Software Guild

I graduated from the January 2016 C#/.Net cohort of The Software Guild at the Akron Campus on March 25th. On April 20th, I accepted a job offer an a .Net Web Developer in Cincinnati, Ohio.   First, my background: I'm a retired veteran with 25 years of service across three branches of the military in career fields ranging from intelligence to healthcare to the combat arms. While technology is the one constant of life in the military, I did not have any programming or web development experience beyond basic HTML, CSS, Cold Fusion Markup Language, and MS Access and that was nearly 15 years ago.   When I decided it was time to hang up my combat boots, I spent months searching for a new career. Then, one day I came across an article about coding boot camps and became intrigued. The more I researched it, the more I became interested. I researched the field and learned about the demand for qualified programmers. Software development seemed to offer the challenge, the variety, the reward, and the possibility of never-ending growth that I was looking for.   The program offered by The Software Guild is tailored to the in-demand skills that employers are looking for here in the Midwest and at companies nationwide. It was close to home and the price was reasonable compared to other boot camps across the country. There was even the opportunity to get housing nearby, which was a major concern for me. Additionally, the Guild features an employer network, a career assistance program and an active alumni network available to graduates for life.   Choosing to attend The Software Guild was the best decision I could have made at this point in my life. Everything seems to have fallen into place from the beginning. Maybe it was because I fully committed to it at the start. You see, I told myself that there was no "Plan B." I described it to friends and acquaintances that I "had taken a running leap off a cliff and face-first into this career." I was going to make it through this course and become a programmer and failure was not an option.   So, what's it like to attend this course? It's like sipping from a firehose while running at high speed for 12 weeks. It is a full time program that features lectures in the mornings and hands on practice in the afternoon. The pace is fast and the course material builds upon itself each week. You'll do practice exercises, take quizzes, write code, and begin dreaming about it all while you sleep. You'll work in teams and build applications to demonstrate your mastery of the concepts you've learned. You'll follow agile development procedures and learn to work with others to meet deadlines. You'll put in many more hours of study and practice than the required 9 AM to 4 PM class time. If you don't, you will struggle and you may even fail out of the program.   This program is the hardest thing I've ever done because it requires learning new concepts, new ways of thinking and problem solving, and adjusting to new types of challenges at a rapid pace. Now that I'm done, I am most surprised by my ability to have a competent conversation with interviewers on a wide variety of technical topics. I'm confident that as a Junior Developer I have a solid foundation from which I can grow rapidly and I can immediately contribute to my new team.   The things that I valued most while attending the Guild were the instructors, the drive shared by my fellow apprentices, and the dedicated, focused environment.   Guild founder Eric Wise is approachable and very knowledgeable. Lead .Net instructor Dave Balzer is truly dedicated to the success of his students. All of the instructors (Victor P., Pat T.) and the Teaching Assistants (Randall C., Sarah D. & Gerry B.) are all enthusiastic and dedicated to challenging and mentoring apprentices.   As a group, we spent a lot of time studying inside and outside of class. Working hard for an extended period with the same people creates a close bond. We pushed each other to learn more and we helped each other when we struggled. I look forward to maintaining friendships with these guys for a long time.   The class environment was key to learning in this program. The following is a list of the things I could think of from the top of my head.
• Apprentices have unlimited access to the classes/computer labs. Every apprentice is issued a laptop with the software required for the program.
• Teaching assistants are available for one-on-one assistance. There's always help online from fellow students from any of the three campuses and even from alumni.
• There's a break area for lunch and every Wednesday night is game night. Several Cleveland area alumni attend to help students relax and learn about life after graduation.
• Alumni are scheduled to sit on a Q&A panel on the first day of every cohort where they share their experiences during and after the Guild.
• Industry veterans familiar with the Guild also sit on a Q&A panel later in the course to provide insight into the software field and how to manage your career.
• Apprentices create LinkedIn profiles, write resumes, and experience mock interviews. Late in the course there's an in-house hiring event in which apprentices get to interview with several companies from the employer network. Several apprentices from my cohort (both Java & .Net) were ultimately hired by these companies.   So far, I have submitted about a dozen resumes and had interviews with four employers. I feel like I was well prepared for each of them. I left each of them feeling like I'd had a great conversation and left a good impression with my interviewers. Sure, part of that is personality (and I'm comfortable talking with people), but much of that is the preparation I received from the Guild. I accepted a position as a web developer with a major company in the logistics industry in less than four weeks from graduation.   So, would I do it all over again? Hell yeah!   Would I recommend it? Definitely, but with one caveat: commit to it completely.   Cheers!   Scott Certain
Junior .Net Developer   PS: If you're a military member leaving the service, I highly recommend the software development field and The Software Guild as a next career/training program. Your drive and experiences will pay off in this field and the Guild is a great place to start.

