Devschool

I think Jim is a good instructor, he definetly knows what he is doing. I do agree with what the guy below me said. You will learn real world coding, and Jim will try to teach you real computer science and how it applies to real projects. If you are used to the old way of teaching which is sit in a classroom, read a lecture, and take the test, this is not for you, but if you are an open learner, and like to learn by trying and making mistakes then this is for you. Its my 4th week so far and I feel I have had my moneys worth, even though I cannot say I have made that leap yet from script kiddie to a real programmer, I do know understand how building projects in Rails work and how MVC comes together in an application. It's good too if you have been exposed to html, css, jquery, javascript, some ruby and the rails framework because Jim will sharpen what you know and make you forget other bad practices you learned from other programmers that do not have as much as experience. If you are a self started and you are okay working on your own without someone holding your hand after one-on-one sessions and group sessions this is the course for you. If not go dump 14k and 3 months of work in some other program where some script kiddie like yourself will teach you.

I was looking at Viking Code School and Learn.co, when I came across Online Dev School (ODS). After interviewing with ODS, I joined about a month ago, and I love it! I actually tried other online bootcamps and just got tired of the old, and dated curriculum. 

What makes this school awesome is Jim OKelly. He is a fantastic and patient instructor. And the guy knows his stuff. He not only pushes you to learn full stack web development, he pushes you to learn the tools and to learn them well, such as Vim, CLI, etc. There's no sitting through boring curriculum, like other schools. From day one, you start building YOUR (first of many )web apps, and then another one, and then another one. Meanwhile you and other students watch him build out real business web apps where you can ask questions, watching a senior level programmer solve problems, etc.

Also, the other students in the program are awesome. Some are ahead of you, and some are just coming in, but all of them have a common goal, and it's great to communicate and solve problems together. You get to pair with someone after you've been in the program for a bit.

Now, I have to admit, Jim is not going to be the right instructor for everyone. He can seem disorganized and a little too casual, but after you've joined, you can see that he really is not disorganized, at all. Really what it is, is he is open to making the best experience for his students, and is willing and open to doing whatever he thinks will help the students acheive success. He actually listens to his students feedback. This means lot's of change and flexibility is needed, which is exactly what you need to be a good programmer. Me personally, I like this.

However, a lot of people might not. Those who need a rigid, structured curriculum of hand-holding will not like this school. But those who want a real-world web developement environment while they learn, who like to see how requirements for software can and will change, and who want to learn how to communicate effectively and well with team members on their future job, will LOVE this program. It really is almost like you're an intern learning from a Sr. developer the whole software life cycle stuff.

Jim is very giving, patient, and knowlegeable, and he has that much needed and remarkable trait of all good teachers: he knows how to break difficult concepts down to beginners.  Like I've said, I've studied with other mentors, and they were excellent programmers and knew their stuff, but they sucked at breaking down difficult concepts. Jim is a fantastic mentor, vastly knowledgeable, dedicated, and sincere to his students' success. 

Again, I've been in the program for about a month, and in that time, I've learned how to kick butt in Vim, CLI, Git, building a robust web app, and pair programming. It's the best money I've ever spent, and I'm so happy to have found this school. 

Hi my name is Eric. I just graduated from Online Dev School. Jim placed me at a Y Combinator start up called New Story. I'm super pumped about it. I'll be working on doing Ruby on Rails for them and couldn't be happier.  I picked online dev school because you literally get one on one time and mentorship and they guarenteed placement. It only took him about 7 days to place me after I graduated. Thank you so much Online Dev School!!! I wouldn't have been able to get into programming without you. 

I was doing research on this bootcamp when I came across a student that was threatened by doxxing from the lead instructor. This is absolutely beyond insane. How could you treat your students like this just because you are irritated? You've just lost a chunk of appeal from many prospective students.

"I left some negative reviews about Devschool , and I don't know what lies he said to the websites and they just removed my comments. No wonder why there is so many good comments. He even send me email threaten me and told me he gonna post my personal information and my photos online, he also said he gonna try to prevent me from getting a job. All those happened just because I left negative reviews. That's really horrible. Stay away from this person."

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the darkside of coding bootcamps. This is why for every negative review, there are a bunch of individuals too scared to open out about this experience. This is incredibly unacceptable. Be wary of such personalities on instructors before applying to this program.

I had an interview with Jim close to a month or so ago as I was interested in learning about the program.

