Command Shift

Over lockdown I decided I needed a career change. I was working in recruitment and although I didn't dislike the role I knew it wasn't what I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life either. Full-time bootcamps were out of the question as I could not afford to give up working full-time, so Manchester Codes was the perfect option. The course is intense and is a big commitment (the 20 hours per week of independent study the course recommends outside of lectures is a realistic expectation), however it was worth every hour and every penny. The tutors and classmates were so supportive, and the careers guidance was vital in me securing a full-time role in software development. 

My experience with Manchester Codes was great. I mean it was possibly one of the toughest period of my life, even if I have had lots of experiences in working and studying. The course is really intense but in the same time it was also one of the most rewarding experience in my life. Apart from the usual challenges, my cohort faced Covid, only few weeks after we started. Manchester Codes as an organization handled it wonderfully though and overcome the difficulties quickly. I have to mention that in my opinion - even if the tutors are there and helped us to find every silly typos in the code - the course is not for those who expect non-stop hand holding. It prepared us for the real word where indeed our best friend is google.  I secured my first developer position at a wonderful startup after 2.5 months. From my point of view the course prepared me for the job as I was able to do some real work after the first few weeks already.

Before applying to Manchester Codes I was working wonderful 12 hour shifts in London in the media industry. Having wanted a career change for a while I decided to get into coding! Using Code Academy and Udemy courses I was able to get a good start but found it difficult to concentrate and felt like I was rushing them just for the sake of completing them. I decided that I needed to do a coding bootcamp, I realised spending 10k on a 3 month course while living in London was impossible! Luckily enough I found Manchester Codes online just as I was about to go back home up North! Lucky timing and a way better price than London courses!
After applying I met Joe and he gave me a quick run through of Javascript through Chrome's console, realising I knew some of the basics and what the course would provide I was glad to be accepted. It was great to get to grips with HTML/CSS and Bootstrap(which I had to use daily at my first web dev job) in the first couple of weeks and then get into JavaScript. I was able to get a thorough understanding of JavaScript, React, GitHub,  AWS and Node in just a couple of months. One of favourite bits was being able to create projects with what we had learned that week, especially with Javascript. I found trying to learn Javascript by myself I was never able to see it’s full potential or why it gets used so much.
Once I completed the course I did some local work experience at a Digital Agency for about 2 months nearby just so I could get a better understanding of how they worked and to up my CV. After which I was able to get my first Junior Web Developer role at a Digital Agency in the North West where the course really came in handy. After being there for a year I decided I wanted to be by the Sea as I am a terrible surfer and managed to get a Web Developer role at a fashion company in the South West!
I would highly recommend this course if you are looking at having a career change and want to get into Web Dev.

I finished the Software Engineer FastTrack a few months ago and I was able to find a software engineer job after around 2 months of job hunting. Overall, the bootcamp was a very positive experience, largely because tutors are helpful, knowledgeable and quick to respond to questions or queries. Like many of the other students, I had to carry on working while doing the bootcamp and being able to get support from the tutors at different times of the day through Slack was a massive plus for me. The career advisor (Andrew) was also really helpful after I finished the course, gave me feedback on my CV and helped me prepare for interviews.

I do think there is an expectation that students work independently and get used to asking lots and lots of questions. But (in my opinion) this is not a bad thing because it matches expectations of junior developers in the workplace. :) I have recommended this course to friends who want to get into web dev and I will continue to do so. 

I'm not sure why one of the anonymous reviews claims that there are lots of mistakes in the course material. This wasn't my experience at all. There were occasional bugs in some of the sample code, but these were always fixed quickly whenever someone pointed them out to the tutors. 

I completed the Manchester Codes software development bootcamp 1 week ago and can safely say it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Whilst choosing a bootcamp to attend i took into consideration many factors, one of the reasons why Manchester Codes appealed was because you can do the course part time whilst still working. I'm also glad i chose Manchester Codes because the staff are really lovely, knowledgeable and supportive and are always on hand to answer questions over slack even when you arent in class. I'm amazed at how much the course covered and found the projects really fun to work on. I would definately reccomend this course to anyone considering a software development bootcamp! 

I joined Manchester Codes in March 2020. At the beginning I was a bit scared if I am going to make it through the entire course 🤔

But everything turned upside down with the amazing people I met. The course is unbelievable; how much you can learn from it in only 6 months. I started from 0 and now I can call myself Junior Developer. 🎮

At the end of this course you can use the knowledge into plenty of jobs and begin something new. 😊 It was an amazing experience that I could live again and again.

A big thanks you to everybody for the full support from the beginning until the end ❤

Having completed the fast-track course, I can say that this was the largest waste of money I have ever spent and definitely the worst choice from all the options I had with other courses in the area.

Alarm bells should have really started ringing on day one, when they pointed out that for the first month there is no "teaching" (which I will come on to shortly) involved. You just have to go away, read a few online articles and complete HTML and CSS courses on FreeCodeCamp and Codecademy (yes, those free websites). Following this first month it is time to "start properly" with their JavaScript material. The track starts with some small katas/JavaScript problems to solve, no teaching on how to do so and only pointers to yet again, more lessons on those free websites. There's even an "optional extra lesson" at the end of this part of the track that points to a specific number of lessons on FCC, which if not completed already you would not know how to complete the earlier katas/problems anyway...

Anyway, with some basic JavaScript "taught", it's on to the backend part of the course. This is obviously where programming for many brings up difficult concepts to understand and so you would expect a decent amount of tutored lessons to help students with the theory needed. Unfortunately, the average lesson length is around 30 minutes, with some as short as 20 and others a little longer. For the course I sat, these started well, but after a few weeks for whatever reason the tutor changed from someone who could explain the theory, to someone who could read off a PowerPoint (whilst the original tutor was still there). At this point in the track it also began to feel like students are proof-readers for the course material too. The amount of spelling and grammatical errors in the material goes from funny to beyond a joke pretty rapidly and be prepared to lose a few hairs (and hours) bug fixing the errors presented within the learning material. (not bugs/errors you mistakenly code, bugs/errors within their "follow-along/teaching-code"). There was always the option of asking for help on Slack, which usually got a response pretty quickly. You just had to be weary of the few tutors who's help also came with sarcastic and condescending responses.

The front end of the course, from what I remember was a lot more straight forward (react kind of teaches itself), however, to be honest by this point I had already turned to popular Udemy courses as I felt I was learning far more from courses costing £12 on there.

Job assistance wise, when I went to an open day, I was told there was a career advisor (no specific department tailored to help you find work following the course like many bootcamps provide - I decided pros outweighed the cons at the time). However, when I started, I discovered this was not however true. Shortly later though someone was brought into the post. A post that involved pasting job adverts a quick google search returns in a jobseeker’s channel in slack. NB. a specific and experienced careers advisor has now been brought in so hopefully this will change.

All in all, I ultimately chose the course because of the price and as the saying goes, you get what you pay for!