Makers Academy

As a testament to the course: I entered Makers Academy with very limited knowledge of software development. I accepted a job offer within three weeks of graduating. 

• ​There is a lot of focus on care both for yourself and fellow students, including daily meditation and bi-weekly yoga. Both the Joy Officer and the coaches are often around to speak directly about your concerns, and there is a strong, open feedback culture that Makers seem to take very seriously. There is a lot of emphasis on everyone feeling safe and supported. ​
• The support in getting a job is absolutely fantastic, as long as you put in the effort from your side as well. That means building a rapport with the careers team and helping them to help you find something suitable. They will help you for as long as you need to get a job, though that might mean supporting you in finding one for yourself, as the number of jobs available via hiring partners at any one time will inevitably be fewer than the graduates applying. 
• The focus on agile practices, software craftsmanship and projects emulating the real world was great. Learning to work like a programmer, think like a programmer and collaborate like a programmer are by far the most important skills Makers can give you - much more than just learning the actual languages, which is something you could probably go at alone with enough time and dedication. These are the skills that will make you employable beyond the code!
• ​The focus on 'learning by doing' was indispensable in propelling my learning forward. This, along with the 'growth mindset' that is integral to the Makers learning philosophy, was one of the most useful lessons that I will continue to apply not only to my career but to any challenge in life. 
• The course is set up to promote total self-learning. What little structure you have is slowly pulled back until you are working in a completely self-directed manner. As such, you will have to rely on yourself to progress forward. The coaches are there to keep the ball rolling, but they won't chase you if you fall behind. The onus is very much on you to make it known if you are struggling or need specific guidance. Don't expect to be graded, or even receive much feedback without asking for it.​ This can be very frustrating, especially at first, but is quite good for encouraging self-sufficiency and self-assurance (which will be pretty essential post-course). 
• There is a sense in which you are at the mercy of your cohort more than your coach. Pair programming happens every day, if not group projects, and programming alone is discouraged. This is fantastic for letting you get a taste of coding collaboratively, actively thinking about a problem and knowledge-sharing, but does also mean you are reliant on each other to maintain a level of commitment and motivation.

Makers is very much what you make of it. Frankly, it is quite easy to go through the course without much effort, though unsurprisingly the pay-off will be minimal-to-nonexistent. And, of course, it's possible to go at it 24/7 and make coding your life, though I think the necessity of this is over-stated. Maintaining a not-insane work-life balance won't ruin you, as long as you work smart and are mindful of your own progress (it's true, though, that you will need to give up some of your weekends!) Seek help for your weaknesses, engage thoughtfully, be a considerate pair, and you're already halfway there.

Disclaimer: I am writing this review in return for a free hoodie (I do love free hoodies), but apparently I can be as honest as I like 😋

I was part of the April 2017 cohort at Makers and finished at the end of June. It took me about two weeks to get a job as a Software Engineer afterwards. Before Makers I was a marketer and only had a tiny amount of coding knowledge, all front end.

I joined Makers because I was making a conscious career change. Before the course I was sceptical that I'd be able to get a job coding straight after, but I've been proved wrong 🙌

The biggest thing I've got out of Makers is a mindset change. Whereas before I wasn't confident about learning new things, especially technical things, I feel way more confident now. Get yourself a growth mindset 📈 

What's good about Makers Academy?

• The learning methodology is great; it's all about 'learning how to learn' which focuses attention on feedback and reflection over learning by rote, perfect for getting into good habits as a Software Engineer;
• The culture is very open and friendly; they take their Code of Conduct seriously in order to create a geniunely inclusive environment;
• Pair programming every day replicates the environment you'll be in when you get a job after the course, and also helps peers share knowledge without too much interference from coaches;
• Learning Ruby, then TDD, then about web apps, then JavaScript; the curriculum flows nicely and each week for the first half of the course builds on the knowledge you already have;
• The careers team are great, friendly and highly motivated to get you a job ASAP after you finish; the jobs are generally good jobs and well paid compared to other graduate-type roles

What's not so good about Makers Academy?

