Founders and Coders

Founders and Coders is a 16 week bootcamp course, that ensures you develop the skills to become a software developer. The first eight weeks are focused on learning the principles of JavaScript (that can be applied to other programming languages), as well as using popular frameworks such as React and Express. This includes two days each week of mini projects in a group of four to put what was learnt into practice. The latter eight weeks are spent working on two four-week projects, one of which is for an actual client.

The curriculum is open source, mostly based on contributions from previous alumni, and is improved after each cohort based on Agile principles. There is a course facilitator that oversees the process, whilst for the first eight weeks there are mentors from the previous cohort to coordinate the self learning.

I would highly recommend the course - it teaches you the technical as well as the personal skills required to become a software developer. Being able to learn in a safe environment, with support from your peers and the mentors, was invaluable. Although it was intense, and a lot of information to take in, it was definitely a rewarding experience. Our cohort also became a close knit group that still meet quite often as well!

Founders and Coders provided me with the groundwork to pursue my career in the tech industry, and I will always be grateful that I was welcomed into such an amazing community.

I've just graduated from Founders and Coders. Before enrolling on the course I was studying BSc Computing at university. Just at the end of the first year, I found out about FAC, and decided to drop off the uni as I didn't enjoy paying an arm and a leg for studying mainly in my own time, outdated tools. At that period I wasn't sure how well FAC would work for me, and now I can certainly say that it was the best decision I've ever made. I learnt so much within the last 4 months, and I'm well prepared to get a job as Juniour Developer. I learnt Express, React and Redux, which are currently in a big demand on the market. I'm very thankful for the opportunity I was given and defenitely recommend the course to everyone who wants to get into coding.

I was involved with the organisation over 3 years as an employee, a mentor and a volunteer. They claim an outward image of being a cooperatively run organisation that implements decisions on consensus, but in reality all decisions are made behind closed doors by management. There’s huge issues with nepotism and it’s near impossible to get anything done unless you are chummy with those in charge. Many have tried. A large portion of the courses structure and resources have been made by optimistic individuals who have either burnt out or been pushed out of the organisation because they weren’t in vogue.

Simply put, they try to do far too much with far too little resourcing and end up being completely unable to offer support to those on the course or those working or volunteering in the space.

Upon witnessing a number of poorly handled events I asked for my membership to the organisation to be revoked and was subsequently bullied by a member of staff who got numerous people to harass me to apologise to her. This included a prominent member of the organisation sending me inaccurate aggressive accusatory messages the day before a funeral we were both attending. Needless to say I got in touch with everyone involved and offered to talk and was met by immature silence.

Do yourself a favour and spare yourself from this bootcamps drama and disorganisation. There’s loads of alternative bootcamps in London that offer discounts to those marginalised in tech and free meet-ups to get you on your developer path.

Founders and Coders is a coding bootcamp that is the perfect springboard to jump into the world of coding.

What sets FAC apart from the other bootcamps is the level of support. Since the prerequisites that need to be completed before applying are tough and the course is highly selective, it has resulted in a community of people who are the best of the best. The beauty of FAC is the people who are always ready to help, and I’ve made many friends from FAC. 

Over the four month course, I have learnt more than any other four months of my life. It is an intense learning environment, one where it is best if you do not have anything else going on on the side. You need to be ready to be immersed in the bootcamp. Although at times it was mildly stressful, it was definitely worth it.

FAC has completely turned my career around. I managed to find a job in a small start up in a great place in London within half a month of finishing the course, where I’ve now been for about nine months and having a great time.

I would highly recommend FAC, it is so so worthwhile.

You can really get a huge amount out of FAC but you need to put a lot in. The people who say that it was an incredible experience (and I think everyone on my cohort would more or less agree with them), will have put the effort in to ensure that they had such a transformative experience. There are many reasons why someone might not be able to make the necessary comittment and they are all probably really good reasons, but they should be aware that they might find they struggle with the way that the project is structured and executed, and with the kinds of interactions they will be exposed to.

