Ironhack

Before ironhack, I had none experience with coding. The only things I’d previously done were self-taught, so it wasn’t until the beginning of the bootcamp when I realized all the work I had to do before becoming a developer.

I decided to get formal education from professionals. Among all the bootcamps I found out, Ironhack

was by far the one that fitted best with what I was searching for. Quality training in which you study what is really being used without wasting time. Rapid, concrete and direct.

To accomplish these goals, they use a very effective methodology: little theory and a lot of practice. The pace of the bootcamp is very intense so, without realizing it, you’ll learn a lot.

Teachers at the bootcamp are  experts  in their fields. But also, they are very good at transmitting knowledge. This feature is, undoubtedly, essential for learning.

Ironhack team designed very hard but enjoyable lessons. They spread the passion they have for what they do and that drags you to keep programming and learning.

My classmates have been crucial in improving my learning. I feel very lucky to have found in Ironhack a large group of people passionate about programming who are willing to share what they’ve learnt. With them, I learned how to fight against frustration and share the feeling of victory when things work out. These ups and downs helped us to bond strongly as a group.

Perhaps what I liked the most was the quality of the people with whom I lived during these eight weeks. Specially the Ironhack team, the teachers and my classmates. They’re oriented to support you at all times and help you in whatever you need. It feels like being part of a big family.

As the icing on the cake, Álvaro’s career support was the key. He helped me to build a great CV resume and an exceptional Linkedin profile. That was crucial to find my job. Before Ironhack, I wasn’t a big Linkedin fan but I’ve learned its importance to get a technical job. After the bootcamp, he continued helping me by introducing me to hiring companies until I reached my goal: get a good job.  This confirms that Ironhack does not end when classes are over.

I highly recommend Ironhack. Enroll myself and complete the bootcamp was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Everything I've lived and learned during these eight weeks has far exceeded the expectations I had before.

Before IronHack I had taken several programming courses online but after completing each course I still felt I wasn’t able to apply anything I had learned. I think thats why I was hesitant to try IronHack at first. I was worried that the large investment would not be worth the time and money. But after meeting with Nizar, the lead instructor, I knew that IronHack was the right place to go. Nizar is an amazing instructor. He’s patient and is great at explaining the concepts of programming. 

I learned more in the 8 weeks of bootcamp than from all the time I had spent before trying to learn on my own. I highly recommend IronHack to anyone who wants to learn how to program. 

You can read as many review as you possibly can, but nothing prepares you for coding boot camp, period.  You think you might know what to expect, but you don't.  From day one you are emmersed deep into the curriculum and it's EXTREMELY fast-paced.  You must keep up.  That means, no cell phones nearby, no Facebook.  Only complete and total focus.  The pre-course work is extensive and extremely important as it's referenced several times during the actual course.  It's imperative that you complete the pre-course work prior to day 1 of boot camp.  The instructors change every week (as each week you learn a different language) and they range from very good to a bit inexperienced, teaching wise.  The TA's are excellent and very dedicated.  In the end though, I didn't feel that I was truly prepared for the real world.  I think another month in this course would've been best (12 weeks instead of 8).  I think focusing on the coding challenges required by employers would've been highly valuable.  It's not touched upon at all.  Hiring week was a little disorganized and many people were under the impression that it was the last week of boot camp, when it was actually the week after.  Therefore, many foreign students had already left Barcelona without taking advantage of it.  Also, the employers that were setup for interviews were looking for people with more coding experience than 2 months in a boot camp.  The perfect job after Ironhack would be a junior developer position.  A company that wants to train you themselves, but utilizes the knowledge you gained from  your course.  All in all, it was a great experience.  There were a few things I would change, but I think I gained enough to get started in the coding world.

I got me degree in Telecom Engineering back in 2012. Right after finishing I started working in a big company where you could see people working as fifteen year ago. No flexibility, no innovation, not a place where I wanted to be. Then I thought of starting my own thing. There’s where the need of learning Web Development arrised.

