Software, Web and Mobile Engineering

Before attending Makers Academy, I had no technical training whatsoever. I had recently returned to school after working for about 5 years, yet I found that my masters degree wasn't really leading to jobs that I found personally meaningful and that stretched my brain. Luckily, circumstances led me to check out programs for learning to code and I found Makers. I immensely enjoyed the program. It was really tough but they realise this. Makers provides all kinds of services and mentorship to help you improve and feel as comfortable as possible with the intensive learning process. If they could improve something, I think it might be the pre-course which increased my anxiety about the program rather than helped build my confidence. What Makers did best was teaching me to think like a programmer, which would have been a tough thing to pick up on my own. In the end and most importantly, I ended up with a job that I really enjoy and a career track that is incredibly inspiring.

Makers Academy has a hollistic approach to learning. It's challenging its students through weekly projects. It also takes care of their wellbeing through meditation, yoga classes and daily checkins. The best learning experience you can ask for

Maker's Academy was the beginning of my beautiful, frustrating, love-hate relationship with code. Before starting the course, I had dabbled in HTML, and CSS. That's it. I was an infant in the ever expanding universe of web development. I don't owe Maker's Academy for turning me into the software engineer that I am today. That's mostly due to my stubborn tenacity to keep struggling through. However, I do owe Maker's Academy for enabling me to fall in love with the process of learning how to code. One must understand that no bootcamp, school, or educational establishment can teach anyone 'how to code' in twelve weeks. That's impossible. Maker's Academy taught me how to enjoy the struggle, embrace the unknown, be confident in what I know, and curious in what I do not. If you're curious about if a job in web development is for you, Maker's Academy will be an inspiring introduction that just might make you fall in love as well. It's a magical experience, and I give it five stars all around, aside from the aspect of Job Assistance. I believe that they are quite helpful when it comes to EU citizens who are looking for employment inside of the EU (almost all of the hiring partners are within the EU). However, being an American, there really wasn't much that they could do for me due to visa issues. Regardless, I recently landed my dream job at ThoughtWorks in Chicago and at the end of the day, when it comes to getting a job, I think it's a very individual effort anyway. 

An incredible experience if you're serious about a career change. Makers provide a vibrant and stimulating environment to learn important real-world programming skills (test-driven development, best practices, git flow) and modern technologies that will make you stand out against traditional computer science graduates in the right kind of companies. Take this from someone who did a conversion masters in Computer Science at one of the UK's most prestigious universities and still decided to attend Makers, and now works at an amazing tech start-up as a result.

Makers is not for the faint-hearted. Firstly, the cost of any bootcamp is prohibitive, though it pales in comparison to the cost of higher education (and don't forget that you need to sustain yourself for about 6 months, not 3 to 4 years). I would also recommend seriously trying to learn how to program on your own and in other ways (attending workshops, taking online courses) - not everyone who joins a bootcamp ends up choosing to become a developer, and that's down to personal preferences and warped expectations. Don't expect to be "taught" things in the traditional sense of the term. A few don't fully understand this and feel frustrated when they're struggling outside a traditional classroom environment. Lastly, don't expect to just be given a job. Makers are improving their ties to companies and are boosting their careers team, who are extremely helpful, but at the end of the day it is up to you to figure out where there is a good fit, to ace interviews and tech tests and to go out and find companies that want to hire you.

The coaches and staff are passionate and helpful, and the material is kept as relevant and up-to-date as possible. There's a lot of hard work and team projects, and ultimately you get out of it as much as you put in, since nobody holds your hand and there is a vast amount of knowledge to be uncovered. 12-16 weeks is a short amount of time, but the hands-on learning approach, being steeped in the right environment and surrounded by passionate individuals really does ingrain the knowledge in your head. People in the tech industry who are familiar with Makers and their graduates are consistently impressed, so no wonder some of the best software companies hire direct.

Do your research, go to open days and taster events and make sure you want to code for a living. If you do, Makers is the right place to start.

