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I am thinking about Nucamp

6 of Michael's comments in this thread · View thread on Reddit ↗

u/dowcet wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

Similar take here. It was a great fit for me and I feel like I got a bargain, but you shouldn't have high expectations if you're starting from zero.

u/michaelnovati replied ·
Yeah I do think their bar for instructors is fairly low (some have no experience at all) and they rely on feedback to quickly remove instructors not at the bar. A problem amongst a lot of bootcamps, is when you start from zero, you don't really know what's good and what's bad. Like maybe an instructor is great at explaining for loops, but you might not realize how much more you have to learn.

u/InTheDarkDancing wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

I did Nucamp before attending Codesmith. Nucamp is fine for the amount of money they charge, and looking back Nucamp was a glorified CS Prep (Codesmith's prep class before the bootcamp). My issue with Nucamp is that my classmates sucked. There were maybe 2 other people out of my

u/michaelnovati replied · ★ FEATURED
I do actually think NuCamp is more competitive to Udemy and Udacity. Their materials are almost all hands off except for the Saturday sessions. And many of their instructors are kind of like TAs at a bootcamp. So I think positioning it as a "Udacity with more hands-on support" isn't a bad position given the cost. \+1 if you want to go to Codesmith or a better bootcamp to do their in-house prep first instead of a separate bootcamp.

u/InTheDarkDancing wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

I'll defend Nucamp a smidge and say I do think it's better than a Udemy or Udacity if for nothing else it does apply some pressure to familiarize yourself with the topics before the Saturday lectures. In my case, I was always aware that there were Udemy courses but I never knew w

u/michaelnovati replied ·
Sorry, that wasn’t meant as an attack on Nucamp. Udacity Nanodegrees are about $2000 and have mentor code reviews, but my point was Nucamp is probably better than those. I shouldn’t have said Udemy in the same sentence. They compete with Udemy by offering similar level of material but with actual human support, and human support is expensive, so $2000 versus $50 might also make sense. +1 for self study more :D

u/CryBeneficial9214 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

What about their career services, what’s the job outcome of the typical student

u/michaelnovati replied ·
Dancing can give a more confident answer. I'm not familiar with their career services other than that they have a job hunting unit now that I think is new and possibly not live yet. I believe when they started, they had no job hunt support other than a job listing board (that was nothing special). Based on feedback I think they added an additional paid unit: [https://www.nucamp.co/bootcamp-overview/job-hunting](https://www.nucamp.co/bootcamp-overview/job-hunting) NuCamp does not provide much job outcome data because they are focused on student happiness more. They ask people if they feel their new skills are useful, etc... I actually think this isn't trying to cover up poor results, but they just don't believe you should expect a job after and they want to make sure people feel like the course was at least somewhat useful or very useful. NO IDEA IF NUCAMP FOLLOWS THIS: but the trend with online cheaper courses is that a lot of people drop out and do not complete them, like the majority. So traditional outcome metrics are hard to compare to because people were not super serious about getting a job to start with.

u/CryBeneficial9214 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

Hmm I was simultaneously doing the full stack course as well as studying for the comptia A+. Was thinking I should drop one

u/michaelnovati replied ·
What's your goal at the end? What kind of job are you aiming for?

u/CryBeneficial9214 wrote (the comment Michael replied to):

My short term goal is to enter the tech field. For long term, I’m looking at software development or cybersecurity which ever one lays out a clearer path for me first starting at my first tech job

u/michaelnovati replied ·
Ok great, I would aim for a tech adjacent role at a company that has or does a lot of cybersecurity. Like a support engineering role at Crowdstrike or 1Password would be a good entry level. If you are REALLY passionate about cybersecurity, then getting an even lower role, like an IT person at a cybersecurity company would be pretty cool and then doing part time of a more intense program on the side while doing that role. So I don't think I would go to NuCamp with the expectation of getting that job though. I can help throw out options like the above, but I don't have enough experience with your exact stage to say what the best path is.