Byte Academy

Overall a very positive experience. I came in with next-to-nothing prior knowledge of coding and development. The course seemed to move extremely fast and I questioned whether I was retaining much. But once the project phase began and the education was put to developing applications I was amazed at how much I had learned in a short period of time. The instructors do a great job the curriculum by covering as much as possible in the limited time while still giving you time to understand it. 

As with most startup style institutions they are constantly trying to improve and iterate the program based on student feedback. So while the changes may appear constant and excessive, I would claim that it extremely important in a quickly changing technology field. 

At Byte Academy you will receive the equivalent experience to the amount of work and time you put into the course. They provide you with virtually everything you would need to succeed, but your success will be solely based on your own effort.

It was a great experience. You have to be ready to study and work a lot. It is really what you put in what you get from the program. Byte is rapidly growing and expanding. Their instructors are very good and smart. 

My only criticisms are:
    - I believe it is more of a full stack program than a fintech program. They have finance lectures and they are good but I did not see a connection between the coding and the finance. 
   - More emphasis on the prep work (I understand they are coming up with a new platform). The pace of a bootcamp is hard to follow and I would have liked to have more to study before starting to avoid getting lost throughout the program, hence focusing on more advanced topics.
    - I would incorporate more discipline and structure.
 
Overall a very good experience, they still need to work on things but I believe they are heading in the right direction. The people are great, it really felt like a family and they are all willing to help you. I was happy to come every day and learn something new.
 

TIP: Expect to stay at least 1-2 months after graduation, it it necessary to learn more specific things, line up interviews and getting further assistance.

My experience at Byte Academy was intense. I had to work hard, and probably learned the most in the short duration that I was there. It all paid off though. I was quite happy with the final project that we completed in my cohort and was able to get a great job within a month of graduating. Thanks Tom, for all your help with my final project and with preparing me for job interviews.

I guess it is quite true that what you'll get out of Byte is what you put in. If you're ready to work hard and spend the time in learning the material, this is a great bootcamp. If you want to just sit back and listen to lectures, this is not for you.

I loved the small cohorts at Byte Academy. Our cohort had access to a few different technology instructors as well as a finance instructor. Also, we had teaching assistants available to help. I entered without much of a background in coding and was able to learn a lot in the 3 months that I was there. The small cohorts and the many different instructors had a lot to do with my learning. 

The focus is on learning by doing. I think this is very useful since I needed the encouragement and hands-on environment for learning. We had lectures everyday, but most of the learning is through projects and coding.

The mentorship during the job search helps a lot. I was able to get a lot of good ideas for companies to target as well as help on my resumes. In addition, the interview prep was very useful. 

Summary: Great for beginners. Do the prework. The smallness is both a positive (hands on instruction) and a slight negative (small network of fellow students and alumni through whom to find jobs). Great at teaching you the basics and how to learn. The phase 3 project is an awesome opportunity to build skills and build a portfolio showpiece. Python is great for the finance industry, academia, and data heavy projects. The career services aspect is a little lacking, and needs more structure.

Attended: February-May 2016

Background: One quantitative methods in Mathematica course in college, one week of Coursera R programming, and some very limited self taught VBA skills.

This course is great for those looking to get into full stack web development, especially those with a limited background in programming. In the first two phases you will learn the basics of object oriented programming and web development. The plentiful coursework and hands on instruction mean that, if the student puts in the time and energy, they will be able to build some pretty cool projects in phase 3.

The course will give you a foundation in data structures, algorithms, database design, API's, and MVC architecture in phase 1. In phase 2 you will put these concepts into practice with the Django framework for the back end and JavaScript for the front end. You will also learn AJAX, so that by the end of phase 2 you can make a single page application.

Phase 3, when you build your own project, is when you "take the training wheels off" and start figuring out frameworks or technologies yourself, and how to incorporate them into your project. Instructors will help point you in the right direction, while giving you the space to do your own work. Many students collaborate on their final project, which is not only an opportunity to build a better project than you could have on your own, but also gives you the opportunity to learn and use a version control system (in my case Git). 