I loved the idea of applying to Ironhack because it promised to compress a whole year of learning in just two months. Also, the proposed syllabus was aligned with the new technologies being used. That’s just what I needed to pick up the pace and being able to start my new project. I think I never got such a persistent amount of knowledge in such a small amount of time.

I really enjoyed the dynamism and good atmosphere we lived in those two months. It was perfect to be in the right mood for learning, being creative and come up with lot of new ideas.

During the bootcamp I built Impolutus. An online cleaning booking service. It was awesome to get the chance of being finalist at the Hackshow and talk about it in front of all that people. A few weeks ago I heard that some people have done the same thing (Impolutus). Now they have been bought. I lacked the resources to bring it forward. I learned a lot from it however.

After Ironhack I launched Gemfeed.com together with two other Ironhackers. We work five minutes from the beach but I won’t call it work. It’s more of developing with friends for some hours a day. It’s not fortuitous that we end up working together. Any person enrolling in Ironhack has something special. At least that’s what I felt while I was there. You get way more than the knowledge.

If you want to invest in good valious knowledge, gain time and become a competent Web Developer I would recommend Ironhack. If you want to start programming or you have some knowledge but want to learn what is being used now, I would also recommend it. It was the best investment I ever made and all my colleagues from my edition have a good positioned job now. I think that talks by itself ;)

My experience at Ironhack was one I will never forget. Ironhack pushed me to my limits like no other class or school l have attended. At times I felt like it was just all too much but would constantly tell myself that it will pay off at the end. Eight weeks straight of getting your hands dirty and setting yourself up for errors over and over again, just to realize at the end that you forgot one letter on your line of code. It wasnt the easiest thing I have ever signed up for but I am glad I did it, I am glad I kept pushing myself everyday and studied even on the weekends, It brought out a side of me that I have never seen.

Nizar(Teacher) and Josh (Teachers Assistant) were the best teachers anyone could ask for. They were accessable throughout the day even after class and on weekends. They did their absolute best to explain the problem that we were having on our assignments. They walk around and check that you have completed the exercises before moving on to the next slide/presentation to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Ariel, the owner balanced us out when we were fried from the content we had learned throughout the week, he kept us motivated and gave us therapy to make sure that we kept pushing. Alia (marketing manager) made sure that at the end all of our LinkedIn profiles and resumes were styled perfect, she also set us up with mock interviews which I learned so much from and I cant thank her enough for that.

Overall, I cant take anything away from Ironhack, they exceeded all of my expectations. It wasnt easy but then again it is not meant to be easy. They are going to challenge you day in and day out until you really get an understanding of things. If I had the chance to do it all over again I would, I am glad I stuck around and accomplished what I have wanted to do pretty much since I graduated high school and that is to become a developer.

My experience at Ironhack was one I will never forget. Ironhack pushed me to my limits like no other class or school l have attended. At times I felt like it was just all too much but would constantly tell myself that it will pay off at the end. Eight weeks straight of getting your hands dirty and setting yourself up for errors over and over again, just to realize at the end that you forgot one letter on your line of code. It wasnt the easiest thing I have ever signed up for but I am glad I did it, I am glad I kept pushing myself everyday and studied even on the weekends, It brought out a side of me that I have never seen.

Nizar(Teacher) and Josh (Teachers Assistant) were the best teachers anyone could ask for. They were accessable throughout the day even after class and on weekends. They did their absolute best to explain the problem that we were having on our assignments. They walk around and check that you have completed the exercises before moving on to the next slide/presentation to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Ariel, the owner balanced us out when we were fried from the content we had learned throughout the week, he kept us motivated and gave us therapy to make sure that we kept pushing. Alia (marketing manager) made sure that at the end all of our LinkedIn profiles and resumes were styled perfect, she also set us up with mock interviews which I learned so much from and I cant thank her enough for that.

Overall, I cant take anything away from Ironhack, they exceeded all of my expectations. It wasnt easy but then again it is not meant to be easy. They are going to challenge you day in and day out until you really get an understanding of things. If I had the chance to do it all over again I would, I am glad I stuck around and accomplished what I have wanted to do pretty much since I graduated high school and that is to become a developer.

