The Tech Academy
The Tech Academy is a trade school headquartered in Portland, Oregon that offers full-time and part-time bootcamps online and in-person at their Portland campus.The Tech Academy offers bootcamps in computer programming, website development, cybersecurity, game development, mobile development, data science, and front-end development. The immersive experience aims to create well-rounded technology professionals, and also gives students the option to take the course a...
The Tech Academy is a trade school headquartered in Portland, Oregon that offers full-time and part-time bootcamps online and in-person at their Portland campus.The Tech Academy offers bootcamps in computer programming, website development, cybersecurity, game development, mobile development, data science, and front-end development. The immersive experience aims to create well-rounded technology professionals, and also gives students the option to take the course at their own pace. There are also no set starts dates or rigid scheduling. Students can enroll at any time, study from home, and choose whatever study schedule they would like.
The Tech Academy’s bootcamps cover topics including computer science fundamentals, programming basics, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL, C#, Python, Bootstrap, jQuery, React.js, project management, Agile, Scrum, MVC, version control, Java, and more. Each bootcamp also includes a Live Project, where students gain real-life experience to add to their resume as well as job placement assistance.
None of The Tech Academy's bootcamps require any tech background or experience. To apply, applicants need to take an IQ test with logic-based questions (to ensure applicants can read, write and perform basic math), followed by an admissions interview.
The final part of every The Tech Academy bootcamp is the Job Placement Course which covers interviewing skills, resume writing, where to find tech jobs, and gives students access to job placement staff who assist students in landing technical positions.
389 The Tech Academy Reviews
AnonymousGraduate • Software Developer Bootcamp • PortlandSep 28, 2016Overall ExperienceInstructorsCurriculumJob AssistanceTech Academy Review
The Tech Academy provided me a broad overview of what I needed to know in the realm of software development and taught me the fundamentals of object oriented programming. The broad exposure allowed me to narrow in on areas of interest.
Danny Condon of The Tech Academy
Lead Job Placement Director
Sep 29, 2016
I think that's a really good point. A good percentage of our students starting out on the program know that they want to get into software development, but they're not quite sure which area of this broad and expansive field would be best for them. As part of the curriculum, students learn six or more different programming languages, which include front-end, and back-end development. By the time the student is through the program, they have a better idea of what they want to do, because they have exposure to so many different languages. I have found this helps a lot on job placement because the student is certain and enthusiastic about what they want to do.- AnonymousApplicant • Software Developer Bootcamp • PortlandSep 08, 2016Overall ExperienceInstructorsCurriculumJob Assistance
Seems Legit
I recently attended an open house hosted by The Tech Academy. More than anything, they seem to genuinely WANT every student to succeed. They literally have staff members that are available at virtually all times to assist students when they need help (Each one has completed the course him/herself as well). I think that's critical for students. At the open-house I was able to speak with quite a few graduates who spoke very highly of this program. I'm not surprised to see all the 5-star rati...
I recently attended an open house hosted by The Tech Academy. More than anything, they seem to genuinely WANT every student to succeed. They literally have staff members that are available at virtually all times to assist students when they need help (Each one has completed the course him/herself as well). I think that's critical for students. At the open-house I was able to speak with quite a few graduates who spoke very highly of this program. I'm not surprised to see all the 5-star ratings.
Danny Condon of The Tech Academy
Lead Job Placement Director
Oct 24, 2016
Glad to hear you made it to one of our Open Houses! We have them every Friday afternoon, so feel free to come to another! - AnonymousWife of a graduate • Software Developer Bootcamp • PortlandSep 08, 2016Overall ExperienceInstructorsCurriculumJob Assistance
My husband's experience
My husband was working as a telemarketer and I was employed as a nurse on the graveyard shift. He was always good with computers so we decided to roll the dice and see about him going back to school to learn programming. We looked around and found The Tech Academy. My initial impression of them was good but I remained skeptical. My husband made his way through the coursework. There were ups and downs but altogether he relayed a positive experience to me. He then began applying for jobs and...
My husband was working as a telemarketer and I was employed as a nurse on the graveyard shift. He was always good with computers so we decided to roll the dice and see about him going back to school to learn programming. We looked around and found The Tech Academy. My initial impression of them was good but I remained skeptical. My husband made his way through the coursework. There were ups and downs but altogether he relayed a positive experience to me. He then began applying for jobs and received help from the school's job placement staff. He was able to land a technical job that paid him enough so that I no longer have to work nights and weekends. Because we are now surviving better and on the same schedule, I am very grateful for all the help The Tech Academy has provided us. His attending has changed our lives for the better.