Pros: hands on instruction, great curriculum, and a balance between instilling best practices and learning how to learn. That is, instructors will emphasize doing things the "right way" while also preparing you to figure out how to build projects yourself and learn yourself. Also learning Python and Django are great if you want to go into a more data heavy engineering role. Another advantage of Python is that it has many packages and libraries, so once you get the hang of it you can quickly use those packages and libraries to do some really cool things.

Cons: If you're a complete beginner and don't do the pre-work it's very likely you will need to re-do phase one. The pre-work is essential for the student to hit the ground running. That's not really a con but just a note that it is really more like a four month commitment than a three month commitment. Also finding a job can take some time, but I think that's true for other bootcamps as well. 

I am happy to say that joining Byte Academy is one of the best decisions I have made. I am a current student, not graduated yet. The program consists of 3 phases and by the end of the course every student will become a fully qualfied web developer. After completing 2 of 3 phases successfully, I can say that the curriculum is well designed to transform highly motivated individuals with or without prior programming experience into full stack developers. 

Instructors are not only highly knowledgable but also skilled and enthusiastic teachers who genuinely care about the success of their students. Even though each instructor is assigned to a specific phase, they are always availble to answer/help students from any phase. These instructors have great sensitivity and give their full support to make sure each and every student is comfortable with the fast-paced environment.

Pre-course work is designed well and it is very important to complete the requirements before starting the boot camp in order to succeed. A good place for networking as many representatives from various companies attend the weekly meet-ups and coder reviews. Great student community, where evryone is passionate about coding. Diverse group of students with amazing backgrounds and goals. You could be working with someone who used to be an Investment Banker, Trader or a Statup founder. You will make great friends and will be surrounded by people who all work together and help each other succeed.  

Reality is, this is a boot camp so one should not assume that everything will be handed out or someone will be holding hand all the time. Students have to think, exercise their reasoning abilities and put a lot of effort in learning the course. I highly recommend Byte Academy to anyone who is serious about becoming a full stack developer. 

I come from a computer science background. I graduated college in December 2015 and joined Byte in January 2016. I wanted to be a stronger developer so i wanted to join a boot camp. I was pretty skeptical of where I wanted to go, and I remember reading the reviews on this site, and becoming more skeptical, not knowing if Byte would be a great experience. However, because I wanted to learn python/django I went with it and joined byte.  Jeff was my instructor for the three phases; he was a very helpful and great person along with all the other instructors at Byte.  Byte is probably the best choice I’ve made in my life so far. It was much better than just having a degree in computer science.

If you are thinking of join Byte I suggest you come in and just talk to some of the students that are in the later phases. Don’t even bother with speaking to the heads of Byte. Speak to the students and find out for yourself. I graduated Byte in April 2016, and I am so glad I chose byte and worked with a language like Python. 

Facts: 

• The curriculum is pretty hard but manageable, also there are ways to catch up if you slack off.
• The space is not the biggest
• They do have lots of monitors and tables
•  Instructors are very helpful. They all are willing to help you with a problem until you understand completely
• They are open 24/7 so you are able to come in and code weekends or late night ( I really love that about them)
• There are many other small features, like presentations, which help you prepare for the job world. 
• You will be in mid down, lots of food places, great view.
• They have big name companies (Bloomberg, Ibm...) that actively take resumes of graduates from Byte.
• very helpful with resumes, cover letters, and preparing for interviews.

After attending four different boot camp meetups in NYC, I decided to attend Byte Academy for one reason: Billy (lead instructor) was the most intelligent person I met at any of the schools. I also met a former student (Adam) who seemed very bright and passionate about programming, who sold me on the culture: enthusiastic, kind, and driven. I'm glad I attended the meetup and met Billy, because at the time, Byte Academy was *not* at the top of my list -- their website lacked polish, their space was cramped, and they were barely on the radar of review sites like this one.

As an aside: at a Rails bootcamp meetup, I swear the presenter said, "There hasn't been a web framework invented since Ruby on Rails." She didn't seem stupid, so she had to know she was lying... this disrespect for the audience only reinforced my intuition that Ruby is a cult for impressionable children. (Although I have two friends who enjoyed their experiences at App Academy and General Assembly.)