My Background

I recently graduated from the first Java cohort in Louisville, KY. My experience before attending was next to nothing, with only slight experience messing around with HTML. Before attending I was working a job for the telephone company installing internet and phone services. I was thinking of returning to school and after researching computer science programs at the local universities I heard about Software Guild and their opening in Louisville. After doing some research I decided to go the bootcamp route and I am glad I did. 

Course Curriculum

The course curriculum really starts before the first day of class. There is some pre-work that is essential to being ready when the classes start. I wouldn't even say that I truly understood everything before beginning, but even the familiarity helps once you are in class and working. Upon starting class you will have to dedicate yourself totally to learning and retaining the material. Class is 9 - 4 each day and you will have to spend time outside of class to keep up. It is a lot to take in, but it can be done. There are a lot of times where you won't really understand what you are doing or necessarily why but by the next week you will and it will be funny looking back on your ignorance. The great thing about the curriculum is that you can go back and reference the lessons afterward, which I have done even when working at my paid job after the cohort. 

Staff

I really couldn't have asked any more out of the Software Guild staff. The Java instructor, Austyn, was patient and persistent. Being the first cohort the building was still being finished and we did not have key card access for most of the cohort length. Austyn went above and beyond, meeting us to let us in the building and spending time outside of class teaching and guiding us in our projects. She spent a ton of time getting us ready for interviews and giving incentives for preparing. She is able to explain and teach abstract ideas to beginners. She also has a knack for making class fun. I really enjoyed my time in class and learned a ton. 

Jacob is the Networking Manager for the Guild in Louisville. He's your liason to the employer network. Again, I couldn't have asked for more from Jacob. He was proactive in not only setting up the employer event at the Guild but also getting us leads beyond the event. After graduation as I was finishing up my job search Jacob reached out to me a couple times a week and was always available for advice or just an ear to bounce things off of and really helped me in my job search. 

The rest of the staff are great. We got to see them around the building quite a bit. One you will most likely interact with is the Brand Manager, Erin. She is your contact to the guild for payments and helps get the students ready for interviews by offering resume advice and interview practice. She makes invoicing and everything easy so that you can concentrate on your studies. 

Outcome

So this is what everyone cares about. Did it work out? Was it worth it? In my opinion, yes. I came out of this program with several job offers, two locally, and one in Dayton, OH. I did end up taking a job here in Louisville and I couldn't be more happy. I'm no longer doing manual labor and dealing with customers every day, instead I am designing and developing web applications that are accessed billions of times a year. I've went from a topped out telephone company wage with no upward mobility to entry level dev with no where to go but up and I've still added 20k to my salary. As long as you dedicate yourself to the program and do not allow yourself to fall behind in the coursework this endeavor will be worth it. 

 

 

Read this entire review

 

Rigor and classroom experince/atmosphere:

My experience at the software guild was overall a very good one.  The program began with clear expectations that the experience would be a lot of work, which it was.  The first four weeks I tried to work 16 hours each weekend; I made it work, but there was no free time.  If you seriously do this, expect that you won't be able to work.  It truly is a 60ish hour/week commitment.  Getting a private and/or parent loan would be worth it.

