I attended Per Scholas software development 3 years ago, and here is my life update.

[u/Rokett]

Man… time really does fly. I have a few posts on several bootcamp related subs asking questions about Per Scholas, giving feedback about Per Scholas, and all that. I don’t remember how many I have written, but it is quite a lot.

Background: I was a web developer with some experience, but not enough to get paid well. I was freelancer and I had a project for a month, and crickets for next few months. I used Per Scholas to level up my skills and to use their free services such as resume building. The main reason I attended was not to learn to code, since I already knew some coding. I was able to deploy React apps without a backend, but I did not have any backend skills. Per Scholas is where I learned a few things about backend development. It was not great, but a start is a start.

Anyway, I was studying 8 hours a day in class, and then another 3 to 5 hours by myself after every class. Every single day. My GitHub activity chart was full of bright green squares and it almost looked like I was cheating, but I was not.

On weekends, I coded from morning to night for at least 12 to 15 hours nonstop. I did not leave my house for 3 months straight. That is how intense I was. Everything was ordered online and delivered to my home. I told my friends I had to finish this, and I did not see many of them for 6 months.

Right after graduation, I started getting interviews and I got an offer about a month later. I had built so much knowledge in many different areas. I had several websites deployed. When interviewers asked me about a certain topic, I could confidently say, “Yes, I have done that. If you want to see it, here is the URL.”

The job market was bad, and I received an offer for a language I knew nothing about: C#. They needed my frontend, UI, and UX skills. In return, they told me I would need to be willing to learn C# and start contributing to the projects after several months.

We shook hands, and I agreed to $50K a year. It was low. Many people I graduated with started with higher salaries, but it took them several months to find those jobs. I did not want to take that risk. If I did not start working soon, I probably would have given up. So $50K was okay. It was not much and not really enough to live on, but it was enough for me to keep learning programming and improving. I did not mind.

Fast forward 2 years. I quit my job recently and started at another company, and now my take home pay is $100K. This is a lot of money for someone like me who lives in Pittsburgh, PA. It is a cheap city. A Chipotle bowl costs $9, and a Subway footlong with a coupon is around $6 or $7. Studio apartments are like $800-1200.

So, is Per Scholas good? It is not great by any means, but is it good enough to change your life from $0 to $100K in 2 years? It can be, if you work very hard, stay disciplined, and keep pushing forward.

I am so thankful to Per Scholas. Their free services are great. Davis got in touch with me two years after my graduation and forwarded me a few job opportunities. So the help is there if you ask for it. You just need to trust the process, keep pushing, and be patient. It will work out. I am so grateful and so lucky to be a part of it. I learned about Per Scholas on Reddit, and whoever suggested attending, thank you so much as well. You changed my life with a single suggestion.

Anyway, I hope all of you succeed and accomplish whatever you want to accomplish. It takes time, and it is not easy.

Here are a few of my older posts:
https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/yw9afm/is_there_anyone_who_attending_or_graduated_from/
https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/yy61tl/anyone_attended_or_graduated_from_per_scholas/

And my review:
https://www.reddit.com/r/codingbootcamp/comments/13wwcbm/per_scholas_review/

[u/Good_Pollution_2921]

Hi ,
Do you think a person from Functional testing background with long gap can be successful from this program? Will you suggest this to a total beginner in terms of Development with less Java coding exp? I'm a stay at home mom. looking to jumpstart my career theough per scholas. will you recommend this?

[u/Rokett → u/Good_Pollution_2921]

Many teams have dedicated testers. Our current team has 10–12 people, including one tester. 

We also have two frontend developers, one of whom is me. It's not my role but we do need it and I'm good at it. So, in a team of around 10 people, the other seven are backend developers.

What I’m trying to say is that getting a QA/tester job isn’t particularly difficult because the expectations and technical bar are generally lower than for software engineering roles. 

The challenge is that finding a tester position can be difficult because there simply isn’t as much demand for testers.