Experience was one of a kind, I had never study anything related to programming until I started preparing for this course, It's extremely important to do all the material given for the pre course, I could not get it all done before we started and I really paid the price through out the course, because once you start there is not stopping or resting! Its a very very intensive course the fact that I did the online one might have made it more intense I'm not sure but it was definitely challenging for me, I struggle with the lack of guidance or people to answer my questions, apart from other students they pretty much want you to find the answers on your own and I'm not very good at that so that made me struggle through out, my mentor was available but only to ask more questions... this is kinda their methodology no way around that, but on the other hand I loved that they help me get job ready, 4 months of studying and I was ready job ready, earning way more than a minimum wage salary, because I lived in London they also helped me to secure interviews and finally a job, I'm very happy I joined MA and regret not doing it earlier in life! its a major change in life style, you get to join an amazing industry that is very flexible when it comes to hours, holidays and family time, there is so much demand that developers pretty much choose where and how they want to work I haven't heard of any other industry that offers this! (obviously the more experience you have the more picky you can get) again I highly highly recommend anybody to go for it, its hard but totally doable

It's cheesy to say but Makers Academy has directly changed my life. 

There are lots of places that you can go to see what their syllabus looks like, the languages they teach and the frameworks they expose you to but none of this really captures what makes this such a revolutionary school. Simply put: Makers is somewhere that changed my perception of learning. Underlying their program in web-development was a subtle thread teaching you to be able and confident to pick up any piece of technology and, given time, change it, manipulate it and ultimately get it to work. 

In practice this proved far more valuable. While studying on the course I was able to practice learning on a particular, useful stack of technologies but when I came out the other end into the real world and a job I was quickly thrown into the deep end using a language and frameworks that I had never even heard of before. That I didn't sink is a testament to everything that Makers taught me. I would thoroughly recommend them to anyone considering going to a developer bootcamp.

The whole experience at Makers changed my life for good, I think everything was good apart from the fact that important things like JS experience and Sass or even CSS were not cover with more intensity. 

Another down side was the "Hiring Week" it was a complete disaster, bad organized and when I applied for different roles I did not have a proper feedback about why I was not shorlisted in the pack of applicants, then I applied outside and I was called for interviews, but I must say that this part of the course has been removed and this issue does not occur at the moment. That week is another part of the course which I think was a great decision.

Apart from those previus comments, everything at Makers was phenomenal, Coaches were like big brothers or your best friend, communication was very fluid, Dana was awesome with her yoga and talks. The building itself was great, having fruit everyday was good, table tennis was something I quite did not understand at the begining but once you are inmerse coding 12-16 hours daily it becomes vital part of your daily excersice, I really miss that at work.

Making real friends was another big plus for me, I found several characters there which I consider a good influence not only in my career but in my personal life.

I have told my story to many people interested in doing the same, shame that they are not ready to sacrifice what is needed, so I started a Charity Coding Club with kids thanks to everything I learned at Makers and who knows maybe some of them would be Makers one day.

If you are reading this review I just want to tell you that Makers is a door that can give you access to a huge universe called Programming, just do it, you will never regret about it. 

The title is serious, this place completely transformed my career, prospects and general well being. Absolutely brilliant place to go, Makers Academy which I am now a part of (and still feel as much a part of as when I graduated 6 months ago), taught Ruby and JavaScript, but really it taught me to code - and by that I mean it taught me to pick up any programming problem, in any language and be confident to give it a really good go.

I graduated from Makers in mid-August 2016. At the time of writing this, I have accepted one of the three job offers I have been made and am about to start working as a professional developer after only 6 months since I decided to change my career and do something I love.

Makers Academy is an amazing environment for learning, helping you develop fundamental skills that make a great developer rather than teaching a specific language or framework. Their career staff is extremely helpful, assisting everyone to find the right job for them.

If you know you want to have a career as a software developer and are looking for reasons to join or not to join Makers, just look at the biggest deliverable, which is how many people who studied here have then gone on to get a job as software developer (relatively) soon after finishing; that should give you confidence that anyone who wants to can make it and Makers is the best way to get there!!

In summary, just do it!

Makers Academy doesn't just teach you to code, it also makes you very employable by instilling best practices in coding and the work environment. Having been taught Agile Practices, TDD and XP among other things i believe gave me a leg up over other candidates when job hunting and helped me stand out. A great environment to learn with and meet such a wide variety of people from such differing backgrounds. Money well spent and memories firmly set in stone. 

