Web Development In-Person, Full-Time

It was good. I enjoyed it and it was well done. I know this sounds basic but its the truth it was good. Here are more characters for this box that is not allowing me to submitt what i want to submit. So if you are still reading this know that I stand by what I say.

My experience at DevMountain was extremely positive. As someone who always struggled to learn in standardized education, I was hesitant to try an accelerated course like the one offered at DevMountain. I am so glad I made the decision to push past my fears and give it my all. I wouldn't trade my time at DevMountain for anything.

Devmountain was a great place for me to kickstart my software development career. The curriculum that was taught gives you a really good foundation in software development. The instructors really care about what you are learning and about the individual students as well. 

I had a great experience at Devmountain. I moved to Lehi, UT in November of 2021 to attend in person. I am glad I did so. I met lots of good people both staff and student. The program starts with 8 weeks of Foundations for everyone coming in and then is followed by 8 weeks of Specializations. In Foundations you are learning in person with an instructor and it is very structured. You will have instruction in the morning, lab in the afternoon and a review after that. This is great as you get to practice what you were instructed on in the lecture. In Specializations you do not have an in person instructor but are learning from video lectures that come from Udemy. When I attended it was Pluralsight. This could be a negative thing if you chose to look at it that way or it could be a positive. As a current Software Engineer in the field, very rarely do I have an instructor. I am mostly learning by doing and by researching documentation or watching tutorials etc. The exact same thing you will do in Devmountain Specializations. I have not attended any other bootcamps and cannot speak for their outcomes team but the one at Devmountain when I attended was amazing. I think most students underutilized them when I was there. They cannot do the work for you or get you a job but they can certainly give you advice and tools to succeed. For me personally this was one of the best parts of bootcamp. I had multiple interviews with companies before I even finished the program as I took everything from their weekly lessons and applied it. A VERY STRONG word of advice to anyone going to any bootcamp. Come prepared! Spend at least 2 -3 months on your own studying, practicing and researching material that you will be learning. If you show up without putting in any work beforehand you will most likely find it extremely difficult to keep up as the information comes quickly and ramps up in complexity really really fast.

My experience with the first half of the course was great.  The instructors were knowledgeable and they fostered a collaborative environment despite the fact that some students were remote and others attended the class in person.  However, if you decide to pursue a DevMountain Bootcamp education, please speak with multiple former students about their experience.  Many graduates have DevMountain on their LinkedIn profile and would be happy to chat with any prospective students (at least, i imagine they would).Now, once you enroll in this program your mileage will vary depending on a number of factors including...

Your previous software development background
The quality of your instructors - his/her teaching style and experience
Your chosen specialty - (specs as they are called)
The quality of your SME, his/her teaching style and experience
The experience of your classmates (both tech experience and non-tech experience)

In my opinion, this explains how the experience of students can come across as wildly different depending on which review you read about the DevMountain experience (i.e. "it was awesome" vs. "it sucked").  Is the class worth almost $10,000.00?  Absolutely not!!  But DevMountain is a business, first and foremost.  DevMountain will charge what they believe the market will bear.  That is an irrefutable fact.  Can you learn this material on your own? Absolutely.  However, what DevMountain offers (in the first eight weeks) is an opportunity to learn in a collaborative environment along side other students with similar goals.  At least, that was my experience.  The last eight weeks is a PluralSight license that will/will not be enhanced by the following factors.

You have a great tech lead (e.g. experienced, smart, personable)  
You have a great SME.  I imagine they exist at DevMountain, but this was not my experience.  As you can imagine these folks are VERY difficult to recruit.

OR

Your tech lead is inexperienced.  He/she is a recent Dev-mountain graduate and inexperienced.  Perhaps he/she attended some training on the "DevMountain instruction philosophy.
Your SME is marginal

Just note, that a significant portion of the DevMountain experience will be outside of your control.  What you will bring to the equation is a passion for learning about the tech AND your individual life experiences (do not discount them for they are important).  What DevMoutain will bring to the experience will vary. And, to be perfectly honest, the tech field is very competitive.  It will be difficult to succeed unless you commit to a consistent amount of studying each day - whether you attend a boot camp or not.  Tech changes too fast to solely rely on what you learned a year ago and many tech companies have very unrealistic expectations of job-seekers.  So be ready!!Fair warning - I'm going to address the DevMoutain "marketing" spin (response) to this review in advance, based on other feedback I have read in prior reviews.

