CareerFoundry

I am originally a translator, with a humanities background and a good flair for technology. I had been working as helpdesk support in a wellknown company for years. I never felt realised with this job, though, on the contrary I was feeling stuck in a dead-end.I thought I had to become more technical and I always felt an affinity to web technologies, although I only knew HTML and CSS so far. I got in touch with CareerFoundry almost by chance, I started getting info and reviews about this online school and I found them all positive. Besides, the course fee was still reasonable for my pockets and being an online course, it was ideal for me as a working student. The assistance of my mentor had always been punctual, friendly and motivating. It was not easy at CareerFoundry, especially for someone who, like me, had 0 coding experience. I was not certainly afraid of learning Ruby on Rails, Javascript, Angular, but I found a great support in their international student community. That is awesome, the way CareerFoundry with a simple slack team created a friendly network of aspiring webdevelopers all over the world. With some of them I remained in touch and even developed some projects together. Learning a new profession from scratch when you are already working is not simple, it is hard, it is effort and self-esteem consuming as well, particularly if you're over 40 years old, like I was and am. Finally I had a new professional perspective, and I really need to thank CareerFoundry , if I was able to leave my old job and land my first job as Junior Web Developer with Rails. I have to thank them for their courses, obviously, but also for the motivation network, if I can say so, that they were able to build up through their international students and mentors community.

I enrolled in Career Foundry for two reasons: 1-It was 100% focused on UX design which is what I wanted to do. 2-It would give me the flexibility to take care of my family and still work on the side.

It was by far the best decision I ever made! I have learned more than I could have ever imagined in the past 3 1/2 months. The great thing about CF is that you learn by doing. The lessons are brief and then you jump in and do a project. 66 to be exact. Is hard work? Yes. But do I feel prepared? Absolutely! CF prepares you for design challenges you will face in the real world. Not to mention the fact that you will get an awesome tutor and mentor. If you are ready to change your life, CF is the way to go!

Today I'm quitting Career Foundry and these are my reasons.

1) I signed up thinking I could do the course at my own pace. CF shouldn't advertise their courses saying "study online at your own pace", it is a misleading statement. 

2) When my laptop crashed and I had no computer for 2 weeks, I asked for an extension and was declined on the basis that I wasn't keeping track. If felt like they were saying to me "you're a bad student, and bad students get punished", and this left me stressed. 

3) Once I became aware of the time limit, I started rushing my assignments, the quality of my work suffered, and I stopped enjoying it. I was doing the course based on my own app idea, so it was really important that I did it properly and took my time.

4) A lot of people on Course Report have been saying that the course takes 2-3 times longer than the stated 15 hours per week. I don't have a spare 15-30 hours more each week, and I am not willing to pay 2-3 times the amount of money to finish it. 

In summary, my experience of CF is that you use misleading advertising jargon, don't put your students learning needs at the core of your value proposition, have poor customer service, and care more about money than a good student experience. I think your company culture comes across as defensive. The only thing that gives your company a heart is your course tutors, they bring life to the subject, where your content is lacking in depth.

I highly recommend Career Foundry's Web development course. I had some background in coding, mostly by learning through Codacademy. However, I was looking for something a bit more substantial. 

This course is intense, but in the good way. The exercises, topics and skills covered give you a good basic understanding of the webdevelopment spectrum, and leave room for more exploration if you want to dive deeper. Every expersice includes theory, and hands on coding. The results are submitted to your mentor. If something is not working, you will have to fix it. This urges you to learn and think as a coder, where can the bug be?! Sometimes it's frustrating and time consuming, but the eureka (!) moment you 'get it' is very gratifying. By urging you to get it right, Career Foundry also maintains the quality of the curriculum. 

My mentor was very helpful. He wrote me long emails explaining where I could improve. Or we used video chat over slack when I got really stuck. He always helped me progress and was very encouraging. 

I'm a college graduate, I'm used to communicating in English and I'm used to study by my self. I took the 'part-time' course. I have a full time job (40+) hours a week. Be prepared to spend two night and a weekend-day, or your whole weekend on coursework. I finished within 6 months, it's doable but you have to commit serious time and effort. 

Overal, I highly recommend Carreer Foundry

Pros:

• Self paced
• Supportive staff
• Job placement support

Cons:

• Curriculum needs work
• Dependent on mentor
• Not entirely "job-ready"

My frustration with the shortcomings of the UX course content was counter-balanced by the friendly, responsive staff at CF. They addressed all of my questions and concerns quickly and to my satisfaction. This included changing mentors after my first one was non-responsive, and ongoing job support even after I graduated.

