Woz U

I'm always looking for more ways to learn, so I eagerly downloaded this when I got the Product Hunt email about it.

Went to sign up with email/password, and right away: there are hidden password restrictions. It says "must be at least 6 characters with one capital letter and one number", so a long 1Password random-word-string won't work, but I used a 32-character generated 1Password random string, and the fields stayed red. After a bunch of trial and error, I discovered that there's a max of 15 characters. Why 15? Who knows? Why not tell the user why the password is invalid? Who also knows?

Then I did the Evaluation, which was intriguing and I was excited to see what it told me, but the (I assume) final screen simply says "Please enter your phone number so we may contact you about scholarships and additional free learning material." There's one form field, and a grayed-out submit button. No way to opt out or not provide phone number. No way to continue without giving it or agreeing to what are clearly spam phone calls. My phone is constantly getting unwanted calls already, so I'm not interested in giving it out with the expressed intent of increasing that volume.

That's when I came back here and discovered the other reviews. I guess I don't know a ton about what Woz has been up to lately, but I'm surprised he would put his name and likeness on this.

Pros:

None that I could find. Presumably aims to educate people?

Cons:

Terrible signup experience; possibly a scam?

I haven't been to any of the online classes but I downloaded and installed the app from the app store. It turns out i'm supposed to be a developer!

Pros:

fun times

Cons:

not sure

I originally signed up with Woz for full stack development with a focus on Ruby on Rails. My biggest problem with Woz is that I signed up for Ruby but I was placed unknowingly into Javascript with no consent on my end or notification. The mentors and/or other staff i spoke with about this during my time essentially told me to shove it when I approached them regarding this issue. The content was decent. I felt that they threw the code at us not caring if we understood what was going on. I feel like I spent 33+ weeks to learn how to code and spent 7+ grand on it when googling would have been better. Other than weekly meetings with your mentor it was like pulling teeth to get mentors help when i started. Now this did improve towards the end with Woz tenfold. Another problem I had was they referenced wikipedia multiple times. It seemed like the content was written with 1 persons learning style in mind. I also graduated with a 3.7 gpa? somewhere around there and I can tell you right now I am not anywhere close to being a professional dev as I didn't retain as much as the information as I really felt i should have. If i was given the chance to go back I would have taken the free alternative of freecodecamp over anything woz has to offer. That being said I do think they have the potential to be the best paid code camp out there. There just has to be tweeks from top to bottom.

Pros:

It was online which was nice

Cons:

see the tell us more box

Make sure to build a tight relationship with your mentor and ambassador

Pros:

I’m currently in the program and my experience has been great so far, my mentor has been a huge help

Cons:

It’s a time commitment for sure, be ready to work hard as some of the classes are challenging.

I was poached at my part-time retail job working at GameStop by a boy who was a recruiter from Coder Camps (at the time before they changed their name). He would call me almost everyday in an attempt to befriend me and ask me how things were going with me. Due to my incompetence at the time, I didn't do my full research on Coder Camp/ Woz-U and fell for the whole presentation of becoming a web developer and how much I could potentially make as a web developer. When I started the program I, my mentor was an amazing woman who genuinely cared for my success in the program, but didn't have much time to mentor with me unfortunately. The earlier modules as far as HTML, CSS and JavaScript were fine, but as I started moving deeper into new material such as JQuery, AJAX, REACT etc. I started to struggle, and when asked by my mentor if i would like to move on, I was told her "no" because I felt i wasn't ready to move on and thats when I learned that I had been failed from that module and that I had a time limit to learn each module. The 33 week time limit because a burdening, significant factor to the progress of the completing the program. You start to pay less attention to actually LEARNING the material and more attention to getting something turned in on time. A lot of the modules had misspellings, a lot of the directions that you followed would give you errors as you followed along. Looking back at it now I should've done more research on Woz-U before jumping head first into the program.

Pros:

I met some amazing people and made some lasting friendships.

Cons:

Based on the material provided, I felt less than confident about venturing out into the world with the title of Jr. Full Stack Developer.

Wow, disappointed to read negative reviews. Had I read these, it would have scared me away. HOWEVER, lucky for me, I didn't. Now, I came from a 14 year background as a data analyst in the old days. Took 7 years off to raise my kid, and want to get back into IT formally and needed to update my skills to what the kids are using nowadays. I have enjoyed my classes in Woz-U. I find it challenging and on par with what I did when I received my bachelor's in IT. IT is shorter (5 weeks), bootcamp style, and the pace is very quickly, but I think the dashboard makes it easier to keep track of. I do wish there was more interface besides using SLACK built within the modules themselves, but using SLACK also gives real world experience into what we use on the outside. Is it expensive? I don't know. I think that's relative. I like we have lifelong access to Woz-U. Yes, it comes via SCTI, but I find that to be helpful because it qualified me to use my student loans, of which I wouldn't be able to do school without. I was also accepted into a state school for my master's degree in Data Science, however, the classes we are doing via WOZ-U I needed to have 'familiarity with' in order to do my masters. Enter Woz-U. Each module is set up in 5 weeks, we have about 10 assignments due every few days and a final project at the end. It keeps me motivated and on track. There are times I feel the lessons touch just the surface, but that's why we have a mentor team (that we have to meet with once a week and they are available at our beck and call it seems, as well as our classmates in SLACK, as well as the usual online resources. By time I get to the final project, it seems to come together and I have a greater understanding than I thought I did, AND actually enjoy doing to the work. LISTEN GUYS.... I have read the cranky 'scam' cranky reviews.... Don't believe it. Definitely worth it.