A Trilogy Education / University of Minnesota Coding Boot Camp Review

Forward

This is a review of a University of Minnesota / Trillogy Education Services Coding Boot Camp from the perspective of a student who completed the full time boot camp that ran from February to May 2018.

My primary motivation for writing this is to share my experience in the hopes that others might find it useful. When I started looking into coding boot camps I found very little information available that was written from the perspective of the students and at that time I decided that if I did take the course I would write about it later on.

It should be noted that:

I have not received any pay or anything for writing this review.
I'm writing this semi anonymously (obviously fellow students and the school probabbly know who I am) for no other reason than it seems like a good best practice.
This is perspective of just one student. Other classes at other locations or even the same school may involve far different experiences, other students in my own class no doubt feel differently about the class than I do, and that's ok ;)
This is a very long winded, poorly written, and poorly edited review. Honestly, I just wrote this in a couple rounds of writing and a few months later decided to post it as is just to get it out there as other people also considering taking similar coding boot camps asked me to do so.

About Complaining

After writing this I realize. I’m complaining a lot here so I added this section. I think all the complaining because day to day learning is not particularly noteworthy and talking about problems is easy, and talking about times where there aren't problems... well what is there to say about that other than "nice".

Ultimately before you get a lot of my griping I want to say that my experience in the University of Minnesota / Trilogy Education Services Coding Boot Camp was very MIXED. I learned awesome things, I often had a great time, I had a great instructor, and I worked with some great students. At the same time the program had some fundamental flaws that in my opinion were pretty terrible.

In the end the program “worked” for me I changed careers and I got an entry level type web development job. At the same time I know a lot of people who took the course struggling just to get interviews, and some who I don’t think the program did much for their prospects.

Writer’s Background:

I am in my early 40s. I did not complete a college degree. I left college early to take an opportunity to work and I turned that into a long and well paying career in the data center networking business working for a company based out of silicon valley. Before the course I had no substantial coding experience but I obviously was comfortable with technology, debugging, / troubleshooting. I enrolled in the coding boot camp as part of a strategy to change career paths as my heart wasn’t in networking anymore, I wanted to do something new.

I had no illusions going into this career change that I would immediately make the same amount of money changing careers that I had when I was in the networking business. I'd be starting as a new guy again and I accepted that.

The Course:

University of Minnesota / Trilogy Education Services Coding Boot Camp is a full stack web development program. The course covers: HTML/CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, React.js, Bootstrap, Express.js, Node.js, SQL, MongoDB, and Git. Note that if you check the website also lists Java, and some other items, my class did not get to those topics (more on that later).

https://bootcamp.umn.edu

It is important to know that the University of Minnesota Coding Boot Camp is run by the College of Continuing and Professional Studies at the University of Minnesota, but this is done in a sort of partnership with Trilogy Education Services, a company that partners with a lot of schools to provide coding bootcamps. The instructors are employees of Trilogy Education Services, the sales people you speak to who try to get you to enroll in the program I think work for Trilogy Education Services (not 100% sure on that), but the local administration of the program is run by College of Continuing and Professional Studies at the University of Minnesota. If this sounds like a bit of a weird mishmash, it kinda is, I’ll get into that later.

The result is that you are NOT a student at the University of Minnesota in the traditional sense. You get a certificate from the College of Continuing and Professional Studies, but no college credits. It also means that there is no connection between the coding camp and the University’s own University of Minnesota: Department of Computer Science and Engineering or any other department other than the College of Continuing and Professional Studies that I could tell…. Effectively this is a Trilogy Education Services camp hosted and managed by the University of Minnesota.

None of the above is necessarily bad, and while these facts aren’t hidden as you get some emails and etc from Trilogy, they are also not advertised either. Most of the branding is University of Minnesota, but really it seems like the University of Minnesota bought a sort of snap in course that they have limited involvement with. There seemed to be nothing added to the course by the University of Minnesota that seemed like a value add for choosing the University of Minnesota’s camp. It may as well have been taught at some local hotel and I suspect it would have been the same course / content…. and the same job outcome for all involved.

Full Time vs. Part Time

The program has full time and part time classes. Full time (what I chose) was Monday through Friday 10 am to 2:30 pm on the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota and lasts 12 weeks. The part time program I belive meets two weeknights and one weekend day and lasts 24 weeks.

