Turing School of Software & Design

I, like many people reading this review, pondered whether a bootcamp was a good investment. Over the course of three years I dabbled with self-study, before ultimately taking the leap and enrolling in Turing's FE curriculum in the summer of 2019. Here are my 10 reasons for why you should consider Turing as your bootcamp of choice. 
1. Graduates have been hired, some directly out of the bootcamp, by major tech companies and consultant firms: Apple, Twilio, Shopify, McKinsey and Co., Gusto.
2. The bootcamp is 7-months compared to many other bootcamps which are only 3-months in length, but tuition costs are the same. This was a big determining factor for me because I figured the more time I have to learn coding the better I would ultimately be. While 7-months sounds grueling and can be, the school does a good job of giving one week breaks every 6 weeks in between modules.
3. The curriculum was created by household names in the tech industry, and the school is run by former teachers and tech professionals. This is another big one that I didn't learn about until after the fact, but you are being taught a curriculum by people who have been teaching most of their adult lives. Many of whom were teachers who then went into programming. They teach you the fundamentals first, and design their lessons around projects so you actually are forced to apply the knowledge you just learned, which helps solidify your understanding so you don't lose it.
4. They teach you how to learn. This may sound a bit cheesy but believe me that this is one of the most valuable, if not THE most valuable takeaway from my time at Turing. You are taught how to search for solutions, how to pick up new languages or frameworks so that you are not a one trick pony. Whether you do FE or BE you will most likely be asked to learn something you weren't explicitly taught. Being able to teach yourself new skills means that after you graduate your skills will remain relevant as you continue on in this new career. Also tech challenges for job interviews are a key component of this ability and this will help you standout amongst other applicants. 
5. The mission of Turing is to create a diverse workforce that is focused on making the world a more fair and equitable place for all. The school is actually a non-profit so if you are worried that this is a money making scheme this fact can help alleviate those fears. And the school focuses on making sure women and people of color (groups whom are statistically underrepresented in the tech industry) are able to land these lucrative jobs and help right the balances in this industry. They compound this by doing GearUp talks that teach you about people’s inherent biases and how they creep into technology (face-recognition algorithms that only accurately identify white male faces). You then partake in discussion with fellow students so that you are experienced in having these difficult conversations, and thereby more prepared to have them out in the wild. 
6. The PEOPLE are the best people in the world. I became great friends with my fellow cohort mates and undoubtedly have made friends for life. One of the most special experiences you get from going to Turing is being surrounded by people who may come from different backgrounds but are there all for the purpose of improving their lives. Nothing is more motivating or inspiring.
7. The staff are ALSO the BEST people. Truly not exaggerating when I say that the people who work at Turing are there because they believe in the mission of Turing. The school has made sure to provide all the support you could need and more. There is an in-house therapist for when the self-doubt creeps in. There are support groups for LGBTQ, LatinX, Asian-Pacific, POC, Teachers, Parents, and so many more. For an endeavor like learning how to code, Turing makes sure you never feel alone or on your own. 
8. Job Hunt Support. During the time you study at Turing you are also taking Professional Development classes. These are teaching you how to craft your persona so you write more captivating cover letters, how to research companies and industries you may be interested in, how to interview for behavioral and technical questions, how to negotiate, and much more. This support continues after you graduate too. Helping you as you move into the job hunt by proofreading cover letters/resumes, helping you through the struggle (the job hunt is hard no lie! But it WILL HAPPEN).
9. The alumni network is very valuable as these will be the people who help you land your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th job. One of the more interesting things is learning the six degrees of Turing, how a friend of a friend went to Turing. The tech industry is large and there is room for all, but the world is small and you will undoubtedly cross paths with someone who has gone to or knows someone who went to Turing. 
10. It will change your life for the better. I doubted myself in my ability to learn how to code. And I have worked a TON of jobs: service industry, Uber driver, life insurance sales, logistics, event planning, substitute teaching, warehouse employee. And I hated them all, because they did not compensate me with a wage that allowed me to enjoy life, and did not give me the sense of purpose and accomplishment that a career in software development has. Today I am working for a small company that is based out of Thune, Switzerland and makes spectrometers for the science and research community, designing UI's for their applications. It's hard work but I am prepared to succeed, and I am surrounded by brilliant people. The future has never looked brighter, and while I worked extremely hard to get here, I have never been more sure that you, or anyone, could accomplish the same. Believe in yourself, do the work, work hard, and you can live the life you always imagined.  