Applicants should be clear from the start that:

• The excellent course material is both challenging and in a state of constant development/improvement - you will cover topics that an expert would be hard pressed to make accessible, and at the end of the course you will be asked to improve on the existing delivery of that topic...
• You will definitely learn to use the practical tools and methodologies that are widely adopted across the industry, and you will be required to use them to manage projects with real-world clients by the end of the course.
• There are no 'teachers' - there is a collaboratively designed curriculum, graduates from the previous cohort to mentor you each week, a course facilitator, and a community of associates, graduates etc. sharing the space with you: the environment is spontaneous and very sociable.
• You need to learn a lot in a short space of time and you will need to learn to use technologies you don't fully uderstand - this is an extremely valuable skill, but can really take you out of your comfort zone.
• The opportunity to mentor the next cohort for a week is an amazing opportunity to cement your learning - on the other hand, as a student, it is easy to get frustrated with the mentors when you are dealing with a difficult topic as they definitely:
  1. do not have all the answers
  2. have been instructed not to feed you the answer, since you are supposed to figure it out with your team
• You will be working in pairs and in teams from the start and will need to become expert at managing interpersonal issues in a sometimes stressful environment - FAC makes sure to provide pastral care and there is always support available.
• The project is expanding, developing in new fields, and seeking new groups of participants and new revenue streams to keep the momentum up - while I have never been pressured to contribute financially, I certainly do want to when I am able, and would not be shocked if I was asked.
• A lot of effort is put into ensuring that a chohort will get on well, but there will be personal issues, things you disagree with etc.
• There is a demonstrable need to increase diversity in the tech sector and FAC is actively working towards this.
• You will need to use emojis a lot.

FAC is an amazing project and course and highly recommended

To summarise it in a few words: a sheer waste of time.

The course is simply not properly taught and I would have better used my money on some udemy classes. At least they are done by professionals, not by improvised mentors that just finished the same course a few weeks before us and often had no real work experience, while following an old curriculum.

Reporting problems is more or less meaningless, they are just blinded by their own political views (read: radical feminism in its most dogmatic form) and as long as they make sure that you donate (because you have to, they put it on paper - it is not free, that is just another lie!) and do not ruin their image, they are fine with things as they are.

And I do not say that without evidence: our cohort was a major shipwreck (lot of people not finishing it due to poor selection process, just to get a class going and get some funding, I would say), but still on twitter they keep celebrating the alleged "success" of the campus without any speck of shame.

Oh, no, wait: if you object and complain too much, you can forget to work in their small projects for a very cheap pay. Well, thanks, but no thanks.

Avoid this trap, don't repeat my mistake!

First of all, I met awesome people there, "thanks" to FAC, but I cannot deny what apparently only a couple of reviewers had the guts to say so far: this is not a proper bootcamp.

Let me go a bit more in detail about that:

• let's start with the most crucial: 90% or more of the people mentoring you are in no shape to be instructors and some of them, I came to think, would actually struggle to pass a serious interview for a junior role;
• it is not by all means necessarily their fault, but some of them were just led to believe they were competent when they were still quite far from it - it happens when you have an environment which does NOT welcome criticism in any shape or form, despite nominally soliciting people to be open and to share, contribute;
• technology does not seem to be a core passion or not even a concern for several people there (I would dare say most of the people passing the very iffy selections - more about them later) - ideology and a political agenda are, while "coding" is just a background, the cool fad of the moment;
• it can happen quite often that the curriculum will get dumbed down, to accommodate for the "less gifted" (or often simply the less hard working or just the more pessimistic) members of a cohort, so be ready to leave a lot of important stuff out, as also Mattia mentioned in his own review;
• remember what I said about criticism? Well, any dissenter is often marginalised and in due time moved closer and closer to the door. Little wonder here that a lot of the positive reviews were most likely either carefully marshalled in place or left by people who just hope to keep their situation as it is - cheap, easy roles for some partner of FAC;
• basically, you might end up not training seriously with mainstream and highly-demanded technologies like NodeJS or React, just because some part of your cohort is not up to speed or because who should decide on the curriculum does not like to take a firm stance;
• there is a strong pressure to donate money and your time to the association, which might be somehow tolerable, if not for the parallel effort of preventing people from landing (mostly on their own, do not expect much help in this regard) real jobs elsewhere. And, to be clear, by "real jobs" I mean jobs which do not pay less than a waiter and/or are not requiring you a similar coding prowess. Also, the fact that [NAME REDACTED] is super keen on reminding you how much he needs your money and time, but then shows that he himself does not do much for the bootcamp, other than going around spreading more self-promotion, collecting praise from his sycophants or dodging any criticism or objection does not help;
• I am more than supportive of people having their own ideas and possibly also being open with it, but FAC does subscribe completely and wholeheartedly to the so-called "radical feminism", embracing claims of constant discrimination of women by the evil patriarchy and generating a constant atmosphere of victimisation and infantilisation for them which is more than likely to elicit results which are opposite to the one they state they wish to achieve. Not that it would bother [NAME REDACTED], which apparently has a penchant for treating people like helpless children in need. Conversely, constant white male shaming/bashing is of course widely tolerated, if not even encouraged by some of the senior alumni (I will let you guess who, but it should not be that hard...);
• this is a minor one, but still it counts in the overall picture: being asked how somebody behaves when they are not there and constantly pushing to know what people think is a bit annoying, if not too controlling for my taste; Mattia's review raised a lot of fuss, with pressure to get it removed, other than him being of course ostracised. I am not giving my name here also because I want to avoid trouble to me and to some of my friends still around FAC;
• despite so much attention to "minorities" and so many claims and chest-beating about their virtuous ideals, the only ones to my knowledge that got good contracts through FAC are [NAME REDACTED]'s son (the same guy that posted one of the first reviews here with another surname) and his buddy, earning way above the market (for engineers of that seniority): why did FAC not offer the same opportunities also to female engineers, considering how many they have graduated and the recurring refrain that women can do exactly the same, if not often much better than men?

