Makers Academy

Me:
I came to Makers with a non-technical background after teaching abroad for a couple of years, but otherwise having no graduate experience. I'd tried some online courses but only picked up basics, and didn't seem qualified for anything. I got a job offer in my fourth week after the course, with a company who had hired Makers grads before.

Course Pros:
- 1 month pre-course gets everyone familiar with basic tools like command line and git, as well as basic Ruby programming
- Solo weekend projects consolidate and build on what was learned during the week
- Intensive, you will learn a huge range of techs needed to make you full-stack in the first half of the course, and apply it in group projects in the second half
- Largely self-directed learning and group projects so that you learn to rely on yourself and your teammates, not the coaches
- Gives you all of the skills that the industry wants, like TDD, Agile, pair-programming, and the ability to learn new things quickly
- Immersive extras like regular lunchtime talks from companies, and evening/weekend events e.g. Makers unconference
- Ongoing post-course support and access to Makers
- Careers team experienced and visible
- They're always trying new things and ask for honest feedback about everything

Broader Pros:
- Generally transparent
- Lots of companies want to hire more Makers grads
- Some companies retrain employees through this course
- A really positive atmosphere, and everyone is always happy to be there
- A supportive community with lots of resources so you can find whatever you need
- Focus on self-care and longevity so that you don't burn out (meditation after lunch, yoga, table tennis, game nights, cheese and wine, beer and pizza, Monday night climbing group)
- Free bread, cereal, fruit, nuts as well as the usual tea, coffee, water coolers
- Shower facilities, bike storage
- Generally life-enhancing, you will learn how to learn, how to work in teams and pairs, how to push through tough situations

Cons:
- The course is always being updated, so it can be hard to get the information you need
- Things like the portfolio and review process can be unclear; an infographic would be great
- Full on due to the weekend projects on top of the full-time course
- That table-tennis table is in high demand, as are the rooms it's stored in

Overall:
I recommend this course to anyone who wants to start/resume a career in tech, as you are so much more employable once you've graduated Makers.
Be prepared to put in a lot of time, and to not be told all of the answers. It's hard, and it's up to you, but everything you need is there.

I was a professional developer before having children but found returning to tech almost impossible. 
Recruiters didn't know what to do with me and my skill set seemed to be out of date. 
16 weeks at Makers taught me about all of the current practices and 2 languages I hadn't used before. 
That is the vanilla answer but the broader experience was considerably more enriching. 
During the 12 weeks on site, I learned many things.
I learned more about self-teaching than either of my degrees, more about working in teams than I ever had working in teams and how important self-care is.
By the end of the course, I felt confident re-entering the tech world and secured several offers within two weeks of completion.

The Makers environment is one in which you are expected to be in control of your own learning. There is no one chasing you up, there is no hand holding. But there is a lot of support when you need it. I loved the environment of Makers academy - I think I thrived by being in a structured learning situation where you have the freedom to explore, make mistakes and choose your path. Being surrounded by people on the same journey as you is super inspiring, and there's an energy and drive like nowhere else I've ever studied.

The coaching team has some truly excellent teachers with a real depth of knowledge. They spend their time answering your questions with more questions, which is really effective when they lead you in right direction. The course structure is varied and the focus is less on teaching you about a particular language and more about learning how to learn effectively. One aspect which is less positive is the eternal hunt for feedback. Feedback, especially coach feedback, is something which Makers places a really high value on and is necessary for passing your portfolio and review (the metrics by which you get access to the careers team towards the end of the course). Actually getting this feedback can be really tricky and drawn out, which can be frustrating. When you do finally get it, it is usually very helpful and incisive, however.

The careers team work with you from midway through the course, increasing in contact time. There is advice on how to find jobs, how to write a tech cv, technical coaching and general wellbeing chat. I feel like the careers team are as valuable as the coaches and were so helpful with me finding employment after the course. They support you and care about your journey beyond Makers, which is a real shining light when you are struggling to motivate yourself whilst job hunting.

The MVP of Makers Academy is the Chief Joy Officer. Before I started I was so skeptical of this job title, but my opinions changed swiftly. She is in charge of student well being - there for personal coaching/therapy, leads yoga classes and meditation, and is just generally a great presence. So appreciated in a highly pressured, fast paced stressful environment.

The Friday evening drinks, the ping pong, and the events that they put on (free and with pizza, normally) show how much they care about the Makers/tech/learning community. There is a vast network of Alumni, many of whom are open and willing to help each other out which is really helpful when you're struggling with a new technology or need some advice from someone further along the path than yourself.

What I've learnt at Makers is obviously applicable to coding, but I also think that it is applicable to almost anything I put my mind to. I think applying to the course was one of the best decisions I've made, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who has the drive and energy to work hard and learn loads.

Everyone there has decided to make a big commitment and change career. Everyone is so different but come together due to a mutual want and desire to be a software developer in one sense or another. This drive makes the people great to work with.

Makers isn’t simply teaching you a tech stack or a certain language. They ‘change the way you learn’. By this they emphasis that after 3 months they are not going to be there to hold your hand. This bootcamp is more about helping you have a process to fall back on when you are stuck. This is what will make you a great dev, not that you have learnt all the syntax in the world.

