Chegg Skills

Applying to Thinkful was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I completed the full-time fullstack JavaScript course in August 2017. It was a huge time commitment, but I was lucky enough to be able to give the course 100% attention. I probably put a minimum of 40 hours a week for the entire length of the course. If you put in the time and work, and have a passion for becoming a developer, this is definitely the place for you.

The teachers were great, the mentor system was amazing, and the Thinkful network is absolutely incredible. If I ever needed help or advice on something, I would be able to reach out to someone and get an answer or pointed in the right direction in a timely manner. I would say the thing that I was most impressed with was the effort so many people put in during the job search. I would get slack messages a few times a week with job postings that fit what I was looking for. One of those slack messages ended up being the job I accepted! I hit a bit of a snag during my job search and my career coach revamped my resume and I believe it really helped me finding my eventual job.

Expect to learn a ton of new stuff, really really quickly. It can get overwhelming but all you have to do is keep moving forward. Let people know if you're not understanding the material, the last thing you want to do is fall behind. Everything will come together in the end, you just have to work hard every day for the enitre length of the course. 

Pros:

I was looking into online courses for data science for two reasons: No.1 I didn't have any actual programming experience and this is becoming a very trendy direction to catch on. Maybe not for new jobs or career shift, I wanted to learn new stuff always. No.2 I do want to know if changing career after three years full time with science background would be a great option for me.

I found Thinkful on Meetup and I signed up for free course and info session in downtown Atlanta, GA. I found I was sitll intereted in the course so that I signed up prep course which helped me to get some shadows on data science, especially to know a little about python and the toolkit. 

My mentor Hallie, who walked me through a lot during our chat sessions. Three time a week was a little too much for me as I was doing part time jobs while looking for new jobs. After four weeks I finished my tiny capstone in which I truly learned a lot as a beginner. I already shared and referred 10 friends to Thinkful. In the mean time I found a great new job then I will be more confident to enroll to the bootcamp.

If you are a zero background beginner like me, the prep course is a real trail for you to know if you are a good fit. Without this, I wouldn't have known a lot of people out there keep learning new things and you will have chances to connect with your mentor and expand your network as well. 

Since I don't need it to find a job but surprisingly I will need python in the new job and I just learned it a bit earlier.

Cons: (Not cons exactly)

You do need to invest a LOT of time and energy before stepping into the bootcamp while doing your full-time job. 

I picked Thinkful because I didn't want to quit my day job.. and it turned out to be a great choice!

Your experience with the program will very much depend on the quality of your mentor. You are expected to have three 1-on-1 meetings per week, for 1 hour each. The best use of the time is to make sure you establish goals with the curriculum, then come to the meeting with questions. Aside from the curriculum, you can ask your mentor about the industry or CS theories.

After graduation, you are matched with a career coach to help with your resume, LinkedIn, cover letter,etc etc... and to help you stay on track with the requirements for the money back graduante. Like your mentor, the career coach is very helpful and friendly with advices. Thinkful will try to introduce you to 3 companies.. but I didn't need this service so I can't comment much on it. I found a Web Developer job with a good company within 2 months after graduation (4 months in total as I started job searching before graduation as well).

The Thinkful community is also very good. I had an alumni reaching out to me to offer helps if needed. I also reached out to an alumni when I noticed he work at a company I was applying for, and he didn't mind giving me an introduction.

Overall, I would recommend this to my friends or others who are serious about a career change.

My experience with Thinkful has been great. The skills and technologies that i picked up these past months have really helped me understand complex libraries and frameworks. My honest adivse to anyone thinking of taking Thinkful or any other  bootcamp would be that, you have to make it a habit to  f**king code day and night. It is the only way to stand out once you come out of one.  Another thing I really liked about Thinkful is that even now that i have a job, i can pop into their Q/A  sessions and ask questions about things that still may be new to me. As for their staff, they are all really nice and considerate. They really do try their best to help you stand on your feet as a developer, so hats off the to staff. 