Firstly – during the application and selection process, they can be a bit pushy. Although they make a big deal of the fact that you've been 'selected' and try and make you feel special, they are clearly under pressure to get you to commit ASAP and pay your deposit. It's a huge life decision to leave your job (if you have one), take three months out, spend £8k etc., and I think they should make more of an effort to not put so much pressure on people at that stage.

Secondly – your cohort will very much a peer-led learning group. The coach is there as a guide and to give you some structure early on ('leave the stabilizers on') before you're confident enough by yourself. As a consequence you're reliant on your fellow learners to (a) show up, (b) be attentive and engaged, (c) be forgiving if necessary. Undoubtedly, not all of your cohort will match this profile. 

As an prospective student, if you're hoping for lots of structure and lots of teacher/student type coaching and quantitative feedback, then Makers is not for you. You need to be confident enough to ask for help if you think you need it, too.

Top Tips for Applying to Makers Academy

Don't freak out. When they invite you for face-to-face interview, read the email they send you with instructions (from memory it's about doing some Ruby on Codeacademy and a couple of other things). What they ask of you is not hard and it doesn't take a huge amount of time. Just make you prepare by doing all the things on their list and you'll be fine.

Final thoughts

If you know that you're interested in coding, this is a great place to start (if you have the money and the time). It's expensive but if you look at the salaries for the roles from the careers team, a lot of the time it will pay off very quickly. 

If you don't yet know that you're interested in coding, do some more Codeacademy or similar, or check out free coding meetups like Codebar.

From what I can see so far, programming is creative, thoughtful and challenging work, and Makers gives you a good taste of that. It's intense only if you want it to be; there's no pressure from the coaches to be working all hours. Take your time and you'll be all the more confident for it.

Any other questions? I'm on Twitter as @baileytalks – tweet or DM me. Always happy to have an honest chat 👍

I came to Makers with 3 years experience as a technical support engineer. 
My goal was to change career into web development.

3 months after the course, I got a job as a junior Python/Django developer. 
I wrote a blog about my journey at Makers Academy : https://bkjourneytocoding.wordpress.com/

What I can say about my experience is that you get out what you put in. 
Makers has the materials, the curriculum and a dedicated team to help you along the way but you have to put in a lot of work.

In November 2016, I enrolled in Makers Academy, Europe's leading developer Bootcamp, and the Bootcamp has been a fantastic experience for me. Firstly I am amazed at what I have learned and can use those skills to create web applications using Ruby and JavaScript. In addition, I learned many software-development-best practices, including Agile methodologies, XP values, and object-oriented design principles.

Career team is approachable and supportive. They provide us job hunting technical as well as mental support. 

Before attending Makers Academy, I had no technical training whatsoever. I had recently returned to school after working for about 5 years, yet I found that my masters degree wasn't really leading to jobs that I found personally meaningful and that stretched my brain. Luckily, circumstances led me to check out programs for learning to code and I found Makers. I immensely enjoyed the program. It was really tough but they realise this. Makers provides all kinds of services and mentorship to help you improve and feel as comfortable as possible with the intensive learning process. If they could improve something, I think it might be the pre-course which increased my anxiety about the program rather than helped build my confidence. What Makers did best was teaching me to think like a programmer, which would have been a tough thing to pick up on my own. In the end and most importantly, I ended up with a job that I really enjoy and a career track that is incredibly inspiring.

Maker's Academy was the beginning of my beautiful, frustrating, love-hate relationship with code. Before starting the course, I had dabbled in HTML, and CSS. That's it. I was an infant in the ever expanding universe of web development. I don't owe Maker's Academy for turning me into the software engineer that I am today. That's mostly due to my stubborn tenacity to keep struggling through. However, I do owe Maker's Academy for enabling me to fall in love with the process of learning how to code. One must understand that no bootcamp, school, or educational establishment can teach anyone 'how to code' in twelve weeks. That's impossible. Maker's Academy taught me how to enjoy the struggle, embrace the unknown, be confident in what I know, and curious in what I do not. If you're curious about if a job in web development is for you, Maker's Academy will be an inspiring introduction that just might make you fall in love as well. It's a magical experience, and I give it five stars all around, aside from the aspect of Job Assistance. I believe that they are quite helpful when it comes to EU citizens who are looking for employment inside of the EU (almost all of the hiring partners are within the EU). However, being an American, there really wasn't much that they could do for me due to visa issues. Regardless, I recently landed my dream job at ThoughtWorks in Chicago and at the end of the day, when it comes to getting a job, I think it's a very individual effort anyway. 