After finishing this course I had one end-to-end project piece for my portfolio and a fairly good understanding of the UX design process, but you'll need more than that to get hired as a UX designer, especially if you're coming from an unrelated field.

Companies want to see client work samples, not just student projects. Cold applying to jobs doesn't get you very far - you'll need connections within the design industry to get much needed personal referrals. Unless you're already in a similar role (graphic design, visual design, product management, front-end development, etc.) plan to go to a lot of meetups, workshops, conferences and/or hackathons to build your network.

Before enrolling with CareerFoundry, I had tried to learn to program web applications on my own. It was a struggle to find material that guided you properly and made you feel like you could write apps later.

CareerFoundry's web development curriculum is great, it guides you just enough and it pushes you to explore interesting concepts on your own. 

My mentor was very nice and available relatively quickly to answer my questions. They would always be able to get me out of a jam. I was enrolled in the program before the tutor/mentor change was made, and I think that having someone to help you prepare for jobs is very important.

What I found to be the best part of the bootcamp is the community of students and staff. Students are encouraged to work together, help each other with issues. The placement staff is also very helpful, they help you setup a good online presence and have many tips and leads regarding finding your next job.

Overall, I was very satisfied with CareerFoundry and can't recommend it enough.

I'm currently doing an apprenticeship as a media designer and wanted to learn more about UI/UX Design. I browsed through the internet and found careerfoundry, so I decided to took this class.
I started in august, so I'm doing this course for 2 months now, and I already learned so much cool things.
The practically oriented exercises are so much fun and you can really learn a lot from them. If you stuck there's always a great community around you which will help you! The conversations in the slack channel and my fellow students are awesome and it makes a lot of fun to help and support each other! :) 
You'll have a mentor all over the course who will help you doing your exercises and designing your apps. My mentor is amazing and has an answer to all of my questions. Not only is he answering them, he's only giving me some further information, etc... He normaly replies faster than 24h after I asked him something, which is really cool. The feedback I' getting from him is also very helpful and you can learn so much from it! I can't recommend the mentor based approach enough. It's just amazing!

All in all I'm so happy that I took this class, because I already learned so much new and interesting stuff. If you're interested in UI design I can only recommend you taking this class! I'm really enjoying it!

Once upon a time.... I was sitting in my first real interview and it was good feeling to be with "the big cheeses" I did not get the job, but the UX Director gave me some really great advice. Terri, you have a solid background, but I think you need more UX, so I recommend you take a class. So that is where my story starts. I took his advice and I look, hunted, look, turn over rocks, check out bootcamps... Wholly crap! Talk about expensive. I would have to sell my left leg to get into a class like that. Fast forwarding now... I came across Careerfoundry... email them some questions they got back to me less then 24 hours. The price was right not too expensive plus I could make payments if I wanted to (paid in full). So I broke down and did the UX course. The UX course was a lot fun and yes some of was dry, not going to lie, but it was something that you had to do and understand what you are learning. They go over surveys, personas, wireframes, design, your resume to your portfolio. The best thing that Careerfoundry has going is the class comes with the mentor. I have to honestly say it is the mentor and the slack community makes a huge differences. The mentor is the key... gonna be honest not all mentors are the same but in my book if you don't gel with your mentor you can get another one. You just have to be proactive about it and let Careerfoundry know or even better tell your mentor what your want and what your needs are. They are there to help you. If you don't say anything nothing will happen they can not read your mind. I realize most students want out of their crappy jobs... trust me been there. There is a process you have to go through.. I know this part sucks you want to take the class and get out of your crappy job. Take your time with the class and learn.. if you can push it then you can... I would recommend Careerfoundry... actually I finish the UX course and yes worked off my tail. I was able to get a UI/UX visual designer job. I almost double my salary, but along the way I had tons of phone interviews some I bomb and some I did good. I had face to face yes some bomb and some was good and the more you have. The more you will be able to hone in your style of interviewing. So don't give up and keep moving forward. I love the UX class so much that I am taking the UI course now with my new gig. So if I can do it then you can do it as well. Don't waste months thinking about it like it... Dive in and click that button. I am glad I did.