All in all, it was not a good investment of time for me (and I pity a bit all the people parroting that it was a life changing experience for them). Now I got a job, but in hindsight I should have gone to a proper Bootcamp like Makers (ah, I mentioned them!). Probably I would have been better off even just doing some online classes, still less expensive and much more productive than attending FAC.

I should have guessed so by the selection process, being interviewed without any serious technical question, all about your attitude (and, well, gender, of course). My fault for ignoring the red flags.

Sorry guys, but as long as [NAME REDACTED] will keep telling that "FAC would not be FAC" changing things, you are stuck in your own jam.

I am out.

An amazing experience, I couldn’t recommend it enough.

Firstly for the sense of community whilst learning. Students are expected to support fellow students during the course, and you also contribute through hosting meetups for new coders and through mentoring. There really is a sense of being 'in it together' which makes the whole thing really enjoyable!

The course material was fresh and current, largely because Founders & Coders is based on an iterative model - each cohort of students feeds back on the syllabus and the experience as a whole, so the course is updated & improved each time. As a student the learning is mostly focused on ‘learning by doing’ (workshops and coding challenges, as well as a weekly group project). Don’t expect to be spoon fed, but do expect to learn valuable skills for a developer, i.e. *how* to learn new skills, how to research new technonlogies, and how to work in a team.

Another point of difference from other bootcamps is that for your final project you work with a real client, usually a charity. This is great on your CV as employers appreciate candidates with client experience, and of course it’s fantastic to help out a charity by solving a real-world problem with your newly-learned tech skills!

I am a graduate of Founders and Coders and I can honestly say it is one of the best things I have been a part of.

The curriculum is ever evolving determined by current trends in tech. Topics during our cohort included accessibility, Node, Express, relational databases, React, authentication. We consolidated our knowledge through weekly projects, which also helped hone our skills in pair-programming, TDD, code reviews, team retrospectives and the Git work flow; all assets in the professional environment.

Not only do you come out with these skills; you also become part of the Founders and Coders community. This was the main selling point for my decision to attend Founders and Coders. All alumni and students go above and beyond to ensure everyone feels welcome, and are more than willing to help out when asked.

One last (and in my opinion the most important) thing about Founders and Coders; it prides itself in diversity and accessibility. My cohort was made up of 75% women. All in our cohort come from a variety of professional backgrounds and are of varying ages. It’s also free. 

A truly remarkable boot camp that I would recommend to all without hesitation.

I’ve recently graduated from Founders and Coders, and I’m amazed at how much I learnt in 16 weeks. I’m definitely very prepared to be a full stack web developer.

The course has a great balance of workshops, coding challenges, short weekly team projects and longer 3 week projects which has given me fantastic experience of working in a team and problem solving, along with a really solid grounding in the technical concepts.

What makes Founders and Coders so special is the sense of community from the day you arrive, and after you graduate. There’s a sense of excitement about making FAC the brilliant learning experience that it is, and it’s such a supportive and collaborative environment which is so unique.

I would highly recommend Founders and Coders!

