Devmountain

Before reading this review, I want to say that all of the facts I've provided below came from searching around on LinkedIn profiles, talking to other members of my cohort and the people that work/teach at DevMountain. I'm not saying they aren't all true, just that this is all to the best of my knowledge and research. For example, there may be a few more people that have found jobs I don't know about but haven't updated their LinkedIn profiles or otherwise made that information available yet.

I graduated in the DM4 Web Development Immersive cohort in August 2015. Of the around 30 members of my cohort, a month later I can only find 5 of us that have found jobs and 3 of those jobs were at DevMountain itself as mentors/assistants. Furthermore, 1 of the 2 non-DevMountain hired students was someone who had been designing and creating websites/apps long before even attending DevMountain. For those 3 jobs offered to students to work at DevMountain, they were all selected mainly because they played integral roles in their group projects. These were all for internal tools the lead instructor wanted made for use in future cohorts. They hired them to stick around to support those tools. I heard this from multiple people who work/teach at DevMountain. Worth noting, this was not disclosed beforehand as a factor for selection to be hired by DevMountain as mentors and many of us that hoped to continue on working and learning there had no knowledge our selection of project had effectively discounted us from the running.

The course material was actually not that bad albeit only slightly better than what can be found online since most instructors taught mainly by live coding in front of the class and didn't always elaborate on the concepts themselves. It seemed like some just hoped you picked it up by watching them code instead of explaining the what, when, where, why, etc. that really helps cement the material in your head. Therefore, some topics were very hard to grasp come project time. What was really odd to me throughout the cohort was that they never shared or wanted to share (I asked many times) the calendar of who was teaching what on which day. I guess this is mainly because people might not show up if a certain instructor was teaching that day since some were, to be brutally honest, mostly useless in helping you fully grasp the concepts. Basically, a lot of self-teaching is required here, so please do not to sign up thinking everything will be handed to you. There were definitely some great instructors there though, specifically Merrick Christensen and Daniel Kesler.

The job assistance at DevMountain is basically non-existent and to be completely fair was never advertised to exist in the first place. I think a lot of us got excited when they hired on Jeff Chapman to help work on this and kind of saw it as the start of a job assistance department. This however must have been optimistic thinking because I still honestly haven't even been contacted since graduating over a month ago as I continue on aimlessly in my (so far) fruitless job search.

In the end, the question that really matters is: In my time at DevMountain, did I learn to code great Web Applications? The answer is both yes and no. I came in starting from basically zero knowledge and ended my time there being able to create full stack applications with great functionality from scratch. However, I feel like around half of this was due to personal study and perseverance and not from the school's curriculum itself. Also, the whole UI/UX portion of making your websites/apps look great along with working great is very much not emphasized, but I've heard this about almost all of the JavaScript-centric bootcamps, including the biggest ones.

To summarize all this up:

- What did DevMountain excel at? Teaching us the core and some of the advanced concepts of JavaScript and many of the popular frameworks and utilities such as AngularJS, NodeJS, MongoDB and Mongoose along with basic HTML/CSS/jQuery/ReactJS.

- What would I improve? Spend less time on breaks and working on solo projects and more time on learning concepts to make us more hirable. Almost 4 weeks of the class (including the one week of break aka Interim Week) are spent working on personal projects which to me is not a valuable use of time when there are so many more concepts that we could learn or spend time elaborating on. The idea of having a week long break in the middle of the class to me is wrong to me as well. We only have 3 months to learn as much as we can before trying to start our career, we need all the time we can get. Also, definitely make job assistance part of the budget. As I said before, almost all of us are having issues getting hired, from my cohort at least.

I wrote this review because I currently would not recommend this course for someone looking to start a career in Web Development. From what I've seen, there are other schools out there that may cost more, but seem to have higher amounts of satisfied and (most importantly) employed graduates with transparent data available to back up their claims. Overall, for me, DevMountain’s Immersive Web Development course turned out to be more of a 0-50 learning experience instead of the 0-60 that I felt like I was promised.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to contact me at dm4student@gmail.com.

I am having a hard time with the teaching methods of UVU regarding computer development and programming. I heard about this bootcamp from a friend that immediately tripled their income only a month after finishing the 3 month course. I signed up and received pre-work to start the course. I haven't started the course yet but have worked on the pre-work. I have learned more in Just 5 hours worth of pre-course work than I learned if half a semester at UVU. I love the teaching method of DevMountain and think it is the most effective way out their to learn. I am incredibly excited to start my course.

Up to this point (half way through), I'm thrilled with my decision to learn iOS at DevMountain.  They aren't kidding when they use the term 'immersive'. -- 9 hours of class a day, generally paired with another 2-3 hours outside of class completing challenges, coding, reading, working on personal projects, etc.  It's intense.  Despite my fear of getting burned out and/or left in the dust, at this point I find I'm actually headed the opposite direction.  I want to keep going, keep learning, keep running into problems so I can keep finding answers.  While I had no background in coding at all, I was interested in it.  Now, once I get going, I have to make a conscious effort to take a break, get some exercise, eat some dinner, whatever.  It has consumed me, which is probably the best review I can offer.  DevMountain teaches the basics, and more importantly cultivates an ability (and for myself a desire) to find answers independently.  I enjoy the instructors, mentors and environment, and I can't imagine any other bootcamp offering this much bang for the buck.

