Makers Academy

Incredible experience where you focus full-time on learning and practising something you love, with people that share the same passion. For me, it was an oasis of enjoyment, always looking forward to the next day and going home with a smile on my face. What makes Makers so special is the culture of the people and the energy and different background students bring to the place. I would highly recommend this course to a friend, as a chance to speed up your development experience in an agnostic way and meet some great people that will become friends for life.

The course is very comprehensive, but it is structured in a way that it is up to you how much you put in. No-one is going to push you to work or check on you, so it is important to take responsibility for your own learning and maximise the available resources as much as you can. The day is usually structured with morning lectures or autonomous learning and pair programming in the afternoon, with weekly goals to achieve around the main theme, like databases, object-oriented programming, or javascript design patterns. The interesting thing is that every day you pair-program with a different person, which massively helps you learn how to communicate with different characters and personalities and gets you to know better each one of your cohort-mates. By the end of the course, there are group projects, where you have the chance to simulate real-world work environments, work within a team, and give presentations in front of your mates. The ping-pong table is the most popular game for break times and it is the fun heart of the school.

There are four coaches that have different strength and again it is up to you what you can learn from them and how to interact in the best way, with physical questions or slack messages. It is important to note that most of the time they won't give you the answer you want, but they will probably answer with another answer, forcing you to do the research and get the answer by yourself, which is much more effective. Also, you get the feedback you ask for and no more.

A special person at Makers is Dana, who I believe is the most unique personality in the community. She is in charge of daily meditations, mental health, lectures about awareness and feedback, and yoga lessons for two days a week. I had never done yoga before, and for me it was a very pleasant surprise becoming a must-go-to event, even during the final project weeks, to release stress, nerves and simply feel better.

After graduating, every month, there are career fairs where you have the opportunity to meet companies, ask them questions, and apply to jobs directly through Makers, where you usually have higher chances to get called for an interview than external applications. You can also practise interviews with external reviewers directly through Makers, to improve your skills and exercise under pressure. 

The overall feeling I had at Makers was to be around people that decided to step out of their comfort zone and challenge themselves. This naturally brought positive energy and created a special bond that went beyond programming.

Makers has given me a fantastic introduction to being a developer. The course encourages best practices like TDD and pair programming and allows you to practice agile team work. Most importantly, the course aims to set you up for ongoing learning.

the learning is highly self-led. I was a bit frustrated at times as I wanted more technical coaching, however I do feel well equipped now to find answers on my own. The course does require self-discipline and you get out what you put in.

The best thing about Makers is the way they provide a great learning environment. Working in a cohort of developers all at a similar level, sharing the experience with fellow career changers and the extra focus on wellbeing as well as just code really made this a great experience.

- No prior knowledge of coding is required (other than some basic ruby achieved through codecademy).
- Provides a perfect atmosphere to meet new people, make friends and learn in a safe environment.
- Course content is engaging, challenging and rewarding providing you put the effort in.
- Ping Pong table & Yoga every Tuesday & Thursday definitely helped relieve stress & mental blocks.
- High calibre of students, everyone is eager to learn & help one another.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I started Makers having not been in a learning environment for a number of years. I'm happy to say that I've really enjoyed the last 4 months. I've learnt so much in such a short space of time and been able to do so with a wonderful group of like-minded individuals. I've been taught how to test drive my code, agile methodologies and a variety of design principles, as well as a number of different languages and frameworks. The big highlight for me was the group project work - bouncing ideas off people and producing an actual working app was incredibly satisfying and has put me in good stead to start my own project work.
Obviously being in lockdown hasn't been ideal but Makers made sure that work continued as normal even if we were all remote. I was on various calls all day so there was still lots of contact time.
To be honest, I'd be happy to do it again. 

I am a Makers graduate and I can say Makers has been such a great experience for me and I would definitely do it again if I could; I highly recommend this course to anyone who is willing to change their life and begin to learn code. If you put in the effort, you will succeed, especially with their job offer guarantee. There is no prior knowledge needed, as I had minimal knowledge in coding beforehand and I thought the course went at a good pace. The partnerships team really make the difference, the companies they partner with are such great companies to work for. Overall, an amazing course which I highly recommend to anyone willing put in the effort!

