Hyperion Dev - is it a good move?

[Brenz]

I am 37 and started learning in January. We are in the same boat

What path are you looking at going? Web dev, or software?

Web dev, im just at a cross roads now trying to decide where and how to study, as I will still be working full time.

 

[bchip]

Yes unfortunately 3 years is a long time for me to invest in a BSc, I am on the older side already, mid 30's, so am looking for a direction to get my foot in the door at a junior level and then work my way up while doing whatever learning I have to on the side.

Maybe consider doing the degree at the same time you get work as a junior dev?
Be upfront in the interviews about your keenness to learn.
Maybe try and find a situation where you can study and do work at the same time, (not necessarily one after the other)?

As a suggestion:
Goals
- Year 1 - Spend 12 months going through udemy/coursera courses
- Spend time building your own projects
- Year 2 - Register for degree if you are still keen
- Start looking for work as a junior dev
- Year 5 - complete degree with (hopefully) 2 years experience

?

 

[Faziki]

I did their Software Dev Bootcamp, Data Science and currently busy with their web developer bootcamp. if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask

 

[Basane]

I did their Software Dev Bootcamp, Data Science and currently busy with their web developer bootcamp. if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask

Hey Faziki, how far did you get with hyperion? Were you able to get a job or are still busy with the bootcamp?

 

[Basane]

I am 37 and started learning in January. We are in the same boat

What path are you looking at going? Web dev, or software?

Hey just wanted to know how your experience has been with hyperion? Were you able to secure a job or interviews through them?

 

[Inn3rs3lf]

Hey just wanted to know how your experience has been with hyperion? Were you able to secure a job or interviews through them?

Heya. I never went with them. I ended up getting a free 6-month pass to Treehouse's tech degree path. I did Hyperion's free trial, and found it lacking. You basically get the same material of freecodecamp for..free. If you need your code reviewed, there are countless people on the forums that would do it for you for free.

I have come across someone on a slack channel that is busy with them. She says she hasn't heard anything from them in terms of helping here as of yet (Interviews and the like). But that there is an alumni type of message board where you can post job offers and whatnot.

For the price they want per month, I would try somewhere else first to see if this is something you want to pursue. Do it until you start getting into Javascript/Python languages and not HTML/CSS to see if you dig it.

 

[Johnatan56]

Yes unfortunately 3 years is a long time for me to invest in a BSc, I am on the older side already, mid 30's, so am looking for a direction to get my foot in the door at a junior level and then work my way up while doing whatever learning I have to on the side.

Mid 30's is not that old, I had a lot of people around your age in my first degree, in Btech there were a lot of end of 30's. Rather practically code for a while, build up a portfolio and consider doing Unisa at the same time and then just keep applying for junior jobs, you only need one to succeed. Depending on what you were doing before, you might have to take a pay hit (or it could be raise?).

 

[lunch]

I knew the name rang a bell, I went to varsity with the ceo and was nearly a stakeholder in hyperion but turned it down. For what it's worth, he seemed quite passionate about teaching people to code. I'm glad he's doing well, as for OP's original question I will always recommend a BSc in comp sci above all else

 

[Faziki]

Hey Faziki, how far did you get with hyperion? Were you able to get a job or are still busy with the bootcamp?

Hey, sorry for the late reply.

To be honest, no. I completed two of their bootcamps last year and stopped with the web dev one because it felt like a waste of time. Since my competition of my first two bootcamps with them till now I am unable to secure a job as a developer.

I am currently doing some freelance work to build up my Professional experience due to most job postings out there have a insane requirement of ATLEAST 1 + year professional experience as a junior dev in any related dev field with a tech stack that is longer than the longest path you can walk on earth.



At this point I feel like I just want to become a hobo on a beach and sell coconuts.

 

[charlieharper]

I've been contracting as a web developer for ±3 years now, full time, remotely. Most of my business comes from North America ( US & Canada ) and occasionally, Europe.
Also working on my own side-projects in my spare time and does a bit of open-source contributions here & there.

How does HR / companies look at developers with 3 years of contracting experience, vs someone who worked locally at a company for the same period?

 

[cguy]

I've been contracting as a web developer for ±3 years now, full time, remotely. Most of my business comes from North America ( US & Canada ) and occasionally, Europe.
Also working on my own side-projects in my spare time and does a bit of open-source contributions here & there.

