CareerFoundry

After trying several free and paid courses on HTML and CSS I stumbled upon CareerFoundry's course offer. The curriculum and the fact that you get your own mentor to guide you throughout the entire course got me to give it a go. I didn't regret it for a second. 

I was happy to have done some HTML and CSS before twhich helped me a lot to get through those tasks. When I started with Ruby things got more tricky for mr initially. Luckily I had a great and very responsive mentor who helped me to reach my goals step by step. Additionally you'll get referred to plenty of additional material to go deeper into the different topics.

Overall I would highly recommend this course to anyone who wants to start their web development career as it's fun, challenging and teaching you plenty of useful skills to get your feet off the ground.

A very close friend of mine has been teaching me to code and program, he had suggested we take a course together and that is how we sumbled upon CareerFoundry. It has been single handedly the best thing I have ever payed for.

The curriculum is on point and and broken down very well.

My Instructor (Ryan Smith) has been excellent and very helpful, with fast responses and very productive crticism and help.

At no point during this course did I feel alone or unable to complete it with very little to limited knowledge of anything computer related coming into this.

5/5 would reccomend

I am finishing up the UX course now and overall I think it was a decent experience. I am the type of person who can easily commit to self-learning, but I like the structure of a lesson plan, so CareerFoundry was perfect for me. You do a series of lessons online over the course of 3-6 months that eventually compile into a portfolio. A portfolio is key to landing a UX job, so I thought CF would be a good fit for my goals.

The curriculum was generally good but not without its flaws. I am transitioning into UX from a related role, and I think certain parts of the course would have been a huge struggle without my previous experience to fall back on. Some lessons were pretty hit or miss at times or seemed vague in their instruction or strangely ordered. For those reasons, I would probably recommend this class to someone either with at least some previous tech experience or a little self study under their belt. I think someone completely new to tech might struggle a little bit. That being said, CF does seem to do a good job of giving you an overview of the various responsibilities a UX designer may have, which allows you to get your feet wet and figure out what type of role you want out of your next job. 

My mentor was very nice and was somewhat available. I can't speak for all the CF mentors, but I know my mentor was very new to the UX field (less than 6 months). If you're expecting to have direct access to a senior UXer as your mentor, you might be pretty disappointed. I haven't checked back on this, but I could have sworn that CF promised their mentors had at least 2-3 years of field experience, which is clearly false. However, it is a self-learning class, so as long as your mentor is knowledgable enough to help you where you need it and you don't have tons of deep industry questions, the mentorship should be sufficient.

CF doesn't offer any job placement, which you might not really expect for the price anyway. It is much much more affordable than something like General Assembly, which at press time is charging $11.5k for their UX class. Even with all the flaws of CF, I can't imagine General Assembly being over 6x better. For what its worth, I know many people who have gone through the GA courses only to seriously struggle to find work... CF certainly won't make you immune to those obstacles, what with so many industry newbies flooding the market with only bootcamp experience, but if you are resolved to take this route, you might be pretty happy to have that extra $10k in your pocket while you look for work...

Overall if you're looking for a way into UX, CareerFoundry is a decent option that doesn't require you to quit your job or take out a second mortgage against your house. Obviously or not so obviously to some people, tech bootcamps are not some magic way into a perfect, high salaried tech job, but CF is a less risky option due to its pricing and flexibility. I would say its a good investment for the money and would be especially useful for current tech workers looking to expand their skillset or transition their career if UX is a lateral move.

The title speaks for itself. I researched many diffrent schools and bootcamps, but having a wife and a baby on the way, I needed somthing I could do from the comfort of my own home. I also wanted someone to keep me accountable, and then I found Career Foundry. With their online course and mentorship program (and don't forget the awesome price!) I decided that it was the program for me. I started my journey into Web Development in July 2015 and completing the course within 6 months, I applied to a company and after 45 mintues of sending out my resume, I got a call to come in for an interview and was hired on the spot! I now work for an amazing company, building fully responsive websites and enjoying every moment of it.
I definitely would recommend Career Foundry.