I finished Ironhack course some months ago and I would like to share the amazing experience.

I suppose that many of you that are reading this are in the same situation I was some months ago. I will briefly detail my background so you can understand why I went to Barcelona to make the iOS Bootcamp.

 Chapter 1: My experience before Ironhack

I was born in Palma del Río, a town between Córdoba and Seville and since I was young I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up, a Computer Science Engineer (that was once I realize I wouldn’t go very far practicing sport’s…).

Since I began my Bachelor degree in Engineering in Seville I had clear that I was passionate about mobile projects and even more if they were related to education or sports.

Since my first year at university I tried to find courses related with apps / education and sports, but the only ones I found were about J2ME and an E-Learning Master. When I finished my degree I started working for a consultant firm in Seville and at the same time I get enrolled in a Master Degree about mobile apps. After that, I began working in several iOS and Android projects.

My first professional challenge as a freelance was an App for the European Cinema Festival hosted in Seville and there I realized I needed to strengthen my skills in IOS. In November 2013 I started searching in Google for iOS courses but none of them convinced me. I also entertained the possibility of going abroad, but as I wasn’t able to afford it, I thought that self-training was the best option.

 Due to the large amount of work I had in my first activity and the subsequent as freelance, I had very few time to to self-train. Therefore, I started to search again at the beginning of 2015. And then "voilá!!": I found a super-intensive course of eight weeks in Madrid to develop iOS applications. I saw the agenda, the methodology and I checked the quality of the teachers. The agenda was coherent and embraced everything in a reasonable period of time. The teachers were professionals of ​​the iOS development area and with a high level of expertise in the subjects they taught.

At the beginning I had my doubts as many of my colleagues, I did not want to waste money and time in a course of such a short period of time, when perhaps I could learn the same by myself. Another aspect that helped me decide was the previous process I went through to be selected. The process and the pre-work strengthened my knowledge and provided me the confidence I needed to tackle the course. In addition, during the course they did not only taught language to develop IOS applications, they also taught us how to approach an application, with a good architecture based on concepts like clean code or using design patterns.

Chapter 2: Simply... IronHack.

Ironhack changed my life, professionally speaking. I saw a way to develop fully adapted to the real world, valid for iOS and for any other software. I could say that Ironhack changed my life, not only professionally. Ironhack is a family, I realized the first day with my classmates, teachers and people around. All I got from Ironhack was positive from the beginning to the end, from the first teacher to the last, and of course, from the first to the last colleague. To me, everything was perfect.

Everyday I went to school with more desire to learn, every day I learned something new that made me come the next day with more illusion. The feeling with my classmates was amazing. We shared ideas and developed them together. With regard to the teachers, everything was positive. They were very close o us, very flexible in class schedules and were always happy to help. In fact, I keep in touch with them, as colleagues they are awesome, and I am proud to have shared this experience  with them (as well as with my colleagues).

I also have to point out all the people I could meet thanks to my classmates and teachers. I have to thank them because they made me see that you can be a crack being at the same time nice and passionate as I am of this world of mobile development.

Chapter 3: There is something after IronHack.

Ironhack provides training and a number of contacts unreacheable if you have not worked for years in this sector. Not only realted to IOS development, they offer many possibilities with seminars and lectures given by reputed proffesionals, offering a glance of the projects from the point of view of programmeing, marketing and business.

In Barcelona we were very lucky as we were able to meet many leading programmers of different companies, and people with different roles within mobile technology projects. Also I have to highlight the role of those involved in the career guidance carried out at the end of the course. Without their support and advice, seeking employment opportunities would have been much more complicated.

For all this and much more, I can state that there is life after ironhack, and I am discovering that it is a totally different life with open doors and a much wider range of possibilities. In short, being part of Ironhack was decisive to be offered the jobs I have opted to.

I 100% recommend this course, with no doubt. It's a big sacrifice but absolutely worth it, and, as I said, not only professionally but also personally.

Ironhack family thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Francisco Caro.

Should you have any question about the course on how to cope it, how to survive it, or what to do after, etc. please do not hesitate to contact me.