I came into Thinkful's program with zero prior programming knowledge. I used their prep course as an opportunity to figure out whether I'd like programming, and then completed the full-time full-stack program. I started my job as a web developer last week - it took a total of ~3 months for me to get a good offer. The TL;DR is that I had an excellent experience with Thinkful and would recommend it to anyone.

Thinkful is a remote-only program, which I thought might be problematic at first but didn't turn out to be much of a problem. The curriculum is constantly being iterated on, and - in my opinion - reflects a lot of thought about how to learn effectively (pair programming, a focus on creating projects, etc.) I think it covers all of the important building blocks for developers and prepares you on the relevant areas of knowledge for developers (e.g., common Git/Github practices). In terms of mentorship and resources, it's quite clear that Thinkful provides as much additional help as you want - "help" being one-on-one time with developers that have been in the industry, teaching you how they'd do something.

The curriculum uses JavaScript (through Node.js) on the back-end as well, which I think is a bit of a trade-off - it is much easier to handle learning just one language, but I saw few companies that use Node. I don't think this is a major issue - you can advertise your general knowledge of back-end, and typically I don't think companies hire junior developers with the thinking that they need to know the specific server-side technology already. I'm also not sure if there are any bootcamps that offer a significant improvement in this regard.

I am really happy with the position I have now, but it did take longer than I would've liked to get a position. Some of that was probably some bad luck, and I was happy with the career support Thinkful provided. The career services group knows what they're doing - I came out with what seemed like every box ticked off (a portfolio of projects, a tuned resume, a presence on LInkedIn and Angellist). Thinkful also provides you invaluable access to a career coach for weekly sessions, and continues to give you access to mentors if you want to polish up the coding side. 

I was accepted in the Nov '16 cohort that finished this past March '17. Prior to Thinkful, my coding experience was negligible, though I had a good deal of advanced math. Four months after completion I received a job offer as a front-end developer and successfully made career shift from a previously non-technical role.

In short, the staff and instructors were lovely people who knew their stuff. Thinkful's dedication to their student's success was clear. I loved the individualized mentor relationship. This is a person who not only helps you with day to day issues, but also with longer term goals, strategies, and struggles.

Special shout out to manager Theresa, instructor Ben, TAs Alex and Sidharth, and my mentors Jason and Jennifer.

Regarding the online experience, Thinkful did a great job overcoming the difficulties inherent in online education. 98% of the time, everything wen smoothly. The majority of the curriculum was great, with the rare exception of 4 or 5 days out of 4 months where my partners and I would lose confidence in the lesson plan and abandoned it for some self-study alternative. However, Thinkful seems very open to feedback and I've since learned that Thinkful has reworked some of the lesson days.

In total, I'm grateful of my Thinkful experience and highly recommend them.

I have been a student at Thinkful for a little over a year in the Python Programming course.  I am 50 years old, married with a couple of kids.  I also have a demanding job in IT at a company in the Boston area.  I highly recommend Thinkful because of the immersion that is difficult to reproduce any other way.  The immersion consists of a dedicated mentor who will colllaborate with you as you learn how code and how to properly communicate with others on your programming projects using tools such as Github and TravisCI.  In the process, I learned skills and vocabulary have become second nature.  As a Thinkful student, you will not only learn how to code, but also how to speak the language which is an invalubale skill required to land coding jobs as a freelancer or a full time developer.  The assignments can seem daunting at first, but the Thinkful mentors I worked with helped me get over that initial fear of what I didn't know when I started the course. Even though I had a hectic schedule, I did manage to finish the Thinkful Python Programming course.  Sign up and make the commitment and you will be surprised how much you can learn and develop your skills. Learning never stops.  It is a life long process.  Thinkful is like vitimins for your professional growth. 

I am currently still working with Thinkful after the phase I introduction phase and this has been the best experience to date to learn programming.

I have tried other programs to learn the same material but for some reason the way Thinkful teaches just sticks with me the best.  The combination of reading and applying that knowledge I find to be the best way to progress effectively.