Outside of Class Time

I want to be clear that even the Trilogy Education / University of Minnesota Coding Boot Camp notes that you're expected to do a GREAT DEAL of work outside of class. That 10am to 2:30pm is just in class time, and most of your serious coding happens outside that time. Be prepared to really dedicate a great deal of time to class, or just don't take it. I'm not joking about that "or don't take it", and that probabbly applies to all boot camps if you want to make them worthwhile.

Cost

+$10,000

Format

The program often followed a pattern that seemed effective. There would be a lecture involving some coding by the instructor where they demonstrate some new concepts. Then some quick activities where you reproduce their work with a twist or two, and them maybe a larger challenge for you and a small group (2 to 4 people) of the people sitting around you (they organized the small groups after a while). This pattern would repeat itself through the day.

Then twice a week you have homework due where you are given a challenge to complete yourself that often has some additional concepts you need to discover yourself to complete.

Facilities:

The classes took place at the Continuing Education and Conference Center. This is an alright facility, but the rooms are not very modern as far as class rooms. It really is just an old conference center. So long fold up tables that are sufficient, some weak projectors, odd lighting and audio, and power strips scattered around the room in odd ways that you will want to adjust every morning...

In my experience we changed rooms frequently and a few rooms were straight up poor classrooms, bad audio, bad seating, bad lighting. This is especially annoying when you’re working in groups in odd rooms with limited space. Word has it we moved because there were renovations going on, but I didn’t see much in the way of renovations happening. Personally I suspect we got moved out so that other groups could use the rooms we used frequently (I saw them using them). More on this topic later…

Career Services:

Career services are advertised as part of the package. Career services are delivered by Trilogy Education Services, the University of Minnesota has NOTHING to do with career services. There is nothing added to career services by the university, it is 100% Trilogy. Ask anyone at the U about career services and they will tell you “Talk to Trilogy”. It should be noted that Trilogy Education Services seems to have NOBODY in the Twin Cities area and no contacts with any local companies / they know nothing about the Twin Cities job market, and most companies know nothing about the boot camp. If you’re hoping for some sort of University of Minnesota career services / networking, there is none of that. I’ll talk more about that later too.

Enrolling

I applied to three different coding camps in the area before I chose the University of Minnesota. All their on-boarding was similar-ish. You are told about the camp as you would expect and you take a “test” to see if you are qualified. In all cases portions of the test were similar (sometimes identical), and that makes some sense as they included fairly clear logic puzzles (predicting patterns in images) and so forth.

After the test they congratulate you for passing the test (warm fuzzy) and push you to enroll. One program had some further tests that were simple (make a personal github page) and IMO also also reasonable. These tests are not hard and I sort of suspect that you can’t “fail” outside of maybe getting everything wrong… but I don’t know for sure.

After enrolling the University of Minnesota / Trilogy Education Services Coding Boot Camp involves a fair amount of pre-work. Installing lots of software (they require you have a laptop), doing several activities regarding typing, make a few Scratch games, some basic troubleshooting just by visually comparing code you are provided (but not expected to understand) and so forth. These were all reasonable activities although IMO they should be far more rigorous.

In addition there were quite a number of hours of pre class work that were "required". I say "required" with quotes because later it became clear that not everyone completed the "required" prework and this had some consequences.

The class also requires that you bring a laptop, this is reasonable and not optional.... of course it isn't.

Story Time:

From here on out I’m writing this more as a narrative than just a list. Editor's note, naw that doesn't last long.

Starting out:

I ultimately chose the University of Minnesota / Trilogy Education Services Coding Boot Camp because of timing. The University of Minnesota full time program started sooner than the other camps that I was looking into. I chose a full time program as I wanted to learn quickly, stay focused, and I had the time to do a full time program.

The first day we were welcomed by some of the very nice College of Continuing and Professional Studies staff. We got a pep talk on the challenges we would face and the rules were laid down for class. Some of those rules were (not word for word here):

Late homework is missed homework.
Turn in any homework you have when it is due, even if incomplete, it still counts as completing the requirement no matter how complete / incomplete it is.
Miss two (I think that was the rule… maybe three) homeworks and you do not graduate (receive a certificate).
If you check in 30 minutes after class starts or leave 30 minutes before it ends it counts as an absence.
You have a limited number of allowed absences (I want to say it was 4... ), more than that and you do not graduate (receive a certificate).