Due to this however, it means coach feedback is gold dust and you need to be very proactive by making sure you are getting all the feedback you need. It would be easy to go a long time and not know you were making the same mistake over and over. You are reliant a lot of the time on your peers and therefore small things can slip by unnoticed. This has been improved by the fact that you now need to collect evidence including your coaches feedback in order to pass your review (portfolio of evidence and a process review) which forces you to chase the coaches.

There are so many positives from the amazement you will have from seeing your own progression over the 3 months through to the atmosphere of the building daily with weekly celebrations on a Friday (and of course when you finally get the job you have been working for!). There are also cons such as the frustration at what feels like a lack of coaching at the start (but is actually a conscious choice) through to the lack of HDMI cables in a tech bootcamp.

But there is a job offer guarantee for a reason - Makers backs themselves and they have the stats to prove why.

This is a life-changing course which I am very glad I signed up for.  It's hard work, you need to be very self-motivated and driven to get through it as you will not be held accountable by anyone except yourself.  If you considering it I would strongly recommend attending a Q&A and demo day.

Pros:

- You will learn best practices but most importantly you will learn how to learn.  I have the confidence to approach any new technology now.
- The coaches: I had some great support where I really needed it.
- The careers team: these wonderful people are absolutely brilliant at their job.  Supportive, responsive and ready to give you interview practice, CV reviews, whatever you think you need.  I secured a job with a great company within a month of finishing.
- Dana, the Chief Joy Officer: a bit of a lifesaver.
- Course structure: this builds upon itself in a really sensible way so that you are iterating over the key learning points.  
- Social: i've met a wonderful bunch of people I hope I can stay in touch with.  You will get to know every single person in your cohort as you change pairs (pair programming) every day.  
- The alumni network seems pretty great with mentoring, coffee buddies and talks evenings.

Cons:

- You are unable to access the hiring partners until you pass your review.  I think this is made clear to new joiners now but this process wasn't in place when I signed up.
-  Access to coaches can be quite tricky, particularly towards the end of the course when you're seeking feedback during tech test week and for your portfolio.  
- The portfolio is a bit of a PITA but I can really see the value of it having now finished it!  My advice is to chip away at it.

Makers gave me a new career and desire to keep learning new things. during my time at Makers, I learned software fundamentals through pair programming and several agile team projects. The Makers staff are great people and everyone coming to Makers have such a positive vibe. Technologies and methodologies I have come across throughout makers were: object-oriented design (OOD), test-driven development (TDD), model-view-controller (MVC), Agile software development, Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, Node.js, React, RSpec, Jasmine, Jest, Enzyme, Cypress.
If you keen to enroll at Makers, I would advise contacting an Alumni or going to meet the team and the students during an event and you will be convinced! 

Makers academy was amazing and the I can't recommend it enough!

Having had little technical experience prior to Makers Academy, they did a really good job of developing my software engineering capabilities and increasing my confidence in this field from the start.

It was an intense bootcamp but thoroughly rewarding. The course is structured really well to optimise your learning and ensure you feel comfortable in all areas of software engineering. The coaches offer enough support so that you don't feel stranded, but don't overload you with help either, as there is a strong emphasis on self-learning. It is a lot of hard work, but as long as you go in with a determined and positive mentality, you won't regret it.

The community once you've finished your course is great as well - you never really leave Makers.

The only cons I could mention would be that sometimes it can feel like there aren't enough coaches on hand to support the amount of students, but this is a minor point compared to how great Makers is overall, and it does encourage you to work out how to deal with problems yourself or to go to other sources (such as fellow students) for support.

Overall, it's a truly rewarding experience which can take you from little-to-no coding experience to a software engineer ready to face the world of work in just a few short months. If you're considering attending Makers Academy then I definitely recommend that you do so!

I can honestly say that the last 3 months at Makers Academy have been the most intense and rewarding months of my life. I still can't believe how much I've learnt about Software Development and myself as a person in such a short space of time. 
Pros:
- Learnt how to build a full-stack web app, and gained exposure to a lot of different technologies.
- Learnt how to learn effectively, which is far better than just learning how to code. It's given me the ability to take any problem, any new tech stack, and figure out for myself how to move forward.
- Both the technical and non-technical coaches are all fantastic, and gave all the support I needed to grow.
- Got into meditation and yoga, which were important to keep me focused. Wellbeing can be just as important as the learning.
- Had loads of fun, and got to know and work with some pretty amazing people.

Cons:
- None. Seriously. I can't fault them. They know how to do a bootcamp!

If you're reading this and wondering whether to apply, I would 100% recommend going for it.

Pros:
- Learning to learn. New concepts, languages, and frameworks come thick and fast. This hones in your process for learning quickly and being able to get projects up and running.
- Amazing journey with peers, with a feeling of being in it together.
- The material you cover provides you with the potential to find an entry level job in the industry.
- The course is very tough at points for everybody. Being committed through the tough times is essential, as the style of teaching encourages you to be self-reliant, which is a good skill to build.