My class--the .Net/C# cohort--started with 12 students.  One student dropped out the beginning of week three (meaning he only got half his money back).  The student seemed really overwhelmed each class, and it wasn't very surprising to me that he dropped out.  However, the instructors didn't know he was considering dropping out, and I am sure that if he came to them and said, "I'm having a lot of problems, considering dropping out, etc..", the instructors would have worked differently with him and made sure that he stayed in.  I am pretty sure he didn't try to initiate such a conversation.  At the time of his departure, he was at basically the same level of two other classmates who finished the program and got jobs within 30 days of graduating.  Also, it seemed like he could have been more diligent with the pre-work, which is essential to a successful experience.  Anyways, classroom experience:

Effectively there were 11 of us students in the class, with two instructors, Alec and Kevin.  During the time Alec was the "lead" instructor and Kevin was technically an teaching assistant, but they effectively were co-teachers with Alec covering a majority of the lectures and providing comprehensive, broad knowledge of the curriculum, and Kevin providing in depth .NET experience, and also being a great rephrase-r, mainly coming from his many years experience as a instructor of community college computer science classes. Small disadvantages that they have--Alec can sometimes forget what it is like to truly be a beginner, and during our cohort, Kevin did not seem as familiar as I expected him to be with the newer technologies--bootstrap, angular, and MVC. He ended up learning a lot with us--I'm guessing the current cohort will be different.  In the end, they covered the opposite's disadvantages.  (Also there was another teaching assistant which would come in to help us between 4 and 7pm 2-3 nights/week.)  Also, both instructors have GREAT attitudes, and I found them very easy to work with.  

The curriculum is great--all the experienced software developers that I've spoken to and now worked with think that our curriculum was great.  Contrary to what one might think, most people with computer science majors are stoked when they hear about my experience.  During the experience, different people found different parts of the curriculum challenging.  .NET seemed fine for me and javascript and a few other things broke my brain; for others, the opposite was true.  

I looked forward to going to class every day.

 

Job assistance:

I thought the job assistance was the most robust job assistance any academic program of which I've been a part.  Firstly, the entire program is geared towards what will be expected of you as a junior developer in 2016. Secondly, there is a clear calendar of events at the beginning of the program.  The first activity is a resume writing session four weeks in, then at about six weeks there's something every week, consisting of mock interviews, recruiter meetings, "speed-dating"-style interviews with members of their employer network (employers who agree to consider us, thereby saving money from skipping recruiters), very successful speakers, alumni connect events, etc.  Thirdly, I accepted a job four weeks before the bootcamp ended.  I think the (1) largest reason why I got one so soon was that I was so well prepared for my interviews (total of 3), partly from the job assistance and partly from the fact that my mom is very business oriented and I've had that shit on lock since high school, the next largest reason (2) yes, is definitely all the technical stuff I learned in the program, and the last reason (3) is that I definitely think that having an undergraduate degree from a well respected liberal arts college helped me.  This shouldn't be a huge barrier for people who don't have an undergrad degree, especially considering the experience trumps all in technology, but I do suspect that it helped.  The last reason that I think the job assistance is so effective is that 5 or 6 of the 11 of us had jobs on the day we graduated.

 

 

General last notes:

• This program absolutely does what it says it does. Important to note that in the twin cities there are way more .Net jobs than Java jobs, however.
• The program is certainly intensive, and the most stressful time is the beginning few weeks.  Honestly I was way more stressed out when I was doing the pre-work.
• Everyone is in the same boat.
• This program is best suited and indeed designed for people with prior education or work experience.  12 weeks is not that long to not have a job, you working professionals!  Do it! Also, mainly because I think Bachelor degrees are life enriching and inherently open more doors for people than not having them, I would encourage a high school senior to enroll in an undergraduate degree program in computer science instead of this program.  That will open the broadest variety of doors in the long term, and getting a job in a professional environment requires a certain degree of maturity that a lot of high school seniors don't have.  These young people will still get jobs like the others, but I think it will take longer.  Also, they must be damn sure they want to be a developer because it is 100% technical.  
• I encourage anyone who vaguely considers this program to do it.

That's all, at the moment!  I hope you found this review helpful, descriptive, and not exalting.  I might edit it later, just for clarity in writing.