Email: franciscocarodiaz@gmail.com

Skype: carodiazfrancisco

Twitter: @kurrokardi

Web: http://franciscocarodiaz.github.io/

Time passes and its almost 2 years since I got accepted at IronHack, I remember the initial fear of not knowing what I was geting into and about how much what I was about to learn would impact my future career as a developer. Today I find myself in that near future and I can say that i could not be more pleased to be an Ironhacker, a part of an amazing and fast growing nextwork of developers. I would like to highlight what I found to be the most important aspect of my educational experiece: the people at Ironhack.

The Ironhack team is without doubt one of the best things of course, to get to know and see how they work and how they resolve in record time was truly enriching. To this day I still hold them as a reference. 

The level of involvement of teachers is something remarkable, precisely it was one of the teachers the one who gave me the opportunity to work with his team, Tapquo. It was an awesome team, very unusual in the world of development, they were an elite in the industry and I had the privilege of sharing work and learn with them. 

Finally we have the students.  Now we are very close friends, keep in touch and meet up whenever we can. In fact I am currently happily working with 2 of them precisely in projects we love like Gemfeed.

This is a personal opinion about my experience at IronHack Barcelona. I have to introduced myself as a customer experience and product oriented person, which means that I’m very sincere with all my experiences and also try to apply all that I've learned as an entrepreneur with a small non-tech startup company which focus on customer experience and product development. When I like something, I’ll be the best ambassador of that product or service, but when I’m not happy, I’m always very honest about my reviews. This is part of my own personal opinion of my whole bootcamp experience. Something that I wish someone would have told me before joining the bootcamp.

Before deciding to attend to IronHack, I have had several interviews for a few coding schools in the United States that were 12-weeks courses. Unfortunately, I didn’t get enough funds to attend to the one I really wanted. Then I found about IronHack in Barcelona that was a 8-week course and which the city’s living costs were also more affordable. Also all the reviews were almost 5 stars, so I decided to apply and prepare for the journey.

I did a lot of online tutorials and practices few simple coding challenges because the previous schools that I applied to demanded to have basic programming knowledge. I was very surprised that the interview process was very easy, maybe is because the main focus of the school is to take students from 0% to 80%. I had the chance that a friend that attended another bootcamp had shared with me his experience of his pre-work of the other school. So I was kind of surprised how disorganized and how poorly made the pre-course work was. We were not even ask how we were doing with it at the time.

I wrote my own very personal review, but since one of my classmates have better english writing skills and I couldn’t agree more on what the author wrote, which its content is similar the two pages I wrote, I asked for permission for posting and editing the review. I’ll just highlight a few other personal comments starting with  to slashes ( // )  at the end of each paragraph of the author's review.

We were supposed to be sent a overall bootcamp feedback survey, but even before that they were already asking us for positive feedback. My classmate's review post and my personal add-ons:

“ … Still, there has yet to be any surveys sent out, yet each week we had to complete two surveys on the quality of our instructors. This speaks volumes to the quality and goals of Ironhack. Additionally, we were told that there would be extensive career help, even a spreadsheet for us to fill out in order for Ironhack to track our progress, yet, this request for a review was sent out before even a slight mention of such a spreadsheet. There’s been no career follow up, no LinkedIn or resume reviews and I am extremely disappointed, to say the least.

// Before attending the bootcamp, IronHack sent me a PDF of more than 5 slides with "career support" that was supposed to taught during the whole duration of the bootcamp.

I'm an entrepreneur, and one of the things that completly appreciated about this bootcamp is that it was meant for entrepreneurs, as their Twitter profile says, note that not a single lecture involved any entrepreneurial concept with code.

My experience at Ironhack was amazing in regards to my peers and the quality of our TAs. Despite there being only one TA per 8 students, they went above and beyond to help us out and it was so appreciated. 

     // Thanks to the TAs for all their effort!