Danny Condon of The Tech Academy
Lead Job Placement Director
Sep 30, 2016
Hi! Wow this success is really why I came to work here. I'm so glad to hear that you guys are able to be on the same schedule now and things have totally shifted for you. I hope nothing but success in your future! - AnonymousParent • Software Developer Bootcamp • PortlandSep 07, 2016Overall ExperienceInstructorsCurriculumJob Assistance
A Balanced Review
I’m writing this review for my son as he was forced to sign a waiver that he would not provide a negative online review. Since I paid for the classes, I do feel I have a vested interest to provide an honest review.
Up front, the Tech Academy served its purpose for my son and it was part of the reason he did get employed in the tech industry; but the program did not live up to the upfront promises. And if you are not the right fit, this would not be a wise investment.
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I’m writing this review for my son as he was forced to sign a waiver that he would not provide a negative online review. Since I paid for the classes, I do feel I have a vested interest to provide an honest review.
Up front, the Tech Academy served its purpose for my son and it was part of the reason he did get employed in the tech industry; but the program did not live up to the upfront promises. And if you are not the right fit, this would not be a wise investment.
My son had received a minor in computer science in college and this program was to supplement and enhance his employability. The program did fill in some technical gaps, but much of it was due to his own effort (which is fine, the students should not be spoon fed), but see the detail below:
- Upfront, the promises were that all graduates got around $65,000 and were successfully employed. REALITY: This was a trick claim, the Tech Academy does not consider a student a graduate until they get a job (since finishing, the school has changed this requirement, but they did mislead us at the time). So just completing the courses is no guarantee. Of all the co-students of my son, none of them got a $65,000 job and over 75% are still looking after completing their course work three months ago. (Note, the tech industry is very difficult to get started without experience). My son did get a job, but it almost 25% below the “average $65,000” promised rate.) Do know we pressed the school on this fact just before I signed the check and they said it was absolutely true with just once exception. (I see that their web site has updated their “stats” now claiming that over 95% of all graduates have landed outside tech jobs, but from a sampling of his seven friends, only two got tech jobs afterwards.)
[Many of the “graduates” are employed at the school, which warps the math – draw your own conclusions.] - The actual successful completion rate in 15 weeks is very rare, some students are still in the program after a year. Some do get discourage and just plain quit. Even though we asked up front, we were told that almost everyone finishes and nobody had quit. Not true.
- At the very start, they make you take a “personality” test to see if you have the aptitude to succeed. Turns out to be a Scientology personality test. And it almost always finds some flaw. Based on that flaw, they won’t let you sign up, unless you sign a waiver to never write a bad online review (yes, you should be suspicious when all the reviews on the Internet area almost all 4 & 5 stars . . . and yes, some of the reviews are written by the owners and employees of the company). In my opinion, this is just plain trickery.
- The course topics are appropriate and the school does a good job trying to keep the students focused, motivated and moving forward. Instructors do check in with the students on a very regular basis.
- The content of the courses is a mixture of books, videos, printed material. About 75% of the learning material comes from the outside world and not created by the school (a non-consistent mishmash of material). And some of the material was inaccurate and not always best practice. Also at the time, they did provide the use of a laptop computer. And the downtown location was open and available almost seven days a week. A great way to build discipline based on a set “work/study’ schedule.
- The “instructors” are there to help answer questions by email or in person. But the instructors are almost always other students that are still working through the program. This is neither good nor bad, but if you are expecting experience “lecture” sessions in a structured fashion from seasoned professionals, you won’t find it here. REALITY: my son did find that some of the material and instructor help was sometimes off the mark, when compared to previous college level classes. There is no strong emphasis on “good programing” techniques and strategies.
Was it worth the $7,000 I paid for my son? I believe it turned out okay for him; but this was only because he had a fair amount of foundation programming education in college and had done quite a bit of self-learning (TreeHouse.com and CodeAcadmy.com) over the previous four years. If you have never had experience, you may struggle; and even with just aptitude, you may only learn the basics and struggle in the future without the strong foundations. (With that said, there are amazing situations where someone is able to become a fabulous coder through their own self-determination, so anything is possible). After finishing the coursework, there was no substantial job placement help; it took about 8 weeks on his own to find a tech job and the effort was his concentrated effort on all the right steps (with 50+ applications and five company interviews).