Videos are not "over a decade old"- most have been created in the last 1-2 years."   Please do not respond to any further feedback about the out-of-date PluralSight videos until you take some time and do the research. The assertion you make is ridiculous.  Two-year-old videos ARE decades old in the tech world and one-year-old videos are questionable.  Please learn more about our industry and the speed at which it moves if you want to be a player in the Tech Boot-camp business.

"Our Specializations tracks are more than a subscription to Pluralsight. While there are videos that are accessible within Pluralsight as part of each specialization, there are also lab exercises, presented tutorial-style (created for Specializations by Devmountain curriculum authors)".  Again, another statement which misses the mark.  The quality of these lab exercises is directly proportional to the experience of the person creating the exercises.  In my experience (in specs), the same tech lead that "taught the material" was the one who created to content.  Good tech lead -> Good content.  Mediocre tech lead -> mediocre content.  
Please re-read (and I'm making an assumption that you critically read them at all) Jake Peralta's, Katie DeMet's Latina in Tech's and all the anonymous reviews about their collective negative DevMountain experience.  These aren't one-off examples of how the program could improve.

In summary, there are some positive aspects of DevMountain but the glaring weakness specs.  The value proposition simply isn't there.  Don't get defensive about it. Critically read the review feedback, avoid the bulls@@# spin and fix it.

So far it’s a very nice experience. Love the school and the programs offered. The teachers are doing an amazing job and making everything very comfortable. It’s a tech school that teaches many different path in the tech industry. 

This course was great. The curriculum did a good job of preparing me for my job interviews and got me a job. 

I had made the decision for a major career change. After a few months of research, I landed on Devmountain. I really liked what they had to offer and loved the fact they had in-person, which most bootcamps didn't offer due to pandemic restrictions. Understandable. I had an interview and a few days after the interview I was accepted! A few days before beginning I got word that I would be transferred to online learning instead (I think there weren't enough in my cohort for in-person? I don't fully remember, but it was something along those lines).The program itself is split into two portions:FOUNDATIONS:The first portion is called foundations. The curriculum has you dive into all sorts of subjects not just the specific topic you chose (the courses listed they offer) JS, Python, CSS, HTML some light computer science,  UX/UI, algorithms etc. That exposure showed me that I wasn't as interested in Python as I initially thought and chose (for the 2nd half of the program) Web Development. Each week (Mon-Thurs) you'll learn anywhere from 2-3 topics and at the end of that week (Fri) will be given an assessment. A culmination of all that was learned that week. Mornings comprised of standups with our instructor, then live lectures, where you are encouraged to code along (highly recommended). Afternoons were labs where you'd put into practice with your peers, what was learned. During the afternoons you had access to something called a queue where you can ask for assistance on topics. At the end of this half of the program, we create a project and present it to our cohort/instructors.SPECIALIZATIONS:The last portion is called specializations. This is where we continue on the specific tract we chose during foundations. We no longer had live lectures, but instead are given access to a platform called Pluralsight. This website is where we do the remainder of our learning at Devmountain. I admit I am not a fan of learning this way (hence my 3 stars). You are completely in charge of keeping your own schedule and also attending the mid-day standups where you'd report your status updates, concerns, "wins/losses" etc. This part helped me out a ton!! Mid way I was given a SME (subject Matter Expert) and we would have weekly meetings for about an hour, and discuss whatever topics I was struggling with, expanding on what I've learned so far, or sometimes just having an ear to listen and help point me back in the right direction. At the very end we are given a second final project this one more detailed and guidelines more challenging than the one in foundations. This one will be presented live and with various staff from Devmountain. Throughout the ENTIRE program you will have meetings with people from "outcomes" which help prepare you for after completion and graduation of Devmountain. They will help with job placement, resume writing, LinkedIn, interview prep etc. All of these things can cost you by themselves upwards of $400-500 EACH TIME you use an outside resource, but with Devmountain, it is included and available even well after graduation for all alumni.I overall enjoyed my time, and the staff there will do what they can to help you succeed, you just have to be willing to do the hard work. No matter your current or past background, you can do it!! If I could go back and do it all over I would, and I would try again for in-person learning.