I finished Makers in January 2020 and it took me just over 6 weeks to get a job thanks to the post-course careers support and careers team/partnership team.

The journey to get here has been an intense and sometimes frustrating experience. But overall the experience I had at Makers was extremely rewarding and definitely set me up for life-long learning. The course really does do a great job at giving you a well-rounded foundation to become a junior developer. The focus is not on learning fancy frameworks or languages, instead opting to build foundational knowledge of things such as Test Driven Development, SOLID software principles and agile working. These principles can be applied to any language and really help solidify core concepts. I found starting in Ruby and then moving on to JavaScript, I was able to translate these fundamentals into other languages when the time came. I have accepted a job working in C#(something that we didn't cover) but the concepts and ideas learnt transfer across.

This course is very much self-lead learning. At first this can seem quite intimidating and you can feel a little lost in the first week. The only downside was it did take a few weeks for good self-lead learning techniques to kick in. This could maybe be address in the pre-course instead of you having to find them out as well as tackle new material in the first week. Once you get on top of this though the knowledge really sticks and stays with you. I am continuing to use these techniques now and will continue to use them. Don't expect to be given the answers if you want help though. Feedback can also take a while to get(if you ask for it that is) and it does not come unless you ask for it. 

Overall a fantastic experience, where I met and worked with some very talented people. The course teaches you what you need to know, what you need to work on, how to learn and how to continue learning and developing. I would recommend it if you are serious about changing career and have a decent level of self-discipline. You do only get out what you put in.

I finished Makers in January 2020 and have accepted a job offer about six weeks after graduation - I'm very happy as I thought it would take a lot longer than that! The average time to find a job is more like three to four months.

Personally I had an amazing experience at Makers and never doubted for a second that it was the right choice for me. That's not to say that it wasn't a difficult and emotionally intense six months! (From pre-course to securing a job) My advice would be that you need to be sure that you are ready to commit to it and it's what you really want. I started the process of trying out coding, researching learning materials and Makers, looking at job possibilities and planning my finances almost a year before starting the course - not everyone does it this way but I wanted to be sure I was making the right decision.

Like plenty of the other reviewers have said, you get out of the course what you put in. You're definitely not spoon-fed the course materials, you need to take initiative and solidify a lot of the concepts yourself, either by self learning or working with fellow cohort members. The coaches were generally lovely and helpful but you need to be proactive and go seek them out when you need them. You're also responsible for setting your own learning goals and deciding how you will reach them. I found this tough at first as it's not at all how I learned in the past, neither at university nor at work.

I met some lovely people on the course from all kinds of different backgrounds. I enjoyed the experience of everyone learning together and pairing with different people every day, I think this helped to bring us together and I felt the cohort members really supported one another.

A big plus is the course's focus on emotional well-being. It's easy to promote this attitude while not actually living it but I found Makers really do practice what they preach. As well as regular meditation, yoga and table tennis sessions, we also had talks and workshops geared towards working effectively with other people and looking after yourself. If you are struggling whether with technical or non technical issues then help is there when you need it. This attitude and support carries on after you finish the course and begin looking for a job.

I think what Makers offer that's unique and worthwhile is that they show you how to go about teaching yourself new tech and concepts and prepare you as best they can for your first job in a professional tech environment.

Although I had some experience coding, Makers quickly identifies your breaking point and gets you pushing yourself further every day whatever your ability. This is very much self-driven study and the coaches are there to help guide you...
-to find the solution yourself,
-to work with others in paired programming,
-to work in groups on projects,
-to communicate effectively,
-to work under pressure of imminent deadlines,
-to work with an understanding of Agile methods,
-to work on self-development and self-improvement,
...honing exactly all the other skills you need alongside coding.
In terms of coding, you could probably learn the content yourself if you were disciplined enough but you would be missing out on a lot of soft skills appropriate (desired) in the workplace. The Makers coaches help to sustain the pace and enthusiasm to keep constantly challenging yourself and enable learning so much in a short amount of time.