I was set on attending Turing because it was one of the longer bootcamps out there at 7 months, the reviews I read here seemed to be great, and I liked that they had a concept of "repeating" where I knew this program wasn't just going to take my money and push me through their program without measuring how well I was performing throughout the journey. The focus in on project based learning, where you'll have the opportunity to build a lot of applications solo, in pairs, and in groups. The assessments they provide throughout each module really do help in regards to being prepared for job interviews afterwards. In my opinion, the goal of this program is to really teach students how to continue learning on their own after they've landed their first roles as developers. At times it may seem uncomfortable, because they don't just "hand you" every single aspect of the material, you're expected to figure things out for yourself, which is essentially what you'll have to do in the software engineering field. Believe, there's a lot of "figuring out" that I'm currently doing in my first job out of Turing, but it's not a huge struggle because I've been trained that muscle. The instructors are amazing! They are knowledgeable, always willing to help, and push you to do more than you think you're capable of doing. Having access to the Turing community and alumni network are also big factors that went into my decision. I've talked with other bootcamp grads and I'm lead to belive that Turing has one of the best community/networks in the bootcamp industry. So just like my title says, it was definitely no cake walk, but it was so worth it.

Apologies if a little log winded, I decided to attend Turning mainly based off of the course reports, so this is my contribution for the future me. This is all from memory, and Turing changes quite frequently, so you it will probably be a bit different when you attend. 

Intro
I was a backend student in the 2003 cohort. We were the first cohort to go online, and I have only been the the physical building twice. All the perspectives below are about the online program. About a quarter of my class did Turing in person at some point. For the most part they said that the experiences in person were similar to online, with some liking online more and some liking in person. They said for in person it was easier to get help, as they only needed to turn to the person next to them to solve a problem, whereas with online it is harder to reach out to initiate contact to get help. With in person they said it was easier to bond as a cohort, though I feel we did a good job of bonding online. Turing is broken into four mods, five if you count the job search mod which I am in. I will detail my experience in each mod below, they also have a mod 0 to ramp you up for Turing.

Turing's Approach:
Turing's focus is on problem based learning and self learning They don't give you endless lesson after lesson where you regurgitate the content back to your teacher. They give you a bit of information and a project to challenge you and make you use that information, and the resources and knowledge to figure out what else you need to complete the project on your own. You are given maybe 70% of what you need to know to solve the project, and the tools and resources to figure out the other 30% on your own. You are taught how to research something, how to reach out to peers and mentors, and techniques to solve problems. There will be many times that you are stuck with a deadline approaching, and the desire to throw your labtop out the window. The best thing Turing teaches is how to move forward on a problem and figure out the answer on your own. 

Help Turing Gives:
     Turing does a superb job of providing mental and technical assistance to students. They have a councilor/therapist, Jun, who I never used, but have heard unanimous praise from. Students have 2-3 hours each mod with him, should they choose, and he does several lunch talks, which I never attended. 
     Turing's mentor system is peerless. They have a list of alumni and professionals working in the industry which their pair with students for meetings every week or two throughout a students time at Turing. Student's can go over technical topic's with these mentors, job support with the mentors, ask questions about software development, and any other things they want to discuss. All mod 1 students get a mentor and students can get additional mentors (more than one if they wish). I only had a mentor for mod 1, and not the other mods, as I did not utilize mine as much as I should have. I know students who had 5-mentors at one time. 
    Turing actively encourage community among your cohort, you will use them to help with your projects, learn the material, and unwind after a hard day of coding. They are you best resource at Turing, and the relationship that Turing fosters between cohorts is one of the best things about Turing. 
     They have A LOT built in reflect for the program
     Teacher's may help you, but they are more likely to guide you to other resources like your cohort or other Turing students in higher mods, or mentors. 



Instructors: 
     A large number of the instructors at Turing where Turing Students at some types, most have worked in the industry for a few or many years. All are professional, with different teaching styles. It seemed that Turing gave them the freedom to teach and conduct the mod as they wish (up to a certain point). Overall the instructors were good, some great, some ok. The emphasis of the program centers more on self-learning then attending class for 8-hours, so even ok instructors contributed to a really great program. 

Mod 1:
This mod involved learning basic ruby for us. We learned how to structure code into different classes. We learned how to test code, and got proficient writing methods in ruby. We had 4 projects for this mod, two individual projects, one paired project, and one group project. For the individual projects we made the card game war, and the WW2 enigma machine. For the group project we processed CSV files and make a stat tracker app for hockey, and the paired project we made the battleship game. There were 3-4 tests this mod involving creating classes, attributes, for those classes, and methods, then hooking several classes together and writing tests for everything. This was probably my favorite mod. For the first 2 weeks or so I was probably putting in 70-80 hours. Then maybe 60 for weeks three and four, maybe 70 for week 5, and 50 for week 6. Then 20 for the intermission week. Those those number are only an estimate. Lessons were more heavy in this mod with 3-4 hours of lessons in the first few weeks. Then 2-3 hours of lessons in the latter weeks, with some days saved for project reviews. 