My cohort was the last one that didn't have to pay for this boot-camp so that was a big plus. Also the founder of FAC procured small contracts with real customers in London, so that we could have some real world work experience while attending the bootcamp, which was really a good thing and don't know if many bootcamps do something like that for their students. 
So why do I give a negative review? The learning experience and the atmosphere were poor in my opinion. 
There were no proper lecturers, the curriculum was very loose. The responsibility to teach to attendees was left to the most 'experienced' members of the cohort. The less experienced attendees were routinely complaining they couldn't keep up and this led the management to ban several technologies that were widely used in the market. JS Promises where banned, ReactJS was banned, Express was banned. People kept complaining and eventually any idea was regarded with suspicion or shut down. 
In general the atmosphere was not very friendly. There were constant discussions going on about gender equality, feminism, white male privilege, systemic misogyny. I heard more the once sentences like 'stick it to the white male' or 'the white male ticket has expired'. 
There was a female only meeting for coding, but when one of us created a male only whatsapp group for going to the pub( never used anyways), we were ordered by the management to shut it down, and all of us were labelled as misogynists. 
Honestly, I went there to improve my coding, I really didn't want to be part of all that. 
On a more personal note, I also worked on a project for them at the end of the cohort, I was the lead developer for the project and we won the competition the customer organised. It was a really exiting machine learning project and they applied for further funding, which I was told they were likely to receive some months later. I asked the management to be included in the further development of the project, which I was told was a normal thing at founders and coders. However one of them came to me one day asking to forward her all the emails, the repo and all the material I had, and thanking me for the job I did. 
So for me it was a bad experience. They seem to have very good review now, maybe something changed in the meantime.

I've just finished Founders & Coders and would highly recommend it to anyone. It's an amazing environment to learn in, surrounded by people who are genuinely interested and excited about what they're doing. The support that you get throughout the course is really good but you are also challenged and certainly not spoon-fed. The fact that you learn to write vanilla javascript before using any framewiorks gives you a really good understanding of the language but there's also a lot of room for pursuing technologies you're interested in. 

What has also stood out for me is how welcoming the community is, both during and after the course - cohorts tend to keep in touch with others on the course, as well as those from previous cohorts, and continue to help each other improve.

I've just finished the Founders and Coders programme and I couldn't be happier. In summary, Founders and Coders taught me how to write clean and readable code and after completing the programme I was connected with a company who interviewed me and then offered a Software Engineering position.

The things I loved about Founders and Coders:

- the programme focused on vanilla JavaScript.

- we spent a lot it time writing Node.js servers and creating databases. This is very difficult to learn on your own.

- we built an app every week in a team of 2-4 people.

- challenging and engaging workshops.

- almost all the the time we pair programmed with a fellow student.

- there were weekly code reviews during which experienced developers would give us advice on how to improve our code.

- half-way through the programme we were given an opportunity to build a full stack app using a technology stack of our choice.

- after graduation all students students were given an opportunity to continue to work on paid projects, internships, short-term contracts or full-time jobs.

But above all, the thing I've enjoyed the most is the supportive community of fellow students, freelancers, alumni and startup founders.

At Founders & Coders you’ll not only develop your programming skills in the short space of time, you’ll also learn to how work well with others, be encouraged to contribute to helping develop the course itself, and work out of your comfort zone regularly to push you to higher levels. Simply put, the course will help you grow as an individual, and you’ll leave the course with highly valuable attributes that many employers look for.

 

The course reviews here sum up the course well, in my opinion the best thing about Founders & Coders are the core values shared by everyone- in short; every member is wonderfully motivated about making a positive difference to the world through technology, it’s inspiring. Applying to the course and completing the 16 weeks has been one of the best decisions of my life, I cannot recommend it enough!

I learnt more during the last four months than at any other time of my life. It is exactly what my university experience should have been like and all without the £30,000 debt. What makes Founders and Coders so great is the people. The entry requirements are tough and this ensures that you are surrounded by intelligent, switched on individuals. Everyone has pushed me to be better every day, I would not be anywhere near as far in my coding career if it was not for this course. As well as the skills I have picked up, there are the friends that I have made. The atmosphere in the space is one of the most welcoming, accepting and friendly I have ever encountered, I will have a hard time leaving!

Are you looking to become a great developer, but do not have previous experience in web development?

Do you want a great learning journey, and share it with a group of young people you'll soon be calling friends?