From day 1 Makers creates a very supportive environment conducive to learning while also preparing you well for the working world.  With a curriculum that covers pair programming, agile processes, test driven development, object oriented programming, continuous development/ integration and emotional awareness, it is a uniquely holistic course. Not to mention the yoga, meditation, ping pong, well stocked kitchen and socials! In addition, there are process workshops, external code reviews, talks from hiring partners, CV clinics, 1-1 careers coaching and careers fairs available for you to attend. Maker's self-led learning and language-agnostic philosophy is refreshing, although many felt that the course materials could be updated to be more reflective of the current job market (e.g. React and Node.js instead of Rails).

I would highly recommend this course if you are in a financial and mental position to be able to commit fully and make the most of all it has to offer. Makers undoubtedly provides you with the tools you need to succeed but ultimately (as with most things in life) you will only get out of it what you put in.

Before Makers I was working at in a role which gave me very little pleasure and offered little in the form of learning opportunities or technical skill.  Makers Academy has given me the tools to pursue a real career change and find a role that I really enjoy in a very short period of time.  I am grateful for the support of the coaches and career team who are committed to helping you through the course and afterwards.  One of the main benefits of Makers is the environment that is available to you throughout the course, the material is great, but the real advantage is being able to work in teams or pairs with other people who are passionate about becoming developers.   Makers has been a fantastic experience from start to finish and although it was scary leaving a stable job to enroll in the bootcamp, it has been totally worth the risk.  I would reiterate past reviews that the teaching style often follows a hands off approach, which initially may be difficult, but in the long run I have found it a very useful approach to learning.  

I would definitely recommend this course for anyone looking to make a career change!

Leaving my job to apply and pay for this course was one of the scariest decisions I've made! It was UTTERLY worth it - it has been the best experience of my life.

The course content taught me so much more than I could ever have learnt at home through online courses. I felt fairly confident about my Ruby syntax before starting, but I still learnt SO much about programming that I would never have been exposed to without the course - things like programming best practices, TDD and thorough testing, deploying projects etc. As well as Agile team processes. The holistic workshops about EQ have also been fascinating and taught me a lot about working styles and personality types, which will be useful with dealing with future colleagues.

The course is very much self-led learning, and all the staff and resources are very open about this from the beginning. In fact, one of the factors in my decision was being told that the course was largely self-led without much hand-holding during my campus tour before I had applied. I personally enjoy the challenge and freedom of the style, but I think some students can find it frustrating or even daunting, so you should consider whether this will suit your learning style when choosing a bootcamp.

There are 4 technical coaches. One coach will work with your cohort each week, leading morning workshops and setting the challenges for the week. All coaches are on-hand in the morning to help with individual challenges, although you are actively encouraged to find solutions yourself before asking for help (as you will be in the industry). The coaches are all very approachable.

I hadn't really considered the post-course careers team and support when choosing a bootcamp, but the team at Makers are fantastic. They take time to sit with you and understand your technical skills, as well as your preferences in what sort of role and company you are looking for. There are many lunchtime talks and careers fairs where hiring companies present their organisation and currently available roles. There is the opportunity throughout and after the course to participate in "reviews", which is like doing a live tech test with a reviewer over Skype. These are daunting but incredibly useful, and definitely take some of the fear out of tech tests in interviews. Finally there are two careers coaches available for graduates during the job-hunt, who are WONDERFUL - always approachable, available, reassuring, full of practical advice for for specific questions about your job-hunt, but also very pragmatic about the experience - for example, I was surprised and delighted to be actively encouraged to take a holiday after I'd graduated, and to make sure to factor in "fun things" into my daily to do list during the job-hunt.

Makers is undoubtedly a very intense experience, with extreme highs and lows. However for me, it is one of the best experiences of my life. I have learnt SO much, which has been very stimulating. I have met wonderful people from diverse backgrounds - both the staff and my fellow students. And in a short period of time, Makers has given me the skills and the opportunity to have a complete career change.