How does HR / companies look at developers with 3 years of contracting experience, vs someone who worked locally at a company for the same period?

Primarily, if they're looking for an experienced contractor, you now have experience at contracting at several companies, it would be a plus. They key positive being that the actual experience specific to contracting (working across multiple industries, quickly understanding client needs, multiple tech stacks, multiple companies, etc.), has value in itself.

The down side, is that a short term contractor's actual lifecycle and complex systems experience, is often pretty limited. A large complex system may have a planning, specing, experimentation/prototype feedback loop, final implementation, productionization, maintenance, 2nd generation planning, addressing shortfalls of 1st iteration, etc., that takes multiple years - working short stints will never give you experience in this. Conversely, and to the first point, someone who has worked on 3 iterations of a single large project over the last 12 years, would have a ton of depth, but less breadth.

So it really depends on the role being hired for (depth vs breadth, long term vs short term, complex vs simple systems, etc.). It's important to note that you were contracting in your resume, so that the reader doesn't think you were job hopping (which often indicates a problem with the job candidate).

 

[CT_Biker]

The best things in life are free. Try YouTube, and you know....reading the docs on how certain things are implemented.

Wanna know how deep your interest runs? Read the docs.
Wanna know what tools the language offers? Read the docs.
Wanna know how C++’s linker works, read the docs.

 

[L10Yn]

Any update on your experience. I'm considering changing fields from being an Actuary to software engineering. I do have lots of basic coding experience but feel like a more formal certificate would help my transition

 

[cguy]

Any update on your experience. I'm considering changing fields from being an Actuary to software engineering. I do have lots of basic coding experience but feel like a more formal certificate would help my transition

Personally, with your qualifications I would look more towards courses oriented around data science and machine learning in Python for practical experience.

For fundamentals, something like MITs open courseware on algorithms and data structures.

 

[Kornhub]

I came across this : https://www.theodinproject.com/home

Thoughts?

 

[Johnatan56]

I came across this : https://www.theodinproject.com/home

Thoughts?

Looks like an upsell for thinkful for a lot of the stuff.
Most of the JS stuff is super basic and you can get that from going through any tutorial anywhere.
Going then to frameworks or something front-end, look at Vue's stuff: https://www.vuemastery.com/courses-path/beginner

The site is basically a first year course, they have learn how to make tic tac toe for full stack stuff that most languages do, most of it is stuff you'd learn as the basics for any language.
There is nothing special/better than any other course there, feel free to go through it though as you'll learn something if you know absolutely nothing. Usually you'd want to find a video course to follow along though and then start a project. Personally I don't like that one as it uses react, and personally I find react is harder to get into than Vue for beginners. I'm talking about JS only, I have never used ruby on rails, and as a beginner I wouldn't get into that either, it was a flavor of the month stack that is now just drifting along, not a bad stack to learn but not sure as to the popularity in South Africa.

 

[Kornhub]

@Johnatan56 Thanks for your reply! I am pretty lost on what course I should begin with (I know basically nothing and don't know where to start).

I have the web developer bootcamp 2020 (Colt Steele) for example. What would you recommend ?

 

[Johnatan56]

@Johnatan56 Thanks for your reply! I am pretty lost on what course I should begin with (I know basically nothing and don't know where to start).

I have the web developer bootcamp 2020 (Colt Steele) for example. What would you recommend ?

Probably going through a back-end course first and then move to front-end.
So e.g. https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electri...nce-and-programming-fall-2008/video-lectures/ there are also assignments and readings. I picked that one because it's quite encompassing and would probably let you pass most junior interviews quite easily if you understand the material (or even 2/3 of it, you get better the more you use it and soon you won't even realize that you know all of it like the back of your hand). Setting up might be an issue due to older content, but you should be able to do it all with newer Java, should be okay setting up. Use something like IntelliJ community edition.
After that I'd start looking at front-end:
First learn HTML: https://www.w3schools.com/html/ , then CSS, then JS (only vanilla). Pick a project and use all of them. Then do the Vue beginner course, then build the project again using Vue. Then pick a project where it uses data, build the front-end with Vue just using JSON source, then build a small back-end to serve that JSON.

Now you're a full stack developer and can choose which direction you want to go/interests you more and explore it, rather than just being stuck back or front end.

I always recommend exploring back-end first because you have to keep that in mind when you think about how you want to handle information retrieval etc., and that should be a small guide as to how you should structure your front-end's information retrieval.