Upon completing the bootcamp one can expect to have a good foundation upon which to build a career in IT/software dev. 

People in the cohort I attended arrived with varying levels of experience with java and coding. Any student that applied themselves should have left the cohort with better skill and knowledge than they arrived with. 

The curriculum stives to provide each student with a foundation to begin a career. I appreciated the hands-on learning, the intensive projects, the support from instructors and staff, and the support from my fellow students. Overall it was a great experience. I am currently employed in the IT field, using my new skills and knowledge.

 

As someone with about 20 years of front-end experience, I really wanted to expand my knowledge of all things 'back-end.' Before I started the course I had never even been directly exposed to SQL or any IDEs.  By the end of the 12 week program, not only did I have an incredibly comprehensive understanding of C# and .NET, but I had developed the capacity to rapidly understand and decipher other similar frameworks.  The atomic level of understanding we developed in the course intricately informs all the work I do now... And makes me look like a whiz at work.  

The instructor, Alec, was excellent.  His knowledge of everything the course covered was encyclopedic, and he and the staff did a good job of prepping us for the day-to-day experience of working In development.   I cannot recommend him enough, and the staff, TAs, and other resources were gracious, knowledgable, and helpful.

I love my new career- much more than I had anticipated.  The SWCG Bootcamp offered much more than I had expected at the outset, and I feel that everything I learned has allowed me to excel in my current position.  

I am a recent graduate of the first .Net/C# cohort in Louisville, KY. My experience from the cohort was fantastic. The class was an immersive 9AM-5PM class, and after the first 4 - 5 weeks (once you master C#), it becomes more of a job, rather than a class. 

What I mean by that, is Jason (The .Net Instructor) does give lectures in the class still, but on Monday, he will give you a project(a Web App) to do, that needs to be completed by Friday. This translates into how a job would act outside of the guild.

Jason was always there to help, but wasn't shadowing over you the entire time. We had a rule: If you get stuck on something for more than thirty minutes, go to him to seek help. Something else that was more, job-like than you'd expect.

Of course, the main goal of this class is to get you hired somewhere.  If you graduate the class, Jacob is there to help you secure employer connections and lead you in the right path. During the last few weeks at the guild Jacob was creating opportunities to connect to leading job employers from around louisville, and even further away! He created an "employer speed dating" day where the apprentices could schedule to meet with each employer, to help get a sense of what each employer has to offer, and vice-versa with the employer.

By no means was that the only thing Jacob did for us. Upon graduating he was also in touch with me every week, usually at least twice a week. Being the first graduating class, and with the awkward graduation date(1 week before Christmas). It was tough looking for a job. Jacob stayed in touch though, continously giving leads that he could find via email, and phone calls.

In the end, though, this all boils down to you. You need to stay committed to the program, in more ways that one. When attending class you cannot just sit through a class and expect to absorb all the knowledge to suceed. Participation is the key to being successful in this program. Particiapting by asking questions when you don't quite understand, attend meetings(outside the class hours) that the guild suggest you attend, and overall interacting with the class and the instructor.  By the end of this program, the guild is not required to get you a job. The guild will assist you by any ways necessary, but ultimately it all relies on your participation. If you can follow everyone's advice, you will be successful.

If it wasn't for the guild, I wouldn't have gotten to where I am today, and would still be stuck working retail, and not living up to my potential. I have just gotten my first job as a developer, and owe a lot of my success to The Software Guild.

 

 

 