To be clear I think these are great rules. They are harsh, but fair. This was a full time bootcamp and getting to class and doing your work is important. If you can’t meet those requirements then you shouldn’t be in the program and you’re wasting your and everyone else’s time. If your life is hectic and you can’t be sure you’re going to be in class, really a boot camp is not for you. Again that is harsh, but best for everyone including the student who might be better off taking another path.

With all the administrative stuff out of the way we got started. Our class started a bit bumpy. First of all we had only one TA (teacher’s assistant) not two TAs like we were told. The TA was a recent graduate from another bootcamp. To be clear I think that is acceptable that the TA be a recent bootcamp graduate, that’s enough for a TA to be effective early on with easier concepts and presumably they would be working on their own to learn and should be far enough ahead to help later in the program.

Our instructor had a what looked like as a good career and was an experienced developer, no problem there experience wise.

On the other hand the TA from day one was clearly… not dedicated to their position. There was no proactive help from the TA, if someone didn’t call that TA over, they almost never got out of their chair at the back of the room, and on many occasions the instructor would call on this TA to do things and they clearly didn’t understand because they were not following along. Memes and job hunting was what was on that TA’s screen most of the time we walked by. I gave up on calling that TA over to answer questions as they were pretty terrible in terms of technical things as well.

Our instructor also struggled a little early on when it came to instruction. Many of the slides and course information were… weirdly organized. Honestly, it felt like a dozen people remotely working against each other organized the slides and information at times. They just didn’t flow / weren’t logical / bounced around. After about a week our instructor clearly had made some adjustments and things flowed a bit better. The slides though were always terrible to some extent.

While our instructor would prove to be a great as an instructor ... our lone TA, did not change, in fact it was clear by the end of the program that this TA didn’t care that they were poor at their job, in fact this TA outright said that they didn't really care later in the program. It was a bit shocking ... because the TA was apparently also unaware that telling students that you just don't care about doing a good job is ... kinda insulting to the students as they're impacting the experience by not trying.

We would eventually get a second (better, but again not super involved) TA about 5 or 6 weeks into the class, but the lack of help early on had irreversible consequences as constant stopping to fix slides, reorganize where the class was headed, or just get the TA in the game left some students floundering and they would not catch up... and that would impact EVERYONE.

The first few weeks were HTML and CSS. I think most full stack programs start there and IMO it is a good place to start…. except that floats are the devil’s work, but I can’t blame anyone for that.

The homework and activities surrounding HTML and CSS were all fine and did a good job illustrating the required points. I will say that CSS being a deep topic probabbly didn't get enough coverage in our class... but really that would be a theme for a lot of topics that I took. What can you really do in 3 months?

Coffee is For Coders (but not you....)

A few days into the program we hit an annoying bump. Just to drill our second class status at the conference center home, we were suddenly forbidden from enjoying the coffee or any other treats offered to…. everyone else meeting at the conference center in the lobby. Just before we were told that we were banned from the treats, a man ushered me away from getting, water (yes, just water) because “that’s not for you”. Granted it wasn’t just water, there was ice in it, and some lemons floating in the cooler thing. It was some serous water apparently that was "not for you".

After that they put up a sign that said “Food & Beverage IS NOT FOR CODING BOOT CAMP THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION”. This sign stayed up for weeks and other guests would mill about wondering aloud “Who are the bootcamp people?” “Oh is that them?” Someone stood not far from the food and monitored for a few days… I have to think that person’s pay was more money than any coffee we might drink. It was explained to us that there was a budgetary mix up, thus our banishment from the beverages (and yes we were told our ban included that wonderful lemon water…).

This is hardly the end of the world, but also so minor and petty that when you’re paying +$10k for a class, maybe you could get some coffee like the rest of the adults at the conference center. I worked in the business world for a long time, I can’t remember it ever being acceptable to deny a customer or anyone coffee… let alone put up a sign about it singling them out. This is one of those bureaucratic things that is not terrible in practice, but so unnecessary and sends a much bigger message.

After a few weeks they did roll in some coffee (just coffee, no snacks, no water) into the room each day, but it was pretty limited, IMO, pretty terrible, and I’ll drink just about any coffee. It was made clear a couple times that our banishment from the food and beverages was permanent.