I spent a lot of time researching bootcamps prior to landing on DevMountain. The reason I decided to attend DevMountain was the overwhelming amount of positive reviews that coupled with the dramatically lower price than other bootcamps helped me settle on DevMountain. I found out why their price is so much lower so I'm going to give you an honest review and allow you to decide for yourself if it's worth it. DevMountain offers several bootcamp courses. Each course is broken into two parts. Foundations where you are given a foray into all the many aspects of the tech world and Specializations where you are supposed to be learning about the technology tree or “stack” you paid for. The good: The foundations class was very well structured. The day begins with a morning meeting, then you are broken up into pairs to program through a problem from the previous day’s lab. Then a lecture on the topic of the day, followed by a code-along live with an instructor. An hour lunch, then you are again broken up into pairs to work on a lab activity based on the lecture of the day. Finally there is an afternoon meeting to review the lab and answer any questions. Our instructor was incredible, there was no question left unanswered. Every lecture was well prepared and planned and by the end of the 8 weeks of this course everyone in our cohort had a good overview of the foundational elements of the tech industry. The Bad: The second half of the course, “specializations” is a scam. Gone is the structure and elements of the foundations course that made it work. Gone is the comradery of your class and fellow students. Gone is the interaction with an instructor that is well versed and competent. Specializations is a self-driven course. You are provided with a pluralsight account and a list of videos that you are expected to watch. There is no instructor. There is no live code-along.
To begin, you are broken up into your chosen field of learning, i.e, data analytics, QA, web development, iOS design etc. You are provided a program manager. The program manager is not knowledgeable about the field you are studying. They can not answer coding questions. They can not help you if you get stuck. My program manager only had an initial introductory one-on-one session with me and never met with me one-on-one again. They do not follow up with you or ask how you’re doing. They do not review the coursework to see if you are keeping up. Their interaction with the students is limited and when we brought attention to how dissatisfied we were with the quality of the videos, we were given many promises but the program manager failed to follow through or follow up with any of these. As to the curriculum, Specialization is simply a subscription to Pluralsight. A website with video modules. The videos that you are expected to learn from are not great at instructing. Some of the videos are over a decade old. Even pluralsight listed these videos as “retired” but there they are in the curriculum that DevMountain is standing behind. The process for watching the videos is to observe the instructor and code along, pausing along the way to keep up. Many of the videos make quick edits to the code or they do not explain what they are doing with the code. Once this happens you are stuck. There is no way to ask questions or probe to find out how the code works.Once you are stuck, there is only one resource that DevMountain provides. The SME or Subject matter expert is someone that DevMountain employs that is supposed to provide assistance. However, the SME’s do not open the queue until mid day. Which is mountain time. So if you are on the East Coast you will not have anyone available to assist you until nearly 3:00p.m.. Now, as there is only one SME assigned to each discipline,  If someone else has a question you have to wait until they have finished with that student before you can get assistance. That is if the SME can even answer your question. Several students in our cohort had very miserable experiences with many of the SME’s. They were unable to help with the questions and seemed uninterested in helping students to understand the coursework. On multiple occasions one of the SME’s we asked for help told us to simply ignore the lab we were working on as it was irrelevant and never used in the field. We had been working on one module for 2 days and were nearing completion. We got stuck on some syntax and called a SME into the room, the SME said he had only ever seen this language used in this lab and nowhere else. So we had spent 2 days learning this language and two days working on a lab using this language and we were advised to just ignore this lab and move on. One SME came into the virtual room to respond to our request for help and was only concerned with clearing the error we were getting. The code we were working on still didn’t work but once he cleared the error from being displayed he felt he had done his job. We had to abandon that lab as well as we were irreparably stuck and our SME didn’t have the knowledge to help. Unfortunately, you don’t know how bad DevMountain is until it is far too late. By the time you realize that you are not going to learn what you need to be able to succeed in the tech field you are already too far into the course to get a refund. Our program manager listened to our complaints and truly did nothing to help. Most of our cohort had to resort to watching YouTube videos and tutorials to learn what they needed. Most of the coursework was so dense and poorly constructed that by the time you had finished watching a 6 hour video you had no more information than when you started. 

I would not and could not Recommend DevMountain, even if they fundamentally change the entire curriculum. They have shown that they do not care about the success of their students or the structure of their course. The fact that they did away with instructors and expect students to simply follow along with pre-recorded, out of date videos with no meaningful assistance from anyone knowledgeable enough to teach you and do not follow up with students in real time means they are simply focused on saving money at your expense. 