I applied to Makers Academy (MA) after my younger brother had completed the course and I was, frankly, jealous of the job opportunities available to him, and that he had a literacy in something I could only dream of. 

Having graduated from uni I was left feeling like my degree didn't really set me apart and I wanted to upskill myself so I could compete with my peers in the job market. I also wanted to make moves towards a career that would challenge me and provide lots of opportunity for growth - something I felt I didn't have in my current role.

In summary, i've doubled my salary and wildly boosted my career opportunities in the space of 3 months, having never touched code before my interview preparation. You get out of MA as much as you put in. It's an incredibly hard course, and you're studying pretty much none stop for the 3 months. There were definitely moments where I felt like I wasn't going to make it. But I signed up to be challenged and thats exactly what I got. 

Experience:
The learning environment at MA is great. They acknowledge what a challenge it can be, and work really hard to create an environment that looks after people's mental and physical health whilst they're studying. It was those extra things, the focus on feedback and open lines of communciation, the ethos of supporting one another, and being surrounded by so many passionate and aspirational people is what really made it for me. 

Instructors:
For the most part I found the instructors/coaches great. They challenged me, often answered my question with another question which, whilst occasionally annoying, has made me a more independent thinker and confident at solving my own problems. I did feel like my cohort could have benefitted from greater contact time with the coaches. They often felt somewhat absent during the day to day runnings of the place, more so towards the latter half of the course - however, as we became more autonomous and capable their intervention was less and less neccessary. 

Curriculum:
The curriculum is rigorous and does what it says on the tin: gives you the skills you need to get a job as a developer. My learning is not over and I doubt it ever will be. But I felt like the structure of the course, and the sue of Ruby as a teaching lagnuage (followed by JS) gave me a fluid and comprehensive understanding of web development. The curriculum will always be a work in proress; students are encouraged to feed back on materials that they don't think are up to scratch or that aren't giving them the clearest understanding of the topic in question. There were a couple of weeks during my time on the course where I felt like that materials weren't as strong as they needed to be to thoroughly teach me that topic, however I have looked at the materials again since graduating and they have been updated and improved based on this kind of feedback.

Job Assistance:
I can't really comment much on this as I found a job relatively quickly after graduating based on my own networking. However, I would say that MA did a lot to encourage me into these kind of networking events, and the careers week at the end of the course in particular I found extremely useful in terms of teaching me how to approach interviews for this kind of industry. They also provide a whole wealth of resources that I will forever be able to reference back to, that cover technical interview questions and how to handle them, tech test advice, and more general guidance on how to job hunt in the tech industry. Their team is incredibly knowledgable on the tech scene in London and beyond, and they were great about advising me on the company I was applying to, and also gave me the confidence and guidance to negotiate a higher salary. I think with the job assistance you get out of it as much as you put in (ie: they won't chace you, the onus is on you to job hunt & keep them in the loop as much as you see fit) and there isn't quite as much support beyond careers week as students expect there to be. I think that MA could do to improve their connections beyond London within the UK but I am aware that they are currently working hard on this matter in particualr. 

The course isn't cheap. But I think it is a better investment than my degree, which these days appears to just be a tick I can put in a box. I am glad I did it, it was the right decision, and I would absolutely recommend this if you're the kind of person that doesn't shy away from hard work, likes to be challenged, and is looking for a way to break into the tech industry. 

Few months ago I did not know what a "Hello world!" was.. now I have an amazing job in the start up I wanted to work for.

My experience.. in one word.. intense!
To get to the point where I am.. I worked from November to April about 12-15hours a day(the course was actually on december the precourse and then from january to april the course..).. I took one day off some weekends.. but in exchange.. the day I did work.. I work double! So it is possible.. but it is on you, you can work s much as you can.. even less is ok too..but it is not like something that just happens.. you are there to learn and this is your responsibility.. Makers is not there to teach you but you are there to learn.. they give you the tools and you need to use them:) all that efford.. pay off and at the end, I ENJOYED doing it!