Aside from that, I entirely regret choosing Ironhack for my bootcamp experience as Ironhack has failed at their only two objectives: be a great educator and be a great business. My list of possible improvements is endless, but here are a few: 

    1    Start by actually vetting your instructors. Have them do a test run in front of you. Are they comfortable with public speaking? Do they engage the audience? Are they clear when speaking English? Are their materials written in proper English? Are the passionate about working with others? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you shouldn’t be hiring the instructor. If you wouldn’t want to listen to them on a Monday morning, don’t hire them. Period. 

        // There were days that I honestly think I’d learned more in CodeSchool, that the current lecture because some of the teachers didn’t seem to be prepared or didn’t have high teaching skills.

    2    Be upfront about the condition of the work space and classroom. Ironhack should be ashamed of the condition of our classroom in Barcelona. I was ashamed when posting class pictures because the room looked so horrible and rundown, and it was. Paint chipping, the room hadn’t been swept or dusted in forever, there were maybe only three quality chairs in the entire room (how are developers supposed to code for over 10 hours a day on plastic chairs?), the room was unbearably hot and we had to pretty much protest for weeks in order to get fans which then just circulated all of the dust around the room. The projector didn’t even have a screen and it was close to impossible to follow along with the instructors having to adjust their settings so frequently. The tables were not actually tables, but rather pieces of lumber stacked on wooden posts even though the average Mac in the classroom was worth $1500. If one of those Macs were to fall and break, I think we can both say that Ironhack was not going to cover the costs.  

        // The first thing I’d learn while studying at industrial engineering: work conditions (weather, ergonomics, etc) affects productivity. I truly understand and appreciate that Barcelona is such a environmentally friendly city, but take into account that 80% of our bootcamp was not form Barcelona, and I’m from Panama City, Panama (Central America), where is 30ºC all year round, and I haven’t been that suffocated by heat in a workspace in my entire life. 6 tables, 2 fans, not enough! By day 2 there where two more, and that wasn’t even enough. I literally had to bring my personal fan until the last day of the bootcamp because I couldn’t focus on class or during my final project.  Some electric extension were laying on the floor, where easily more than 10 times people have tripped because of them. Also, as programmers that were supposed to spend 10hrs+ a day in that room, I expected to at least have basics: water and coffee. Filtered water tanks or water dispensers with filters, specially when not even people from Barcelona drink their own tap water because it is awful! 

    3    Reevaluate which students are accepted into the program. While of course more students mean more money, if you don’t have enough TAs and are unwilling to provide more, then simply get more selective and accept fewer students. Also, students who have been working as a developer and beginners are not to be in the same class. Reevaluate your mission as a school and choose an audience. The majority of the time, it felt as if the instructors were speaking to 3 of the 16 students. 

        // Either you take people from 0% to 80%, or from 20% to 120%. There where students that haven’t even finished the pre-work before coming to class,  and where so lost on the basic concepts. I think it may have downgraded the class for people with more experience. 

    4    Establish your worth as a school and stick to it. Although each student paid the same amount, certain students have been afforded the opportunity to retake the bootcamp. If that is the case, are the rest of the students going to get half of their money back? I didn’t think so. I, in no way, learned as much as I thought I would have and I know I would have been given more attention had I chosen one of the American bootcamps, yet a second round at Ironhack was never offered to me. Keep it fair, it’s as a simple as that. 

        // The fact that there were several students that either dropped out or very lost in class and they just decided to skip some subjects and do what they could, should have never happened on the first place if the pre-work was better built and proper follow-up student/pre-work would have existed.

    5    While MOB is clearly not the correct choice to host Ironhack, at the bare minimum, if it is known that there is going to be loudly obnoxious construction the FINAL DAY OF PRESENTATIONS, the day for which we prepare during the entire bootcamp, the day that Ironhack invites guests to listen to its student’s present, you find an alternative space in Barcelona to host the presentations. It’s not that hard, not to mention Ironhack’s connections to startups with amazing presentation spaces. I’m sure those startups would have loved the exposure and would have loved to be a part of the presentations. Get creative, don’t get lazy. 

