Makers Academy

I enjoyed the course and found that by each week i was learning something new which helped move forward to the next unit to learn. I liked the way we learned not only about coding but also the way we share and collaborate code across the platform GitHub. One thing i struggled with sometimes was because the course progressed quickly in that we covered a new topic every week i would not fully understand a topic by the Friday and could have done with a second week on it to consolidate what i learned. Other than that it was a great course and very rewarding in the last few weeks where we made our own projects and presented them on the final day.

Moving into coding was a huge career change for me, having a performing arts and retail background but Makers made finding my first job in tech feel like an inevitability rather than a pipe dream. I chose Makers because they came across as a focussed, professional operation that offered good job support.

I enjoyed the focus Makers put on writing clean, clear code and instilling you with a strong problem solving process through TDD. This, more than the actual languages taught, made me feel confident I could get a job as a software engineer because these skills can be transferred to any language.

Being responsible for my own learning while on the course was another great aspect of Makers. Self-directed learning is a big part of how you learn at Makers. There are goals for each week, typically being able to understand and explain object oriented programming concepts or other technical concepts. The projects you work on each week give you an opportunity to explore and implement these ideas, but you’re encouraged to reflect each day on your own learning so far, what you do and don’t yet know and set yourself SMART goals to fill in the gaps in your knowledge. It’s a mindset and process that helps a lot post-course as you tailor your learning towards the requirements of jobs you apply for, even in languages you haven’t studied on the course. You trust that you can pick up any language you want.

The emotional intelligence syllabus really stood out to me from my time on the course as well; learning a lot in terms of empathy, effective communication and working in a team. Makers develop you as a person as well as a programmer and prepare you for the ever-changing world of tech.

The support post-course from the careers team is also solid. For me, the careers coaching offered is very friendly and effective; they helped me extract transferable skills from my previous experience to use in applications and guide me in terms of the type of work I’d want to do, as well as offering valuable feedback on my CV and interview technique. The careers team also have a varied range of hiring partners the work with in several different and interesting fields. I would though still encourage people to apply to jobs outside of Makers too as the careers team sometimes have insight into those companies and can give you good tips on what to look for/watch out for in an employer

Makers is an excellent place to kick-start your career in software development. As long as you commit yourself to the career change, fully commit to the work, take heed of the advice that's provided, and bring a positive energy with you, I have no doubt that you will get a great job in software development through this course.

The curriculum is heavily self-learning based, which might put some people off at first, but I have come to realise that it is this fact that actually makes the course a much stronger learning experience. The support is there, both technical and careers, but you're not going to be spoon fed, just as you wouldn't in a professional environment.

There is a lot to learn, and it can be intense, but over many iterations of students, Makers has REALLY honed the skill of taking individuals and turning them in to highly employable Software Developers. Trust the coaches and trust the careers team - they know what they're doing and are always there to help :)

As with pretty much any endeavour, you get out what you put in. As I say, no one is going to spoon feed you, so if you're not ready to fully commit and give it your all, then you risk wasting a lot of money. On the other hand, if you are ready to give it your all, you will come away with untold benefits and huge personal growth. Don't worry about your ability, Makers know what they're doing and they won't select you if you're not ready. All you need is positive energy and determination and you will succeed.

The final projects are a fantastic growth opportunity. Each team can build essentially any software they want, using any languages or frameworks they choose (as long as everyone in the team agrees). I can't tell you how much this (on top of the rest of the Makers experience) has helped me in interviews!

Finally, Dana (Chief Joy Officer) is absolutely incredible and a huge asset during your time at Makers. From meditation, to Yoga, to Emotional Intelligence workshops, she provides invaluable support throughout the entire process. You might not be someone who intuitively places a high value on these things, but trust me, they are HUGELY helpful during your time at Makers, and almost every company I have interviewed with places an extremely high value on Emotional Intelligence, Empathy, and Social Awareness. Those skills could well land you a job :)

I’d like to start this on a simple note: I paid £8000 for this course and got a software engineering job between 30-40k per year. Regardless of what follows in this review, that alone makes this course worth the time and money. 
As I'm sure anyone looking at reviews is aware, Makers runs a 3 month boot camp course that gets you ready for work as a junior developer. It’s a great course, but I think there are a few things that stop it from being an amazing course. The first thing to know is that you are required to complete a one month precourse before you can join the main course on site. After you finish the course, expect the job search to take some time. All in all, the whole process from zero to software developer takes roughly half a year. How you choose to handle the job search is entirely up to you and Makers gives you a lot of freedom here. Some people choose to stick it out, while others go back to their previous employment while they search for a software engineering job. 
It’s a great course, but I think there are a few things that stop it from being an amazing course.