 

[Inn3rs3lf]

Forget framerworks for now. Vue vs React etc. Do the fundamentals and get it under your belt. HTML + CSS will take you a while to complete (CSS more so). You want to have that knowledge before you head to Javascript, as you will be injecting code into your Javascript for interactivity, and without a solid knowledge of it, you will get stuck trying to go back and relearn it.

You can produce perfectly good sites just with HTML and CSS that will spur you on to head into JS. JS will keep you busy for a while. Trust me, and 90% of others out there. Build projects, no matter how small. Get comfortable with the language and then you can move on with a framework. So many want to dive into Frameworks without fully understanding the basics, and get stuck when you need to start debugging, implementing and the like.

When it comes to a framework, then you have the option to have a look at jobs you wish to apply for. While Vue is easier than React, there are a heck of a lot more jobs for React than there are for Vue. So that is something to consider as well. But honestly, by the time you wish to move on to project, who knows what the landscape will look like - perhaps Vue will be the main choice for jobs, I don't think it will but you never know.

Bottom line is, take your time. Walk before you can run.

To add, The Odin Project has no upsell whatsoever. You also do not have to do a Ruby path, you can do their HTML, CSS and JS path. All it is is a consolidation of lessons found on the net, and bundled for the user to follow in a structured away instead of flip flopping on their own. They also have a Discord whereby you can ask questions when you are stuck, all 100% free of charge. Think FreeCodeCamp, except more thorough.

Another thing, you don't need video lectures if you don't learn visually. Not everyone learns the same way. I am a visual learner, but you may not be. Try out different methods, and stick to what works for you.

 

[MartinMorrison]

Hi all...was doing some holiday browsing on this forum after a very long time and came across this thread. I actually founded and still lead HyperionDev. If you have any questions, concerns, feedback please do not hesitate to reach out to me directly on [email protected].

Haven't posted here in 5 years so this is going to be a long one... Part of the reason I did was when I was much younger I used to use these forums a bit obsessively and come across the many posts about the best way to get into development/study IT, like the OP, and I think that is where I subconsciously

My own personal journey was started a CS degree at UKZN, hating it, transferring to the UK/US and finishing a degree in CS & AI (studied at Edinburgh/Cambridge/Penn/Oxford), doing a masters at Cambridge trying to look into why tech education is so hard for students and employers, ended up working in tech at Google after a short time in investment banking, then Facebook & Google funded HyperionDev to become a full-on edtech company and also spin up a sister company called CoGrammar (www.cogrammar.com) which helps other tech education companies deliver high quality coding education using African-based talent ( I see Treehouse is mentioned in this thread, one of the companies we've worked with).

Much of my life has been in formal Computer Science education, working as a developer, working with developers, building software development education programmes, and helping other companies build and deliver software development education programmes. The main thing I learnt were:

1. Education & employment is a weird thing - I think some of the smartest and most talented students I met were at UKZN, not Cambridge, and some of the best developers I met were completely self-taught and some of the most toxic working at Google. I was rejected from every company I applied for for my first job (including SA companies like Takealot and banks here) except Google.
2. A dirty secret of the higher education space is that a Computer Science degree (whether part-time, full-time) has one of the highest post graduation unemployment rates in the UK , and is the degree with the highest failure rate on average in South Africa (±80% of those that enrol never finish).
3. Pretty much every company now needs people who understand tech, and this is much broader than just needing senior developers.
4. This need is so huge it is just not met at scale by universities or BSc Comp Sci/IT degrees. That isn't because these programmes are not valuable, but they are not primarily designed to supply the knowledge that is needed to span all these needs of employers. They are designed to teach the discipline of Computer Science, which is not the discipline of being-able-to-do-all-jobs-in-tech.
5. This tech skills problem is so big that there are companies that help universities offer 'bootcamps', because universities don't even know how to train these skills. One such company is Trilogy Education. In fact, Trilogy and most bootcamps offer pretty much the same subject matter that minimally overlaps with what you may learn in a BSc IT/CS degree.

