Bloc

Bloc was my first experience with an online bootcamp but I have to say I doubt it gets much better than this. I was very careful with my selection and reviewed many programs before I made my choice because it is a pretty significant time and money investment. I have been really impressed with the thoughtfulness and relevance of the curriculum and depth of knowledge you can obtain if you put in the time. That said, it is definitely not a course for people not willing or able to put in the time. If you work full-time it's challenging to keep up but it's definitely worthwhile. The mentors are knowledgeable and great to work with and I've definitley learned a lot.

I am nearing the completion of my Bloc program (only one week left!) Bloc has been a great experience for me all around. When you sign up for the program, they say that you will be able to keep your current job and complete the program at the same time. For me personally, I kept my 9-5 current job for the first 2 months with the plans of quitting after that. When I did that, I temped/freelanced (I was a photographer before my 9-5) which worked perfectly with the program since I was able to choose how much I wanted to work.

Once you get past the first module, I am not sure if it is realistic to keep up the 40-50 work hour pace on top of the 25-30 hour a week dedication time, although I am sure some people do it! For me, it was better to work part time and focus on not only my studies, but learning beyond that. I think that to get the most out of your experience you need to attending their group sessions. Attending meetups. Practice online tutorials. There are so many resources out there and you should be ready to embrace them, beyond what is taught through Bloc. The great thing about this program is that they encourage you to learn beyond what is taught in their material. 

In terms of jobs, I have had several interviews, which I am sort of in the middle of so I can't say whether I do/don't have a job because I am still completeling that process. What I CAN say that before I attended Bloc, I had tried to apply to soft skill marketing jobs and didn't hear back from ONE company (even with several years of experience). Now, I have gotten interviews from 25% of the applications I have put out which is a HUGE progression. 

The only cons I can think of are that the program is going through some growing pains right now so some of the resources that I have depended on (like their career assistance team and student success team) have been understaffed/slow to reply to emails. I am hoping they fix that up soon because I think they are a huge perk to the program, but I think it's because they are currently going through some transition/growth issues. Otherwise, the mentors have been great, the material is good, and I have had an overall fantastic experience. 

Hello There!

I'm currently a student with Bloc and finishing up the last leg of my assignment/apprenticeship with the UX Design program and I must say that it has been quite a ride. 

The amount of support you get in the program is on point - the slack channel is a large community on a global scale all pushing each other to finish, the technical coaches are almost always a key stroke away from getting you "unstuck" from a problem, the recorded and live class sessions are an extremely helpful resource, the student success team constantly check on your progress to ensure you are getting the best out of the program, and the mentors you meet have years of experience behind them to help you unlock your potential into a career you will break into at the conclusion of the program. 

When I was researching a program to enroll with, I came across a TON of them online, but ended up narrowing down my options to two: 

1. Bloc

2. Thinkful

And at the end of it all, Thinkful ended up acquiring Bloc, so that in itself speaks great volumes as to what Bloc has been achieving alongside the reputation it has built throughout the years since its inception. I'm glad I chose Bloc!

I'm halfway through the Designer track, and I have been enjoying the course so far! Everything they teach is relevant, and I love that you will finish the program with three case studies under your belt. My mentor, Lauren Smith, is amazing and willing to help wherever she can. I can talk to her about the course, job advice, and anything else related to UX design!

If you're thinking about choosing a Bootcamp for UX Design, I highly recommend Bloc. This isn't to say that the coursework is easy, but I truly find UXD fun. What you put in is what you get out. You have to make sure you don't slack off. I supplement this education by going to Meetups and meeting professionals in the industry.

I have been in the Bloc program since July of 18. I have learned so many new skills/useful skills that I believe will take me into my job search and beyond. My mentor sessions have been fantastic and super useful in gauging my progress, my skillsets and where I need to make improvement or strides. Bloc's success team and technical coaches have provided supports whenever I needed. 

I am looking forward to building my portfolio and really getting into the nitty gritty of applying for jobs. Great experience so far!!!

This school will give you the skills by putting you to work from class one.  I believe in learning by doing and this is exactly what Bloc is offering.

The program is hard and challenging, but stay focused. The support from the fellow students and coach team is always there for you. 

This is one of the few programs that I found after an extensive research that gives you an opportunity to study online without quitting your current job.

I liked that they offer scholarship and a very comprehensive loan plan.

I so thankful and only looking forward to taking charge of my future career. 

Yulia

I really found Course Report useful when looking at Bootcamps and I am a couple weeks from completing Bloc's Web Developer Track and wanting to give back to the community here!  Being a self-employed person in TV/Film production for years, I had been considering a coding bootcamp for a while to get into a bigger job market with more career options and room to grow professionally.  I have a 3 year old daughter and a pregnant wife and juggling life and Bloc has been pretty good, you have to give up most nights and weekends for 8-9 months, but the outcome will be worth it to provide a better life for my family.

