Ironhack

Hi, my name is Pablo, I was a student of the iOS Development Bootcamp in Madrid (Summer 2014). I’d like to answer why I decided to join this learning path and why I would recommend it.

 

First of all, I want to explain my background before Ironhack (I will also tell what I did after that, but this will be at the bottom, don’t rush). I studied Technical Computer Science Engineering, and after that I was working for 4 years in a big education company, deploying several learning paths for e-students, mainly MySQL and Oracle courses. After this 4 years, I turned my professional career to development, this time in a small startup in my hometown, developing backend for a website, frontend, database management, and an API to communicate with an iOS and Android app. And this API project was the reason I decided, not to pivot my professional career again, but go a step further. To be honest, once I finished my University studies I never thought about going “back to school” again, but when I heard about this bootcamp, and after reading some reviews and talking to some alumni, I thought it would be the perfect solution I was looking for.  

 

The main thing I found remarkable was the methodology. It is totally different than any I had ever known while I was at the University. It’s really hands on and based on practice, even the theory we learnt (we always need notions of theory) was also based on practice, sometimes several examples, sometimes teachers left us to explore, touch and discover subjects in real situations. During the eight weeks’ bootcamp, practice is quite important since day one. We learned objective-C from the real basics of C (it’s always a pleasure remembering how C works, and why you do things you usually do when programming), then we discovered Cocoa fundaments, in order to be able to develop one single application from scratch since the very first week, and every week we went further on Cocoa programming. Each subject was taught by a different professional, so having a new teacher every week was a motivational experience, as everyone has always new things to teach (I like to name it “secrets”). Relations with teachers were always very close, so this does the learning even more interesting. And one of the most important things I ever learnt: paying attention to clean code. Every teacher emphasized in clean code as much as code lessons. About the colleagues, the youngest was 19, the older near 40. One ecuatorian (he came to Spain just to do the bootcamp), one from the USA and the rest from different places in Spain. We became good friends and each time we can, we meet up again. Eventhough many of us are working in different cities,  we are all still in contact. I’d like to share one curious story that reflects very well the Ironhack spirit; the first day we started the bootcamp, Apple showed its popular Keynote, this one with a big secret no developer was expecting: they presented Swift, the new programming language for iOS. Yes, new language. So, what happened with Objective-C? Was it a waste of time? Absolutely not. Everything we learnt was useful for any kind of language that uses Cocoa. But even more… we learnt notions of Swift in the last week of the bootcamp. Yes, the very newest language. That was really Awesome!

 

On the other side, I would also write one thing I didn’t like so much. Sometimes some subjects needed more time to be learnt than planned, such as some related with Collections Views, or network access and handle of asynchronous responses. The good thing was that while we were developing our project we were are to emphasize these things, and even more: every feedback we had, were applied almost on the following day. So, very good Ironhack team :)

 

After this bootcamp I was interviewed by three different companies, two from Berlin, the other from Gibraltar, as my main purpose was leaving Spain and keep improving myself. Finally, the Gibraltar company hired me to be part of the iOS team. I’m there since then, learning every day and giving my colleagues my different points of view and experience.

 

I’d like to explain more and more what I found in Ironhack, what I liked, what didn’t. But I wanted to explain the main points I think you may find interesting. Don’t forget keep learning every single day!

I have always had interest in programming but I did a very different job for most of my life in another country on another continent; finally I decided I wanted to make a career switch and to software development, specifically iOS, and move back to Europe with my family; I am self taught and my coding skills were already decent (albeit mostly academical) when I joined Iron Hack but I had no prior iOS experience beyond doing some online tutorials and reading a couple of books. My biggest concern was wether I'd be able to absorb all the information needed to have a solid foundation in iOS development in just 8 weeks but I have to say Iron Hack exceeded my expectations. The teachers were great and the program extremely thorough and I ended up being amazed at the stuff I learnt in just 8 short (albeit extremely intense) weeks. A big multinational company interviewd me and considered me to be a semi-senior developer and I am enduring negotiations with a couple of companies to get a job. The great thing about Iron Hack is that they kept me supporting during the job hunting process and I made many contacts thanks to them. 5 stars for me, that's for sure!

Hello everyone, let me introduce myself. I'm Elena Torró, Ironhack Alumni. I studied there for two months during the past summer, in Barcelona. I'd like to share with you my experience as an 'Ironhacker' and answer possible questions you may have.