This bootcamp teaches less of the basics than you can learn for free at codecademy or w3schools. After 8 weeks, you're also basically on your own. No more powerpoint presentations or rushed demos. You'll get to spent 8 weeks being assigned 100's of hours of Pluralsight videos with follow up assignments that ask you to code material never covered. Want to watch 3 hours of video on React components and then have to do an assignment on the react router dom that was never mentioned? This is the place for you. I have no idea how much a Pluralsight subscription costs, but I'm sure it's not $4,000. These guys are profiting off of self taught people.  

Devmountain is a great Bootcamp. It will feel overwhelming at first with all the information they give you but they also give you so many resources to help you through it.

After pounding my head against the proverbial wall in college trying to get a computer science degree I finally switched went to a web dev boot camp. The college I was attending had a good CS degree but that degree had almost nothing for web development. I went to DevMountain and loved it. The instructors were good and so was the curriculum. One of the things I liked most from the curriculum was that they tried to do more than just teach the language that they use but also to teach students how to learn a new language and tools.My favorite thing about the school those is their student outcomes team. They have several people dedicated to helping students get jobs and they are great to work with. The amount of effort that this team has put into helping me get a job after an extremely unique and challenging situation since graduation has been super helpful

Overall, the course is great. They really invest their time into you and your success after the course. The program is well designed and the support you receive during and after the course is top-noch. I definitely would recommend this course to anyone looking to get into software development.

I highly enjoyed learning through DevMountain. It’s a highly immersive experience that even has you make a personally built website and a group built website, which is more than a lot of other ones do. I do not regret going through the experience.

Seriously the best choice I have made in my professional career! It was such an amazing experience with the best instructors and students alike!

Overall I'd say I had a great experience at Devmountain. The help I received from alumni was completely unexpected. Be prepared to create projects and start thinking about creating things you are passionate about. I only have 2 things I wish were a little different; first I wish they gave more feedback with the students (even those who are passing or doing well) and sharing more about what they see their skills are, secondly is that I wish they had more resources to help with job placement/assistance.

I’m going to make this pretty short. In a summary, I was looking for a career change in this Trying time of COVID-19. When the world is changing so rapidly, your priorities change with it. Before DevMountain, I had very minimal experience with coding at all. I’m a pretty Blue collar, old school raised kinda guy. Working 60+ hours a week at an aluminum manufacturing plant for the last 6 years, my body and health we’re definitely starting to see a toll. Looking for a career change without going to college for years, I applied to DevMountain. Let me tell you, it’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but the overall experience was more than I could’ve hoped for! The staff at DevMountain are completely devoted to making sure you succeed. From the directors, instructors, mentors and everyone they truly take remote learning seriously. I now feel confident with the skills to find a full time web development job, and hopefully change my life for the better! If you’re considering changing your life and learning new skills, or just needing a change of pace for learning new code, I can’t suggest DevMountain enough! #babyyoda4ever

I decided to join the Devmountain program after a year of self learning. Devmountain took my learning and programming skills to the next level. The instructors and support staff make you feel like you are not alone in the learning journey by always being available to answer any questions about new concepts even in a remote setting. Overall the program was one of hardest things I have done but I feel it is equally as rewarding. I am now confident going into my job search with the skills I have learned! 

My big fear was attending a school in a remote setting going into this. While Devmountain was always primarily in person they've done a great job producing a top tier remote learning environment.Everyone was super easy to get ahold of when needed whether it was for questions or just for venting. Never once did I feel awkward about asking any questions whether it was in class or during study time.Every single person from the students to the staff were fantastic. I came away with new friends and a community that I get to be apart of forever. That to me is one of the biggest advantages Devmountain graduates have over someone who was self taught.Going into this I essentially had 0 coding experience. I've basic tutorials but the program revealed I wasn't even scratching the surface on my own.Devmountain blasted the door open for me and taught me how and what to learn for my studying after graduation.I cannot enough as someone who was skeptical going in this is a way better option than doing self taught. I wouldn't have even known what to learn without the program.Special shout out to the director of my cohort Joseph and my amazing teachers Eric, Matt, Aaron, and Scott.Eric was my team lead for my group within my cohort and really helped make a totally online course feel human.As far as pricing goes - Devmountain is BY FAR one of the more affordable programs. Not once did I feel like there was anything significantly lacking. If you're looking at one of those 13 week programs that cost 20k or more take a close look at Devmountain. You'll save money and learn the same stuff.

Learned a lot, loved learning to code. Had some problems with one instructor.