So in the end, this part of his life with the Tech Academy turned out fine; but the school was not what it was advertised, and the reason for the review is to give a more complete picture for prospective students to decide if this is a right fix for them.
To offset some of the co-opted favorable review by staff and signed waiver keeping others from providing bad reviews, I am lowering my rating down an extra notch.
Signed,
A Parent that paid Tech Academy $7,000 in tuition
Danny Condon of The Tech Academy
Lead Job Placement Director
Sep 28, 2016
Hi there! Thank you for sharing your experiences and making your concerns known. Also, I've stayed in contact with your son, and I'm glad to know he's doing well at the company he's working with now and he may come back to the Tech Academy soon to do one of our Friday Tech Talks.Having spoken to your son directly since you wrote this, he has conveyed a different picture to me. In his own words, he enjoyed the program and is happy with his current job. He also mentioned that he would have preferred you had not posted this, since it was him, not you, that took the program.I'd like to address some of your concerns below:You mentioned that we guarantee a $65,000 job upon completing the program. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding, because we have never made that guarantee. At one point, we promoted 100% job placement rate because all of our graduates had landed jobs after completing. As we've had a higher volume of students come through, the figure has changed to 95%, which we have updated on our website and other media. 95% is still pretty good, and our Job Placement team works very hard to do everything possible for each graduate to get them employed, including thorough resume review, review of cover letters, interview prep for technical and non-technical interviews, as well as unlimited guidance and direction. This is all on top of our Job Placement Course that prepares students for their job search. I personally remember working with your son on his job search and being in touch with him almost every day during his search. He was doing work with a company he and his friends had started, and the company ended up doing so well that he didn't want to search anywhere else for a job. I think that's a pretty big accomplishment, especially considering his last job was at McDonald's. That's a pretty big upgrade. I offered, and still offer today, any additional assistance he might want if he ever chose to seek different employment. The average salary of our graduates was and still is $60,000. We have never guaranteed that.As for the friends of your son who you say are still looking for jobs after completing the program, this is a little hard to respond to, since I don't know who those friends are. I know of one friend of your son who was doing our program, and he mysteriously went out of communication with us in the middle of the program, and we haven't been able to reach him since despite multiple attempts. He never finished, but if he would get back in touch with us, we'd be happy to work with him, so he can get through the program and get a job.You’re totally right in that not everyone who enrolls finishes the program. However, the vast majority do finish. 15 weeks is the average for students who study consistently 40 hours per week. Our program is structured in such a way where students go at their own pace and we’re much more flexible than other boot camps. Thus, we’ve had students who study very aggressively and get through the program in 8 or 9 weeks, and others who are working full-time jobs and who only study 20 hours per week, who end up taking closer to 30 weeks on the program.You mentioned that we have students sign a waiver that they will never write a negative review. I want to clarify this: we have students take entry testing. One of the purposes of this testing is to locate negative personality types that are hyper-critical and will cause problems on the program. A couple years ago, one of our Registration Directors (Morgan) was using a "loophole" for students that failed entry testing. He created a waiver that protected the school from potentially problematic students and it included in it that these students that failed our entry testing would not attack the school publicly (since it was already clear from their entry testing and our experiences with them that they were highly critical). But there has never been a statement that we require 5 star reviews. Very few people ever signed the waiver and our Co-Founder canceled its use over a year ago (I estimate only 10 out of the 300+ people we've signed up ever signed it). None of the reviews on this site are from one of the very few students that signed this waiver.Tech Academy students and graduates are free to write whatever reviews they'd like and they have.Thank you for acknowledging the persistence of our instructors to motivate and encourage the students on the program.And yes, the curriculum does include include books, videos, and printed material and we do use outside sources. We make that very clear in our registration video before any students enroll. It’s a very large task, but we are working on a project to make all of our content original. We do highly promote best practices. I’m not sure where you got the idea we don’t, especially since you haven’t seen our materials yourself since you never enrolled with us. We do, however, have a system wherein any error in the material can be reported directly to our Quality Control Director, who rapidly updates the curriculum with the necessary improvements. In this way, we’ve continually been able to keep our curriculum up-to-date.All of our instructors are graduates of our program. Due to the self-paced aspect of the curriculum, they aren’t always lecturing in front of the class - you’re totally right about that. We do, however, invite a professional from the tech community to come in to the school and speak at the Tech Talks we have every Friday, which we Live Stream for our remote students as well.You mentioned that your son didn’t receive substantial job assistance after completing the coursework. A lot of the job assistance given is actually during the coursework in the “Job Placement Course” that every student does. During the course, the student learns the essentials on how to find a job, how to write an excellent tech resume, how to write a good cover letter, how to interview well, and more. We don’t guarantee a job, and we make it clear that it is 100% the responsibility of the student to get hired, but we do everything in our power to ensure it happens. I personally thoroughly reviewed your son’s resume, checked off on his cover letter template, did mock interviews with him, and stayed in close communication with him while he was searching for a job and called him almost every day to give him guidance, and he did get a job, which he was very happy about.If there's anything you don't feel I've addressed, please call or email me directly. Our door is still open for your son if he needs anything and he knows that.
