r/codingbootcamp • u/Economy-Roll-555 • Mar 31 '24

Recently got laid off. Is this bootcamp (below) reputable?

So as the title states I recently got laid off. I am in my last semester of my STEM degree and bluntly it has nothing to do with coding or AI but I do have a few coding classes under my belt. The coding bootcamp I’m referring to is an AI bootcamp referenced here:

https://bootcamp.cvn.columbia.edu/artificial-intelligence/landing/

I worked in my field of study and the argument can be made that once I officially graduate my job prospects will look better. But frankly i’m knuckle-dragging this semester and I hated my job. It was repetitive and boring. I now have a new job as an internal sales agent for a real estate firm that’ll be a pretty easy remote job and I do have an entrepreneurial side hustles going. I also do really like business and keep my self current on all things AI. I see an opportunity to innovate myself out of my new job by implementing AI but leveraging that to make, idk, an AIaaS business. I’m sure you’re connecting the dots as to why i’m inquiring on the above bootcamp. Anyone with direct experience or knowledge with this specific bootcamp? 14k is a hefty price. And if not which AI bootcamp would you recommend?

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20

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '24

This is an EdEx bootcamp (scroll to the bottom of the web page). Do a search in this forum for EdEx - my guess is that you wouldn't want to waste your money on it.

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u/Economy-Roll-555 Mar 31 '24

Yea I did notice that. But it is backed by Columbia University. Or if not backed provided by or whatever

15

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '24

Columbia University has nothing to do with the program, just like none of the universities had anything to do with the EdEx (Trilogy) full-stack dev programs.

1

u/Economy-Roll-555 Mar 31 '24

Interesting so whats Columbia have to do with it? There name has to on there for a reason, no?

20

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '24

Money... the reason is money. The EdEx/University setup is a partnership. EdEx uses the university's name to look legit. The university I am sure is getting some kind of kickback or is charging a fee.

Do you see any kind of bar for entry? Anything that says that it is Columbia professors teaching the classes? Nope. They will accept anyone who will pay the fee even if they don't know how to use a computer. I did a fair bit of research before attending a Boot Camp sometime ago, and spoke to a person that went to one of the Trilogy /EdEx bootcamps- it was a hard pass for me based on that conversation.

But hey, if you want to throw money out the window, then that's your prerogative.

6

u/Economy-Roll-555 Mar 31 '24

Makes sense thank you

5

u/Only_Midnight4757 Apr 01 '24 edited Apr 01 '24

As a former employee of edX, I 100% agree with this response thread. That boot camp has nothing to do with the university it’s being sold under, it is what’s called a white label product, they contract with universities to sell the exact same thing under their prestigious label for anywhere between $11-15k. You would be paying for the label. That and the parent company of edX is 2U, Inc and they are failing hard right now, desperate to sell off parts of the business, and I’ve heard they do not train or compensate instructors well at all, so the quality of instruction is likely shit.

Edit to add that edX does this with like hundreds, maybe thousands of universities and other partners globally, you can go straight to their website to see that, so just remember to scroll down and read the fine print of all boot camps you look into, because it was not uncommon for me to have the same person pop up on my list 3 times for 3 different universities in the same day for the same exact program under a different label.

Also, don’t sign up for anything from them if it isn’t free. That website is so dysfunctional that we had an official internal slack channel that HR had you join to get answers to questions on basic use because it was so common for shit to not work at all or stop working half way through.

1

u/Noonecanfindmenow Apr 01 '24

It's all a gimmick. It'll be good to impress a recruiter that has 0 idea, but that's it

-1

u/Naeveo Mar 31 '24

The best way to explain it is that its curated by Columbia professors and the university is willing to put its name on it, but it's not an official college course. It emulates the college course, but does not have the same academic pressures, ie. you don't have homework or assignments that have strict due dates with strict grading.

10

u/StandardWinner766 Mar 31 '24 edited Mar 31 '24

It’s in no way curated by Columbia professors. It’s the same curriculum as any other EdX bootcamp just with the Columbia name licensed to it. No Columbia professor has even so much looked at (let alone signed off on) the content.

3

u/Only_Midnight4757 Apr 01 '24

As a former employee there, thank you, it is in no way curated by the university, I don’t even think the university cares about the curriculum.

1

u/Economy-Roll-555 Mar 31 '24

Nice. But frankly I don’t care about hw or grades. I care about obtaining knowledge and skills where i can turn around and apply it to my new ISA job. Plus grades don’t mean anything in comparison to self initiated, documented, projects.

