Pros
The trainer I had (who is no longer working there) was an expert in his field and covered all the most important topics. It was a very very fast experience, not a pleasant one, but extremely productive in terms of providing a good overall picture of the kinds of things that you should know in the field. The training was not well organized, but this was not necessarily a bad thing because it meant that more topics were covered via random digressions. The problem with covering so many topics so quickly is that there is little chance for students to learn much about project architecture or absorb good coding practices. (I think this is inherent in a boot camp experience, though.) In short, the "boot camp" experience I had was pretty good. (I can't speak as to how it is now since the teacher I had (there was only one teacher at GLL when I was there) isn't working there any more.) GLL also seems pretty good at finding working for people -- they do all the legwork, which made it pretty easy to find a job through them. (However, they can take half or more of your salary…so I'm not sure if it makes any sense to work for them.) After the training/finding work process was done, everything went way downhill.
Cons
I was promised a certain wage when I started at Go-Live Labs. When it came time to make good on the promise, I was told there was a "mistake" and they couldn't afford to pay me that, and they offered to pay me much less. The CEO claimed at the time that if I was paid what they had told me they would pay me, Go-Live Labs wouldn't make any money from me. I have since learned that that was outright lie -- GLL stood to make a very large amount even if they paid what they said they would pay me. After that salary discussion, GLL then made me sign a "cover letter," which slapped a huge penalty on me if I were to stop working for them during the duration of the contract. I am far from the only person to have had negative experiences at the company. The CEO likes to spin a very positive narrative, one in which employees should be thankful to the company for everything, but it's primarily self-serving, and in the middle of it, I always felt, was intimidation. Paydays -- There is no set payday. Payday seems to be any time between the 24th of a month and the 12th of the next month. At first I thought that the company couldn't pay its bills, but now I think it was probably just disorganization somewhere along the line. Pay stubs are a bit irregular; two date ranges are given for when the pay is for (one date range is inaccurate and the other is right); stubs don't list sick/vacation time, and sometimes key information (like tax information) isn't included in the pay stub. I recommend checking every pay stub methodically for errors -- maybe I just got really unlucky, but there was something wrong in about 1/4 of the paychecks I got. Staff -- GLL seems to go through a large amount of office staff. While I have had several positive interactions with the staff, I've also had some pretty bad ones, like when I was yelled at for telling the truth during an interview. I never felt comfortable dealing with the staff. I have the impression that the staff is seriously constrained in what they can and can't say to the trainees and "consultants." (Similarly, GLL encouraged secrecy among trainees by insisting that the terms of each contract be kept secret, and that "consultants" avoid communicating about anything serious to the managers at their job sites. I think this last part was essentially just a ploy to sucker trainees into accepting abnormally low pay and prevent them from building contacts which could turn into other jobs, making them dependent on GLL.)