Again, I’d like to thank you for your review. There were some valid points, which have long since been corrected. We are a relatively new company and always try to learn from mistakes and constantly better ourselves. If you’d like to discuss this further, or if you have any other concerns you would like addressed, please send me an email at techacademyjobplacement@learncodinganywhere.com or call me at (503)206-6915. - Upfront, the promises were that all graduates got around $65,000 and were successfully employed. REALITY: This was a trick claim, the Tech Academy does not consider a student a graduate until they get a job (since finishing, the school has changed this requirement, but they did mislead us at the time). So just completing the courses is no guarantee. Of all the co-students of my son, none of them got a $65,000 job and over 75% are still looking after completing their course work three months ago. (Note, the tech industry is very difficult to get started without experience). My son did get a job, but it almost 25% below the “average $65,000” promised rate.) Do know we pressed the school on this fact just before I signed the check and they said it was absolutely true with just once exception. (I see that their web site has updated their “stats” now claiming that over 95% of all graduates have landed outside tech jobs, but from a sampling of his seven friends, only two got tech jobs afterwards.)
- AnonymousStudent • Software Developer Bootcamp • PortlandAug 15, 2016Overall ExperienceInstructorsCurriculumJob Assistance
Beginning Student
I started the program at the Tech Academy at the age of 58. I have had no experience with coding and wondered if someone with as little experience and as old as I was could do this program. Upon being around the other students here, I have seen the excitement of the newer and older students doing this program. Upon talking to the other students, I have only heard positive comments about their experience here. Once when I was in the office, I witnessed a graduated student that walked int...
I started the program at the Tech Academy at the age of 58. I have had no experience with coding and wondered if someone with as little experience and as old as I was could do this program. Upon being around the other students here, I have seen the excitement of the newer and older students doing this program. Upon talking to the other students, I have only heard positive comments about their experience here. Once when I was in the office, I witnessed a graduated student that walked into the office say how happy he was with the job he had and how his income was much higher than it was before attending the Tech Academy. I think this is a program that many people can do if they have the desire to do it.
Danny Condon of The Tech Academy
Lead Job Placement Director
Oct 24, 2016
Wow that's really great to hear! And you're totally right: we designed the program so that even people with no exposure to coding can get through it. And for those who do have coding experience, the program validates and solidifies their understanding of core concepts. Glad to hear you're enjoying the program so far, and keep it up!
The Tech Academy Alumni Outcomes
| Employed in-field | 70.1% |
| Full-time employee | 70.1% |
| Full-time apprenticeship, internship or contract position | 0.0% |
| Short-term contract, part-time, or freelance | 0.0% |
| Started a new company or venture after graduation | 0.0% |
| Not seeking in-field employment | 11.2% |
| Employed out-of-field | 2.8% |
| Continuing to higher education | 4.7% |
| Not seeking a job for health, family, or personal reasons | 3.8% |
| Still seeking job in-field | 8.5% |
| Could not contact | 10.2% |
Recent The Tech Academy News
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does The Tech Academy cost?
The Tech Academy costs around $14,000. On the lower end, some The Tech Academy courses like Self-Paced Front-End Web Developer Boot Camp cost $1,800.
What courses does The Tech Academy teach?
The Tech Academy offers courses like Online C# and .NET Framework Boot Camp (full-time), Online C# and .NET Framework Boot Camp (part-time), Online Cyber Security Boot Camp (full-time), Online Cyber Security Boot Camp (part-time) and 29 more.
Where does The Tech Academy have campuses?
The Tech Academy has in-person campuses in and, Portland. The Tech Academy also has a remote classroom so students can learn online.