Pros:

Learning
The most valuable thing I gained from this course was the ability to learn. By the end of the main 12 week course, I truly felt that learning anything is possible. Makers also encourages you to keep your skills sharp by focusing on your process. They effectively teach you how to break down problems. Generally, it’s a very friendly and diverse community and everyone is very approachable. You’re also encouraged to take care of yourself during downtime. There’s a fully stocked kitchen, ping pong table and beer on Fridays. You’re also encouraged to participate in meditation, yoga and mindfulness in general by the Chief Joy Officer. It helps you to centre yourself and without her this course would be a lot harder. 

Hiring Partners & The Careers Team
This is without a doubt the most useful and best part of the course. Help is given for CVs, interview techniques, tech tests, and there are constantly lunchtime talks, seminars, meetups and other useful events about the industry and the best ways to get in. At the end of it all, this is what made me choose Makers; they have valuable industry connections that other boot camps don’t seem to have. 

Cons:

Self-directed learning
I think it's important to know that this course is very self driven. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing but £8000 is a lot of money to pay for a course where I mostly have to teach myself. Coaches are on site but their availability hours are rather narrow and sometimes it can be difficult to get the help you need. 

Hiring Partners
Makers have a lot of hiring partners which is great because often I found a lot of companies didn’t understand what boot camp grads did or just didn’t think we had enough experience for a junior role. Unfortunately the process isn’t perfect and I sometimes found the selection process of Makers hiring partners to be questionable; even though they had been endorsed by Makers some of them still seem not to what they require from a junior developer. Feedback from hiring partner companies also felt inconsistent.

Communication
This was probably my biggest frustration with the course as communication at Makers can range anywhere from excellent to poor. Naturally, a lot of it takes place over Slack. Sometimes you just need important information and you could either get an answer from someone instantly or not at all. I found myself frequently feeling left in the dark--I think if someone needs help with something, it would be good to just shoot them a reply with something like "I'm still looking into this but I'll get back to you soon", instead of just not replying at all.

Overall Makers was still a great experience and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in starting a career as a software developer.

Coming from a non tech background wanting to transition into the tech industry I had explored different options including self teaching, I'm glad iI made the decision to enrol with Makers Academy as the experience has been one of a kind. Before starting I reached out to Makers Alumni and not one person had anything bad to say about the course and after completing the course I can see why. 

The great thing about the course is that it eases you into learning how to code and gradually ramps up in complexity. The coaches are always on hand to provide support and help along with the workshops, meditation and yoga is also available to all. The course offers different types of projects built through pair programming and group projects and by the end of the course you'll have a portfolio of projects. Another awesome thing is that even though we learnt Ruby and Javascript on the course as we are taught in a way that allowed us to easily pick up other programming languages, when it came to final projects some groups did theres in Python even though they hadn't written a line of code in it beforehand.

Definitely a great investment not only does Makers teach you how to code but they also have an amazing careers team that help with cv, applications and interview prep to help land you your first role in the industry.

Makers Academy is not just for people without tech background, I chose this course being already a web developer, wanting to learn TDD and backend and more importantly learning how to teach anything to myself and it turned out to be exactly that. I was lacking progression and learning new technologies in my job and online courses wasn't enough. I wanted to gain the correct mindset and learn around the people with the same passion as mine. Makers Academy was the best education experience I've ever had and I recommend this to anyone who wants to become a software engineer with a full package. With this course you don't even need to go to University for software engineering. Also in the end of the course you have the career's team full support in finding best companies suited for Maker's students to develop their skills further.

There is nothing better than accelerating your learning than joining a bootcamp. After spending some time trying to learn a coding language online, I decided to join Makers. I spent almost a year researching bootcamps in London and Makers was by far the most impressive one. One of the best decisions I have ever made. As someone from a non-coding background, like other reviewers I did find the course challenging at some points. I knew this was normal, and it is really worth sticking to it and trusting the process as the hard work pays off.

The course is really hands off, so if you expect to spoon fed information, or taught in a classroom environment then this may not be right for you. The emphasis is for you to develop key self-learning skills that will help you tackle most things post Makers. The course starts off in Ruby, then you get exposed to JavaScript later giving you a free rein to choose any tech stack you want for the final project. There is a good mix of people in the cohorts and a great camaraderie that helps further your learning. One of the best things about Makers is the post-graduation support by the careers team. You’re not left to fend for yourself, there will be a careers team that able to provide feedback and help with your efforts to find your first job in the industry. I can’t recommend Makers enough.

I have worked in IT for many years, but for the last 10+ years I've drifted away from hands on development and moved to managing IT teams.  This never sat well with me, as I hated losing my technical skills.

So I decided to go on the Makers 3 month course, and haven't regretting it for a second.  

