CareerFoundry

I loved my time with CareerFoundry.  I found my mentor to be extremely knowledgeable and encouraging. The mentor was probably my favorite part of the course.  I also liked the format of the course material.  The assignments were clear and easy to understand.  They don't unlock the next section until you finished the previous one.  This made it easier for me to stay focused and on track.  My experience  was a very positive one. I will be continuing my education with them later this month by taking the Web Developer Course.

I signed up for CareerFoundry's "Web Development" course with the belief that at the end of the course, I would be ready to apply for junior-level jobs in my area, as per their online promise.  I was suckered in by their cutesy-poo story of some developer who was unemployed and after three months was working as a freelance developer.  That may be well and dandy, but it would be nice to see a roadmap as to how to go down that path.  But this is my review of CareerFoundry.

PROS

CareerFoundry is affordable.  It is cheaper than other bootcamps where you pay 10% of your mortgage, but you pay for what you get.

My mentor was nice and knowledgable, but per CF you are only entitled to one Skype call per week.  So Google and StackOverflow become your friends.

The community on Slack is (somewhat) engaging.  There's a lot of "Hi, I'm from [insert country here]" where you can meet other people.

CONS

CF is more geared toward UX/UI development and freelance web development.  So if you're looking for support in web development for a company, you won't find it here.

There are NO CAREER RESOURCES.  No help for technical interviews, job preparation (they don't do placement), resume writing, nothing.  Sidenote: how do you call yourself CAREERFoundry and provide no career support?  They claim to have an "extensive job network", but that's for European jobs in UX/UI.

The majority of their lessons leave a lot to be desired.  They say that no programming experience is required, but if you've never even looked at HTML before, you'll be blown away by the early assignments.

Good luck asking for help on the forums.  I've come across problems with assignments and tried to post questions and received no help.

Your portfolio consists of "two" projects: the personal website and a Ruby on Rails app.  Nothing to really impress a potential employer.

If you're a PC user, you will struggle with the RoR portion and they provide no support.

Bottom line is, you can go through Treehouse and get the same skills at a fraction of what you pay for CF.  I cannot recommend this program to anyone.

If you are beginner in the field please avoid this UX designer course or you are in for a bad time. No previous experience necessary? That's not true at all!

The first section asks you to write a proposal to a company including an analysis, timeframe and pricing. Sounds great? Well, don't expect to get any help or material relating to how to write a real project proposal. In fact, the majority of the material was completely irrelevant to the task and the little help you get are some outdated links to web applications and blog posts. The submitted answers by fellow colleagues are clearly made by professionals with previous experience in the field.

Finally, the platform is buggy. My mentor didn't receive some messages or the submit button wouldn't work. I have also noted some sudden changes in how you are supposed to submit a project without prior notice. For instance, all of a sudden i'm supposed to use Adobe's Behance to submit my paper without explanations on what it is or why. My colleagues, however, were able to send their papers as PDF files not long ago.

I tried to like this course and i believe that I gave my very best. But I seem to get more from a good book at a tiny fraction of the cost. The mentor is nice but Skype calls only once a week are not enough since the course material itself just leaves you hanging. Overall, I regret my decision to pay such a large sum of money and i cannot recommend this Careerfoundry course to anyone.

I am finishing up the course and wanted to share my experience with the program. I initially decided to go with CareerFoundry because of the cost - for the money, there isn't a comparable online bootcamp that offers one on one mentorship and teaches full stack web development. I also didn't know if I wanted to (or even had the ability to) code and potentially pursue a career in it, so this was a perfect entry point.

In the beginning, I didn't know anything about writing code or anything about programming languages. The course is well-designed for people starting from zero experience - the lessons are structured into manageable tasks that explain terminology, the how/why of things, and detailed instructions in actually writing the code. By the end of the course, I went from not knowing anything about coding to being able to make my own personal website and also how to make an e-commerce (fancy way of saying a website that sells something) site with Ruby on Rails - one of the more popular programming options right now.

My mentor reviewed my work on every exercise and let me know if I could improve anything and what to focus on. If I had questions, he responded within a day or two. There's also a forum/group that every student is signed into and I've seen that the people on there are pretty responsive and try to help each other.

I can't comment on job assistance as I haven't talked to my mentor yet, but this course gave me a good idea of what I can do next. I think that's the important takeaway - ultimately, I got out of the experience what I put into it. The program's a lot of time and effort, so it isn't a walk in the park, "barely scratching the surface" course, but if you use all the resources that you're given, it's definitely a good starting point in learning how to code.

CareerFoundry's UX program is challenging and really pushes students to learn the ins and outs of UX while creating great work. Each lesson has vital and helpful information, but my favorite part of the program is being paired with a mentor. Unlike other online programs I've gone through, the mentor/mentee aspect of this one really helps to make sure you understand the concept/fundamentals before moving onto the next section.

If you're looking to break into the field of UX, I would highly recommend this program!