Yes, he certainly seems to be a bit more on the "liberal" side, but I didn't necessarily find that to be a bad thing. In many cases it was refreshing.

I'm not going to speak anything about the rest of the program, since I ultimately decided to not continue with it, however, I did personally find some things concerning:

Mostly the quality of reviews and responses. I get that every company gets a bad review every now and then.

But there seems to be a heavy shift between the five star reviews and the lower reviews. 

In fact, both low reviews seemed to have been responded to with a rather unprofessional and in one case a (perhaps) borderline illegal revelation of someone's personal information. (I don't know but isn't that like illegal or something?)

Regardless, I think that to do something like that is pretty messed up.

I personally find this to be very unprofessional and quite morally wrong, regardless of one's personal feelings. 

Also, I don't know how much of the largest bad review stems from emotional issue, but to think that a student would come out of a program feeling insulted and humiliated... Is that how an instructor should make their students feel under any circumstance?

I could be wrong, but to me, the program was advertised to not have a curriculum because the work would be tailored to an individual's needs.However, it sounds like this person's needs were not met and instead they were insulted for not following "the rules" (which I thought was not what the program was supposed to be about). But I digress.

Again, I don't mean for this to be a review about the program itself, since I didn't participate after the initial interview nor did I get a clear idea about the curriculum, so my rating for the curriculum isn't based from experience, it's more based on the mixed messages between the reviews, what was advertised, and my own experience after research.

But seeing this has really influenced my decision.Mostly from a quality of teaching aspect.

I don't know if a review is best fit for this kind of situation, but since there is no "dislike" feature, I believe that this is suitable.

Given if this is appropriate, a final message I have for this program is: No matter how mad someone is... treat them with a bit more respect. The customer is always right. Failure to do this not just reflects poorly on just the business, but on the people who run it as well.

Good Luck

This is a boot camp with 2 people: the instructor Jim Okelly(and also he is the principle) and his assistant who also takes his classes. It is small and unprofessional, the owner of this business lives in Mexico (it's a BVI business), which means, if you have any problems, you will have no way to complain or properly defend yourself without significant challenge. This is because he lives and operates his business outside of the USA.
HERE ARE SEVERAL THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT DEVSCHOOL:
Is DEVSCHOOL legit? 
---I don’t know but Jim Okelly is the owner plus instructor and he is in Mexico. If you get screwed, your contact can be limited, which is problematic if you were to decide that the program is not for you and would like a refund. 
Also you won’t have any way to complain if you are treated badly. Since Devschool is small and unprofessional, Jim Okelly will be your instructor, your principle, your financial officer, and once he decides that you are a “bad student”, you are 100% screwed and won’t even have any way to communicate or stat a valid case. 
I saw some good reviews, are those real?
---I don’t know but I personally don’t believe so. He threatened me (Told me he will stop me from finding a job, and he will sue me to influence my students VISA if I don't delete the comments) and even revealed my personal information online, and he is trying to build a website using my name just to release my information. All those because of I left negative reviews. Also he spent a lot of time and money trying to figure out how to rank better in Google and he asks his students to “like” his comments on YouTube.  I wouldn’t be surprised if a person like him would ask some friends to post good reviews for himself. 
Is Jim a good instructor?
---If you think an instructor who humiliates you and says rude things to you and shows you his darker side is good, then go ahead. Also, I think that he behaves rude and can’t accept any suggestions and will treat them as your challenge towards him. Which means, if you are looking for an instructor who cares about your growth and best study needs and you are the kind of person who likes to ask “why I am doing this” or “may I suggest something that is more suitable for me”, he will berate you.

Will I get a refund if I don’t like the classes?
----Yes. I know it’s hard to find this info but HE WILL DEDUCT A MINIMUM $1500 FROM YOU EVEN THOUGH YOU NEVER TAKE ANY CLASSES YET. Which means, once you handover your money, $1500 of it is just gone. And in my own case is, I took only 1 class in total along with an “onboarding session”, and from that I had owed him about $2000.

How about the job guarantee? 
---Read it again and think twice. If you can’t find a job then you stay inside the school forever and enjoy the resource? What resource? Most of the resource that DEVSCHOOL gives you are online resources that you can reach easily by yourself, and other than that, there is a useless and unprofessional slack channel and his group sessions, which consist of “watching him code”. A program that promise you to give you a full refund if you can't find a job is way better. Think logically, Think twice.