Job hunting

They will not find a job for you.. this is the real life.. you need to find a job yourself.. but they will help you with references, tricks.. many stuff that make the difference in the job hunting etc.. but forget about you finishing the course and start to work for google.. ¬¬ it is on you too, and it is important you keep this in mind.. but I can say, I got an AWESOME job and I feel... happines!!! when the alarm wake me up early in the morning everyday! :D

Instructors
I did Ronin, so basically I had only one coach, SAM, do not forget that name because if you are lucky enough to be his student, you will fall in love with coding and you will not get just an instructor but a friend, he is an AWESOME DEVELOPER and a PERFECT teacher. The workshops with him were amazing, the way he explains stuff is great.

Well.. if you want to change your life.. they will give you the tools to make it possible..:)

With the world becoming more and more reliant upon technology & software systems there is no better time to get into the industry than right now. Makers Academy is the perfect stepping stone into the world of computers where you're surrounded by peers who geniunely want to learn, staff & coaches who exude the same passion and excitement they teach the students and very relevant material that applies to a real life working tech environment. I had high expectations joining Makers but they were completely blown away and I'm still thoroughly impressed by how much what I learned during my time there is helping me now working as a software developer!

The course was fantastic. I learnt a huge amount in a very short period of time. The tuition was great and there was a perfect balance of lecturing and self taught work. Everyone was very friendly and approachable, meaning I was never afraid to ask stupid questions. There was loads of ping pong and yoga, which I thoroughly enjoyed. At the end of the week, beer was provided and the office turns into a party... what more could you want? Most important of all, they helped me get a job within 3 weeks of graduating. I couldn't recommend this course more highly!!!

Makers is not just a bootcamp, it's a community of passionate developers.
They provide you all the tools and support you need to start a developer career.

If you really want to become a coder Makers is definitely the right starting point.
 

From Bartender to ThoughtWorkers in about 6 months... 
Probably one of the best decisions I have ever took in my life.

100% worthwhile in terms of being able to totally change your career and land a job in under 4 months but, understand that all of the hard work will come from you. I landed a well paid job less than 2 weeks after graduating with one of Makers hiring partners. 

If you're a procrastinator like me, Makers is great at forcing you to code all day, every day. There is no escape and you will learn a lot very quickly! This includes all of the best practices that employers are looking for so will put you in a strong position on graduating. 

However, it is a lot of money for the amount of access you get to coaches. If you do the course, do not expect to be spoon fed. The coaches are amazing, but seem overworked and with not enough time to give full attention to their students.  

Essentially you are given the course material and you work your way through it with the rest of the students but, with little feedback from coaches. This does of course have its benefits in terms of teaching you to be a very independent learner and find the solution yourself but can be very frustrating when you consider the cost. 

There is quite a lot of focus placed on the social side of things as well, if this appeals to you then you'll have a lot of fun. Work hard, play hard.

Also, the intensity level is overplayed and don’t let it put you off. If you’ve worked in a fast-paced environment before this is no different.  

Went into Makers with a huge amount of skepticism but I couldn't have been more wrong. Not only did I learn how to code, but I learnt how to learn...as peculiar as that sounds. Walking out of Makers has not only given me a dream job as a developer, but its also given me this surreal feeling of being able to learn and tackle anything, even outside the domain of coding. The atmosphere was incredible and support was also very good on both the technical side with the passionate coaches, as well as the human side with Dana being a superb joy officer looking our mental and physical wellbeing.

I don't like to make dramatic statements but easily the best decision I've made in my life so far.

A little about me: I studied politics at university, co-managed a martial arts school, tutored english & maths, and wanted more intellectual challenge. I was looking for a way into the industry, prompted by a developer friend and was stuck between a more traditional masters CS conversion course or a bootcamp.