Mod2:
This mod centered around making rails web applications, working with databases, active record, rspec testing, and authorization, and authentication. We had the same format of 2-individual projects, a paired project, and a group project. We worked on two websites, a dog application, and an Ecommerence site. We had a few test involving making a basic website, and making relationships between databases and testing such relationships and the website. For the first couple weeks I put in probably 70ish hours, then maybe 60 on the next two weeks, and 50 on the last couple. Usually the time investment for each mod is heavier on the first few weeks as you learn the basic material, the potentially lighter on the last few weeks as you prep for the finials and finish the bigger projects, though you can make the later weeks harder as well by doing additional learning.

Mod3:
This mod centered around api's and some additional features in rails. We were tested on our ability to consume api's and interweave the json data together, and send that to other apis. This had the same format of two solo projects, a paired project, and a group project. We built onto an existing site for one of the projects, we made an api that integrated with an already built frontend for another. We also had a project that where we could pick what we wanted to build, and had to option to show off the project in a competition. The time investment here was similar to the other mod with the first weeks being time heavy around 70-80 hours. Then the rest being a bit easier around 60, with may a 50 hour week thrown in somewhere. 

Mod4:
This mod was less useful. We had only 2 projects and no tests. For the first we were building onto an existing codebase using node.js and graphql, which were 2 languages we never used. This mod combined the frontend and backend. So we had the front end team working on displaying the data and making the website look nice and interactive, and the backend team stored the data, and made any database relationships. There we very few lessons for this mod, only a few computer science ones. For the first project, the goal was to get us familiar jumping into a brand new codebase, we wrote no code in the first week, which I did not enjoy, then made only a few contributions to the code. The second project was much more enjoyable. it was our capstone project, which we could pick. We worked with the frontend team in a language of your choice to built out an application of our choice. The finials projects all turned out really solid and were presented at demo-comp. 

Extra Notes:
We did a lot of presenting though-out the mod, with at least one presentation each mod, and later mods having several presentations. Turing taught a bunch of practices that a great in a professional environment such as git workflow, project management, and how to work in a team, those skills are probably just as useful if not more so than the code. The program was also structured so that there were more lessons in earlier mods than later ones, and more lessens were given at the start of the mod than the end, allowing more time for exploration. 

Job Search and Professional Development:
Turing had a professional development/job search lessons at least once a week. In later mods it was twice or even three times a week. They have 3-career development councilors who you can meet with whenever. While a job is not thrown in your lap, they do hold your hand throughout the entire process, providing lessons on resume, linkedin, code interviews, negotiations, networking, and 1 to 1 meetups with the career development team to help you in your search. It takes about 2ish months on average to find a job after graduation, some get one before graduating, some a bit later. The Turing network greatly helps with this. They started a fellowship program for those have a bit more trouble in the job search to get them some work experience. They throw resources with you, and as long as you put in the time, and work with the career development team weekly, you will find a good high paying job. 


Overall: 
Most who attend Turing say it is life changing, and I, having just finished the program agree. If you are even thinking about switching careers, or trying software development, go to Turing, you will love it, have a great time there, and with a bit of work, get a great job afterwards. 

Turing exceeded my expectations in all aspects:
- The curriculum is thoughtful and is constantly changing to meet the needs of the job market
- The teachers, many of whom are former educators, are kind, supportive, and are experts in their content areas, as well as teaching methodologies
- The nonprofit status, mission and overall culture is one that supports people holistically rather than just pumping out developers for a profit
- Included in the curriculum is professional development, which covers networking, job hunting, developing your past career as an asset to an employer
- The length of time, which is longer than most bootcamps, gives students more time with the material, allowing them to go deeper into the content, ultimately better equipping graduates compared to other bootcamps

In my 'past life' as a middle school teacher, I was looking for an organization that would accelerate my career in front end engineering while putting their people first. This includes students, instructors, staff, and everyone involved. Turing is a place to truly be yourself while you learn. Turing is also place where you will lean into discomfort and talk about the ethics of AI and what your code could REALLY impact. Once I attended a Try Turing I didn't even look at any other coding schools. I knew this was the one. 