Is the internship style cool? 
---Do you enjoy your boss asking you to do stuff without telling you any reasons? Do you enjoy having to build complex projects with no basic knowledge, subpar instruction and simply being told to “look it up online?”? Do you like it when your boss humiliates you when you ask questions? If you really enjoy all of those things, then congratulations, you will pay Jim O’kelly so that he can be your “boss” and teach you a real life lesson about how stupid you are.

Can I really become a programmer after 4 months? 
--- Basically, you maybe can find a job after some inefficient, basic lacking studies, but it’s hard to find a good one or get promoted. And it’s definitely not worth that much money.

How about the “insanely humane” part? 
---Jim Okelly never consider your opinion or your study hobbies, also he will give you super rude feedbacks when you become “annoying” and asking too many questions. I call this INSANELY IN-HUMANE.

So if you are interested, here is my experience in DEVSCHOOL: 
Just like most students, I chose his Devschool because I saw that he had some good reviews online (and now I personally doubt if those are real). When I did the interview with him, even though performed unprofessionally during it, I thought it was his cool personal style and didn’t realize that it was a dangerous signal. 
The class began after about 3 weeks, and within this period of time, I was in his slack channel, watching him share some random videos. Some of those videos (from Youtube) are programming related, but most of the time the topics inside the slack channel were just very random and unprofessional. I have been involved in many programming related slack channels and I have to say that Devschool’s slack channel, compared to any other slack channel that I have participated in, is the most unprofessional and useless one. If you want to pay $8000 to read dirty jokes, then go ahead. 
The first class experience was awful. 
So basically his teaching method is called “fully emerge”, which means he will just throw you into the share screen and begin to write JavaScript code in terminals and discard the fact that you don’t even know what is a terminal or how to write basic JavaScript. He will tell you to learn programming just like you would learn a foreign language. This is a very inefficient strategy. If you really think that throwing a 25 year old into a foreign country for TWO hours per week is a very efficient way to learn a language, then you will probably like his teaching. Also, he doesn’t have any curriculum and you won’t know what you are learning or going to learn, and you think that he is doing this so that the classes will fit you the best? Ask other students and you will know everyone learns the same thing. 
Since I can’t understand a single thing of the first class, and since HE DOESN’T REALLY ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS (he will tell you to search google or watch a tutorial online), even though he seems really confident in what he is doing, I decided to send him a very polite message, asking “Is that OK if you at least tell me what I am learning and what I am going to learn?” and “Is that possible for us to figure out a better way to help me to learn?”, and his first answer was along the lines of: THEN YOU SHOULDN’T TAKE THIS PROGRAM AND I WILL GIVE YOU A REFUND(I have more to say about the refund part later). Can you believe that that was the first thing your instructor tells you when you ask him for help? Really? He asked me to leave because I asked him to tell me what I am learning and what I am going to learn. His reaction made me think that HE IS AN AWFUL INSTRUCTOR! He answers in this way so that I will get scared and then he can manipulate me as he wanted to in the future. So that’s why most students don’t ask any questions in that slack channel! 

After Jim Okelly told me to quit, I talked to many other of my classmates in Devschool. And apparently, a lot of them, after two months of study, still don’t understand what he is doing and have to learn everything by watching free online videos. But they never told him they didn’t get anything from him, because somehow, talking to Jim Okelly is very hard. 
Considering his bad altitudes and the other students’ experiences, I decided to leave and left him a very polite message. The second day, WITHOUT ANY NOTIFICATIONS OR MEESSAGES, I found that he just removed me from the slack channel (the only connection you can have with Devschool) and didn’t say anything. After I finally reached him out, HE SAID SOMETHING REALLY PERSONAL AND RUDE TO HUMILIATE ME. And he told me EVEN THOUGH I ONLY TOOK 1 LESSON, HE STILL SPENT ENERGY, AND THERE NEEDED TO BE AT LEAST $1500 FEE DEDUCTED (It’s around $2100 after everything). I tried to talk to him, and he just said rude things and then “go teach class”, the next thing I see is his assistant took the chat and told me “he is in class”. After that, he is in class forever, so good luck talking with him easily.

DON’T CHOOSE DEVSCHOOL OR JIM OKELLY! WHAT HAPPENED TO ME WILL HAPPEN TO YOU AS WELL. There are so many better programs, with free classes you can try, and way better quality.