Another challenge was the class size. We were around 30 students, larger than I was quoted over the phone (they told me 20...), and with only one TA for a good part of the program this clearly had an impact that I will talk about later. Again if you're paying 10k a class you would hope for some limits on class size but clearly there was no real limit as several students reported getting in beyond what I was told the "deadline" was.... and without question many students did not complete the prework that the class required and still got in .... this was a profitable choice no doubt... less so for the students.

Moving On, Bringing Coffee From Home

Our instructor got his feet under him pretty fast considering the state of the class material. I really liked my instructor, while the instructor had no teaching experience he clearly was quite capable technically and as an instructor. He was patient and understood that giving the exact answer was not always the best way to teach people. He also flew around the room answering questions during projects and practice activities. The TA ... not so much ... too busy hunting for hobs.

Once we hit JavaScript things accelerated and that is when you really start to struggle to some extent, and hopefully win some of those struggles. I can remember doing a victory dance after fighting some functions. It the technical aspects might not sound impressive to me now, but my victory was real and it felt great. Those of us who arrived early to class would show each other neat tricks we found and we were oh so proud of our 10 or 20 lines of messy code. We were right to be proud. Plenty of "holy what the hell is switch case?!?? oh that's cool!" moments.

Those first JavaScript weeks were also when you started to see the class drift into those “struggling but learning”, and those “struggling, but falling behind” (those are my phrases). Everyone struggles in a boot camp (if you don’t, you probably should be looking for a job or another route to learn) Boot camp material is likely to be almost all new material to everyone in the program. Programming is not easy and everyone had their failures, and that's ok, but there is struggling and learning, and just STRUGGLING. It can be hard to tell exactly where you are until a thing here or there "clicks" and you see the light (for 10 minutes until you hit a new challenge).

Group Projects and Other Students

I want to open this part by saying that I have the upmost respect for all my fellow students who took the boot camp with me. There was a wide variety of ages, experiences, and all sorts of people taking the class for different reasons. And going into a camp like this, throwing down the money, and taking a chance is something you have to be pretty brave to do.

The nature of coding boot camps these days is that they're populated by people who are new to coding. Thus it's really hard to even have a clue if this is a good path for you, if you'll like it... or if it fits your personal skills career wise ... or if it doesn't at all. I had no idea going in.

The result is some folks will find that coding is just not for them. It seems inevitable and for those who really try and find it isn't for them, there's no shame in that at all.

Sadly it is also true that if you have enough people falling behind in a class, it is going to impact the progress of the class, the group projects, and the experience for everyone in the class. This is exacerbated when you have disorganized class materials, LOTS of students, a missing TA, a TA who is not really there... and so on. I'm sure you see where I'm going.

Eventually we reached our first "large group project."

The program involved three of what I will call "large group projects" over the course of the program that take about 5 days or more. All groups were assigned by the instructor, so you couldn’t pick your buddies to work on a project together (probabbly for the best early on). Each group got to pick what their project would be with some guidance from the instructor on scope of the project and organization (little to no useful guidance from the TA, the TA was not paying attention...).

The first group project was an eye opener for me. Up until the first group project is is kinda hard to tell how your peers are doing until you work with them longer and deeper into the program. You get a hint here or there when you work on small coding challenges with them, maybe you get to know a couple people doing well, but you can’t be 100% sure about most of the class.

This also became the point where I realized one of the largest weakness of the program may have been, my fellow students. :(

Now granted all students struggle in a boot camp. If you’re not struggling in a coding camp, you probably don’t need to be there. Generally the class quickly separated into groups who were struggling but learning / making progress and those who were struggling and ... not.

The "large group projects" we were told were great portfolio projects to show future employers, so it was something you wanted to do well.... and when things go well it can be a stressful situation for everyone no matter how well they were doing.

Quickly it became clear that a lot of people were falling behind, and in a way that worried me for their future in the class, and what would become of the class.

As I said everyone struggles in a boot camp but just to illustrate I'll mention some examples:

Takes days to put together some very basic HTML for one page.
Could not find files on their computer they were working with the previous day.
Didn't complete the prework that was "required" before class began, do not have the necessary programs installed on their laptop and the clearly could not install them without very clear step by step help. (you're probabbly getting the idea by now)

I want to be clear I give those examples not to mock anyone, but to illustrate how basic some of the struggles were for some students. Some students simply didn't have the knowledge to know what they were getting into... and for that I blame Trilogy Education / University of Minnesota.