Founders & Coders is the answer!

Founders & Coders is not only incredibly good to learn Full-stack Web Development, it is a community you can rely on to keep on learning, and a place which feels like home.

You will learn from day1(!!) to build powerful websites. By the end of the course you will be highly confident building full-stack apps, whether in 1-2 day hackathons or over the span of several weeks. I am now a much better developer than I could have ever imagined when applying.

One of the key differences with other bootcamps is that the learning doesn't stop after the course! You have a community which supports you! I have just finished the 16th (and last official) week of the course and am looking at working immediately on customer projects as a freelancer with my friends from the course. We will carry on learning and exploring new technologies together, and have the support of the FAC community (the experienced developers who graduated before us).

Web development cannot be taught on a whiteboard and a set of manuals, so this calls for a very practical approach. F&C's learning method is very powerful and unique for three specific reasons: exploration, group work, peer-led learning.

Exploration

You will learn how to learn new topics, practicing every week. I cannot emphasize how important this is in tech, where new technologies will be coming up all the time! You will also never experience spoon-feeding, and grow as a learner as well as a developer.

Group work

I have learned more in 2 weeks working in groups, than in 3 months learning on my own! And it's been way more fun and rewarding! Working in groups and pair programming, you will support, push and help each other to do more and better and to keep learning.

Peer-led learning

It may not be clear right now (it wasn't for me at the start), but teaching is an invaluable way to learn... for you and for the FAC community. It's what makes the course FREE (I still cannot believe it is!!) for the students, and will consolidate your learning! It will also not take too much of your time as a teacher (it is perfectly compatible with working the rest of the day). I'm really excited to do that!

If you are still not convinced, here are some other great reasons why F&C is so good!

• Javascript is the future, and is probably the only language which alone can allow you to be good on frontend & backend development. The myth that Ruby is much more beginner friendly is false (and if that were true, I still think you should challenge yourself and aim high!). I am now in the position to learn to build mobile apps
• You can contribute to making F&C an even better place! F&C values your opinion and asks for your feedback at least on a weekly basis (e.g. we have group sessions where you can potentially propose new best practices).
• Highly selective entry. I believe this ultimately leads to a higher learning standard. Being a free course, only means that the selection criteria are based on your motivation and aptitude/mentality rather than your willingness to pay (I have successfully applied to all other major bootcamps in EU and US as well, so I know this for a fact).
• All common best practices included: Test Driven Development (TDD), pair-programming, learning-by-doing, etc.
• Variety of backgrounds, experiences and cultures - F&C recognizes the importance of ensuring a balance between men and women, which is rewarding to the overall experience.

 

Founders and Coders is a full stack JavaScript course based around collaborative learning. It is an intense experience that is not your everyday classroom format. There is no teacher on hand to give you an answer whenever you are stuck, instead you and your peers need to research and then share what you have learned. 

It is without a doubt one of the best experiences that I have ever had and I have no doubt that the skills learned will be a massive help in my career as a developer. 

After a masters in Art History, I was unhappy about where my career was going. I found out about the school and joined Founders and Coders a couple of months later and honestly could say it was one of my best life choices. I've met lots of lovely people; the work is challenging and creative;  my career looks much more promising. I have found that the collaborative way of teaching suits me very well. I have learnt so much in the last few months. In addition, I have been given the opportunity to work with amazing clients such as Breast Cancer Care and other reputible charities so early on in my career as a developer. I would highly recommend. 

In no particular order: - A rounded introduction to fullstack development - A modern syllabus (ES6, Node, Hapi, React, etc) - Supportive environment and mentors - Encourages resourcefulness, self-directed and peer-supported learning - Regular feedback sessions to shape and tailor aspects of the course to each cohort - High entry requirements, very selective - Lots of external speakers from industry on a variety of topics - Social enterprise which encourages engagement with third sector - FREE

What susrpised me about Founders and Coders was that at its core, the key to its success was a group of people in a room commiting to learning together. It's so simple but deceptively powerful.

It was one of the hardest, most intense experiences of my life, Founders and Coders doesn't hold you hand, it teaches you how to learn.

I learnt more in 16 weeks than I did in 3 years, met some extremely talented people who I want to continute working with and am really excited about my future in software development. 