I had a traditional education mentality, having studied only at a the University, so I was expecting to find more or less the same at Ironhack. But I was wrong, it was much better. I learned so many things that I had never learned at the University. Every week was planned carefully based on previous students experiences. We started from the very basic things a web programmer should know, and the difficulty of the lessons increased weekely. We went form HTML, CSS and JS to Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Test Driven Development and, at the same time, what I enjoyed the most: team work, agile methodologies and project development. We also had the possibility to decide if we wanted to learn something more specific, and the teachers organized activities, additional lessons and offered individual help. That's how we learned to deploy applications in production, how we acquired more advanced programming skills and how we managed to solve problems by ourselves.  Furthermore, the Intense programme was really hands-on, something that I really enjoyed!

I'd lie if I tell you it was easy. The course run for around 8/9 hours per day, but then we stayed practicing exercises, it was incredibly intense! But all the students enjoyed these hours a lot. We spent time together, learning from the teachers and from other students as well. Because we were more than just classmates, we became really close, and we are still in touch: sharing our experiences and sharing the projects we are currently working in. We also meet up from time to time. I used to code alone, but after Ironhack I've learned to share and to enjoy coding with someone else.

About the teachers, it was great to meet people who are currently working in different very cool product companies. They all have huge experience in what they tough. What I liked the most was that they were available after the lessons, and also during the weekend: if you sent a message to one of them asking a question, you'd have an answer almost inmediatelly. I had the opportunity to ask them about finding a job, what are the enterprises looking and what are the different profiles in tech companies, and it was really helpful for me.

Right now I'm finishing my studies in engineering and I found a job after straight Ironhack as a frontend developer for Google Actívate online courses. Thanks to everything that I learned about how to work in teams, I fit in the team rapidly. For the future, I've been in touch with some companies in Barcelona, where I'll probably move after my graduation. Thanks to Ironhack and to its strong network, I made a lot of contacts and now I know what I'm looking for and where can I find it.

Hello, I'm Arslaan one of the students of Ironhack Barcelona edition 07-2014
I will try to explain my experience in the bootcamp focusing in 6 main points (if its too long just skip to the 'personal opinion' part):

1. Learned subjects:
At the beginning the classes were easy to follow (well HTML and CSS is not rocket science...). After the easy part we were initiated to Javascript and suddenly shit got pretty serious: we started backend programming in Ruby with Sinatra and as a non formal programmer it was mind blowing sometimes. Then, when we felt confortable with Sinatra we changed to Rails and it took us just a week to understand the whole MVC thing (Martin from XING did a good job). Once we understood Rails we got back to advanced Javascript and then again to more Rails. 

2. Methodology
Each week of the course we had a different teacher that explained the subject from 9 to 17:30 (not totally accurate because sometimes teacher stayed a little bit more to explain things that weren't totally understood). From 17:30 to 19:00 we finished exercises that teacher left for us or just keeping up to date our work. Also we had 2 assistants who were full time dedicated to us and gave extra classes on saturdays or sunday to learn something different(TDD with Jasmine, How to contribute open source...). After 19:00 we had a talk gave by someone outside ironhack about jobs, startups, bussiness models... Every monday and friday we filled some surveys about our teacher and teacher assistants (I have to admit that a couple of times I filled the survey with all the answers as an 8 just to finish it and start coding...)

3. Background
I just explain a little my background to give the reader a full picture and understand better my answers.
I am an electronical engineer student that liked programming and wanted to get to the next level with his programming skills. I played with Java and did Mathlab, Maple and Pascal in my first 2 years of university.

4. Colleagues
We had from a 17 year old high school student to a 40 years old hardware technician, we had people from Philippines to Norway. We had diversity and it was amazing, some of us, even teachers assistants, still hang out on Saturdays.

5. Teachers
They were good at what they were doing and we knew that.

6. My actual job
Well for now I'm working part time with a startup building a restful API to manage cargos on air flights for a couple of months. Also I'm being interviewed from other Startups (wish me luck).

PERSONAL OPINION:

Ironhack, the bad parts:
I think the subjects were the proper ones to study (after all its a web development bootcamp) but not the order, I would have started with ruby and once we were prepared start with TDD because doing TDD at the same time we were learning Ruby was frustrating.
In my opinion, Ironhack should push us a little bit more after the main teachers left and give us more things to do. Also on weekends, even with our teachers assistants extra talks we could have done more, after all, Ironhack killed all of our social life. We studied in a coworking space and it was very cool to know new people that were working in the Tech field but when it was loudy it was difficult to hear the teacher sometimes and it was not pleasant.

