The Iron Yard

I signed up for the Mobile Dev program at the Detroit Campus of The Iron Yard and enjoyed my time. My instructor took a practical approach in teaching both Swift and Objective-C, creating situations and examples to code into instead of teaching subjects with no narrative or relative experience to relate it to.

There were difficult moments in the 3-month course, but between one-on-one help from the instructor and working out problems with others in my cohort, I was able to break through mental blocks and complete each assignment at or above expectation.

In addition to coding, we held weekly meetings with the campus staff and instructors to talk about the business of coding; learning about managing stress, how to prepare for interviews, and what to expect from jobs and careers in coding.

The course finished with a demo day where The Iron Yard brought in a dozen local tech companies and each of us students presented final projects in front about 70 people. After presentations we had time for tech demos and small group chats with attendees and potential employers.

Overall, I consider this a worthwhile experience and has set me in the right direction towards beginning a new career in software development.

Doing the RoR class in Durham was one of the best decisions I've ever made. The course was taught by an incredible instructor who was very engaged and had a way of breaking down complex topics into an easily digestible format. I learned a ton from him and always tell anyone who asks that the instructor, Mason, was probably the best teacher I've ever had. 

Often times people ask if they can learn the material on their own, and you cerntainly can, however you'd be hard pressed to learn it as quickly and as thorougly as you can at TIY. Additionally, probably the greatest benefit in my opinion was having an experienced developer as our instructor so that we could learn from him how to "talk the talk." This made me seem a lot more competent in interviews because I sounded like an experienced developer. 

The Iron Yard was one of the best experiences of my life. I decided that I wanted to make programming my career, which is what eventually led me here. I believe the most important part is knowing that you actually like to program, or think of UI/Ux before you plunge into the Iron Yard. For me that part was easy, because I had been trying to teach myself for several years with no success.

The 12 week course is a speeding train that never slows down. You have to be discplined, take breaks, don't fall behind and stay motivated! Typically I got to the school at 7AM and did some self study until the 9AM lecture and I would leave around 7PM take a break for a couple of hours before finishing up the assignement. For my specific class - the assignments had several difficulty levels, everyone had to finish the base difficulty but there was always more to do! The important part is to always stay challenged and ask for help when needed. Before you know it, the 12 weeks will be over and you will be presenting your very own 'final project' that was built in 2 weeks and will be amazed at your own achievement.

After graduation comes the hardest part of this journey. Finding a job. Research your market! For example, Austin is extremely saturated with junior developers and there are 8 code schools that have more graduates every few months. The Iron Yard does a good job preparing you with resumes, cover letters, interview skills (technical and soft). However, you will have to do the legwork to actually search for the jobs, network in your city and apply!

If you are someone that is self driven, but needs a support structure that can propel you forward, The Iron Yard is for you! And the connections you make here will help you get to that next step of your life.

Over all my experience was good. There are a few things to remember:

Getting a job is hard. This is not a silver bullet to landing you a six figure salary in the first year. Expect high 40's low 50's for your starting salary for the Charleston area. I was fortunate enough to land a coding job within the first month, but most people took a bit longer. Expect 1-3 months before you get an offer. It takes time, effort, and a bit of luck. Job assistance is available, but there is only so much the staff can do. It really comes down to you.

Focus on your portfolio. It will be the most valuable thing when you leave. Pick 4 or 5 well done projects to feature, and that's it. Add readme's to your github repositories so others can understand what you are doing. 

Understand that coding is not easy. Yes, anyone can learn it, but not everyone can learn it well enough in 3 months to perform at a job. Work on some free beginner tutorials through treehouse.com or codecademy.com to see how you do and how much you really enjoy it. 

In the end, for me, the investment was worth it, but I made a considerable effort into making sure that it was a good fit. Make sure you do the same for yourself. 