I got offered a job last week as a junior software developer working in Ruby which allowed me a moment of massive validation that the career-change gamble I took actually worked. I couldn't be more excited! However, Makers could have done a better job in setting good expectations for how long it would take to get a job. Budget on 3 months job-hunting after you finish Makers. I was among the first few in my cohort to get jobs and i'm 2+ months into the magic 'three months'. (Of course, there are a host of factors involved)

Makers Academy is not just a place to learn to code(in fact i'd say it's a place to learn how to problem-solve), it's a place of community and friendship and self-development. The educational philosophy that Makers seems to follow is to enable you you to learn as much as possible. The traditional model of timed lectures at fixed points during the day or course doesn't work for them. Instead I felt constantly encouraged to find answers myself and then given tools to do so. Standups twice a day and retrospectives at the end of the week help keep the communication flow up, not to mention the constant pair programming which has made me grow immeasurably as a communicator and as a coder. There is a set escalation process when struggling through a challenging part of the syllabus. Online research, then the peer group, and the assistants, and then the coaches. If the coaches are being asked similar questions a breakout lecture inevitably happens. The whole place breathes Agile practices to give a better feedback loop to students and to staff.

Each week's topic is broken down into challenges which we complete as much as we can each day in pairs. and the weekend has a related challenge to be completed by yourself. And the syllabus then keeps marching on. The rest week in the middle of the course was fantastic to catch up on sleep and revisit some earlier challenges and even get started learning other things. The coaches are fantastic and have different strengths and weaknesses, and yet combine together to give an all-round solid net to catch and resolve any question we've thrown at them. My advice is to always ask the coaches as much as you want or need.

Not everyone is suited for Makers Academy. A couple of the reviews here seem to show this. The strength of the course is in the highly selection process that whittles down candidates into a cohort of roughly 30 students. Sometimes the recruitment process makes mistakes. You live and breathe code with the guys and gals for 8-10hours every day for 12 weeks. Now I was the type to be first in the door and last out the door and always trying to find the answers myself. Others aren't quite like that and expect to be handed information. So if you're looking for lots of lectures and lots of 1:1 time each day with the coaches, this is definitely not the course for you. If you're looking for a course that challenges you to rely on yourself until you've banged your head against the wall for an hour trying to understand dependency injection and you finally crack it or trying to debug some omniauth authentication errors but can't but there's a system in place to help you resolve it, and this constant struggle while learning excites you, then this is definitely the course.

Because that's as close a resemblance of the real world as Makers gets in order to train you to be a job-ready dev when you finish. And it's crazy and intense and filled with a wonderful array of personalities from all over the place. Make sure you understand what Makers is, come for a graduation day, speak to us grads, and then make your mind up! And if you are accepted, study hard during the precourse, and study hard during the course!

Definitely, no holds barred, recommended.

So 12 weeks and 8k later, what have I got going on after going through Makers Academy? Well I’ve gotten really good at googling stuff, that’s for sure. 

Going in to the course I was really pumped up and perhaps a little guilty myself of believing all the hype. I don’t know what previous cohorts were like but I don’t think I got value for money and feel like a lot of time was wasted. Time that could have been used to give us a really solid education.

The biggest problem for me was the lack of trainers. The first few weeks were fine but it got to the point where all the staff were working on other things or unavailable for some reason. It’s really hard to learn a subject properly if there’s no one around to teach it.

I got so fed up of being told to go away and google everything. When I asked what would we do if google wasnt an option, I was told to use bing or yahoo. I’m not sure if this was a joke or not. I understand as a new developer we will have to rely on google a lot but I want to at least understand the basics and have the ability to solve simple problems.

When you add up all the time spent clapping, meditating and other non related events you realise you’ve spent half of your 12 weeks doing nothing that is related to the actual course subject. Do we really need so much relaxation and stress management. The only thing stressing me out was not doing the course i’d paid for.

One thing that is probably just me but still stood out was the staff and trainers swearing. Now swearing doesn’t offend me and I understand that the odd word here and there is usual in the workplace. The problem is when you swear all the time people don’t hear what you’re saying, they just hear a bunch of swear words. It’s basically very distracting.

So, have I walked away as a junior full stack web developer? No. Have I walked away with a solid foundation in ruby and pair programming skills? Yes. Would I recommend based on my course? No.

I took the Makers course in September 2015 and would thoroughly recommend it as a way of learning the basics of software development and the standards expected in the industry. The course is very much a hands-on experience, structured around pair programming and weekly challenges as opposed to formal lessons. I found it exhilarating and extremely effective but also very hard work. The post-course assistance with job hunting was first class and just what I needed.