Cons:
- It can feel all consuming at points. The more you put in, the more you get out, and it can be difficult to balance your Makers journey with real life, especially over weekends.

I completed the Makers Academy bootcamp as part of a government software developer apprenticeship scheme. This scheme sought to re-skill existing civil servants into software developers to help grow the talent pool and bring about value for money on large government IT projects. I had no prior professional coding or IT experience before starting the course. This was a complete career change for me and something of a step into the unknown - with all the nerves that accompany such a dramatic upheaval.

I did however have a keen interest in the IT industry which had led me to undertake some web development courses on platforms like Udemy, along with some minor (and largely unsuccessful) dabbling in Java and C++ during my free time. I would strongly recommend that a personal interest or passion for IT is an important component for being successful in the course.

The first thing I would say is that while it might seem daunting at first - to learn a discipline that you might have little or no experience with - don’t panic! Trust in the Makers selection process. It is rigorous for a reason, they are very adept at selecting only those who they think will make it through the course.

Makers is about a lot more than just typing away at a keyboard writing code. They very much take a holistic approach to learning, with a great deal of emphasis placed on mental wellbeing. There was onsite meditation and yoga coaches for instance, and regular social events such as pizza or climbing nights. All of this helped build a comfortable learning environment that is designed to take as much of the stress out off learning a technical subject as is possible.

The course began with a very gentle easing in over a period of about 4 weeks. During this time we got our feet wet with Ruby - a language that was used extensively throughout the course. We completed some pretty simple coding problems that steadily increased in complexity and helped ground us in the basic features of the language. Additionally during this time we were introduced to the terminal interface and some basic commands useful for development on a Linux or UNIX based Operating System along with version control via Github.

The course truly began in earnest when we started onsite training for 12 weeks. I personally was based at the Barbican campus, but there is a second, slightly larger campus at Aldgate East. Both facilities were excellent (better than every government workplace I have ever seen) with fully equipped and stocked kitchens, adjustable / standing desks with monitors.

The first two weeks of the course was essentially an introduction to Test Driven Development and this was one of the key coding practices that Makers sought to instil in us. The language we used during this time was Ruby. We would spend the first half of the day with a workshop led by a coach, before working on coding problems that were provided via Github and Maker’s very own workflow tracker Diode. In the afternoons we did pair programming on whatever that week’s afternoon challenge was. The pairing was randomised and you were very rarely with the same person twice. On Fridays we spent the whole day working individually on mini projects - like building a twitter clone or takeaway ordering app.

Next up was a two week introduction to all things web based. We did an overview of basic web communication and protocols, before getting to grips learning the Sinatra web framework for Ruby. Accordingly the projects were web based during this part of the course - building a Twitter and Airbnb clone. Following that we then switched things up and started doing Javascript - both vanilla and jQuery, which again lasted for about two weeks.

Towards the end of the course we started what were personally my favourite parts - the two engineering projects. At this stage we started learning and coding in whatever programming language - often referred to as a tech stack - our employers had informed Makers we would be using during our placement. In my case it was Java. We spent two weeks building a Facebook clone in our respective tech stacks before moving on to the final project - which is self selected.

In summary I would say the course was incredibly useful in giving me the skills and confidence to be able to go away and learn any programming language independently. IT is a difficult industry to break into, especially when you are attempting to do so self taught. Makers helps provide a structured and guided learning experience. The level of tuition was adjusted as we progressed through the curriculum - with regular, class sized lessons given by the coaches in the early stages of the course; which steadily tapered off as time went on and gave way to more ad hoc sessions as and when requested by particular students.

I would say that in order to succeed in this course self-discipline and a willingness to dictate your own study is very much needed - Makers teach you how go about learning a new language, but they cannot and do not teach you everything there is to know about said language. This detached teaching style might not suit everyone - but seemed to work well for my cohort. In terms of criticism I would say that perhaps too much time is spent focused on Ruby - which is great if that is the language you will be using professionally, but not so great if it is not. Secondly given that so much of professional development work is now cloud based or severless it would have been nice to have a week dedicated to this aspect of programming.

A recent graduate of Makers, I accepted a position as a Junior JavaScript Developer within 1 month of completing the course. I am a career-changer and had wanted to make the move into software development for years, and finally took the plunge in late 2018. I am SO glad I did! The course is very intense (it's called a bootcamp for a reason!) but I had a lot of fun and met some awesome people on the same journey as me. The technology they provide instruction on begins with Ruby (including Sinatra and Rails) before moving to JavaScript. This provides a solid groundwork for understanding the key principles of programming and provides a platform for 'learning how to learn' so that transitioning to a different technology or language is a smooth process.

It is very much a self-lead learning environment and you get out as much as you put in, but the coaches are approachable and knowledgable. Makers promotes best-practice methodologies such as Test-Driven Development, Agile workflows and Pair Programming throughout the course which means that graduates have experience in collaborative environments ready to join professional development teams.

Although I am yet to start my new job (I begin this coming Monday), I feel that Makers has provided me with the skills and confidence to succeed and am looking forward to my new career in software development.