The whole experience was fantastic, and has really got me ready to join a Web Development team, and actually start delivering code again.  The environment at the course was amazing, and the other people on the course made it a really great experience.

It's interesting that the course is very hands off, leaving you to figure stuff out yourself.  This seems odd, but has meant I've hit the ground running now that I'm back in my office.

I strongly recommend this course to anyone wanting a kick start into Web development.

Before I started Makers, I had read several reviews stating that it was a hard course, and that it took up all of your time for those few months. This is the same experience for me, but that was a good thing. I was really looking for something to challenge myself and this course certainly did that. 

I really liked the curriculum, starting off with Ruby and its easier to read syntax, and then moving on to Javascript and beyond. I liked the weekly challenges and the different projects you get to work on, and how they get increasingly more difficult each week. Along with this, I liked the fact that it was largely self-led learning - the coaches are there to give you advice, and do workshops etc but for the most part you are relying on yourself and your cohort. The coaches however do instill a good mindset about being able to learn anything, and how to easily pick up new languages due to the learning process at Makers. The only things I'd change to the curriculum is for them to maybe add more about some JS frameworks - maybe a few days on React or Vue etc since they are such a large part of development these days. The other would be to change week 7 as I haven't really found anyone that particularly enjoyed it and could maybe be used better learning something else. 

The after course care has been really good. The careers team are great and are a very helpful lot. If you are active with them and engaging with the careers fairs etc then you can get a lot done in a short time. While it took me a few months to get a job, there was so much opportunity around and I feel that the alumni have been great at sharing job postings. 

I don't think anyone is going to be an expert in development after 12 weeks, but Makers definitely gives you the tools and the attitude to pursue it and to be a great developer. I would always recommend them to anyone looking for a great new career. 

I was told joining Makers would be a life changing experience, and I was told right! A friend who graduated and is now a software engineer recommended this "bootcamp" and I cannot thank her enough for this.
I put "bootcamp" in quotes because to me, that word sounds like you would have a drill sergeant forcing you to work hard on something until you can't take it any more. For tech, that would be trying to digest a Computer Science degree in a few months. But Makers doesn't do that. The coaches teach you how to learn more than what to learn. Of course you'll have a set of tools they'll recommend you use for the project of the week, but mostly they teach you how to think like a programmer, how to solve problems, how to get un-stuck when a problem seems too big for you. It's not intense because you've got your head down trying to learn every single JavaScript library, but because you feel how much more you can improve and learn, because every day you understand a new concept that opens more doors.

And then there's the environment. I expected the technical know-how I'd be getting there, but what struck me the most was how good I felt being there. I was surrounded by like-minded, open, and generous people, both coaches, students and staff, who all contributed to make these intense 3 months (4 with the pre-course) the period I've felt the most relaxed and happy in the last few years. You're never alone in your struggles, and pair programming is at the heart of the whole course, learning from each others. Taking on this journey with people like them is priceless. The Chief Joy Officer, Dana, is probably the symbol of that spirit at Makers. Through quite a few workshops, she made me understand how emotional intelligence and awareness could practically, tangibly impact your well-being and your capacity to take on challenges. I even practised meditation, and I wouldn't have believed it had you told me a year ago...

Oh and once you're done, they're not done. There's a great team of people whose sole purpose is to find companies that they believe junior devs should work at, make sure students get in touch directly with them through careers fairs, and help the graduates be at their best for the whole application process. I applied in April, started in July, graduated in October, and started on my first dev role in November. 6 months to train and get a job as a software developer, I couldn't be happier.

If what you want is to know how to write programming languages' syntax, look up the documentation. But if you want to become a software developer, Makers is definitely a good bet!

I finished makers in August of 2019 - and am about to start my first job in tech in mid Novemeber.

Makers was a tough few months, I certainly didn't find it an easy journey, but for the most part I had a really fun time. A lot of that is down to my wonderful cohort, many of whom are friends for life as well as a few of the staff. I definitely struggled most at the start of the course - I felt very uncomfortable and out of my depth, but this is something that we are really taught to 'lean into'. That feeling discomfort is part of growing and learning - I think around week 5 that mentality really began to click.

Makers is not a golden ticket to a job, it's a lot of hard work - and you get out what you put in. The course is good, but it is very self directed so it is up to you to do the work and the learning.

I feel like the course needs some updating, inclusion of React and APIs would be very useful given most tech test requirements. But I also understand that Makers is about giving you a foundation in programming - to learn how to learn. And I did find that to be the case, the real journey began for me post Makers when I was on my own, making up my own projects and learning what I wanted to learn. I felt like I was capable enough to tackle new technologies which was an amazing feeling.

Ultimately I managed to career change in well under a year, and in the most fun and exciting and mind opening way - and for that I am truly thankful to Makers.