but I could have (personally) benefited from a little more review of the checkpoint assessments.  Having said that, when I asked for help, I was always given one-on-one attention until I was comfortable

 

Whether you’re considering LEARN or any other coding bootcamp, here are some things I’d make sure my past-self knew before staring:

• Get through some HTML/CSS/JavaScript classes on-line, maybe a little command-line training, basic computer stuff.  I did very little and it cannot be understated that this was a mistake.  They told me to do it beforehand, and I sort of did…a little
• Know that you’re going to be given access to the career or job you want, but you’re going to have to earn it.   The LEARN experience gave me everything I needed to succeed.  It’s just a matter of putting that into practice
• Start networking for your future job as a developer Day 1.  In fact, start right now
• Whatever you decide, I wish you well and hope the future brings you much success

A year ago, I was a wedding planner. Today, I am a software engineer at a Fortune 50 company.

People laugh when I tell them that…like they think it must be a joke. Let’s be real: it does sound like a joke. But it’s 100% true, and that is in large part due to my experience at LEARN.

I had a background in math and computer science, but life took me in a different direction, and a few years after college I found myself running my own wedding planning business. Fast forward almost a decade, and I had come to a crossroads. It was time to switch things up, and that meant either pursuing event planning in a different avenue, or returning to my roots. I chose the latter.

Obviously, my college education was outdated and, in the world of tech, pretty much obsolete. I needed some help to get back in the game. So I started to look into boot camps.  I researched my options, and was pretty set on the fact that I was going to have to leave San Diego for several months in order to pursue this dream.  Then I found LEARN.

From the moment I met Rob, Chelsea, Lisa, and the other staff, I knew these were my kind of people. When your interview feels more like catching up with an old friend you just never happened to have met yet, you know you’re in the right spot.  Which is not to say that they don’t take this seriously. It’s called a boot camp for a reason; you will be challenged, at times your brain will be fried, and you will wonder, “what on earth have I gotten myself into?”  But you will also find yourself surrounded by a community of people who are interested in not only seeing you succeed in the course, but who are committed to your overall well-being long after you’ve graduated.

Full disclosure: Everything about my experience wasn’t just peaches and cream. There were difficult personalities to work with. My internship experience was not the perfect fit, and I didn’t get a job from it like I had hoped. It took me 15 minutes to figure out how to turn on the computer on my first day, and I was sure that I’d just made a huge mistake by signing up for this thing…

But it turned out to be the best decision I’ve ever made. LEARN gave me a foundation in web development, and more importantly, taught me how to learn web development. After all, that is what a career in development is all about: constant learning.

Three months after graduating, I interviewed for a software engineering position at a Fortune 50 company. It was a full-day interview with multiple coding challenges and technical interviews with various senior engineers. Because of LEARN, I was confident in my technical skills, and made it through each challenge happy with my performance. I got the job offer that night.  Scratch that. I got a job offer that night which was far beyond what I had let myself hope for.

I’m now six months in to my job, and loving every second of it. I can’t believe I get to do something so fun as a job, and that I get so well paid for it.  Going to LEARN catapulted me into this new career, and I will be forever grateful. Not to mention, I made some incredible friendships with the other students and staff which go far deeper than just working together in tech.

Go to LEARN. Gain an education. Leave with a family.

LEARN was absolutely instrumental in getting me to where I am today. Before I attended LEARN I was stuck in a marketing job with little opportunity for advancement and days full of busywork. Now, I am a junior engineer at the beginning of a (hopefully!) long and productive career. My employment outlook is significantly brighter: I have a better job that's more fun and engaging, pays better, is more stable, has more room for internal growth and advancement, and values my personal and professional growth. And should I ever choose to leave it, there are tons of great opportunities in the industry to move on to other organizations doing exciting work with an ever-evolving technology stack. Changing careers was a big and scary step, and it isn't easy, but LEARN has consistently supported and empowered me to make this change, and that support continues today, more than a year after I graduated from their program.

I decided to attend a bootcamp pretty spur of the moment, and crammed enough of the JavaScript course on Codecademy to be able to complete a programming challenge as a part of my application. After the application was submitted, I interviewed with Chelsea, the CEO, and she made me feel really good about the entire process. I'd been checking out another boot camp in San Diego, but after comparing the technologies I'd be learning, and talking to her about what the experience would be like, I felt very strongly that I wanted to attend LEARN. I found out pretty quickly after that that I'd been admitted, and before class started I got another call from one of their TAs, to talk about my learning style and what to expect from the experience. It was very clear from the beginning how committed their team was to making sure I got the most out of my time there.

The coursework was fast-paced and at times overwhelming. 3 months just isn't enough time to learn it all, and you finish the program with a sense that there's a lot more work to do. However, the biggest value of this program is the process. You learn how to ask questions, and how to search for answers. I spent a lot of time feeling frustrated and like I didn't know what I was doing, but LEARN does a good job of normalizing that discomfort and teaching you to work it without getting discouraged (which is one of the toughest parts of trying to learn something so new and foreign as an adult!). The program uses project-based learning to get you practicing writing code from day 1, and consistent pair programming teaches you how to collaborate and has the added benefit that you're never alone with a problem. The instructors do a great job of balancing giving you the answer versus guiding you to find it on your own via research. LEARN also introduces its students to the agile process, which is widely used in the industry today, and this iterative approach means your project doesn't have to be perfect on the first pass.

After 3 months in the classroom, LEARN placed me in a one-month internship with a local startup. I got to push real code to their production application the first week! My particular internship did leave something to be desired, as the developer who was supposed to be managing me and two of my classmates wasn't very available, and we were assigned tasks and left to pretty much figure them out on our own. So the collaboration skills we'd learned in class and the support of the LEARN community proved to be vital to our success. Our instructors, classmates, and alumni were all just a chat message away, and we used our network a lot to get our work done. Even though I wasn't that well managed, I still learned a lot, and at the end of the internship our boss was impressed with how much we'd accomplished.

After graduation, I was nervous about getting a job, but Lisa, LEARN's outreach coordinator, was diligent about passing on job opportunities to recent alumni, and just about every interview I went on was thanks to her referral. While I was searching for a full-time job she even got me connected to someone who was looking for a part time independent contractor for web development work, so I was working (and practicing my new skills) while I was looking for work! I was hired on for a full time job about 2 1/2 months after finishing my internship. 

I can't say enough good things about LEARN. It's honestly changed my life. I'm so, so glad that I attended and that I'm still involved in the ever-growing, ever-supportive LEARN community.

I had been programming as a hobby and to help in my profession as an internet marketer for several years and wanted to switch to progamming as my career.  After a lot of searching for a bootcamp help with this change in career I found LEARN in San Deigo.  It appeid to me for a few reasons.  I wanted to move back to the San Deigo area where I grew up, the bootcamp focused on full stack development which was what I wanted to do, and it was less expensive than the other bootcamps I was looking at and appling to.

The actual program was fantastic.  The teachers adapted the curriculum to my experience level and really gave me confidence in my ability. Another thing to note is that LEARN is deeply involved in the community and it provided many opportunities to network and meet people in the San Diego Technology community.

After the class part of the bootcamp came the one month internship, which is guaranteed for every student.  Form that internship I got the job I have now and couldn't be happier with how things went.  The staff at LEARN really care about every student and will do everything that they can to help you succeed.