Makers Academy

Pros:
- Enforces habits and rituals of engineering environments that it would be really hard to achieve self-led (e.g. diagramming, TDD, BDD, Agile, CICD). My technical interview questions were based on these! 
- Amazing emotional support - they want you to challenge yourself but to also practice self-care above all else which is excellent.
- Great people; both coaches and jobhunting team - every one who works there is smart, so supportive and keen to help you succeed.
- Really is a transformative experience. I knew next-to-nothing about software developing in November, enrolled in February and then got my first dev job in May - three weeks out of the bootcamp, with a Makers hiring partner. Not everyone has been that lucky though and some have been searching a long time for the right role. 
- Alumni community is amazing. 

Cons:
- Zoom fatigue: you pair every afternoon for 3-4 hours which can be exhausting, and there are a lot of group projects. Also there is little time for you to do self-led learning (which is my personal preference).
- Syllabus needs a bit of love - the links are out of date on a lot of the curriculum. 

I started this course with only two weeks of experience in coding, and now, 5 months later I'm about to start my first role as a software developer. 
Pros:
- The coaches are great, super helpful and keen to ensure you've understood the concepts but you need to reach out and ask for help.
- You are in a cohort with like-minded people of all abilities so you'll find yourself sometimes learning from others or taking on a teacher-role. 
- The job-hunting support is great, lots of workshops on offer with great career coaches. 
Cons:
- The curriculum could use an update, especially the front-end material. We spent about 7 weeks on Ruby/Rails, 2 weeks on Javascript, 1 week on consolidating and 2 weeks on the final project. The 4-week pre course material was also on Ruby. I think a bit more of a back-end/front-end balance would make graduates truly feel like full-stack developers. 

 The coaches were excellent throughout, very patient and forthcoming whenever I reached out to them (in the designated times to do so). At times it felt like the course was moving at breakneck speed however I felt fully supported throughout and enjoyed every second. I met some amazing people and built lasting relationships with cohort members to take with me into industry.
After the course ended I was amazed by the partnerships team who provided excellent feedback in regards to my applications. The internal hiring system was infinitely more effective (and ultimately rewarding) than spending hours trawling through LinkedIn and other job boards (which I did do and had some success with). The feedback I received on my applications was very insightful and helpful, by the careers team members and coaches alike and led to me receiving an offer from an industry leading company.
The Alumni network was also incredible and I cannot wait to give back to those who enrolled at Makers to change their career/life.
Also I landed a job in a language not formally covered by the course and this is super typical so do not think you will be pigeon holed by the course material. 

I went to Makers so I could get a job as a developer within 5 months - and that happened, even during Covid! For this reason, despite the fact that there were things that certainly could have been better (support from coaches & curriculum), I was still able to achieve my end goal, and will soon be starting at a very famous company - with room to grow and develop and a decent starting salary!

There were certainly some aspects that were infuriating - Makers focus on "self-learning", but the lack of direction from the coaches is frustrating when you've paid to be taught - not to constantly learn independently (which you can do for free). As annoying as this felt, at the end of the course, when you get that job, it's worth it! There are certainly things that could have been better and I'm not sure what the coaches are doing to only be available in the mornings, but to be honest, Makers opens the door to a lot of large companies with BIG names. The career coaching team were epic  - the advice before interviews was great, and they were always happy to help. In summary, the experience wasn't what I imagined, but who cares when it leads to a job in coding - in the end of the day, that's what we're here for - and that's what Makers does.

Makers is a great option for those wanting to transition into tech. The 12 week course is fast paced but comprehensive and designed not only to teach you how to code, but how to learn in general.
The hands-off teaching style from the coaches encourages you to be more independent and find answers on your own or reach out for help within your cohort. The careers team are excellent and provide as much support as you require with things like interview prep, improving your CV and even one to one coaching. Overall the Makers staff are super positive and always willing to help.
I highly recommend Makers to anyone willing to put the hard work in, it's totally worth it!

Makers provides a great learning environment for a wide variety of people with the willingness to learn. The ways that they do this are through skills workshops, independent learning time and pairing time. One of the most important aspects being pairing which is an opportunity to sit down and code on a task together with someone else which provides you with a different perspective to coding independently. 
The opportunity to work in teams and practice agile methodologies is invaluable as this is what many companies are currently using or moving towards. The coaches are very helpful and open to questions which makes the workshops fun and useful. The culture is one which also aims to promote mental health awareness through daily meditation and regular yoga sessions.
Some problems were with job hunting. Due to the unfortunate circumstances there was quite a lot of reduced support including the removal of the careers fairs. It also didn't help that they added pressure towards job hunters by tightening rulings in the job offer guarantee.
Overall, there were some struggles on the job-hunting side of things due to the unfortunate circumstances of COVID-19 but I really enjoyed the course and it has provided me with invaluable experiences. 

Pros:
- Meet lots of great people. 
- Amazing to see what you can learn in a relatively short space of time.
- Freedom to work on your own project in a group at the end of the course. 
- Compared to other bootcamps, you get a good full stack approach. 
- TDD approach is drilled into you from day one, which stands you in good stead for interviews. Process reviews with external reviewers are another great way to prep you for interviews. 

Cons:
- Coaches are stretched and as a result,  aren't able to offer as much support as most people would like.
- My cohort was let down by the careers fair - only one company turned up to the first fair; 3 to the second a month later, with one of these companies retracting their job openings a few days later. Therefore, there were only 4 job openings for around 2 cohorts worth of people. You need to be motivated and dedicated to finding yourself a job outside of the course. 
- Some of the course material needs updating or for coaches to check for errors before using the material. 

Truly one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I joined Makers this year after dropping out of a humanities degree at university - without any prior computer science knowledge, industry experience or coding skills to speak of.

 

Since then Makers has enabled me to land my dream job as a Software Engineer, at a company I’m super excited to work for! The course itself is fantastic and extremely apt in teaching practices which are highly valued the industry. Not only this, but the people & culture are extremely giving, and I had a lot of fun in the process. I’m really grateful for entire Makers experience; from writing the first lines of code to securing a job - I was amazed by it all from start to finish!

I really enjoyed the focus on mental well-being along with learning new skills and the curriculum. Although there was heavy focus on learning ruby in the precourse by no means was it the only language learnt. It help set the pace and knowledge for how to learn new languages. 

During my time at Makers I had the chance to learn Ruby, Javascript, Python and Swift. When it comes to the final project, it is very flexible and the team do their best to make sure you get support throughout. 

In terms of the careers team they were super helpful. I got a job with one of the hiring partners and beforehand they were great at giving me advice on unsuccessful applications and how to prep for the final interview. 

This is definitely an experience I would recommend anyone looking to change their career at any stage in their lives. 

Makers provided an excellent bootcamp, that enabled developers like myself (with no coding experience)  to be able to go off and make valuable contributions to their tech company. The curriculum  provided, covered a wide range of topics that allowed  you to be exposed to a range of best practices ,key development concepts and  programming languages.  The support given by the coaches are of a high quality and they are  very supportive and patient. Not only are you supported on a technical level but also on an emotional level by the Student Support Coach.
Cohorts need to be more diverse and inclusive however, and include more females  and more people from ethnic minority backgrounds.