Have the one on one mentor time I think is one of the best parts about this program.  As an introvert, I struggle in larger class settings but having one person to talk to about what I am working on works for me very well.  I find that am able to ask all the questions I may have been hesitant in a classroom setting and thus I am moving forward to ideally become a software engineer.

4 months ago I was working behind the bar one of my favorite places to be, my place of work, a hip and trendy coffee shop in the Downtown area of San Diego. I've often considered school to study computer programming, but more often than not the idea seem unachievable. In my area there are many developers, often filtering in and out my store, sparking my interest yet again in web development. Through them I learned of FreeCodeCamp.com which rapidly became my second favorite place to be as I began learning the basics of HTML/CSS. After spending a few hours every evening working on fun little projects for my photography friends and I, I decided to take it more seriously, I just didn't know how. After expressing my interest and enthusiasm with the before mentioned developers filtering in and out of my shop, I learned about the concept of a boot camp. Having experience with unconventional forms of learning, having been home schooled most of my life, the idea intrigued me, and I started entertaining the idea by researching programs in my area. After touring a place or two, having a few discussions with friends of mine (one of which an employee of GitHub), I kept hearing about Thinkful, the online alternative. 

Thinkful's course covers fullstack JavaScript development. They focus on the idea of project based learning all the while being taught by personable instructors and guided by a mentor assigned to you in the beginning of the camp. Through the instructors I learned new concepts, through my fellow students I learned how to "speak code" and work with other developers, and through my mentor I learned new ideologies for troubleshooting issues, new resources for learning, exciting new technologies, and recieved help on my personal projects.

Two weeks before graduating the program I was recommended by my program manager to a company out of San Francisco who was in the market for a Junior Developer, and got the job. I am now no longer working behind the bar at that hip and trendy coffee shop, instead i'm working infront of it in the tables I once served. The transition from barista to developer has been a wild one, but I couldn't recommend it enough. 

If anyone is looking for a professional, supportive, and effective coding bootcamp, particularly in the DC area, Thinkful is the best place! I came here on a complete career switch and wanted not only a school with a robust curriculum but also one that could provide me with effective career services and local networking opportunities. Thinkful's staff delivered on both of these and more. I had zero technical background or experience and managed to get hired before graduation thanks to Thinkful's help and encouragement on my portfolio, resume, and project management. Definitely a lot of hard work but totally worth it! 

In short: I had an extremely positive experience with Thinkful's Full-Time Web Development program and would highly recommend it to others. Thinkful is still a fairly young company and it does show--some of their material is not as polished as you'll see at more established companies like GA. However, it also means that they are much more flexible with the curriculum (which is a good thing). 

When I went through the program they had just switched to full JavaScript front and back-end. While they do offer resources for learning Python and, I think, Ruby/Rails as well, I felt that the all JavaScript approach was excellent. The market is definitely moving in that direction and I was able to land a full-stack Software Engineering role before finishing the bootcamp and was able to dive into the code base and contribute production code very quickly thanks to what I had learned at Thinkful. 

You'll have to make the decision whether the all-remote approach is right for you and, of course, you'll get out of the experience only what you're willing to put into it. But I found the support to be excellent and the all JavaScript approach is, IMO, the correct one.

Short Story:

Overall, I had a positive experience at Thinkful. I was in the 3rd cohort for the Full Time Full Stack program. I graduated in November 2016 and started a job on February 6th, 2017 as a Software Developer. I love my job and the company I work for and consider entering a bootcamp and getting into this career as the best professional decision I’ve made. I learned a ton while at Thinkful that directly contributed to me getting hired, specifically my React/Redux skills/experience.

Longer Story:

Like I mentioned earlier, my experience at Thinkful was very positive. There were a few things I didn’t necessarily agree with, but they collected feedback and you could tell were making efforts to improve their program (based on feedback) as we were going through. Since I’ve graduated, I’m sure a lot has changed and their program is even better. I learned a lot while I was there and it was very hard work, so expect to put in your best effort if you want to maximize the return on your time – this would likely hold true to any bootcamp. I thoroughly enjoyed what I was learning and put in many hours outside of the scheduled time. There were certainly times when it was frustrating because things just didn’t make sense, but once it started to click, it was amazing!