I'm not entirely sure how much the instructor or staff knew as the class went on... at least not until later in the class. The instructor really tried their best to help but many students who struggled simply didn't ask questions, and straight up would say they "got it" when they absolutely did not. And with one missing TA and the other not really there.... there was little view of the class's true status progress wise until probabbly it was too late.

For those students who struggled with basic PC skills, they shouldn't have been in the class, simply not accepted. For those who were found in the class, it should have been an invite to a partial refund and removed from the class.

I say removed because some students who failed to complete the requirements for class and were on track to simply not "graduate" (get a certificate) were still in class. They still took time from the instructor and TA... and they were still assigned to groups.

This meant that those of us on track to graduate had to bring those students along in class.... show them how to operate their computer, or just the basics that we learned weeks earlier, during all that time we're not learning. That time, in some situations were A LOT of time.

Worse yet if you wanted to ask the instructor a "complex question," you had people who clearly did NOT try to look for anyone else and were busy asking the same question you can get with basic googling their exact question word for word....eating up all that instructor's time.

Now I'm happy to help and spent a lot of time helping my fellow students, and many helped me, but at some point it is such a mismatch that it seems unfair that I was paying $10K .... to basically be a fill in TA (because you can't get help from the only TA (or the other who later joined)) for my own team rather than spend ANY time working on my own work. That of course applied to me, and others who were also frustrated with similar situations.

There were moments where I felt like I was dying while I tried to help folks and kept thinking:

I just told you what to type... why aren't your hands on the keyboard ... just ... why ... put your hands up there and .... PUT YOUR HANDS ON THE KEYBOARD AND JUST TRY DAMN IT!

Now in the real working world there are of course different skill levels, but I doubt there are many coders out there showing other coders how to find files on their computer, again ... and a.... you get the picture.

Again I bring this up not to mock anyone, but for some IMO some sort of intervention where they were invited to pursue other career paths could have saved them time and money, and benefited everyone. But I don't suppose anyone makes money giving refunds or offering them.

Something Good

I do want to take a minute and say something positive.

In the camp it progressed from HTML, to CSS, to JavaScript. JavaScript I was told was where things got hard... but for me it was where things started to make sense (but still hard). CSS and HTML broke and just looked bad / overlapped / broke spacetime and made a black hole.

JavaScript made more sense. First of all using a code editor like VSCode with JavaScript it is a lot more strict where you can make all sorts of silly stuff with HTML and CSS and VSCode just doesn't care. JavaScript is just more heavily formatted and so you get a lot better feedback when it comes to simple code layout.

But the real revelation was that JavaScript gave you ERRORS and errors are the best thing ever, and it took me a while to understand that.

At first I would get so frustrated with these absurdly vague errors until I spent a lot more time reading errors and googling them endlessly that I realized they told me so much about my code and what was going on. I wouldn't always know what it was they were telling me (most of the time not) but it was in there, and I could find it.

It is to the point now where I make a change in code, expect an error "this probabbly won't work but lets's see how it craps out" and then I get an error or console output that points me in the right direction. I now / expect and look for errors as something good that points me in a direction. It's one of those lessons that took me a while to learn and of course errors take time to get comfortable with to be useful.

I remember doing a wonderful dance when after working on a JavaScript trivia game with a ton of nested call backs that I finally got it. I was fighting and frustrated until like 3 am, and I could have quit (younger me would have...) but I decided to keep going and ... it worked.

I did a silly dance and not just because I finished my program, but because I "got it" I finally understood what it was was going wrong and without all that frustration, I'm not sure I would have learned it nearly as well.

The lesson being that the struggle is as much a part of learning coding (well it is for me) as getting it right in the end. The struggles are the things that sink in and you don't dork up again (well, not soon, maybe).

About that Homework

One of the biggest frustrations I experienced was homework. I want to be clear and say that I think homework was critical to learning in this class. At some point you need to go home, go on your computer... and TRY. That is where you learn. I've got no problem with that.

