I went to their orientation, hoping I could take a course in a particular language I want to augment. It's a ubiquitous language that assist in programming the biggest ecommerce platform in the world, so you would think it could be part of their curriculum, certainly as much as Python. Javascript, of course, made sense to me that they were teaching that, although they alluded that Node.js came first in the general courses. OK? I was told they graduate people in iOS, javascript, and Python only. They said this was because these 'stacks' were the best ones in which to get hired.. They also said a lot of their instructors were former students which kind of reminded me of MLM. They claim a 90% six-months after graduation placement rate. While I was there, a guy who was friends with someone else who graduated came in, and it turned out his friend was not working yet. They were moving out of the center of Amazonia, which was giving them great advertising, but maybe it wasn't appreciated by the powers that be. Their new office is still downtown, but much less 'cool'. My biggest issue was that the structure. The 101 level is $99 for the day(since this is an intro day only, set up MAYBE to scare off newbies, you would think it could be less). Still, not much for instruction, unless you find out it was utterly pointless and are desperate. After that, however, 201 is $3500, and 301 is $4500, but you don't start an actual specialized track until the 401 level, which is $12000. You're basically paying $8000 for some sort of fundamentals which are supposed to prep you for jscript and/or iOS. Seems to me 8k could get you some pretty good tutoring to five straight into either jscript or IOS, or you could go into a community college program, or grind your way through an online course for much less. Its not that 20k is too much to pay if you actually end up programming jscript or iOS, but I had an issue with paying that 8k upfront just to ramp up, although they claim you can test past these levels. Again, this didn't make sense either. What do they test you on? CSS? They claim to have a great success rate, and the vibe seemed professional, especially their claims to prep students for interviews, as well as networking, but how do you know that until you see it coming out the other end? Lot of money, and the orienteer made it clear they were for profit, and this was why they needed to protect their reputation. They also said it was really hard to place at Amazon, and mentioned the same three companies over and over, and none of them were the majors, minus one big travel company. Go to the orientation and see for yourself, but there are no shortcuts. Still, maybe its possible these guys can get you your money's worth. As I said, forking over 8k without knowing what track I'm on was a real issue for me.