I specifically choose Thinkful for a few reasons. I was looking for an online program due to my geographical area (Phoenix, AZ) and the limited in-person options at that time. So, I wanted a bootcamp that specialized in online education, which I felt like Thinkful checked that box. I also wanted a program that was longer than the traditional programs. A lot of the bootcamps I saw were between 9 – 12 weeks and I just didn’t really feel like that was long. So, I was looking for something a bit longer, but not too long due to time constraints for myself and needing to get a job. (The longer you can spend learning, the better off you will be. To most of us, this stuff doesn’t come easy, especially in the beginning.) At the time, I think the Thinkful program ran 16 weeks, which I felt was much better than 12 weeks. Finally, I wanted a program that had a lot of resources. Thinkful had many resources, including: instructors, TAs, mentors, program managers, training sessions, open Q&A sessions, lectures, career advisors, and a lot more. I really think the amount of resources is one of the things that sets Thinkful apart from others and makes them a great program.

My Advice:

This advice applies to learning to become a developer and selecting a program in general and is not specific to Thinkful. From a cost perspective, there are a variety of options out there, some even free. So, depending on your situation, take into consideration what options would work best for you and make sure you understand what you are getting for your money. I am a believer in investing in yourself, but that’s just my opinion and you should do what’s best for you. When looking at different bootcamps, don’t be afraid to ask questions, even the tough questions. If they won’t give you answers, they probably aren’t worth your time (or money). This is a big investment in your time (and money), so you want to make sure everything is clear before you sign up for anything. After you do select a program, don’t hesitate to ask questions or raise concerns. In my opinion, a good program is one that would welcome feedback and the chance to make improvements that will be beneficial to their students. LASTLY AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, once you start a program, work hard! Like really hard! It is not an easy journey and it shouldn’t be. I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent person, and it was very difficult for me. But I put in my best effort and it paid off, big time! Put in the extra hours, ask questions, ask for help, and try to help others (trust me, you’ll help yourself doing this). You don’t want to finish a program and look back with regrets on not trying harder. Like I said earlier, this is a big investment in your time (and possibly money), so maximize that investment the best you can.

Feel free to reach out if you have any specific questions and I’ll do my best to respond. You can find me on LinkedIn.

Shay Kennedy

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaykennedy/

I’m about halfway through Thinkful’s Flexible Web Development Program and I’ve been really happy with it so far. After years of dabbling with tutorials and other programs, I think that Thinkful is finally the perfect fit.

The Node/Express/React curriculum is current and is exactly what I was looking for. The flexible schedule is still challenging enough to keep you moving forward, but also allows room for the important things in your life.

But the key for me has been having 3 mentor sessions a week. At every step of the way I have a knowledgable, experienced developer that can look at my code and let me know if I’m doing it “the right way” or there are some things to change or improve upon. I was always able to get through lessons in other programs, but I still never knew if what I was doing was really applicable in the real world. Now I know!

And all of this at about half the price of a traditional bootcamp!

 It’s great to finally feel like I’m on the right track to a career as a software developer.

Thinkful has an amazing program. I chose to enroll in Thinkful's Flexible Web-Development Bootcamp after trying to learn web development on my own for about a year.  I was at the point where I wanted some mentorship or guidance on the decisions I was making since my projects were becoming more complicated.  I strongly feel that Thinkful was the best choice.  I say that based on an analysis of Thinkful's program of instruction based on the three components that make their program what it is; the people, the curriculum and how they are managed in the process of education.  Thinkful does a phenomenal job in all three areas.

From an administrative perspective Thinkful has always been prompt and accurate with billing and any questions that I have had. They offer a veteran’s discount which I appreciated.  The people on the staff are all professional and are located globally; so there is flexibility in scheduling your mentoring sessions.  I have worked with two mentors because I had a scheduling conflict with the first.  The change was smooth and I did not lose any momentum in my education.

