Devmountain

Many bootcamps offer the same good things. In that sense, Devmountain is like any other: Good way to jumpstart a career in some type of tech field. What makes Devmountain stand out and why did I choose it over one of it's competitors? A) Value. B) In-person. C) Compact
I almost didn't sign up for a bootcamp and wanted to do it myself with online courses. I couldn't really justify a remote camp because why not just do it through udemy otherwise? So I wanted something I could attend in person both for accountability and for atmosphere and environment. I also wanted something affordable.
The fact that the course was only 13 weeks was another big plus. I wanted to be done, and be working on my own projects and looking for a job. So this course gave me what I was looking for.
And hey, another huge perk? I was able to live in the student housing provided. :) The course was great! I would recommend it.

Devmountain's part-time web development course has been an ideal choice for me, enabling a seamless transition back into the workforce while managing motherhood. The Part Time web development course strikes a perfect balance between acquiring new skills and fulfilling childcare duties. With supportive staff, practical learning tools like monitors, and interactive whiteboarding sessions, my experience has been exceptional. These resources, along with the hands-on approach and dedicated practice time, have significantly improved my web development skills and confidence, making Devmountain an excellent choice for career advancement.

After completing Devmountain's Coding Basics course, I promptly enrolled in the 16-week full time React Web Development Boot Camp. I knew of people who had taken this specific course and obtained employment immediately post-graduation. I come from a long career in healthcare with no prior coding knowledge prior to enrolling at Devmountain and, although it was difficult to fully grasp the concepts, the instructors were extremely patient, available, and helpful to ensure I would complete every project. The curriculum was great, I have all the recordings for future reference, and I definitely feel more confident at the end of the program than I did on day 1. I loved the group activities and pair programming. It was a fun and interactive class! The student success manager and outcomes team were incredibly supportive and available when I needed to discuss my progress, apprehensions, and issues. They encourage you to continue to reach out after graduation and offer to help during the job search. I didn't realize the tech job market would be so difficult to get into at this time, but I know that if I continue to utilize Devmountain's resources, staff, and instruction, I should be able to find tech employment soon.

I really enjoyed attending DevMountain. Personally, I felt like the structure of things were much better in the first half, and that the online content during specs did not match super well with projects, but I am still glad that I did it. My main critique would be that for the portion that was online and without a dedicated instructor, if the videos followed course material that they were made for it would have been much better. It was hard for me to know what things were going to be applicable to projects from videos a lot of the time and ended up focusing more of my time on the projects and just supplementing with the videos.

The first half with foundations was amazing though. I had really great teachers who felt like they really cared and were putting in a ton of work.

Main
today is 03/03/2023, what a lucky day! I have just graduated Devmountain's python software engineering bootcamp. They aren't the most expensive and are very competitive. Instructor Chalon(specs) and Garrett(foundations) were amazing. Always offered a helping hand and helped me to figure out how to think like a programmer.

Part Time Students
Foundations is amazing, Garrett and two mentors who are Matt and Nathan. It was every Tuesday Thursday night and every other Saturday. Every other week was self learn and then the next was lectures. To give you a bit of an insight of my life i am a busser at a local brewery so i had more than enough time on my hands to deep dive into certain aspects so the course work for me was great and i had plenty of time.

The Switch To Full Time
First off I had time on my hands like no other. I had my foundations so learning python was a nice ease into things at first. But then after the excitement of making a killer project in foundations my schedule was lacking and i had no sense of urgency to finish. You just got a bunch of videos to watch and assignments due whenever you complete them... there were no due dates in Part Time Specs unlike foundations you had a unit review due every 2 weeks. That's really my only gripe, I just had wished specs was more like part time foundations. And so I had a conversation with an awesome counselor at Devmountain and they helped me switch within like 5 hours. I can't say this will happen for you so be wary of trying this and i don't recommend it either. I could've done the full time all the way through i just needed to realize it first!

Full Time
Full time was amazing. Fast paced, detailed, fun, difficult, frustrating, and rewarding. All of those are good things. When learning you need direction, or at least i do. I like to feel accomplished and so i did. I was able to push myself and my instructor pushed me. I can't say how much this program has already changed my thinking about school and my love for learning has been re-energized.

Outcomes/ Job Assistance
Since i just graduated they gave us a plethora of information about obtaining a job, networking and more. Taylor helped me build my resume, LinkedIn profile and scripts to get inspired off them. The Outcomes team is truly a great feature and felt as if they cared as much as i care. In which I care a lot!

Messages to future Software Engineers. Make Friends during your cohort, most of them want friends too. I made around 4 solid friendships we talked a lot, encouraging one another and helping eachother grow. 