Ironhack, the good parts:
Being a university student in Barcelona made me realize how fucked up the actual education system is, don't get me wrong, I like what I'm doing as an engineering student but the Ironhack methodology is by far, more evolved than the actual system (in my opinion of course). They listened our fridays reviews and tried to change what could be changed. Also we learnt things that are used in today's companies and gave us advise about our job research. They cared about how we felt in the course (or at least the were very good at pretending that :P). It was not about the grades, it was about our knowledge and when 16 persons meet in a room to do what they love it just feels good. I never knew if I was able to work as an electronical engineer once I finish my studies but after this adventure I know for sure that I will work programming (mainly because I'm getting paid for doing that now).

Pros:

• Barcelona: The location is beautiful and affordable. I enjoyed living there immensely, was able to meet a lot of locals, and lots of great people in general. It's also relatively inexpensive and very walkable.
• Staff: People are really friendly, and I want them to succeed
• Instructors: About half of our instructors were great to fantastic and we learned a ton during their weeks.
• Class size: We had just 10 people in my cohort and we really felt like a family by the end.
• Atmosphere: It's very laid back, and a comfortable and safe feeling space.
• Network: They have a good Barcelona network, which is great if you want to live there and have an EU visa.
• Job assistance for EU citizens: They have a strong network in Barcelona and can get you interviews. Instructors and speakers will also be looking out for you and helping make connections. However, once my colleagues who are EU-citizens left Barcelona they found that assistance dropped off like a cliff and there was minimal communication. 
• I learned a ton.

Cons:

• Staff: Despite their friendliness, commuication was a huge issue. Even before class started, I missed most of the Hangouts because I didn't realize the times were being posted to Slack. Emails were not returned in a timely manner before, during, and after my session. People were defensive when offered feedback. I was often told "So and so will contact you about your concern." and then silence.
• Instructors: Two of our instructors were awful and it felt like they just wasted a week of our time which is a big deal when you are only studying for 6 weeks. We basically had to relearn everything we learned from our first JS teacher. They made up for the bad CSS class by bringing in a great instructor later on, but it meant we lost a day of working on our final project. 
• Curriculum: It was frequently commented by my colleagues that it felt like we were being experimented on too much and I agree with them. We alternated between JS and Ruby instruction and the context switching was very confusing. They started us off the bat with Ruby and OO which was completely overwhelming for most people our first week. 
• Visa sponsorhip for non-EU: You will probably not be able to find someone to sponsor you for a visa. I wanted to stay and it seemed like it should be doable (I was one of the strongest students in the cohort), but even though there was some interest ultimately what I heard was it's way too hard to sponsor and very few companies are willing to do it. You are limited to large foreign companies and even then it can take 3 months.
• Job Assistance: Good or bad depending on your needs. I'm going to move this out of the bullet, so read on below.
• We lost internet for a few days and last a ton of class time as a result. They didn't have a contingency plan so we had already lost almost two days before they found us a temp new space. Internet was pretty consistently bad the whole time we were there.

Job Assistance:

They were great while I was still in Barcelona, but as soon as I returned back to the states they went silent. I had previously decided with the cofounder that we would work on Barcelona until I left and then switch to SF. After two weeks of silence (I pinged a couple people during that time), I sent another email and this time they apologized and said it was a new guy's responsibility.

I scheduled a Skype call with the new guy and I thought maybe things would improve. Well, he sent me a list of sites with job postings. And then the next week he sent me another email with one more site with a job posting. In the meantime I was adding the jobs I applied to on to a spreadsheet so they could see my progress.

I did know that they would have less of a network in the states, but the cofounders are well connected. So I knew that it would take more effort on my part. However, job placement is absolutely crucial for any startup bootcamp, and Ironhack is expanding in to Miami. To succeed in the more competitive bootcamp market in the US, you need to cultivate relationships with companies that are specifically interested and willing to hire bootcamp students.

My expectation was that they would reach out to companies and pitch Ironhack and their students– in other words be proactive. What actually happened was they checked my spreadsheet and if they knew someone there they put me in contact. Which is helpful and I don't want to discount that, except 2/3 of those contacts were for companies were I had already gotten myself an employee referral and since their contact wasn't in a position to hire me they couldn't really provide me any assistance. In my opinion this just isn't aggressive enough because if they can't hit a high placement % then they are doing good enough.