The curriculum at Thinkful is focused on the Node stack and Javascript web development.  That should probably be your first consideration in choosing a school, do you want to learn their technology?  If you decide on Node you won't find any better school than Thinkful. I have seen the curriculum at another coding school and Thinkful's is far superior; the other school did nothing to explain the utility of Ruby's gem system and left a lot of the programming decisions to the "black box" of Rails. Thinkful walks through the components used at length.  Both in developing a CSS grid system and in the introduction to testing Thinkful's curriculum unpacked what was going on so that the final functionality was clearly understood based on how it was built.  I believe that it is better to understand than rely on a "black box" from your framework's package system, but that is only my opinion.

In the execution of the program the Thinkful team has been stellar as well; they really do function as an integrated team.  Due to travel I had to suspend my program a week and that was executed smoothly, so basic administrative functions are solid in this regard.  The sessions with my Mentors have always been professional and productive; they have been both attentive to my questions and able to guide the process.  As part of the education I have held three mock-interviews with other members of the staff, two where I had to perform coding demonstrations.  This was new to me and real value added, because it was hard, and something I could not have done on my own.  The evaluators were thorough and professional and demonstrated the high caliber of the Thinkful Team.  I have several interviews left in the program and I am confident that the future members of the staff that I interact with will be of equally high caliber.

Coding bootcamps are expensive but it is my opionion Thinkful is well worth the money.  That said you don't get handed anything, you have to work for it; Thinkful provides a comprehensive program that guides you along by focusing on the most important tasks needed to become competent in web-development using the Node stack.  I highly recommend the school.

Why I Chose Thinkful

I am a Product Designer working mostly on web products. I am also self-taught front-end dev. I watched tens of hours of tutorials, went to meetups and conferences and got to the point where I could comfortably turn my designs into HTML mockups. I found it very difficult to progress from here into programming. I tried learning JS frameworks myself but had difficulty finding help and understanding best practices and so on.

I was looking for a bootcamp that would provide:

- guidance on how to approach switching to a full-stack development,

- active student community,

- and most importantly, lots of 1:1 time with a mentor.

I compared a few programs and then I had a chance to join Thinkful's online community for a bit to explore and talk to a few people. I really liked the community I found there and all the Q/A sessions going on, so I decided to give it a shot.

Curriculum

I thought the curriculum was very modern, very challenging with a lot of great content. I supplemented my learning with additional resources like Egghead and FrontendMasters, but I thought it was a perfect roadmap of concepts and techniques I needed to master.

Mentor

My mentor is by far the best part of the program. I have a tremendous respect for him. He is extremely knowledgeable, but also kind and patient. I have three hours a week of face-to-face time with him, but we also Slack on a regular basis if I am stuck and need help.

Community

I don't know how many students are taking the program simultaneously, but it always seems busy in Slack. Moreover, there are Q/A sessions available every day with other mentors over a video chat. To me personally, it was very very helpful to have a community of folks I can talk to and learn from.

Carrer Support

There are five interview practice sessions. They are hard, mentors are rigorous, just like a real interview.

I graduated Thinkful's Flexible Web Development Bootcamp in May. I have gotten a job and an offer from a fortune 100 company. The Bootcamp does exactly what I expected it to do, which was to give me a start in the web development world. HOWEVER, there is one thing all boot camp seekers should know and understand. A web development boot camp is only as good as what you put into it. This is a field that requires a love and great interest in coding/programming. If you are going to spend the time and money to change careers, wouldn't you want to make sure that it is really what you want to do? Not only does this have to be something you are extremely interested in, you have to be willing to put in the hard work. Meaning you have to be willing to research, read, breathe, eat, and sleep code all while working full time and or having a newborn like I did. Thinkful does not hold your hand. They do not give you the answers all the time. They do not give you a master book saying here is everything now you're a web developer. Thinkful requires you to research, read, analyze and understand outside of what is printed and what they have as assignments. You MUST do this in order to actually understand what you are doing and learn a valuable skill set. 