The homework usually included making a program using about 90% to 100% of the topics you were taught in class in the past few days with a few elements you had to go out on the internet and learn yourself. That last 10% or so really frustrated students but I've since learned that being able to pick up another concept, programming pattern, etc is where the magic really is.

No class will ever tell you everything, no career, no boss, and while asking is important.... you have to be able to learn somethings yourself, in fact quite often IMO. For those folks who want to be told exactly when and how to push the buttons, programming is not for you.

Sadly, much like the class slides, the homework instructions were a mess. A typical set of homework instructions followed this pattern:

Tell you a bit about the homework.
Tell you some setup instructions (file structure, etc).
Tell you a bit more about the homework out of nowhere. You thought you knew what you were supposed to do, but now you’re confused because they just added to it with a paragraph seemingly disconnected from everything else.
Tell you some setup instructions (file structure, etc), again… but different.
Maybe an incomplete sentence or two.

Worse yet when you took the Full Time coding camp it was painfully clear that dates and instructions on materials were for the part time classes…. sometimes, creating more confusion.

Just to top it all off homework was due on Mondays, and Thursdays. This meant that you really didn't have any time to ask many questions about concepts related to the Monday homework that you just got on Friday (you often had no visibility the homework until Friday late...) and was due in class the next Monday and because we're always short on time .... just don't have time to talk about it because of the weekend.

It was a mess that could have been fixed easily, even just proofreading the instructions would have helped. (I'm aware of the irony that i'm not proofreading this blog post... but nobody is giving me 10k for it either, or multiple people giving 10k)

The layout and poor timing of the homework due dates just seemed to indicate that the full time class was really just the part time awkwardly squished together.

The Never Ending Saga of Not Getting Git

Another issue was that the class had a gitlab repository that contained most of what you needed for the class (homework, activities, even some extra help videos). The very first day we all cloned the repository and were told to git pull on a regular basis. As noted with projects some students simply forgot where they cloned it...if they ever did it correctly.

But soon after we relied on Slack to send out instructions for many short exercises and activities (despite them being in the repository). This was a wonky way to do it, especially with one TA who was never ready to do it (pay attention, seriously)….. Why did we do it that way? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect some students never cloned the class repository (or forgot where they cloned it and didn’t think to clone it again). And to top it off the TA didn’t update the repository very often… even days at a time.

Again… if someone can’t clone / keep track of where they cloned a repository, it’s just going to be problems for the whole class, and there it was again :(

Later we did exclusively used the gitlab repository and abandoned Slacking out instructions. The astonished response to the announcement by some classmates was seriously disheartening for me. “Why can’t we just Slack it out!?!?!” sounded a lot like “Can someone send me another copy of the TPS report!?!?!?”

I honestly don't think those students understood what happened when they git pulled and how convenient that was, so their response was to complain. This was in spite of the instructor's repeated efforts to explain it.

More Good News Time!

Let’s throw in some more good news! I really liked my instructor. I feel like he was experienced and well rounded technically enough to answer more advanced questions, but also a capable teacher who can answer questions in a way someone new to web development needs to hear it. His patience, far better than mine.

I also enjoyed going back to school. I was a terrible student oh so long ago and I was very nervous about going back. I mean, maybe I just suck at school?

I don’t know what changed, but the idea of sitting in a classroom and someone providing me knowledge was pretty thrilling. I have no idea why I didn’t feel that way when I was in college, but now everyday was an opportunity to learn more, and here were people trying to teach it to me. In addition some of the other students were just as excited as I was. It sounds cliche, but that really motivated me. I wish the class could have gone full time for 4, 5, or 6 months.

Granted I spent most of the program in the mode of WAKE, SCHOOL, HOME, TEND TO KIDS, PUT KIDS TO BED, CODE... WAKE...

I really didn't do much of anything outside of coding and such, but I enjoyed it.

Being older (I don't think of myself that way, but go back to school and you notice) I was a bit worried about the older student / younger student dynamic. Would these kids want to work with someone nearly twice their age? In reality it was not a problem at all. I worked with people my age, and people nearly half my age and we just worked hard and got along like anyone else. There were Dad jokes … and rightfully so… I mean you’re going to get a terrible sunburn if you keep standing in the sun like that.

Really the instructor and some of my fellow students were a real highlight. The end of my networking career was a bit of a downer for me even if I didn't want to do it anymore, despite all the stress of a boot camp... those folks really got me going again.

