Dev Bootcamp

Summary

Dev Bootcamp was an immersive 19-week coding bootcamp founded by Shereef Bishay, Jesse Farmer, and Dave Hoover in February 2012.[1][2] It is designed to make graduates job-ready by the end of the program.[3][4] Dev Bootcamp was headquartered in San Francisco, California, with additional locations Seattle, Chicago, New York City, Washington, D.C., San Diego, and Austin.[1] It was acquired by for-profit education company Kaplan, Inc in 2014.[5] Dev Bootcamp closed in 2017.[6]

Dev Bootcamp
Location

Information
TypePrivate
Established2012; 12 years ago (2012)
FoundersShereef Bishay, Jesse Farmer, and Dave Hoover
Closed2017
Faculty40
Number of students450 (per year)
CampusUrban
OwnerKaplan, Inc.
Websitedevbootcamp.com

The program edit

The program was 9 weeks of remote work (called Phase 0) and then 9 weeks of intensive onsite training in professional web development, including Ruby on Rails, HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript.[7][8][9] A week of career training followed the 18 weeks of technical training.[10] The program took students with little or no prior programming experience and taught them the fundamentals of computer programming.[2][11] The program's goal was to develop the necessary skills within the students to make them job-ready for an entry-level developer position.[2] According to Hoover, applicants to the 2013 Chicago programs had varied backgrounds, ranging from students who have master's degrees in computer science to a Starbucks barista.[2]

The program valued learning by building and doing; in contrast to traditional classrooms, Dev Bootcamp students worked through a series of programming challenges, usually working in pairs or small groups, which culminated in a final group project.[12][13][14] The tuition costs were $13,950 in the New York and San Francisco locations, and $12,700 for the Chicago, San Diego, Austin, and Seattle locations for the 9-week, 40-hour-per-week program. Core class hours were weekdays 9am-6pm in San Francisco and 8am-5pm in Chicago. However, most students stayed nights and weekends, which amounted to an approximate 70–80 hours per week.[2] Dev Bootcamp organized hiring days for technology companies to interview students.[2] They then collected a referral fee from employers that hire their graduates, and they passed along part of that fee to the graduate in the form of a hiring bonus.[2]

In 2015, Dev Bootcamp tested a remote teaching model in a pilot program in Columbus, Ohio, which was canceled after the first round even though four of its 14 enrollees had already found jobs.[15] The company announced it was closing its doors on July 23, 2017 via a press release.[16]

Phases edit

The program was divided into three core phases, each lasting three weeks. In the first phase, students learned some of the fundamentals of computer programming in Ruby, including algorithms and database querying. The next phase introduced front-end technologies and combined them with previously learned material. The final phase brought everything full-circle with the Ruby on Rails framework. In this phase, students built a web application from scratch.[17]

Students were also required to remotely complete 9 weeks of preparation material before the on-location courses began.[17]

Reception edit

After its founding in 2012, Dev Bootcamp was featured in the Chicago Tribune, Fast Company, Business Insider, TechCrunch, and Inc. Magazine.[8][9][2][18][19][20] According to the company, 95% of the individuals who had graduated from Dev Bootcamp San Francisco that year found jobs, with an average starting salary of more than $85,000.[2] Dev Bootcamp was also highly rated on bootcamp reviews sites like Course Report.[21]

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ a b Empson, Rip (10 May 2012). "Startups Court Dev Bootcamp's Ruby Grads: 88% Have Offers At Average Of $79K". Tech Crunch. AOL. Retrieved 16 July 2015.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wailin Wong (December 3, 2012). "Dev Bootcamp coming to Chicago next spring". Chicago Tribune.
  3. ^ Olanoff, Drew (31 March 2012). "Dev Bootcamp in San Francisco just increased the number of Ruby devs by 20". The Next Web. Retrieved 16 July 2015.
  4. ^ Rowinski, Dan (10 May 2012). "Developer Bootcamp Teaches Regular Folks to Code and Maybe Get a Job at a Startup". Read Write Web. Wearable World. Retrieved 16 July 2015.
  5. ^ Fain, Paul (2015-09-18). "General Assembly leads coding boot camps into the regulated side of higher education". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 2015-09-29.
  6. ^ "Dev Bootcamp, which Kaplan bought three years ago, is closing". www.insidehighered.com. Retrieved 2022-12-25.
  7. ^ E.B. Boyd (February 10, 2012). "A Hacker School That Helps Solve Silicon Valley's Hiring Problem". Fast Company.
  8. ^ a b Boonsri Dickinson (January 4, 2012). "Someday, Writing Code Could Be As Common As Farming Or Factory Work". Business Insider. Archived from the original on January 9, 2012. Retrieved December 19, 2012.
  9. ^ a b Michael Staton (December 3, 2012). "How Dev Bootcamp Is Transforming Education To Focus On "Extreme Employability"". TechCrunch.
  10. ^ Alex Botsford (July 17, 2014). "What Happens After Dev Bootcamp Is Over? Enter Career Week".
  11. ^ Kyle Leishear (December 13, 2012). "Dev Bootcamp Producing Amazing Talents". Technorati. Archived from the original on December 14, 2012. Retrieved December 19, 2012.
  12. ^ Fran Berkman (13 December 2012). "This Dev Bootcamp Will Make You More Hireable in 9 Weeks". Mashable. Retrieved 16 July 2015.
  13. ^ About. Dev Bootcamp.
  14. ^ J.D. Hildebrand (January 9, 2012). "A novel solution to the programmer education problem". Software Development Times. Archived from the original on December 10, 2012. Retrieved December 19, 2012.
  15. ^ Ghose, Carrie (May 28, 2015). "Dev Bootcamp ends Columbus pilot despite 2Checkout, CoverMyMeds, Cardinal Solutions hiring grads". Columbus Business First. Retrieved 2015-09-29.
  16. ^ "Kaplan-owned Dev Bootcamp to shut down, closing Seattle coding school and other sites". GeekWire. 2017-07-13. Retrieved 2017-07-25.
  17. ^ a b FAQ "Dev Bootcamp FAQ"
  18. ^ Jessica Stillman (May 17, 2012). "The Fast Track to Start-Up Life".
  19. ^ Ben Weitzenkorn (April 18, 2012). "Startup News: Dev Bootcamp, Incubator Deadlines, Closet Monsters From TV and Free Food". Betabeat.
  20. ^ Patrick Hoge (December 7, 2012). "Coder boot camp grads snapped up". San Francisco Business Times.
  21. ^ "Dev Bootcamp Reviews | Course Report". Retrieved 2016-08-10.

External links edit

  • DevBootcamp.com
  • Dev Bootcamp on Twitter