Ironhack's response is that they are working hard and this is what they told me I'd get, so if this meets your expectations you wil be fine. If not job placement is really important to you, you may want to look elsewhere.

Tl;dr: Can be good depending on your needs. They can help you get jobs in Barcelona if you are eligible to work there, but if you want a lot of help for a non-EU job search they are limited to providing contacts to companies you've applied to. So far from my cohort the only person placed through Ironhack was hired by Ironhack.

Summary:

It was a fun experience overall, and I don't regret it. I did learn a lot despite the hiccups. However, I can't help but feel like they could have done much better and the communication was consistently a huge issue. I felt frustrated by the time wasted because of bad or unprepared instructors and bad internet. I felt like they missed a lot of important topics such as code reviewing and interview prep. And job assistance didn't meet my expectations at all. So yeah, YMMV. Living in Barcelona though, that I can recommend with no hesistation.

I came to Ironhack with very little coding experience; although I had always had an interest in it, I only managed to pick up a few concepts here and there through various online tutorials. I had already applied and gotten into a few programming bootcamps (back in the US) when I heard of Ironhack. I was attracted by its location- Barcelona is a beautiful place-, the fact that they had scholarships for women, and the overwhelmingly positive experiences the graduates seemed to have. 

My first few weeks at Ironhack proved to be extremely difficult- a good portion of the people in my program had much more programming experience than I did, and it took some work to catch up and learn the materials at the same rate as my colleagues. Luckily for me, the entire staff at Ironhack- the teachers, TAs, administrative staff- were all extremely helpful in making sure I caught up and had the support necessary to make some progress. Ultimately, I ended up catching up- and although the program was constantly challenging (for everyone!), I learned so much more than I could have ever learned on my own... and my final project was selected to be in the top 5 projects of my cohort! 

The staff were all wonderful, responsive and helpful; the curriculum was difficult and set at a fast pace, but it was thorough and I never once felt like I lagged behind or didn't learn a concept well enough. 

Very disappointing and complete waste of time and money. Lack of support and resources. Campus facilities in bad condition. The overall feeling was of just studying alone and paying for info that I could have found on the internet for free. Teaching stuff mostly uninterested in what they are doing(some exceptions of course), and unwilling to challenge themselves and try to provide better answers or explanations, rather they just give you copy paste answers that are not applicable to the projects you are working one. Overall, I am left completely dissatisfied with the experience and feel unprepared for a future job in WebDev

I just finished a full-time ux/ui design BootCamp at Ironhack Portugal and I gotta say the best word to describe it is intense: one day there feels like a week of learning and one week feels like a month. It's amazing how many skills you can learn in such a short period of time.

I recommend it to whoever wants a fast career change, but I warn you to the fact that you need to be 100% committed to it. I mean, you don't need to but its one of those things in which you get out as much as you put in, so bear that in mind.

The first weeks I was fine with just working during campus hours but when the solo projects started, around week 4, I arrived home and had to continue working, in order to not let the tasks pile up.

It's a tiring and intense experience but 10/10 would do it again.

The classes were phenomenal, in my case my professor was outstanding, very patient and always glad to help anyone who needed it. As for the 2 TAs, one was better than the other, but they both still tried their hardest to help you in anything they want. So in the case of learning how to program (I did the web development bootcamp) it really was a nice experience where you learn a lot.

Here comes my issues, the career service. They promised in their old website a really high chance to get a job after finishing their bootcamps (+90% of students found a job in less than 6 months supposedly), and they claim to have contacts with over 600+ companies, which does not really seem to be the case. The career service is only valid in my opinion so you can learn how to set up your LinkedIn, the rest of the stuff they organize/offer, is really not up to any kind of standards that you would expect, specially when they sell themselves in such a nice way, and for the cost, Id rather pay 50% just to go to class, and just skip the career service. They start bombarding you with e-mails, asking for job updates and what are you doing, and in my case, even after answering all of them, since I needed to find another job to sustain myself. I can not part-take in any of the events they organize even remotely in 99% of the cases, and seems like if you do not part-take in this kinda sect you are not welcome. 

So, finishing up, I would recommend that you go to another bootcamp if you just want to learn and want to avoid being sold smoke.