It's hard to believe how much I have learned on the course when I think back to how little I knew before starting. Having finished the course, I feel comfortable setting up a full-stack, fully functional web-app - frontend, backend, database, and any of a number of powerful modern frameworks.... I remember before the course, I barely knew how to make a simple static web-page. 

The fact is that Founders & Coders is an incredibly effective way of learning the skills you need to start a real career in software development. IT WORKS as a way of gaining an incredible amount of knowledge and experience in a very short amount of time. It's also amazing fun, thanks to the people teaching and running the course, as well as the close ties you build with your fellow students.

I can't really think of many cons. The fact that the course is free means that it gets a lot of applicants, and so you have to put substantial time and effort into learning the prerequisites before you actually start the course. Another possible con is that you can't expect to have your hand held. The course relies on self-learning and peer-learning, and the instruction you receive from the teachers is limited to the essentials - this means that you get out of the course what you put in.

As far as getting jobs goes, I think Founders & Coders offers more help than many other bootcamps. They have a great system in place to get graduates paid freelance work after you finish the course - this lets you gain experience and build a portfolio to show to recruiters in the future. If you're thinking about applying, I can't recommend it enough.

This is full-stack javascript boot camp with a twist - there are no tuition fees and no teachers. This is a model based on peer learning combined with excellent support and structure - the ideal environment in which to develop the practical skills needed for coding. Stay at the forefront of cutting-edge technology, learn with and from some of the smartest people you'll ever meet, begin working for real clients, use your newly-acquired skills to make a real difference to people lives..... too good to be true? I can assure you it isn't. It's happening right now so get involved!

A life changing full stack JavaScript web development course! Working collaboratively and learning from my peers, whilst teaching everything I learnt to them, was such a brilliant way to supercharge my development skills. If you're thinking of doing this, just do it. Speakers such as Stephen Fowler (Tech lead at Guardian) Twitter, Bithound and ITV gave us a real grounding in the web development industry. What's more, this place is a real social enterprise and believes education should be free! No fees! I couldn't believe it but it was such an honour to be a part of this incredible organisation.

This is a fantastic coding school, it genuinely feels like a cooperative. The tutors are always happy to give guidance, but also give you the support you need to let you teach yourself. The curriculum is constantly adapting to the views and needs of the students. You are encouraged from early on in the course to branch out and go to lots of tech meet ups and hackathons, this gives you a well rounded view of the London tech industry and teaches you how to promote your developer skills.
Go for it :)

Founders & Coders is an amazing course.

I did the course Summer 2016 and it was one of the best decisions of my life.

The course was alot of hard work but I loved it. It's amazing how much knowledge can be learnt in such a short period of time. The peer learning and self teaching has left me with more skills and knowledge I could have ever imagined and after the course I was able to get a job as a web developer.

I can safely say that the Founders & Coders Boot camp, has been a thoroughly enjoyable, challenging and rewarding experience.  Coming from a back ground in sales, whilst pursuing various online routes to learning how to build websites I became dis-enfranchised with being the lone ranger sitting at home. After attending the Monday evening meet-up sessions  I began to take on the pre-requisites for the Bootcamp after getting a feel for the environment I knew it was something that I wanted to be a part of.  The course itself consisted of weekley tasked based learning in the form collaborative projects. Whilst the course is taught free of tuition there was no compromise on the quality provided. Throughout Founders & Coders we were encouraged to participate in pair programming and help one another to overcome every task.  We had speakers from a broad spectrum of renowned organisations and potential employers such as , The Guardian, Twitter and The BBC.  

 Whilst the curriculum is vast and the pace fast it certainly lives up to the 'Boot camp' label. Even if you come away with 50% of the knowledge that is provided to you it's a worthwhile experience. Fantastic way to spend 4 months  highly worth it !!!

When I was learning on my own, after six months of coding I managed to make a website about football scores with three differently sized boxes and a button that randomly generated the football scores because I couldn't figure out how to actually get the real football scores. 

 

After six weeks of Founders & Coders, my team and I have created a working blog from scratch, a soundcloud playlist app, a wordsearch app with autocomplete search and dictionary definitions, a version of twitter (ours distinguished itself by allowing 141 characters), and most recently a working version of instagram. I'm not even slightly exaggerating. 

 

That's six weeks' worth of projects. In the ninth week, we'll move out of the classroom and start working on projects for clients. Where else could you imagine that after eight weeks of training, you'll be in a position to deliver genuine value to someone else's business? 