I should also note that a new TA did finally join the class (half way through?). But the damage was done as far as many classmates falling behind. This TA was more involved, and clearly more technically skilled... most of the time. But that TA sat around a lot too...

Feedback Time

A good reader question also would be “Hey Jerkface! Did you bother to tell anyone about this stuff you’re complaining about!??!?”

I absolutely did provide feedback. The university camp administrator asked for feedback every week, and was very responsive when I contacted them via Slack. My conversations with the administrator made me believe that the administrator took my feedback seriously and understood the severity of the issues I was reporting.

After reporting poor TA performance, there was an immediate jump in activity / involvement by the TAs, although the bad TA pretty much remained…. bad / low effort.

One aspect that I was concerned with was that supposedly the lack of TA activity was because the TA's were grading homework, but that was clearly not the case as we could see they were way behind (you never got feedback when it counted) grading homework and ... we hardly ever saw them actually doing it.

Ultimately the feedback I provided probably wasn’t going to change the program before it ended so any dramatic changes would have been unrealistic to expect.

On The Topic Of Administration

The University of Minnesota had a student success manager who I spoke to and felt was very capable and cared a great deal about the program. The catch is that this person seemed to be running the show all them-self. This was a job that no matter how capable anyone is, seemed like it needed several people assigned to it, or at least a lot of assistants assigned to the student success manager. And maybe some quality control folks to review materials and watch the TA's read meme's / job hunt all day.

It is easy to think that someone at the University of Minnesota was sold on, or saw the Trilogy Education Services Coding Boot Camp as some sort of snap in program that could be lightly administered and bring in good money (and I would also assume they thought people would get a good education)... I don’t know that, but I wonder.

To be clear the University of Minnesota / Trilogy Education Services Coding Boot Camp was new even when I took the class. I believe it may have only been the third semester that it was run…. But even so, budgetary issues with coffee, basic proofreading, terrible slides, moving between bad classrooms, terrible TA … those are not “new program issues” those are simply issues that enough staff, time, observation, could have solved, but it didn’t happen.

About Career Services

Career services is a pretty hyped part of the program as far as the sales pitch goes. As I noted before career services was ONLY run by Trilogy Education Services . Any University of Minnesota help you might have hoped for such as connections to companies or advice …. Nope, NONE of that exists. If you’re not disappointed to hear that… well I was.

What career services does is largely give you advice on getting a job, networking, resume writing, LinkedIn help, portfolio advice. These were somewhat helpful to me and the people working for them do seem enthusiastic, but they’re remote, they can only do so much with no contacts in the area.

Also some of their material gave some odd suggestions. One suggestion on a handout indicated that you should use some sites to find the email for local CIOs and email or call them. I don’t doubt that might have worked for someone, sometime, but if everyone in the multiple classes did that…. that would just be a lot of spam.

Trilogy Education Services career services lack of reach into the Minnesota / Twin Cities area is a huge negative. Many employers I spoke to had no clue such a program even existed at the University of Minnesota. You can do all the LinkedIn, Resume and related work… but you still are faced with cold applying to companies.

Another challenge is that career services starts during the program. I understand why, building a resume and all the interviewing advice and such takes a lot longer to do than you might expect. At the same time filling out forms for career services is a huge pain when you’re struggling with some code and putting hours a night into that work already. While I completed some work during the class most of my career services work was done after the program ended and that took a good week or two before I felt comfortable with any resume or other stuff.

No Coffee or Java?

After JavaScript we moved on to Node.js and SQL, MongoDB, React. One of the topics we were scheduled to go over was ... Java. We never touched on it due to time constraints, not at all. If that is concerning.... yeah it was for me too. Here was kinda an important language we were supposed to at least touch on... nope.

Python? We quit following those slides as again we had problems getting some students to install some required software.

It might be for the best that we stuck with JavaScript related topics through the entire program, and maybe that is how it should be if you have 3 months, but we were sold on more than that, and they simply did not deliver, at all.

The fact that they thought they could touch on those topics made me wonder if my class was just that slow, or if they simply still had no clue how to structure the class.

Things You Don't Expect

One last bit about fellow students. I felt like there was reason to remove some other students, and not for being bad at computers / to redirect them to a new path.... I'm hesitant to mention this but at the same time I feel like I should if only to illustrate how off the rails things could get. So we had some behavioral issues in our class.

