I have a lot of questions because the founder was banned from this subreddit and almost all of their content across a dozen subreddits was deleted by moderators as spam.
They also hadn't refunded someone who paid $1000 for a cancelled cohort at least until a month ago and making up excuses for why. It's been so long the person can't PayPal dispute it anymore.
Questions:
1. How many cohorts are there? They founder said there were 300 people signed up and space was limited. But it sounds like your cohort had 15 people.
2. What is the background of the instructor? Do all the cohorts have the same or similar instructors?
3. Where do they get their money from? Even though they are not for profit, they are not a charity and they can't accept tax deductible donations.
4. How much collaboration do you have with others?
5. After 2 months you have 6-7 people left in the cohort. How many do you think will remain for the full year? Do you think they will combine the cohorts?
6. Have they explained why all of their last cohorts failed and were shut down and how to they plan on making sure that doesn't happen again?
u/newGuyCoding wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
u/michaelnovati Thank you for your questions, I'll answer as many questions as I can.
1. Our classroom only had like 15 students, but I am assuming that they were talking about the total enrolments across all the different sections.
2. Our instructor works at a FAANG company and
u/michaelnovatireplied·
Thanks for the replies!
u/newGuyCoding wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
u/michaelnovati Thank you for your questions, I'll answer as many questions as I can.
1. Our classroom only had like 15 students, but I am assuming that they were talking about the total enrolments across all the different sections.
2. Our instructor works at a FAANG company and
u/michaelnovatireplied·
BTW did buildadev ask you to review/post or comment? They kept popping a few weeks/a month before the next cohort started and spammed with out of place comments about buildadev (and december cohort was cancelled and refunded afterwards). They have a cohort starting in a few weeks and now that they are banned they can't post here, but I noticed several students posting about it all at the same time yesterday.
I don't actually think you are sus like the other commenter, but just curious if BAD prompted this.
u/newGuyCoding wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
No entirely unprompted, the guys at Build a Dev had mentioned in passing that they have a new cohort starting soon. I just wanted to spread the good word primarily based on the fact that I am getting a decent return without paying a single dime. I personally believe that it is be
u/michaelnovatireplied·
I commented a longer reply but it got lost because I think you deleted the comment and moved it here.
TLDR: FREE programs can have great benefit short term because you are getting value from someone doing something for free (whether it's to give back and do a good thing, or to grow a brand), but long term they aren't sustainable My post went into evidence why with numerous examples.
To give a quick example, Build A Dev used to be PAID and suffered this problem of teachers leaving and disappearing and the founder couldn't supplement. I know they have a new teacher Wei who claims to be super committed. But what happens if OpenAI gives them a $1M offer (those are real) or Wei gets a full time job and has to leave suddenly.
u/michaelnovati wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
BTW did buildadev ask you to review/post or comment? They kept popping a few weeks/a month before the next cohort started and spammed with out of place comments about buildadev (and december cohort was cancelled and refunded afterwards). They have a cohort starting in a few weeks
u/michaelnovatireplied·
And here is the larger campaign: [https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/13jeiy4/build\_a\_dev\_upcoming\_cohort\_1\_for\_verification/](https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/13jeiy4/build_a_dev_upcoming_cohort_1_for_verification/)
Their primary account was banned from this subreddit and by blatantly circumventing that ban they are risking permanent ban from Reddit :(
u/newGuyCoding wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Completely understandable, I’ll leave it up to your discretion. I don’t use Reddit much outside of work so this is the first account that I have made other than my primary one.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
The post was removed by Reddits spam filters and Data Mastery's posts from the past week have all been removed as spam. It's really sad that if you are posting honestly that you can't even spread your opinion because Build A Dev is using Data Mastery's account to circumvent a ban, got caught, and all their stuff is marked as spam and everyone associated with them is being flagged.
u/businessbee89 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Based on the downvotes seems like you're the one who needs to be ignored lol
u/michaelnovatireplied·· edited
Reddit took action against them for circumventing Build a Dev's ban, and almost all of their content for the past week across several subs has been deleted and marked as spam.
It's sad because if the reboot of the program is good and doesn't have all the problems of the past, they no longer have the ability to spread the word because Reddit has identified their accounts, computers, IPs, and content of all their posts as suspicious now and even legit accounts content is being removed for talking about. They definitely aren't doing Reddit right at the very least and the pushback against me personally is so incredibly misplaced that if they truly believe it they will fail for sure and get into legal trouble too... I highly recommend reseting the marketing strategy and starting from scratch.
u/datamasteryio wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
This is Hussam . Micheal , you have no idea what you are talking about lol . Build A Dev folks , ignore this man’s questions . I’ll answer them for the last time in a brief summary :
Every student from our past cohorts has been refunded and the reason our previous cohorts didn’
u/michaelnovatireplied·DELETED · archived copy
Anyone reading this for posterity. Build A Dev cancelled the cohort after two months and the instructor was not showing up for sessions and many people dropped out.
I'm posting this because Reddit is Reddit and people can say whatever they want with whatever tone they want and no matter how confident someone is it doesn't mean they are right.
Check your sources and think critically about everything you read, including my posts.
P.S. If something is free and you are going to change your life and make plans around it, please be careful and figure out what the catch is.
u/newGuyCoding wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Completely understandable, I’ll leave it up to your discretion. I don’t use Reddit much outside of work so this is the first account that I have made other than my primary one.
u/michaelnovatireplied·
/u/newGuyCoding do you have any updates on how it went? My understanding is the program shutdown again :(