I started the CareerFoundry course after already doing a UX design week-long short course with another company. It had been really hard to grasp the basics of UX in a week and althiugh I'd been working as a UX designer for about four months previously, I really needed a confidence boost.

Studying the CareerFoundry course was the making of me.  It is coursework-based and pupils are allowed to work on the UX project of their choice. I chose to redesign my company’s help and support offering which meant I got to learn and also positively impact the company too.

The main benefits for me were:

• the bite-sized lesson plans (I tried to do three each week after work)
• the bi-weekly Skype sessions with a mentor
• the after-care following the course.

I’m still in contact with my mentor Sophie Lepinoy who has been a real inspiration to me. I also love the Slack channel as it is a great way of keeping in contact with other graduates and learning about the latest UX developments.

Studying UX with CareerFoundry has given me the confidence that I actually have a useful skill, an identity and a career path. It has also opened doors for me. I got the travel bug in December 2015 and moved from the UK to Christchurch, New Zealand to work as a UX Designer for digital agency, NV Interactive. I then moved to Auckland to work as a UX Analyst for Datacom who are New Zealand’s largest IT company. I genuinely don’t think I would have had the confidence to apply for these roles overseas without my CareerFoundry training.

I wandered alot on the internet before someone recommended CF for me!

I have been always interested in the UX field and wanted to become an expert in it, unfortunately the more I "googled" it the more it became complex and harder to learn!

CareerFoundry UX course developed a study area, where the material is well organized, resources are available, experts are on-call, 1 on 1 communication channels, and the best of all; the established a community for the students to connect through! Where we can share thoughts, experiences and fun.

I am so confident about my skills, I am starting to lecture my colleagues about UX.

I started the web development course in the beginning of April and finished it by the second half of September. I thought I could finish the course in less time. But for someone with no previous experience in coding, I felt that I needed all that time to assimilate and practice all the concepts and the information contained in the course, which is a lot in a very short period of time.

To someone starting a course online like this, I would recommend self-discipline and consistency. It is really easy to get detracted and you do need to spend time on it everyday.

Getting all available support was really important and necessary for me. In this sense, mentoring and tutoring were an underpinning aspect of my experience. As clear and concise as the materials are, I don’t think I would have succeeded without the constant support and feedback from both tutor and mentor. Your tutor is available for you on slack a set of hours every day and I cannot highlight enough how important this is. My mentor was key in my learning process and he also gave the support I needed when I thought that the course wasn’t working for me.

I got very detailed and professional video feedback from my mentor as well, and the mentor calls really helped me keep track and stick to my goals throughout the process.

Course materials and learning resources are comprehensive and constantly updated. The course is structured in such a way that you acquire the core skills that are needed to become a web developer. When I mention skills, I don’t mean the coding languages you learn (you’re trained both in frontend and backend) but a certain attitude and predisposition that all web developers need to have to be successful: being resourceful, resilient, analytic, cooperate with others whilst still being independent enough to find solutions to problems. They train you on how to develop the ability to grasp how code works in general so that every time you learn a new language it’s just easier because you can relate to the languages you already know and establish parallelisms. After all, code is code and all languages follow a certain pattern of syntax with many common aspects. Concerning the languages they teach, I did find necessary to have a few lessons on PHP. Although it’s not the best of backend languages, it’s still broadly demanded by employers and the course doesn’t cover it.

 Once you enrol in your course and after your finish your course, you have full access to all those resources online and the great thing about this is that you can still keep learning and studying the updated course materials. This makes easy for you to be always ahead and up to date with changes in web development.

The career advisor team accompanied me all the way through my job searching process even before I had completed the course. They gave me all professional support I needed to have a new CV as a web developer and update my linkedin profile accordingly to fit into the industry standards. And they helped me to find a paid internship as a frontend developer when I finished the course.

In all, as someone without any previous knowledge in coding, I feel the Career Foundry Web development course prepared me to become a junior web developer in every single aspect and they provided me with the skills to take my knowledge further once I finished the course.

However, I don’t want to give a misleading message. No one learns coding in 6 months, and this is not what they promise –in case there’s any confusion. You need to be mentally ready and willing to dot whatever it takes for this to work  for you.  The course is highly demanding in terms of time and energy and you are expected to be really focused, positive, motivated and driven by the desire of experimenting a real career change.

And by the way, they don’t hide this, as they make this very clear before you enrol so that you’re not led to confusion on what the course requires from you.