I finished my Front End Developement (JS & Angular) cohort at the end of August 2016.  Without sounding mushy, I can honestly say that it was one of the best and most fullfilling experiences of my life.  The instructors and faculty at The Iron Yard in Atlanta made every effort to ensure that I was prepared to enter the tech scene.  I made lifelong friendships that I woulnd't trade for anything.  I can and do give it the highest recommendations for anyone looking to enter or advance in the tech industry.

I enjoyed the course. It was nice to have an intimate in-person classroom environment to learn. The Iron Yard Houston campus, is incredibly welcoming. The director and operations manager did a stellar job creating a productive, and fun campus community.

The instructor was talented an knowledgable. He knew not only course content, but understood the Houston technology space in a deep way, and customized the course for the Houston area. He also acknowledges how important the web is to new iOS developers and how blogging and getting yourself out in the developer community online is important.

The curriculum kept me interested and was fun, we had an Apple API focus everyday and had project related to that focus due by next class. I think this approach has an advantage on keeping students engaged and shows students the full capabilies of the iOS software development kit, but might not be actually preparing them for the realistic tasks they'll be doing at their jobs. 

(The topics I see that are missing are a deeper dive into UIKit, a framework that will be the most used in the jobs that students and a heavy emphasis on debugging, and hard to find bugs. Most junior developers will be resolving bugs in their job rather than architecting somthing new from scratch. I would also like to see the homework assignments relate to a single app that you build throughout the course, rather than small, seperate single-view projects everyday . One of the harder parts of development is literally navigating through a large code base. Forcing students to deal with the large amount of files and code in their project will give them a better understanding of Xcode along the way. This is especially important since Iron Yard students are competeing against Computer Science students. The advantage that The Iron yard can have is giving students very specific real world skills, rather than focusing on a overall picture of the programming space like a Computer Science degree.)

Having no coding experience before a coding bootcamp may work better for web developement, but for Mobile Engineering in iOS. Have basic programming knowledge in any programming language is a requirement, there is a steeper learning curve in iOS to make something that looks and feels functional, compared to making a functional website. Getting hit with basic programming knowledge, adaptable UI, learning in a more complicated coding environment like Xcode is a lot. So I would definitely encourage anyone considering to study basic programming before hand. I had about a year of experience before I took the course and that really helped my learning accelerate.

I was in Houston temporarily, hoping to get a job back in Austin, so my situation was a bit odd. But if I was planning to stay in Houston, the support giving in terms of getting employment after graduation was great. We were given a mock interviews, demo/graduation day was a great place to showcase work to lots of employers visiting The Iron Yard. Throughout the course, we were given advice and reminders about what stages we should be thinking about in the job hunting process. And the journey didn't end after graduation. The Iron Yard staff continued to help guide me in my job hunt.

Given that it was the first Mobile Engineering cohort, it felt like being at a disadvantage because the staff was less versed on what hiring a Junior iOS developer would look like. During demo day, there were less companies that were seeking junior mobile developers rather than web developers. The weekly speakers were mostly geared toward web development. And the visit to a web consulting company was geared towards web developers. I'm sure as Mobile Engineering cohorts go through this campus, the resources for them will only increase.

Overall I'm proud to be an Iron Yard grauduate. It was fast-paced learning, and I got a lot out of the program. If you want to acclerate your learning of iOS development as fast as possible, The Iron Yard is the place to go. There are many cheaper resources online, and it is possible to learn it yourself. But many people won't have the disipline to self learn outside of a school environment, and it will defintely take months if not years longer to learn the skills that you need to get a job. So, what are you waiting for? The clock is ticking, go sign up for The Iron Yard.!

I graduated from The Iron Yard's UI/UX course at the Columbia, SC location in 2015 and accepted a full-time position about 3 months after graduating. My experience with this course, and the Iron Yard was definitely a positive and correct step in my life. 

During those12 weeks, I went from 0 coding experience to learning html, css, javascript. The first couple of weeks focus on the fundementals to to give you a good foundations. In the following weeks, you build real-world projects and continue to cover more advance topics (JQuery/Sass). It is really impressive what can happen in such a short time.