Student A

There was a student whose emotional outbursts at first seemed like someone in distress, but over time in my opinion proved to be used to harass team members in a strange sort of way. This person was often upset and they were going to make damn sure everyone within earshot, and particularly those the were working with was going to feel it… all the time.

The behavior was something I wouldn’t allow with my kids… and the behavior was CONSTANT, especially when doing large group projects (multiple times a day when working with the three larger projects … and it continued even over Slack at night with snide comments). It just never ended, yelling, throwing what I would call “emotional fits” involving yelling and so forth.

So wasn’t this person removed?

Honestly, I didn’t ask that they be removed or anything like that (by the end I wish I had), mostly because I was fortunate enough not to have to work with this person for more than an afternoon. The real catch was in how the behavior manifested itself.

The yelling wasn’t what you would traditionally think of someone targeting an individual. This person didn’t say “you suck” outright, but still their behavior was always mean spirited. The sum of their behavior was that everyone in this person’s group (and everyone within earshot) had to endure this persons frustration, yelling, crying, and etc all the time. To top it off, this was an adult student like me… it was terrible stuff, a constant distraction.

Now on the internet armchair psychologists like myself will wonder about a serious mental illness. I say serious because it was that bad. And I’d be sympathetic to that…. if this person wasn’t a grown adult who clearly was aware of their behavior and just kept at it. At some point it becomes a choice, and subjecting other people to it a choice as well (both by them and the administration), and it becomes unacceptable to do so. If they need help, get it, do something, if they choose not to… then everyone in class shouldn’t be subjected to it, and arguably the boot camp isn’t for them because stress is par for the course.

Student B, C...

Then there were a couple students who were just "too cool for school" (i'm dating myself with that phrase maybe). They straight up were not trying and that should have been grounds for tossing them from the class. Again at least one person I knew wasn't there often enough to "graduate" but still they showed up and took up space, were assigned to groups, and didn't do their job. That did nothing but hurt other folks in the groups where they were assigned. They were often not with their groups working with them (it's a mystery where they were), when they were they were on YouTube (granted we all need a mental break but this was not just once in a while).... worse yet they promised to do things for projects, and simply didn't. At least one, maybe two should have been removed from the class as well. Still they remained in class...

Outcomes!

So there it is a lot of complaining.

But what happened to me?

About three months after camp I got my entry level web developer job. I'm in the industry and I'm really enjoying it! It's a lot less money (I was pretty established in the other career so comparing is not really fair), but I'm working hard and hoping to move up pay wise and really enjoying the work.

Some of my classmates too have gotten jobs and I'm super excited for them. Others I know returned to school to complete a more formal CS degree. It's great to see people of different ages and backgrounds who made it work.

In the end this is a rambling mess of a "review" but so was the program. I'm ultimately glad I did it. At the same time I recognize the good things that made the program for me don't seem like sure deals for any other class, or camp even, and the bad were ... so bad that I really worry that things are still that way, or if they were even allowed to be that bad, that the powers that be are incapable of or don't care about fixing them. The issues were that bad.

I have had the chance to speak to other students from other coding camps in the Twin Cities and based on my experience, I'm not really sure I'd recommend them anymore than Trilogy Education / University of Minnesota Coding Boot Camp. It's possible they're better, or not, I've just heard similar stories that make me wonder.

I'm also left to wonder about students for whom web development just wasn't for them. They spent +$10K to find that out, and really didn't get much guidance along the way when it was maybe clear that they were not going to make it... is that really a good deal?, are most boot camps like this? I worry that sometimes folks selling "anyone can code" when the truth is that isn't the case.

Would I recommend it? I don't know.

On The Topic of Bootcampers

One thing I worry about when posting this is giving other folks taking boot camps a bad name. After all I complain a lot here so could good web developers come out of a boot camps like this?

Absolutely! I was in class with some folks who were remarkably skilled and great learners who would be great entry level web devs and can learn quickly and are already doing great in their new careers. The ability to learn is the difference maker in most every job in my experience, and a Computer Science degree (not knocking it, I wish I had time to go back and get one) vs a boot camp certificate IMO says nothing about someone's ability to learn, drive, and long term skills.

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Trilogy Education / University of Minnesota Coding Boot Camp Review