First off, I love Bloc's 12-14 hours a day of technical coaching on Slack, there is a whole team ready to help you everyday.  The live group sessions on a variety of topics are really a great way to interact with Bloc Mentors and hear from other students which is nice when you feel confused about a topic and realize most other students are too!@#$  They have many live sessions every week on a variety of topics and I haven't been able to do as many as I would like, honestly, so if you have time, do a couple a week.  It establishes a connection with Bloc that is sometimes lacking due to it being an online only school.  The student success and career services teams have all been so easy and great to communicate with.  Also, I like that Bloc is a larger bootcamp and they have Slack channels for many cities in the US so you can organize a Meet-up with other students, like I have done.  The curriculum I would say is challenging and makes you work hard and learn how to forage, which is what developers do all day in their jobs I'm told.  The amount of work you do on career preparation is waaaay more than I expected, but I now see the value and appreciate how much they have you work on presenting yourself to the industry besides knowing how to code.

Bloc does a good job setting expectations of what you can expect from them and what you need to do to make your time a success and that balance is what it takes to have a good experience I think.  If you work for it, they will work for you and with you.  Cheers!  

I guess you could say I am now on the other side.

I finished the web developer track 4 months ago and things could genuinely not have been better!

I was lucky to secure a job the day after I finished my course, not only this but the company were so impressed that I was able to command the highest junior salary.

I have now been working at the same company for 4 months and I love it. I work remotely and am building some really cool projects.

It is incredible to think that before I started with bloc I knew ZERO about coding or about how the internet works.

But the course was genuinely incredible, I learnt so much and everything was practical down to helping me secure a job.

My mentor was great and I still keep in touch with him! 

Moreover, at times when I was struggling on the course, as well as my mentor, the student success team were such great help and when I was freaking out about jobs the careers team were always on hand.

Living in London and a different timezone was completley fine and I was surprised about how easy it was to schedule a video call with anyone from Bloc.

I highly recommend Bloc, they are a great team of people doing the right thing! 

I have enjoyed my experience with Bloc so far! I am a little over 5 months into my program in the Web developer track. It has been VERY challenging (they aren't kidding when they say it is hard!) but very rewarding and I have enjoyed learning a new skill. I haven't began applying for jobs but am eager to start that soon. The career team has been fantastic in prepping me for this, as they have helped me review my resume, conducted mock interviews, etc. 

My favorite aspect of the program has been that they have pushed me to network. I didn't think an online school would be able to do that, but they REALLY pushed my bounderies which was able to connect me with a great coding support group as well as make other great industry connections. Additionally, there is always tech support available as well as mentors, who have been great to work with as well. 

I am excited for next steps and look forward to the job application process soon! 

When I first started my search for the ideal program, Bloc was always the one that stood out to me. It fit my criteria for being remote and providing the things that I felt were important. I used Course Report and SwitchUp as guides to show me what other applicants, students, and graduates thought of the program. Bloc had a lot of positive reviews so that was a big reason as to why I thought this would be right for me. I was wrong. About two to three months into the program I recieved an email from someone at Bloc asking me to write a review. I was asked to write a review on Course Report or SwitchUp, good or bad, in exchange for a gift card to Amazon. I was really shocked when this happened because that made me worried for several reasons. It made me wonder how many other people this has happened to and it also made me wonder how many reviews on these two websites are actually legit? I don't think this would have been as issue if the curriculumn offered in the program was actually worthwhile. It was valuable information, but you could easily find it for free on many websites. I guess I'm just trying to give a warning to other students not to trust the reviews on this website or SwitchUp for Bloc. I'm very upset with my experience and the way things turned out.  

I am currently enrolled in the Designer Track at Bloc. I have already learned so much related to UX Design, Visual Design, and Front End Development. 

When I go to local meetups for design I used to always be hesitant since I have only been doing bloc for 2 months. I thought I wouldn't know enough to participant or even have a conversation. 

In fact it turned out I had already learned all the topics covered in meetup presentations. When talking to others that wanted to break into the design industry, I felt so well equipped for my future job search. I knew all of the topics, theories, practices, and even lingo.

All that's really left is to keep implementing these skills, receive feedback, and develope my portfolio. 

I am so highly impressed with the content taught by bloc. I love the 'set your own pace' concept. This allows me to take a pause with topics that I find challenging to make sure I understand them before moving on. 

I can't wait to continue to learn and eventually seek out my first opportunity in the design industry. 

I have been a retail manager for over a decade now and decided that it was time for a career change lest I get stuck in this role for the rest of my life so I did some research and stumbled onto Bloc. I applied for and got a $2000 much needed scholarship which really helped me out.  I'm not finished the course yet but it is fantastic so far. There is always someone to ask for help when you get stuck and they start preparing you for job hunting from the beginning. I would strongly recommend Bloc to anyone thinking of a career change.

I’ve been working as a print designer for many years, and for many years, I’ve been wanting to expand my skills to pivot to web and mobile design. Bloc has given me the structure and mentor support to realize this goal. 

The program has a flexibility and nimbleness baked right in. I’ve seen the program expand to include new methods of teaching content, including invaluable daily sessions that can be attended live, or viewed as recordings. The Design Program Director is accessible to students with a daily design critique, and there’s a growing library of recorded technical sessions to help deepen understanding. 