Of all the bootcamp style programs, this is by far the most in depth and beneficial. After seeing friends go through the program and after a few years they were still employed and happy, I knew I was going to get the support I needed as someone who was completely new to tech. The curriculum is insanely fast paced, but ingrains a tenacious work ethic, and leaves you with the confidence and abilities to teach yourself anything new. Most bootcamp style programs don't teach their students anywhere near as much of the content that Turing provided me with. The community is so supportive, and the rapid growth of the program is proving to thoroughly benefit their graduates. Everyone I have met in the Turing alumni network has said attending Turing was the best decision they have ever made. Turing provides their students with the materials and resources they need to succeed, and I have no doubts in my worth as a junior coming into the field.

Software is a very difficult field to enter because you're competing with other bootcamp graduates and people who have Computer Science backgrounds. Every job in the marketplace wants 3-5 years of experience and your resume gets thrown into a pile of 400 other applicants. If you understand this, you can still succeed at Turing. They do a pretty good job of letting students know the jobs aren't going to miraculously land in your lap - you will have to work incredibly hard, excruciatingly hard, to land that sweet gig at the end.

 

Originally I wrote a pretty negative review of the program because I was upset about having to deal with the alt-left politics present in the curriculum. I took the review down because I decided it wasn't fair to the employees who provided so much support for me during my time there. Looking back, my verdict now is that Turing was a pretty valuable experience - if anything, because it allowed me to become more resilient and understand that I'm much more capable than I thought I was. The only things I wish they would change are to not have politics in the program, and to teach a more marketable stack of languages (Python/Django/PHP/Kubernetes/Docker/JIRA) instead of Ruby on Rails/Knex/Node.JS since those languages aren't really used in the industry anymore.

 

Shout outs to Ian, Sal, Dione and Allison for being a pillar of support for me during the more challenging parts of the program. If you're thinking about applying to Turing, 100% do their free try coding events, and be sure you are ready to work harder than you ever have in your life for 7-10 months. You will get out of Turing exactly what you put into it.

I myself tried to learn through self-teaching avenues, and I found that there is an obsurd amount of content out there. So much so that it's hard to get a clear path of what you want to learn and should learn, let alone what foundational skills are needed before learning something else.

I had choices of choosing a school in Virginia/DC and with family in Denver I also could attend there. After weeks of research I decided upon Turing and based my decision on several factors: 1) Length of the program was huge, I knew that if I wanted to make a life change that it couldn't simply be done in a 6week course. 2) Reviews from the alumni students, where several students had glowing reviews of their experience attending the school. 3) Being a non-profit was huge! I knew that not having to impress investors and having only one location that this school cared about the success of both students and staff.

I'm so proud to call myself an alum of Turing. I couldn't even dream of a better teaching staff! Each and every teacher had their own little quirks that made grind of bootcamp worth while and fun. Not only the teachers but the supporting staff also played a big role in our community, helping students through thick and thin and bringing everyone together as collective of aspiring developers. Turing believes changing the Tech landscape one dev at a time and strives to help us find our own way to make the world a better place, piece by piece.

Although you could certainly find the resources to any bootcamp available online and self-teach, it really helps to have a strong and thriving community to help you get through the turmoil and applaud your little victories. If I could go back I would do it all over again. BIG SHOUTOUT to all of the staff on the Frontend Engineering team (the program I took) for helping me and all of your other students to become confident developers and reach our potential. I love you all, peace out ☮️

I'm a former electrical engineer that graduated the front end program on 11-19-2019 and this is by far the best thing I have ever done. I have the skills to be able to go after big goals and I can literally get a job anywhere in the world with internet.

Turing has been way more valuable that engineering college and does so much more to prepare you for a real job, not some BS a college professor thinks is fancy on a resume. Turing instructors are real developers and they are always changing the classes to keep up with the times so you always learn the newest technology and best practices, and every week through Turing they ask for advice on how to improve the program.

Turing is a 7 month course made up of 4 modules aka "mods", each mod is 6 weeks of FULL time work. You will be working over 70 hours a week so I recommend getting yourself situated and say goodby to your friends and family for 7 months, but it goes by incredibly fast and by the time you get out you will feel totally capable of getting and developer job. 

So far I'm working a contract job and looking for a full time position but the CEO of the company I'm working with said this about a team of myself and 2 other Turing grads from my class 'Holy shit, these guys are like, legit!'.

I had wanted to attend Turing for a long time. After watching some friends go through and succeed I talked to my husband about it and I jumped in. I was treading water for seven months, and I began to swim VERY slowly. 

I now have more grit than I thought possible. I've stuck with things I never thought I could do and now I'm getting paid doing what I've always loved to do. Turing is the best and most challenging thing I've ever done. I still keep in touch with my cohort mates who are killing it in the business as well. I highly recommend Turing for anyone looking to change their life.