The greatest benefit to me, you can create a whole new career path in a short amount of time. The initial money spent can easily be recouped once you land your first job.

After you graduate, you are apart of the Iron Yard Family. The instructors, directors have gone above and beyond to get you prepared and placed in your first job. 

Advice: Network Network Network before you graduate. Also, get your hands dirty and just keep building.

The decision to attend the Iron Yard literally changed my life. I went to school for a music degree, which was an incredible and fulfilling experience but not amazingly lucrative career-wise. I didn't want to teach, so I ended up with a handful of odd-jobs to pay the bills. I quickly started to realize that I was not in a place where I could get a head in life and I needed to take action.

I heard about the Iron Yard through a friend of mine. I was naturally a bit skeptical about the idea of being able to completely switch careers after only 3 months, but after talking with the instructor in a prescreening interview I felt a bit more at ease. I attended the Spring '16 Backend course with my friend that had originally told me about the Iron Yard. Roughly a month after we both graduated, we both received job offers at the first place we applied to. 

The experience I had over the three months there was incredible. The atmosphere is really geared towards intense study and facilitates an excellent mindset towards learning. My teacher was probably among the best teachers I've ever had and I still keep in touch with him to this day. Unlike college classes, everything you learn is 100% geared towards real life job skills without a whole lot of extra pure-theoretical baggage. After I went through the Iron Yard, I was well prepared for the interview and I was able quickly make valuable contributions when I came onboard to my current team.

The one catch is that the workload is pretty big! I don't think that someone just looking for a paycheck would fair too well in an environment like the Iron Yard. However, if you've done a small amount of coding before and think you might have a passion for it, this is definitely something to check in to!! 

So, I graduated from the Front End Engineering program at The Iron Yard not too long ago. I completely loved it there. I had a little coding experience prior to attending the bootcamp but was pleasantly surprised by how much more I was able to pick up during my time there. I'm really happy with the progress that I was able to make and just how much I was able to enhance my coding and programming skills. The staff is totally awesome; everyone working there is extremely helpful, supportive and interested in your success. I was impressed with how knowledgeable and engaging my instructor was, and my TA was always there to help anyone who needed it as well. Not only that but they were really cool too!

I will say that the environment at The Iron Yard is exceptionally challenging; you will encounter inevitable frustrations and may want to give up at times but the instructors and staff are there with you the whole way through, helping you to push through such frustrations and to persevere with the coursework. They just get it; they get the programming industry and are always able to provide helpful information to us as students and 'noobs' to the industry so that by graduation you can be confident about stepping out into the workforce. Even being a graduate, I still pop up on campus sporadically and am welcomed with open arms and still receive assistance from the instructors and staff as far as career support or a project I may be working on. What a fantastic experience this was for me! It was definitely well worth it.

I completed the Front End Engineering course here in Las Vegas, NV. I was stuck working in a dead end job at a casino when I realized it was time for a change. After spending some time looking into the school and getting a tour of the campus, I finally decided to go for it and thats a decision I will always be happy about. The Front End course is lead by a great teacher named Mike and from my first conversation with him I knew he was very knowledgable and yet still approachable. Which made it easy to ask questions and to just have conversations with him. The most important thing I can stress about The Iron Yard is you are only going to get as much out of this course as you put in. The campus became and still is a second home to me from all the time I spent there during the class. From my first day of class till well into my new career, the instructors have proven over and over that they are there for you and will help out in any way they can. The Las Vegas campus has a family vibe that makes it easy for new comers to fit in. There are always alumni working out of the building who are more than happy to help out. I think this really speaks to the community that Gabe Shepherd, the campus director is trying to build out here. He tries to keep the Alumni involved in everything from guest lectures to just random campus activities. I came out of The Iron Yard with friendships that will last a life time and skills and knowledge to keep growing with this industry over time.