The pace of learning here is *hard* and *fast*. I came in to refresh my skills after not using my undergraduate CS degree for ten years. Although I came in with a decent amount of experience, I was blown away by the second day. I don't know how anyone without my level of experience was able to keep up -- some of them didn't. I've never been to a different boot camp, but if they're graduating all of their students in just 12 weeks, they're not teaching nearly as much as Byte. The good news is that Byte students can repeat a four-week phase if they're not prepared to advance.

I am a *much* better developer now than before I came to Byte.

My cohort's instructor, Tom, was knowledgeable and passionate. He knew just the right balance of what to explain to us and what to let us figure out ourselves. Every instructor has their own interesting side projects they're happy to talk about.

Once per week, all students and instructors who wish can give a five minute presentation about anything they like. A lot of people sign up and it's really cool what people are working on and getting excited about.

Cohorts are small at Byte -- mine only had five students.

During my twelve weeks, I had a concern that Byte didn't seem to offer *any* job placement assistance, but the Monday after I graduated, Billy and Richard helped me immensely with my resume, and by the end of the week I was confident to start applying for jobs. They've also started bi-weekly meetings with Rak and Richard to check in with and help every graduate who is still looking for work (but it seems like basically everyone has already found it).

(They *do* help with job placement, but to be honest, it seems like this industry is so desperate for talent that all it takes to find a job is to sort of know what you're doing and start sending resumes.)

Another aside: A recruiter told me she was having difficulty placing graduates of a particular Ruby bootcamp because of their cookie cutter portfolios. Having attended two Ruby bootcamp graduations, it does seem like their universal formula is to just clone an existing website by gluing an API into React and Rails. The Byte cohort before me built a tool for risk analysis of mortgage portfolios. I built a JavaScript touch event library. The cohort after me built an AI bot to do sentiment analysis on Slack messages (an extension of the project they won the Stamford Hackathon with).

Oh -- and finance! Richard is an incredible finance instructor who spent a lot of time with us in phase two. I didn't find myself becoming interested in finance, but about a third of my fellow students came to Byte specifically because they were interested in finance; Richard knows enough about finance *and* software to advise finance-related final projects in a way the technical instructors can't.

One negative: The daily exercises are intentionally an unfinishable amount of work. I strongly disagree with this philosophy of teaching and I hope that it changes.

All of that said, I believe both Rails *and* Django are archaic. The problem they were built to solve -- templating -- no longer exists, and using them just to implement a JSON API introduces tremendous overhead for no discernable benefit. I think the future -- heck, the present -- is about pulling JSON data into a single page application. Or a multi-page application, but certainly not generating server-side templates for every single page.

Come to Byte; you'll love it.

I am glad I signed up for Byte Academy. My cohort was small, so I was able to get a lot of attention from the instructors and teaching assistants. Quite amazed with the great student-teacher ratio. I really needed the individualized attention, so thanks to everyone who helped me along the way!

The program was tough. I had no programming experience before joining. I found myself spending extra time trying to keep up with the rest of the class. However, the late nights definitely paid off at the end. My advice for people joining - if you work hard, you will learn a lot. If you're not willing to put in the time, don't waste your money.

I read the past reviews on this site, prior to writing my review. It seems a couple of people submitted negative reviews. I can't relate to their problems, since my experience was quite positive. I do know that some of the past instructors have left, the current instructors definitely seem capable and eager to teach.

I initially chose Byte Academy because of the unique technology stack that it teaches. Most bootcamps are more front-end oriented and my intention was to learn a language that will be powerful on the back end. Byte Academy teaches full-stack web development around Django framework. We have been writing Python code every single day. I really like the structure of the program. Every assignment was challenging and fun. We covered a lot of various concepts such as recursion, b-search, objects during the first month. The second phase was concentrated on the Django framework as well as some front-end basics(HTML, CSS, client side Javascript). The last phase is a final project that you have to build front to back with your group members. I had to go back to school after the bootcamp but was able to get a programming internship. Before Byte, I tried to learn programming on my own but I realized that it is important to have structure and ability to ask questions when you are just starting to code. I am very satisfied with Byte Academy and recommend this program who wants to start their programming career.