I am a graduate of the second .Net cohort in Minneapolis. Attending the class was the best decision I have ever made. I am employed as a Web Programmer and continue to expand my knowledge development daily. My experience at the Guild not only gave me a great base understanding of coding, it provided me tools for continued learning. The aptitude test ensures that candidates are capable of absorbing this type of intense learning. The course pre-work is imperative and so beneficial. It absolutely set the pace for the rest of the course. The course material covers a broad enough range that one's ability to get through the course says a lot to potential employers. Pros:  My instructor was AMAZING. Alec had a way of making the most intense, stressful times doable. His demeanor was vital to the wonderful atmosphere of my cohort. He took time to review any lesson we asked, either in a group basis or one on one. He was so committed to our success it pushed us to work harder. The rest of the staff! Everyone was encouraging, enthusiastic and supportive. The Program Manager, Johanna, went way above and beyond to help us in every way she could. From treats on Fridays to keep us going to calling personal favors. Jo made personal calls to many friends she has in the industry to work with us. We had offers for references, mentorship, career counseling, etc.  The COURSE. The work is fascinating, the pace is intense, by the time you grasp a topic you're on to the next. The material is relevant, and laid out to be absorbed. Cons: I don't think enough emphasis was placed by the recruitment people on the time and energy it may take us to land interviews and jobs. It wasn't until later in the course, when the staff at our location talked with us, that we realized we needed to prepare for the possibility of not having a job right after the class was over. Being that the participants are all adults, presumably with financial responsibilities, families, etc., the recruitment staff seemed more concerned with enrolling us than with making sure we understood we'd need the time and resources to commit to full-time job searching after the program finished. Enrollment also could have done more to explain the intensity of the course.  There was confusion (as should be expected in a program this new) about requirements for pre-coursework. Potential students need to have access to appropriate software for those assignments.  All in all, the program is great and getting better. I would (and have!) highly recommend it to anyone with any interest in coding. I am in an amazing field with awesome career opportunities. My time at the Guild was sometimes a blur, but worth every moment. I am so grateful I had the opportunity.

The end game for me was employment.  While that was promised by the creator of the program on day 1, that did not happen for me.  It happened for most, but not me.  The communication from the program has become non-existent, with the exception of an email asking me to fill out this review.  I enjoyed the program, the teacher was cool, my classmates were awesome, and if I would have found employment like they promised I would be very pleased with the whole situation.  I just don't think they had a contingency plan if things didn’t go the way they hoped. 

Taking this course was a great experience, it was very challenging but also taught me alot about software development and about working hard and persevering in over challenging situations. Also the in-house job fair at the end of the course was the reason I had a job already in hand before I graduated. I am grateful to all the instructors including Alec, Kevin, and the staff Jo and Kipp. This experience is worth it and it will help launch your career as a software developer.

 

I graduated at the end of July 2015 from the .Net course in Minnesota.  Entering a computer programming field of education and career path was a giant leap for me and it turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. 

The staff at the Software Guild were supportive, informative, and fun to be around.  The amount of information being presented in a short amount of time can be overwhelming but there are resources to help deal with the stress; classmates, staff, course materials and exercises.  Our instructor was always willing to answer questions and provide follow-up lectures when needed.

In addition to programming information the Guild provides career assistance with resume workshops, employer networking events and mock interviews.  This is very helpful to those entering this field for the first time and need to create a technical resume and prepare for technical interviews. 

I am now in a job where I am constantly learning new skills and contributing to a company and team that I respect and enjoy being around.

 I graduated from the SWG on July 31, 2015.  I got my job at Kinetic Data a week and a half after the course ended.  I love what I do.

 I've never thought that I would find feild where everone was like me and into the same things that I'm into.  Yesterday I was walking though another companies shop looking at the pictures on the walls and the trinkes at people desk.  There where Majic cards, Star Trek posters,  and a room theamed after Lord of the Rings.

The only reason I am in the position that I am today is because of the SWG.  Thank you to Joanna Rizzo, Alec Wojciechowski and Eric Wise.

Prior to attending the Software Guild, I had a job. But now, I have a career in a field that I love, and that wouldn't be possible without the Guild. I took a huge risk leaving a job that paid well to pursue something that I was passionate about. Before the course was even completed, I had already received an offer and started working the very next week in a great company where I can grow as a developer. And it just so happens that it pays more. The instructor was amazing: Austyn went above and beyond, putting up with all my questions, both the good and the bad. I attended the Java cohort, but am currently working for a company that develops in both C# and Java. While I didn't learn any C# in class, I am very comfortable extrapolating what I do know about programming in Java and seeing similarities between languages in order to quickly understand what is happening in the code. 10/10, would attend again.