The empowering things about bootcamps that are run well by having proper student support (ie can provide personalised feedback which is extremely hard to do and what we at CoGrammar help others do), is that:

1. They do actually teach skills that are in high demand are not present in a traditional BSc IT/CS degree and that universities don't know how to teach well. Trilogy and others are proof of this. These are skills that look at tech careers more broadly, not just being a senior backend developer, and skills that realise you don't need to know advanced math to, but skills that are incredibly hard to learn just by yourself by watching videos and doing online tutorials. While you can definitely find *all* the equivalent course content for free online (as you can for a degree in pretty much any subject), well-run bootcamps definitely create the best environments for intensive learning of these skills that is tangibly valuable and extremely hard to create, especially in a remote-first, part-time setting.
2. They do teach these skills in a relatively short time frame because they are not bound by accreditation limits. Do you know why a BSc IT degree takes 3 years? Not because it takes 3 years to learn those skills, but because the government says it must take at least 3 years if it is to sit on the national qualifications framework. Isn't it crazy that universities work with companies like Trilogy to offer and sell courses that are not on the respective national qualifications framework, and isn't it crazy to think governments can come up with all the tiny unit standards that make up every form of knowledge, especially in tech?
3. They do get self-motivated students to outcomes. And this is a big one. At Hyperion for example, a majority of our students are already working and want to move into a more technical role in their current company or at another company, and no necessarily wanting to 'double their salary in 6 months' - though some do. This is a really different 'outcome' from going to study full-time at an institution when you are 18 years old, or when we run programmes for marginalised youth who didn't even get a chance to finish off high school. But no education institution can guarantee outcomes (though some have tried..) and universities do not operate on an outcomes-first basis and cannot in the way that non-universities can. Building relationships with hundreds of employers that are open to non-degreed graduates and even helping them understand how to identify and assess tech talent, identifying the right types of roles, building trust through a larger alumni and placement network - it takes years or focus and millions of rands.

But what does this mean for HyperionDev:

1. Do all of our students get to the outcomes they wanted coming in? No, and this is something we literally obsess about on a daily basis and this is something I will be personally chasing up with Faziki. Unlike universities, we specialise in this problem and so success for us is 100% of students reaching their outcomes, with a data-driven approach where we track CV reviews, interviews, technical assessments from hiring companies across thousands of students on a weekly basis. A traditional university simply can't even get ±20% of students through a CS degree consistently. We do everything in our power to help you actually complete a programme and the proof is in our progression, graduation, active student rates, net promoter scores which are orders of magnitudes higher than traditional BSc IT/CS programmes in SA. Our last graduate report showed 72% of graduates reaching outcomes in 3 months of graduating, but we've also spent 8 years learning about the 28% that didn't, the different outcomes people are seeking, and also what is realistic in what timeframe at scale. We have just raised the majority of a round of funding (with investors like Black Coffee) where we will be deploying the largest amount of capital that has ever been deployed in South Africa to solving the problem of scaling consistent outcomes in tech further than we have today.
2. Are we known by employers? We have one of the largest tech hiring networks in South Africa with graduates placed at hundreds of tech companies - and this is where network efforts kick in, where employers want more HyperionDev graduates and even trust us to help them assess technical talent for many of their roles.
3. Are we accredited? Intentionally only partially. We could offer BSc IT/CS degrees if we wanted, and are SETA accredited and can confer unit standards of a National Diploma in IT in our programmes without compromising their quality - but thats the problem. The solution to scaling outcomes is not accreditation - accreditation in some cases helps people get alternative funding to study (which is why we have it), but it otherwise forces you to limit where and how you offer your programmes, and to teach content that doesn't help people get to outcomes, wasting time and money of students. We can iterate on our content and pedagogy in ways that are not limited by this, and this is how we scale outcomes.
4. Are we perfect? No. We have made a lot of mistakes in our journey, and it has been an incredibly hard one - I started Hyperion when I was 18, and built it with absolutely no money of my own or friends/family - our first financial backers were Facebook & Google which I still can't believe - but I can confidentially say we are the best technical education provider in South Africa, one of the most advanced globally in terms of scaling extremely detailed technical instruction and feedback for students (so much so that we help other leaders in the space do it others through CoGrammar), and can scale and obsess about outcomes in a way no traditional university does or can do - with 2021 being the year we really get to focus on (and spending way more capital on) innovating in new types of outcomes that accelerate people into tech employment that has never been done before

Thank you MyBroadband for first introducing me to the scale of the tech education and skills gap in South Africa.

If you have any questions, concerns, feedback please do not hesitate to reach out to me directly on [email protected].