Thinkful was great while I was paying. Meaning that I had 1-1 mentorship, I had a program manager who kept in touch or would respond when I reached out. I had a mentor who was experienced and challenged me to fight for every single word in my code. They even allowed me time to pause in my program to have my son, and then continue. However, the hiccup came when I was in this sort of limbo. I requested to stop being charged tuition because I was refining my portfolio and waiting on feedback. This process in total took me a month which I didn't deem as fair to pay if I had no mentor support. Once I stopped paying with the agreement of Thinkful, it seems services died down. It took 2 months to get full access to career support and by then I had already landed my first job offer.
 
So while there are issues that could be addressed, that doesn't mean Thinkful failed me. It only means things could be improved as all systems could. Thinkful is a good boot camp and provides flexibility in which course to take as well as financially. 

I'm a student at Thinkful's Flexible Web Development program. I'm about a month into the 6 month curriculum. Prior to this, I had taken a handful of coding courses online with Codecademy, Lynda.com, and CodeSchool. I also took advantage of Thinkful's 3-week prep course on Web Development prior to officially starting the FlexWebDev program. If you are on the fence, I do recommend taking this prep course, it's not very expensive to start and it gives you an accurate assessment of what the 6 month program would be like.  The course material seems to be a healthy combination of active/passive learning. You are never alone in your learning. You have access to a mentor for 1-1 discussions, there's several slack channels to seek out help or review. There's also workshops and Q and A sessions, all thorought the day making it accessible to someone like myself who's stuck at a 9-5 job during the day. Overall, I'm happy and satisfied with Thinkful and would recommend their services.

TL;DR: Thinkful’s flex web development program helped me land a dev position within 40 days of graduating. While I do think the program could improve in a few areas, I still think it is well worth the time, money, and effort.

There’s a lot that could be covered in this review but for brevity’s sake, I’ve chosen to focus on the curriculum. Let it be known that the Slack community, QA sessions,  Mentors, and Career Services team are all incredible.

I started Thinkful’s flex bootcamp with roughly two months of development experience under my belt; I knew what variables were and understood the basics of control flow, but had yet to build any real apps. The first curriculum module quickly got me up to speed on basic web development, and I completed my first capstone project with a reasonably solid understanding of framework-less front end development.

The second curriculum module focused on Node and the basics of backend development. There was considerably less handholding in this module, which forced me ask better questions and sharpen my Google-Fu skills. While being able to teach yourself and google your way through new concepts is an absolutely vital development skill, I would have had less difficulty during this section had I known that the curriculum intentionally contained less information. All that being said, the curriculum was well written and successfully explained the more abstract backend concepts.

The third module focused on React. Following the pattern established with module two, there was even less spoon-fed information and I spent more time reading the React docs than I did the curriculum. However, the curriculum does a great job explaining the topics it covers, and always links to more in-depth resources when necessary.

The fourth and final module focused on Computer Science (CS) basics. The curriculum was really well written, but I still spent a TON of time grappling with the sorting algorithms and data structures. I completed this module convinced that I had learned absolutely nothing, but I gleaned enough knowledge to satisfy most of the CS interview questions I encountered.

Overall, I really enjoyed the curriculum. There were a fair amount of typos and a few instances of non-functioning code examples, but most of them occurred because Thinkful is constantly updating the lessons. I’d rather have slightly unpolished curriculum than a pristine set of lessons on old tech and legacy projects.

My one critique here is that, while the curriculum does not teach UI/UX design, all of the capstones still have to satisfy certain UX metrics. These standards may be intuitive to designers and front-end oriented students, but this was not the case for me. I am a terrible designer and having to wrestle with design principles I did not know or understand severely hampered my progress. Having said that, the program still helped me land a job as a backend developer. I'd enthusiastically reccommend the flex program to any committed student excited about cutting-edge web development.