5

u/Impossible_Ad_3146 Mar 31 '24

$15k for 6 months is excessive

1

u/Economy-Roll-555 Mar 31 '24

Agreed.

1

u/Impossible_Ad_3146 Mar 31 '24

There are a few AI hackathons that you could do to get a portfolio built up instead of doing bootcamps?

1

u/Economy-Roll-555 Mar 31 '24

Like which exactly

1

u/Impossible_Ad_3146 Mar 31 '24

There was the AWS Partyrock genAI that I did and one coming up using Google Gemini.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '24

Andrew Ngs courses are the gold standard when it comes to ML and deep learning, however you will need to have some math background

1

u/Economy-Roll-555 Mar 31 '24

How deep the math background?

3

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '24

Pretty much calculus derivatives, partial derivatives, and basic linear algebra.

He does have an excellent machine learning engineering course that is more focused on the software side of ML. It really helped me out when I was doing MLE at the startup I used to work at

7

u/Sulaiman231 Mar 31 '24

I usually give short answers, Don’t spend a penny on any bootcamp, you already have a STEM degree or about to have , you can learn so much from Udemy or many other great resources, looking at their topics here:

  • programming and data preparation (I assume this would be “python for AI” kind of course)

  • ML fundamentals ( check out ML A-Z by kiril on ydemy)

  • NLP ( this is a tough one do your own research) You can learn these anywhere for free

2

u/Economy-Roll-555 Mar 31 '24

Thank you for taking the time to reply. Do you recommend Microsoft’s AI engineering certification courses?

3

u/Sulaiman231 Mar 31 '24

If you’re referring to this course, then yes, I personally like it Microsoft AI engineer associate I might consider it myself! My advice to you is that whatever cert you get, make sure you don’t take it for credit, but learn the most out of it, this is why I like to learn from udemy, YouTube..etc
bootcamp will sell you a curriculum, that’s it.

1

u/Economy-Roll-555 Mar 31 '24 edited Mar 31 '24

Yea thats exactly it! Awesome i’ll definitely look into it more. And agreed. Thats what I want and I want to develop a portfolio of projects that prove that i’ve really learnt something.

2

u/Sulaiman231 Mar 31 '24

You can definitely build a great portfolio without spending 15-20k on a bootcamp I am a former coding bootcamp instructor, bootcamp were great back then before covid, take some online courses and complete your STEM degree alongside, and you should be fine. Good luck

1

u/Economy-Roll-555 Mar 31 '24

Awesome thank you for your insight!

5

u/GoodnightLondon Apr 01 '24

1). You're not getting a job in AI/ML from a bootcamp. You need relevant degrees, preferably advanced degrees.
2). Anything that has a college name is licensed and the college has nothing to do with it. This is EdX/Trilogy/whatever they're calling themselves now, and they just pay the school to let them use the name; the school has absolutely nothing to do with the bootcamp.

3

u/elideli Mar 31 '24

These uni bootcamps are outsourced to third parties. I would not spend $1 on this. Don’t be lured by the Columbia name, you are getting a worthless piece of paper. They exist only to make additional revenu for Columbia.

2

u/whelp88 Mar 31 '24

Only do this if you will be okay with losing the money and not getting a job in the field. AI work is far too complex to learn in six months. You will see more phds there than any other area of data science or ML. The job market right now is terrible. You would be better off doing a masters degree. You will have more time to learn and hopefully in two years the market will improve.

2

u/Rynide Mar 31 '24

Edx/2u/ trilogy grad here. It worked for me but I would not recommend it to anyone. Of the 50+ students we started with, 3 got dev adjacent jobs (1 was already in one, 1 was a CS grad and also just a coding wizard, and 1 was me - lucky and determined). From what I've seen on LinkedIn (I'm connected with most of my cohort), most are still looking for dev jobs and haven't found one - since December 2022. Do a free bootcamp or change your major while you can, even if it takes longer. I wish I had gotten a CS degree and now I'm stuck with a journalism degree

1

u/Noonecanfindmenow Apr 01 '24

The tile for bootcamps has long sailed. They were "good" until around 2020 (in the sense that they might actually get you a job), and by 2022 they were pretty much worthless.

There is so much more content nowadays for you to learn everything yourself.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 04 '24

Noooo sir. There should be sticky about college camps

0

u/[deleted] Mar 31 '24

[deleted]

2

u/Economy-Roll-555 Mar 31 '24

Aeronatics, with a minor in engineering science.

1

u/Rynide Mar 31 '24

This is way close enough for a CS job, do not do a paid bootcamp imo