Hopefully this review helps those thinking of applying for the remote course of Makers. To sum it up, as good if not better than the on site equivalent! I had only a small amount of coding experience prior to this before switching from a science degree to a programming bootcamp but the amount you learn in a relatively short amount of time is insane. The coach we had was extremely helpful and I loved every minute of it working with others from the cohort every day. 

I don't feel that I lost out in doing it remotely. We still did daily standups via video conference and screen shared when pairing for the rest of the afternoon. We all left at the end of the course with as much knowledge as the others but there is a lack of social activities to bare in mind. There also aren't as many(if any) remote jobs for a Junior Developer as they tell you so bare that in mind if applying from abroad or somewhere with a rubbish tech scene.

You have to be willing to work incredibly hard as Makers don't hold your hand throughout the course. You'll leave a much more independent and capable developer from it. Do some practice problems and join codewars to make sure it's what you want to do as a future career. 

I'm currently working at a fantastic startup as a backend engineer in London after doing the course back home near Birmingham and it wouldn't have been possible without going to Makers. Best decision of my life. Can't recommend enough!!!

An incredible experience if you're serious about a career change. Makers provide a vibrant and stimulating environment to learn important real-world programming skills (test-driven development, best practices, git flow) and modern technologies that will make you stand out against traditional computer science graduates in the right kind of companies. Take this from someone who did a conversion masters in Computer Science at one of the UK's most prestigious universities and still decided to attend Makers, and now works at an amazing tech start-up as a result.

Makers is not for the faint-hearted. Firstly, the cost of any bootcamp is prohibitive, though it pales in comparison to the cost of higher education (and don't forget that you need to sustain yourself for about 6 months, not 3 to 4 years). I would also recommend seriously trying to learn how to program on your own and in other ways (attending workshops, taking online courses) - not everyone who joins a bootcamp ends up choosing to become a developer, and that's down to personal preferences and warped expectations. Don't expect to be "taught" things in the traditional sense of the term. A few don't fully understand this and feel frustrated when they're struggling outside a traditional classroom environment. Lastly, don't expect to just be given a job. Makers are improving their ties to companies and are boosting their careers team, who are extremely helpful, but at the end of the day it is up to you to figure out where there is a good fit, to ace interviews and tech tests and to go out and find companies that want to hire you.

The coaches and staff are passionate and helpful, and the material is kept as relevant and up-to-date as possible. There's a lot of hard work and team projects, and ultimately you get out of it as much as you put in, since nobody holds your hand and there is a vast amount of knowledge to be uncovered. 12-16 weeks is a short amount of time, but the hands-on learning approach, being steeped in the right environment and surrounded by passionate individuals really does ingrain the knowledge in your head. People in the tech industry who are familiar with Makers and their graduates are consistently impressed, so no wonder some of the best software companies hire direct.

Do your research, go to open days and taster events and make sure you want to code for a living. If you do, Makers is the right place to start.

Experience was one of a kind, I had never study anything related to programming until I started preparing for this course, It's extremely important to do all the material given for the pre course, I could not get it all done before we started and I really paid the price through out the course, because once you start there is not stopping or resting! Its a very very intensive course the fact that I did the online one might have made it more intense I'm not sure but it was definitely challenging for me, I struggle with the lack of guidance or people to answer my questions, apart from other students they pretty much want you to find the answers on your own and I'm not very good at that so that made me struggle through out, my mentor was available but only to ask more questions... this is kinda their methodology no way around that, but on the other hand I loved that they help me get job ready, 4 months of studying and I was ready job ready, earning way more than a minimum wage salary, because I lived in London they also helped me to secure interviews and finally a job, I'm very happy I joined MA and regret not doing it earlier in life! its a major change in life style, you get to join an amazing industry that is very flexible when it comes to hours, holidays and family time, there is so much demand that developers pretty much choose where and how they want to work I haven't heard of any other industry that offers this! (obviously the more experience you have the more picky you can get) again I highly highly recommend anybody to go for it, its hard but totally doable