And student support happens through multiple channels: there’s a slack channel where students can learn from each other and from industry professionals who are mentoring students, daily online sessions, and weekly mentor sessions.

Enrolling in Bloc's Designer Track was on of the best decisions I've ever made. The curriculum was challenging but intentional and I never felt like I was wasting time, and the feedback from senior designers was incredibly valuable as well. My mentor sessions twice a week were rich with feedback both on my work at Bloc and support for getting a job, and the group sessions that began about halfway through my Bloc tenure both pushed my designs to the next level and helped me feel like part of the Bloc community even though the program was 100% online.

I felt prepared for success in a design career and spoke to designers in the field with confidence - I got a job offer at a fantastic company about two months before I finished the program. My manager has been impressed not only with the high quality portfolio Bloc helped me build, but also the skills I acquired through Bloc. I am proud to be an alumni of this top notch program and highly recommend to anyone looking for a quality education with the flexibility of an online program. 

I'm currently enrolled in Bloc's Web Development Track. Thus far, it's been very challenging, but very rewarding. Bloc definitely keeps up with the industry. I was referred to Bloc by a co-worker who completed the program a year ago. I was very interested, and when he told me what he learned, I was definitely impressed. When I enrolled, I noticed it had changed, but for the better. Bloc will help you learn by building projects, and you will be meeting with a mentor once a week. This has definitely helped. You can talk to a real person about what you're struggling with. They have many resources like live group sessions where you can learn about the concepts in a more hands on environment. If you're stuck on an assignment, Bloc utilitizes Slack so you can communicate exactly what you're stuck on. They have live coaches that are there to guide you through those challenges. It has been a great experience thus far. They also foster self-study. You will have to Google and Stack Overflow things, but that's what developers do anyway. I like how it's structured, and thus far, I've been very satisfied with my experience and have recommended it to several of my co-workers.

Living in Dallas there were quite a few options for coding boot camps in my area but most are $10,000+ for tuition and require 3-5 months of full-time dedication. Which unless you have a lot of savings to pull from is just not a financially sustainable option. On top of this I wasn't sure to choose then one of my friends who graduated and got this amazing job suggested me about Bloc and how amazing his experince was. So then I contacted a student advisor with Bloc about my indecision she was very helpful in providing me with resources I could try in order to make my choice. Bloc was the best choice for me because it allows me to learn at my own pace. Best part about Bloc is its online and tution fee guarantee, only who are confident enough can give that guarantee. I am about a month into the Web Developer track and love the module layout. It makes it is easy to see my progress. The weekly mentor meetings are helpful in clarifying concepts and asking for additional resources. The additional weekly learning sessions are very insightful and focused on specific topics. Also, the Slack community is very helpful for getting quick assistance from other students, alumni, or assigned mentors. I am grateful an option like Bloc exists so that I could have the opportunity to make a meaningful career.

I am the quintessential coding school fairytale story. I was a bartender and now I am a few months into a great job as a software engineer and I still can't believe my new life is really mine sometimes.

I picked Bloc partly because of the pacing. Unlike a bootcamp, I could still work my old job and support myself and do the coursework when I had time. You really do sort of set your own pace, too: they had one program that was about 6 months and one that was more like a year, which is the one I took, but when things were going well and I wanted to work ahead they didn't mind so in the end I was done in maybe 7 months.

They do a good job of helping you a lot at first but weaning you off of it. You get a lot of detailed instruction on earlier projects then later ones becomre more like just a set of criteria to meet and you do it your own way. This means you do a lot of googling, and you have a very active Slack channel to ask questions if you get stuck, and you save up questions for you mentor meetings as well. Now that I'm out working in the field I can say this is excellent prep for what it is really like at a programming job: getting a set of criteria for a project, only knowing half of it already, doing research to teach myself the rest, and reaching out to ask a coworker questions if I get stuck, is literally what being a real programmer is on a day to day basis.

This actually helped me a lot in job interviews, too. The way that Bloc works like real tech companies do was something I could really use for selling myself. It does mean that you get out of Bloc what you put in. You do a lot of self-teaching and a lot of self goal-setting and you really have to be internally driven. But if you have those qualities then Bloc will become whatever you want it to be (for instance, on my final project I decided to use several technologies Bloc doesn't even teach, and just figure them out myself, and my Bloc mentor was still totally up for helping me and guiding me with that).

So, if you are an internally-driven person, and someone who just loves to learn for learning's sake, you are the kind of person Bloc is made for.

I started the UX Designer track about 2 months ago and honestly think it is one of the best decisions I have ever made. It is so hard to balance work, kids and education, but the flexibility of this program is allowing me to dive in and accomplish a lot in a short amount of time.

The program is really rigorous but the amount of knowledge and skills I am gaining rapidly is so encouraging. I have taken many courses online in the past (that I enjoyed and learned from) but Bloc is really different from my prior experiences. It is efficient and comprehensive.

The weekly mentor meetings are so helpful, as are the coaches on the slack channel. When I am stuck, I can get help immediately, in real time. Though I am working really hard, I am really enjoying the process and feel excited and hopeful about new career prospects.