 

Through a mixture of expert instruction and collaboration with our peers, we've made faster progress that I ever dreamed was possible. I couldn't recommend Founders & Coders more to anyone who wants to devote a helluvalotta effort, with the guarantee that they'll get out of it what they put into it. 

Well, as f&c are famous for their social commitment (more on this later), let me join Mattia with a late #meToo post. Sorry for the lateness, but I have to admit I procrastinated too much, not having much time and trying not to follow too much the endless amount of discussion and polemics it created.

Let's get straight to the point: my experience was BAD, as I think was the case with most people, despite the very positive reviews that were written (or rather marshalled?) here. Not many, if you think how many "professionals" nominally were sent to the market by f&c; or if you consider that the first one is from the son of the "founder of founders and coders", as he proudly likes to declare, although he preferred *for some reason* not to use his father surname here. He uses it without a problem when he gives interviews (in one they even present him as a "founder of founders and coders" himself) or when he gets good contracts on some of the partner company which are instead far from taking all the past students in. And that is one of the first problems I would like to address: f&c does NOT help you much to land a job, as they seem to currently prefer to enrol middle-class people [Mattia addressed this point in one of the meetings - so surprise they didn't call him for further projects!] who might stay for a long while either out of the market or working for peanuts in DWYL not-so-complex and not-so-well-managed projects. But, after all, and here I go in reverse to another problem, that is a good amount of alumni can expect, not having been trained properly due to the scarcity (some cohort might say "absence") of PROPER mentors. Having people who just graduated teach the next cohort on paper sounds really cool, but in fact it tends to be more disastrous than anything else: most of the alumni, as per requirements (often bent, but I will talk also about the selections), do not have a single day of professional experience and expecting them to magically become good enough to mentor others at the end of the course is plainly absurd. Don't get me wrong, I have met former alumni who were really good, and given the selection rate it does not surprise, but if we talk about fresh mentors, it is a hit&miss with many, many more misses than anything else. Well, more misses is good for the gender quotas, isn't it :D? Speaking of which, I am sorry to confirm Mattia's impression: if half of the attention that was given to ideological propaganda was instead addressed to better developing training and curriculum, well, in that case f&c might be a much better job. It is also true that the kind of divisive, mysandrist and sometimes even violent sentences and speeches he reports are not only unsanctioned, but often even encouraged. To the point that one of the people who were in Mattia's cohort and that maybe spent more time making propaganda than learning to code was even promoted to mentor for multiple cohorts as an UX designers. Despite: * not having a single hour of professional experience before; * not having a solid grasp of the core concepts of UX; * acting in a confrontational (or, let's be honest, fairly childish) way every time that an objection is raised; * not even showing up for lessons in the morning, with a wide set of excuses; * trying to co-run the "coding for women" meetup and having caused a good amount of embarrassment, being consistently unable to solve even white katas despite being among the "veteran" alumni; * a massive negative feedback from past cohorts, including even the meekest students, who were fed up with wasting so many days to learn UX (which, incidentally, is not even so meaningful in a cramped bootcamp to become fullstack devs). As f&c is definitely a meritocratic environment, the same person has even been put in charge of the UX for some DWYL project and of the selection of new candidates. Basically on congeniality level, as "attitude is the most important part, learning to code is easy". Shame the easy path never seems to allure much... There are constant rumours about this being a reward for helping set up the camps in Israel, but I would not indulge in gossip, letting everybody draw their own conclusions. Speaking of Israel: the greed underlying the nominally altruistic spirit of f&c went more or less public since they started to run even less organised meetups, but still claiming success after success via twitter and other channels. A shame a cohort, for example, ended up with less than the initial number of "surviving" members, including 2 natives dropping out, as apparently they were selected so well that they had serious trouble in properly understanding English. Of course, the fact that having locals there would have brought more government money must not have been an element of pressure.   Anyway, bottom-line: I would not recommend it, as you either get to waste time or, if you are a good, autonomous learner, you might have a better time just going on coursera, treehouse or wherever you wish to learn how to be a real developer.   No ideology, no pressure to be part of a community (which does not accept you so much as soon as you even start to politely dissent on minor points) and no amateurism.   Again, sorry for all the good, competent and/or dedicated people who did a lot of good, but the current indisputable system and philosophy will just push more of them away and make f&c a less and less decent training ground.