*Regarding the job category, I'll be marking it a 3, simply based on the fact that I don't actually have a strong opinion on the matter since I still have half the course to finish before I start looking for work.

Overall my experience has been mixed with DevMountain. Like the other user that has participated in the SLC Web Development After Hours course I feel a bit let down by DevMountain as a whole. There have been multiple days that we have been locked out of the building, had teachers not showing up at all or just being late on a regular basis. Also as the other user stated the mentors while being great people can be very hit and miss, some are helpful, some have trouble answering simple questions in regards to coding issues. They have 100% stopped teaching back-end which is a big disappointment to me because I was looking forward to this and on top of that they are now telling us our demo-day is now just going to be showing to the class instead of showing to potential employers. Once again, another big thing I was looking forward to that is gone and I believe is going to make it much tougher to become employed leaving this program.

That being said DevMountain certainly gave me the tools to get started. I previously had very little coding experience but DevMountain's course has made me comfortable enough with the basics of HTML/CSS/JS/Angular to learn more. The thing is the majority of what I'm learning at this point comes from self-study and places like Code School and Team Treehouse, but I have to give credit to DevMountain here because I don't believe I would be able to as quickly understand and excel with my self-study if it wasn't for DevMountains instruction.

I also 100% agree that if DevMountain is not willing to put more focus and time into their SLC campus and their after-hours classes than they should just drop the after-hours classes and maybe the SLC campus entirely.

I attended to Dev Mountain's iOS immersive course this past winter. I chose Dev Mounatin because of the low price and the housing they offered. The experience was great and the teachers, mentors, and guest teachers were all passionate about their jobs ensuring that we as students, understood the lessons. I entered the course with zero developing experience and now have a job doing iOS development. The career change has been great, in so much that my wife is currently attending the Summer IOS course to pursue a career in development as well.  Thank You Dev Mountain!

My time spent at DevMountain was great. I had never done any sort of coding before so I came into the bootcamp really green. I got a lot out of the part-time cohort but it seems that the instructors and organization down in provo couldn't give a damn about the way things are run in slc. There were multiple days where instructors wouldn't show up to teach. We were locked out of the classroom as a class and some of the Mentors knew very little about how to help students succeed. There was no pair-programming in the class which is what excited me about it in the first place and there was just not enough time spent on Data-Structures and algorithms (which is something that I'm constantly using today in my career and wish I had a lot more time on). I heard that after my cohort they stopped teaching back end altogether. DevMountain should give up on trying to teach the after hours program and focus on all full-time programs.

All that being said, I had great success (unlike the majority of my classmates) and ended up getting a job after much self-study and learning post graduation. My hope is that DevMountain irons out their kinks and really starts to focus on the program as opposed to the cash making machine it has become! Otherwise I see it just going the way of all other mediocre at best programs out there. 

DevMountain provided me the foundation to become a successful iOS developer. With fantastic instructors and the ability to get the help you need when you need it you receive an incredible education. They provide instruction based on real world experience and teach you what you need to know to become a great developer.  After taking computer science classes in college and learning some basic programming skills at a slow rate I wanted more. Having a developer in the family I asked what he would recommend me doing and thats when he brought up DevMountain. Because of DevMountain I have a solid career path and the ability to make an impact. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn from the best and look forward to seeing DevMountain produce top quality developers. 

DevMountain is one of the best bootcamps in the nation. It it one of the most affordable and also most intensive that you can find. The teachers are very accomplished and extrememly good and what they do. The course expects a lot out of its students but is very rewarding. Most of the students had 2 apps in the appstore at graduation and had job offers or interviews when we graduated. I landed the job I have now before I even graduated. DevMountain was the best decision of my life. 

I literally knew nothing about code or development. All I knew was that I didn't want to work in a call center for the rest of my life. I looked around and interviewed every single code camp in Utah. All of them. DevMountain was by far the most personable, knowledgeable and real out of them all. They don't accept everyone, but they do believe that everyone they accept has the potential to learn and grow into a developer.

DevMountain taught me more in three months than I learned in a whole semester at the community college. Since completing DevMountain I have reccomended everyone I think would be a good fit to go there. A few of my friends, who just graduated with four year degrees, will be attending DevMountain and I hope that it changes their life like it changed mine. I doubled my salary in just three months and now work for one of the largest online retailers in the world. Life isn't good, it's great.

It was an intense 12 weeks but I got so much out of it. As with any boot camp, you can't expect them to hand hold you through out the whole course. You will get what you put in. The teachers and the mentors explained clearly the concepts and they were fun to be around. I love the new Salt Lake location its very spacious and they provide snacks and water to keep you going.

They provided free housing which is a 5-10 tracks ride (VTA Trax which they ALSO provide a bus/train pass). When they mean, immersive, they mean immsersive.

They hit all the needed course materials without getting to bogged down on the details (Having encountered the detail myself rather than hearing them explain it saved them/me more time). It was an overall rewarding experience.

I got a job within 3 weeks!