I'll just start out by saying, I really love Devmountain. The tuition is about $10K where most other bootcamps I looked into were around $13-15K starting. I loved every bit of the Foundations half of the program. You get to build a full-stack application! The curriculum is very well laid out, and I had a lot of resources available to me. There was tons of help available to me, and my instructors/TAs were outrageously helpful. 

At first, I hated the format of the Specializations half (it's very independent learning with support from a tech-lead). But, I'll be honest, by the end of those 8 weeks I feel very prepared to learn on my own, without a teacher holding my hand the whole way. It was just growing pains.
I did have some issues with the curriculum for the Specializations half of the Data Analytics program, because I think I would've liked a week or two of learning things like Data Scraping and other visualization tools like Tableau or Power BI or even just Excel (course is set up for Python & Jupyter Notebooks). I was also hopeful for a little bit more in the way of utilizing SQL within a real database. That said, my tech-lead listened to all of my feedback and although couldn't just change the entire curriculum mid-cohort, he gave coding challenges or instruction that helped fill in those gaps for me. It was a very generous thing to do, and I'm very grateful!

I liked the Outcomes team and that they took time to meet with students individually to go over resumes, LinkedIn profiles etc. They are still available to you even after you graduate which is really cool.

I really believe that Devmountain is there to help you! What you put in is absolutely what you get out of the program. And I do feel empowered with the tools and skills necessary to begin a career as a Data Analyst. 

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.

I couldn't recommend Devmountain enough! I learned so much in my 16 weeks attending there, and they truly go above and beyond for each student. Every day of class is something new and is filled with worthwhile information. Not once did I feel like it was a waste of time, and I was continuously challenged to keep growing and learning. Though the course is rigorous, I also never felt lost because the instructors and staff are so helpful, and like I said they really want you to succeed and grasp what is in the curriculum. They also have extensive help and resources for the real world job search, during and after you graduate. 10/10!

I attended the bootcamp from November 2021-March 2022. The first two months of the bootcamp is the Foundations portion which covers Javascript, HTML, and CSS. The last few weeks of Foundations is spent creating your capstone (website). I believe the Foundations portion did a great job at introducing students to coding and how a webpage is structured from front end to back end. The last two months of the bootcamp is Specializations where students in the cohort break into their chosen subject. This portion of the bootcamp was self taught through videos that I was able to code along with. During my time in Specializations we used the platform PluralSight to obtain our information. Specializations was similar to Foundations in the sense that both portions of the bootcamp finish with a capstone created by the student from scratch. Overall I had a great experience with helpful instructors, staff, and outcomes team. 

This course was amazing!  Before doing DevMountain, I had tried several programming classes and struggled greatly in all of them.  DevMountain was exactly what I needed to gain the confidence and skill to become a software developer.  The first 8 weeks is the foundations course where you learn the basic fundamentals of programming and I received so much individualized and group help that I finally started to understand how programming worked.  The second 8 weeks where I learned Java specifically was much more independent learning style but I still had plenty of support from a tutor, mentor, and also guidance counselor who all helped me to be able to pace myself and complete a full stack app where I used Javascript in the front end and Java in the back end.  The people at DevMountain really care about you and your interests and have the know how to help you succeed.  I had such a great experience that I am going to enroll in their IOS development program later this summer!

I want to tell you about my experience of studying at Devmountain. After a long search, my choice fell on Devmountain. I was happy with the price and read the reviews. Now I will definitely say that this is a very good start for programming. The first two months of the Foundation. At first I was a little frustrated because I thought that all four months would be devoted to learning iOS programming, but later I realized how useful it is to know web programming too! Using the example of web programming, we studied from the basics to how to place a site on the World Wide Web. There are lectures every day and homework every day. Every Friday, a knowledge test on the studied material. The remaining two months are specialization. Yes, most of the time you already spend in independent study of the material, but the material is so well structured and the videos are very thought out to the smallest detail that there are practically no questions. Well, if you have any questions, you can always ask the instructor. I chose iOS programming. The course is excellent, there is a lot of material, it is hard to study, but when you go all the way, you understand how much knowledge was gained during the training. Therefore, I will say this: I will advise everyone to this bootcamp! I want to thank the entire Devmountain team! In my opinion, I got more from training here than I expected. I hope my review will help new students make the right choice!

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.

DevMountain was a great experience, and I'm glad I did it.  The first 8 weeks of the foundation were incredible.  You had dedicated instructors who did lectures daily, live code, and daily labs. 
 
The problem I had with DevMountain was in the last eight weeks.   You no longer have dedicated staff who teach you, and instead, you are given a plural sight subscription and a list of videos to watch daily.  Some days the videos were 7 hours long.  Then at around 12:30 every day, there would be a small number of "subject matter experts" that would be available to help us if we had questions.  Some days it would take hours to get help because there wasn't enough SME's for the number of students.  

That being said, I would do DevMountain again in a heartbeat.  It was one of the best decisions I've made and I would recommend anyone to do it!