Hi,
I did the Mukyu (Novice) and attended 1 Month of Shodan Classes.
The format is great, ideal for people who want to learn it nice and slow.
The problem is the Instructor. I have no doubts on his knowledge. He knows what he's talking about, he has real good advices and he has experience in the field too.

The problem is the way he's trying to take the class. In the class he says feel free to ask questions, I want you to ask many questions even after the class throughout the week. Well when we do send him questions, the reply comes after 3-4 days!! That's not what you expect when you are paying for the class! Don't get me wrong, but forums have better response time then his. I can understand that he maybe busy with a lot of work, but than again that's not my concern. Once in a while its fine, but it was often than not.

Also, the worse thing that really made me tick off was when I had asked him to post the video of last week which he had forgot to. No reply. After few days again i mailed him. No reply. after a week or so, when I sent him a really long mail asking him whats the matter? His reply was I don't tend to answer mails that are demanding!!
Huh?? Demanding??? I simply asked you to please upload the video as I had missed the class and I wanted to catch up!!! And even if it was wrong, you could have replied to me that "hey, i'll upload the video but please reply in a nice way (or something)..." I would have appreciated it and I won't waste my time waiting for it...

And oh one more thing, from Shodan and onwards, if he misses one class (not you, he) that class money is gone! That's right, he doesn't carry forward them. I asked him the reason, he said that its very difficult to maintain the accounts that way. Although at the start of shodan he gave me 2 weeks extra but that does not make any sense to me ....

Even though the content is great, I left the class and Now I am pursuing it on my own, Its gonna be slow, its gonna be painful, but hey that's the way every awesome security specialist has done it. And I think that's the way it should be.

As for me, I don't recommend this course, only because of his attitude not because of his knowledge or the content. Only if he could change the attitude the class would be top Notch for any beginners like me.

Any comments are welcome as this is what I felt taking the course..

Cheers.

I think it's a personal perspective type thing here.  While I agree that Tom is sometimes a bit difficult to get a hold of, I'm OK with it because I understand that he has a job and a family.  My thoughts: family first, and he needs to keep his job to pay the bills and care for/support his family.  At least he's not leaving us hanging with nothing.  There's another instructor to take over (who knows the material, but agreeably just needs the teaching experience), and most everything is on the wiki already.  I think better student interaction could help in this situation also.  I try to frequent the Hacking Dojo forums, but hardly anybody ever posts anything there.  The same few people will post their results/findings regarding the "homework assignment" Tom gave us, but that's about it.  Not to toot my own horn, but if somebody posted an issue they were having and I don't know the answer (if it's an app issue, I usually try to see if I can resolve the issue myself - case in point the SSH/hydra issue with BT5 awhile back), I'm confident enough in my Google-fu that I could at least point somebody in the right direction to get them the help they need.

Also, I've never had any issue with Tom sounding as arrogant as mayjune has made him out to be.  Every conversation I've had with Tom, he has been very kind and helpful.  I've found him to be a very laid back guy, we usually end up joking around a bit by the end of the conversation.

Understandably the frustration some people have with attempts to contact him, but there's also other people who can help and resources to ask those people.  At the same time you're paying to learn from him, you're paying for access to those other resources.  I'd use them

No dude you are paying for the content not someone to hold your hand.  With a mentor they help you but they don't hold your hand and force feed you stuff.  The security field is not for people that need hand holding its a field that you get a little help, such as the videos and learn and apply it yourself.  I don't mean to come off as an A** but seriously man don't be so lazy and say that this mentor should be there for you 24/7 because like I said that is not what a mentor does.

I still stand by my point, mentor is a mentor not a 24/7 hand holder.

My questions were less how do I, and more of should I do something / suggest something not related to what I'm paid to do at work.