Makers Academy

Makers Academy is quite the experience but it's not for the faint of heart. The course provides a intensive experience covering programming best practises such as pair programming and test-driven development, helping students gain the skills to get a job as a junior software engineer and be an effective member of a team. The support provided from the coaches and Chief Joy Officer throughout the course was fantastic and the careers team were brilliant, helping me find a job within a week of finishing the course. It's a great choice if you want to become a software engineer.

Makers has completely reinvigorated my relationship with learning and instilled within me a belief that I can achieve whatever I set my heart to.

The couse itself is challenging and is designed to acquaint you with the feeling of unknown. If you're looking for a formulaic, spoon-fed experience similar to University/School this may not be for you. You are often given the bare minimum information to fulfill each week's task which can at times be frustrating but empowering at the same time when you ultimately succeed. By the end of the course I felt like I could learn absolutely any language/library/framework independently.

Content-wise there is a huge emphasis on best practices (e.g. test driven development(TDD), pair programming) which, having spoken to people from other bootcamps where TDD is not covered, would perhaps set you apart and better prepare you for life as a software developer.

The coaches at Makers are amazing. They offer plenty code review to push your skills to the next level and are masters of extracting every ounce of learning possible every time you are stuck/need help.

It could not be emphasized more that the Job Assistance that you receive after the course is invaluable. The careers team helps to find you ample opportunities to apply to whilst providing coaching to help keep morale, motivation and belief high until you finally find your first software developer job.

Overally Makers has been the most valuable experience in my adult life and I could not recommend it more. 

Makers Academy lives up to its promises. It has a great community of software developers connected to the place and really encourages you to get involved with it. It has a firm focus on learning to write high quality code, and you end up with a portfolio of a variety of projects built with ruby and javascript.

It is intense, but its not too hard in terms the learning curve and at the end of it many of our cohort got a job within 2 weeks - including me. They have a good careers fair where students can meet employers, who end up hiring many of the students finishing a cohort.

The teachers are very knowledgable and supportive, this course does demand some independent learning as well, but if you ever feel you are struggling there is loads of help. It has a large focus on group and pair work, to prepare you for industry, and helps give you confidence for job interviews. If you are thinking of becoming a software developer and get a job quickly then go for Makers!

I attended Makers in search of a career change, like many others. After quite possibly the most difficult 12 weeks of my life, my search is over.

Makers is difficult. Very, very difficult. It doesn't matter if you've never written a line of code in your life, or if you're a hobbyist developer wanting to take your skills to the next level - Makers will be difficult for you. It is a bootcamp in the purest sense of the word. Expect to put the rest of your life on hold for 3 months.

That being said, it has been a fantastic experience for me. The course content is fantastic, the coaches are fantastic, the staff are fantastic, the careers support is fantastic, and your fellow students will be fantastic as well.

Makers sets itself apart from other bootcamps by its course content. While marketed ostensibly as a web dev bootcamp, there is a strong focus on writing high-quality code, which is valuable to any software developer. The cirriculum at Makers will prepare you for any software development job, which I believe is a huge plus.

You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll probably dream in code as well, but at the end of the course you'll look back with amazement at how much you can learn in 3 months if you put your mind to it.

Makers is a life-changing experience.

Makers was a fantastic experience, albeit very intense! They do a lot to foster a sense of community, I met so many lovely people both in my cohort and staff members. This really pays off during the course as it is difficult and you are really pushed so having a support system within the course makes such a difference. There's also a lot of effort put into student well-being with yoga and meditation classes. The course focuses on helping you to teach yourself, you are not spoon fed very much beyond the very first steps and are taught how to find the answers yourself. Beyond coding, you also learn good practices to use while coding which I found invaluable, this works as a framework for everything you pick up. I think my only criticism would be that there is a lot of self-learning, but with perspective, it has helped me so much after graduating when I'm working on my own.

As for employment the careers team were lovely for me and supported me all through the process. They found me relevant jobs and chased up companies who were dragging their feet.

I came to makers with no tech background and now have a job as a developer! If you can afford it and are a hard worker I would definitely recommend it!

If you're serious about a career change and are up for a challenge then Makers Academy is for you!

The entire course is pretty intense, 3 months of weekly topics followed by weekend challenges to really make sure you learn as much as humanly possible. It was amazing!

This is not to scare you off but equally if the above doesn't excite you then you might struggle because every person who makes it onto the course will have signed up to this and be raring to go!

 

The course: Like many people I wanted to make a switch into development and doing tutorials at home wasn't really cutting it. The course itself is great, every week (well most) your coach starts the week of introducing the next topic. Sometimes this may involve whiteboard sessions, talking through syntax and others just pointing you and your pair to the repository for that topic. That week you then spend working through a specific challenge focused on teaching you about this topic. Each day you switch pairs so you have the benefit of looking at different code, different ways of thinking and learning from one another.

This is ultimately the key thing that makes Makers Academy so good. They get a whole bunch of passionate people from diverse backgrounds together, set them a challenge and support where necessary. Makers isn't an onsite tutorial because if it was you really wouldn't understand the content. If I didn't have to figure things out myself (or with my pair) I honestly don't think I'd remember half of what I do now.

 

Career support: They have a great careers team who do everything they can to support you in your job search afterwards. But just like the course, this is driven by you and you have to be prepared to put the hours in.

I loved Makers Academy, but be warned, this course is not for the faint-hearted! It is really intense - it has to be, it's only 12 weeks long! So you have to be prepared to commit utterly during that time, including weekends, if you want to make progress.

I chose to do Makers Academy because I felt that just doing online tutorials by myself was difficult to find time to do while working, demotivating and left me with a lot of questions. Makers Academy did not disappoint. The way that the course is structured means that you're not spoon fed a 'how to be a developer' syllabus but rather led to discover yourself how to be a developer - you're given signposts, if you will, rather than an actual map. So we were taught concepts, skills and behavioural practices (Agile, XP values) over the concretes of how to actually write code, as the latter is usually quite easy to find yourself.  The focus is put on learning how to learn and learn quickly in order that students can leave with a certain level of self-sufficiency when coming across a new language or coding practice after the course is over. 

We pair programmed throughout the duration of the course - this is great for honing communication skills,  for learning how to talk clearly about unfamiliar concepts and enhancing understanding. Again, this is not for everyone - if you're a lone ranger,  get frustrated at others for being slow or resentful of people being ahead of you, then you should probably look into other courses.

One of the really great things about Makers Academy was that we were being taught best practices on real-world applicable projects from day one. It meant that right from the beginning I knew that what I was learning I could actually use once the course was over - which sounds daft but I did a degree and have not used it since graduating. 

I also appreciated Makers Academy's attention to the wellbeing of their students - it could be easy to burn out in such an environment, but daily meditation, twice weekly yoga and the support of the Coach and Joy Officer kept me simmering at an optimal learning temperature rather than boiling over.

Conclusion: do this course if you want to be a software developer, are happy to put in the time, are cool with self-learning and enjoy collaborating with people to build awesome things. 

I attended this bootcamp, and coming from a traditional learning background, it was a bit of a shock to adjust to the Montessori-style approach. There were no grades, so I never knew exactly how well I was doing, which made it challenging at first. However, in hindsight, this method helped me develop strong skills in breaking down and analysing technical requirements, which was especially valuable since I already had some coding experience.I would definitely recommend this bootcamp to anyone looking to sharpen their coding skills and get job-ready. However, for absolute beginners, unless you pick things up very quickly, you should be prepared to spend an additional 3 months to a year perfecting your skills after the bootcamp, especially in today's competitive job market.