        // At the HackShow, there where 40-50 people in that room, and I felt ashamed that the audience had to uncomfortable watch our presentations which such heat. Also, as a finalist for the top projects, I was very sad that not a single video was taken by IronHack, like the previous cohorts, or even t-shirts with our handles where given to all the students, to have memories about our experience presenting our final project. This may not sound very important, but if you start adding features, even as almost meaningless like the previously mentioned, you shouldn’t downgrade by taking it away. *MOB: Makers Of Barcelona, where the bootcamp was being held.*

    6    Know your audience. During our “hiring help days”, the first thing that Alvaro said was that most of us probably aren’t comfortable with networking and approaching strangers. False. The majority of my class came from backgrounds like communications, media, marketing, sports, recruiting, journalism, customer service, etc. Learn about your students before you attempt to advise them. Additionally, don’t have us go into a corner and show you our LinkedIn profiles while you tear them apart -- it’s not thorough and it’s inefficient. Take the time to look at the profiles in advance, take some notes and then discuss with us. It will save both your time and the student’s.  

        // I like people being realistic, but Alvaro saying that it was almost impossible to get a job in Spain as a non european, was absolutely demotivational.  Nevertheless, one of my classmates and me, non europeans, got job offers, because we manage to find alternatives to pursue success. So, don’t just say it’s almost impossible without providing work arounds. Also, how come you claim to have a 97% rate of hired students when not even 50% of the students are showing up at interviews and  with such non-existing follow-up after that?

    7    Hire more TAs. Don’t be greedy. Money is great, but a stronger reputation is worth much more and ensures longevity. Having to sit and wait 40 minutes to ask a question is beneficial for no one, especially a newbie.      

        // I get that some students may have slow pace while learning, but the other students that are paying the same amount of money, deserve the same kind of attention and assistance during class. If you don’t want to let anyone behind, make sure that each student is really prepared to start a coding bootcamp.

    8    Lastly, hire someone that has both customer service and teaching experience to facilitate the education aspects of Ironhack. You need them. As a former educator, most of the things that went wrong were simply due to lack of planning and experience. Even our welcome meeting was lackluster and could have been full of creative and light-hearted icebreakers designed to get everyone introduced to one another.   

        // TAs had enough work as being TAs, someone that takes care of the customer experience and product is very needed so we don’t end out writing this long reviews!!!

I truly hope you view this feedback as constructive more than anything. Everyone wants to see Ironhack succeed, but without some adjustments it’s truly not worth it. "

// Couldn’t agree more with this! 

And now, one of my best friends, who I recommended to learn to code and go to IronHack, is about to take the next cohort, and I just wish he can have a better over-all experience that I'd had. I'll definitly take another bootcamp in the next few years, this time one made in the USA.

Turns out that after many years of work in a certain field I’d like to change something and focus only on doing things that keep me engaged and very enthusiastic about. Learning web development technologies was something I intended to do for a long time, but never actually took my time to just do it, I decided this is the time and I chose Ironhack based on their reputation, training curriculum and also because I really wanted to spend some time again in Barcelona :-).

I am really confident my investment will pay off, in fact I think it is one of the best investments I ever made. I met the most extraordinary group of people, my colleagues, and I learned a lot in a relatively short period of time. I never coded before, so the first week seemed like a lot to take in, but persisting in understanding as much as I could and getting support from the TAs, which are the greatest, I began to feel more at ease as I continued my learning journey.  At the end of the bootcamp my project was selected by a jury of senior developers as one of the top 5 projects in the class. I wish you all happy coding at Ironhack !

Probably the most incredible part of the experience is the surprising level of continuous support from the entire IronHack team. With a family member serious ill throughout the process, I've sometimes had to shoot off to the hospital or the like temporarily. On each occasion, the team displayed genuine concern, which meant a lot, and helped me stay on track with the course. It's a testament to the IronHack mission of making us part of their community.

As an attorney and someone whose career is mostly in management/operations, IronHack teachers made it fairly seamless to transition to what was previously a foreign language (code).

Came to Bootcamp with already lofty expectations to be completely immersed in coding for 8 weeks. At its conclusion, I feel like it has exceeded those expectations by also being an immersive experience into technology and a style of thinking.