I chose the Web Development track for CareerFoundry on the reccomendation of my friend, who took the UX design course (and got an internship, and then 70k a year job shortly after). It's a 6 month track and it took me just over 4 months to do it, even with a full time job. I had been wanting to switch into the Web Dev field for a while and primarily chose CareerFoundry because of its affordability and the fact that I could do it on my time. There aren't a lot of comparable options. Overall, I was satisfied by my experience. I learned a LOT- CareerFoundry gives you all the foundations you need to build a static website and Ruby on Rails application, which in turn gives you the foundation for other frameworks.

My mentor was available from 7pm-11pm every day, and was incredibly helpful. He gave me a lot of help on his own, sometimes stayed a little later than his shift to help me, and he taught me a lot. However, he also taught me the importance of being resourceful and looking stuff up on my own.

I'm not sure that "just taking the course" will get you a job- but nonetheless, neither will "going to college." However, without the structure of the course to help me, I don't think I would have been as sucessful with my learning. You essentially build two websites for the course, both of which can be used as "portfolio projects" to apply for a job. The course doesn't focus on javascript and algorithms and things like that as much as it could have, so that's really what my next step has to be.

Another important aspect to CareerFoundry is the Slack community and the networking opportunity it presents. And when your mentor isn't available and StackOverflow doesn't seem to be able to answer your question, you can likely get an answer on there. Their customer service and staff are incredibly friendly and helpful and genuinely want you to succeed. While they don't seem to have the resources to be able to do direct job placement, they do provide other advice to students. Personally, I feel like I could maybe apply for jobs now and be successful, but want to learn a bit more. If I didn't take this course and just tried to learn unguided and compiling other resources together, I'm not sure I would have been as motivated in successful in my endeavors.

While I have yet to land a job, I believe that this was a great investment of $1,500 and the boost I need- I couldn't quit my job and go do a $15,000 bootcamp. This is affordable, you learn a lot and I would reccomend it to anyone.

Suggestions: They have a few "optional projects" like a calculator in JavaScript that you can make or a rails "to-do" app and give you suggesions on how to make them. In my opinion, they could add a few more of these, as it wouldn't require much staffing on their part but really help their students.
 

I'm taking the developer course and I've just about finished the exercises and achievements.

Pros: The curriculum is setup well and it's easy to track your progress and see where you are going. Having a mentor is a great resource and the Slack community is pretty knowledgeable and accessable. Compared to other bootcamps the price is reasonable too.  

Cons: This is still self-based learning and if you get stuck on a problem you are encouraged to try and figure out the issue yourself by looking online. Yes, you can ask the community or your mentor, but you will not always get quick responses. Part of being a developer is learning how to google your issues and how to fix things on your own so in a way this is a good thing. I don't believe there is much in the way of job assistance, but if you ask your mentor or the community you can be pointed in the right direction. 

Overall, I liked my experience and feel I learned a lot about web development, but I've only scratched the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more to learn and this course is just the beginning. I think it is possible to get a job after this course, but you must be disciplined and continue building and learning on your own. 

The content was decent, although there were plenty of errors in the lessons, some that would completely throw off your learning until you inquired to your mentor or the community only to find out it's an error in the lesson. I'm not clear on why these things weren't corrected immediately, even after they'd been brought to the attention of CF multiple times.

My mentor was very little help. This is the worst part since it was the EXACT reason I signed up...for mentor access. He was often not available when he said he would be and often took a week or more to respond to questions or lessons. Also, we are promised 12 skype sessions, I got exactly 0 (it appears they no longer provide that, lol). My guess is this is more mentor specific, as many other students have raved about how responsive and helpful their mentors were. So, you'll want to make sure you get a good mentor and if you don't, ask for a new one.

Also, there isn't any job assistance whatsoever. The "student success manager" never checked in, although I received a few automated broadcast emails with general advice. I was surprised that after six months, there wasn't one personal check in.

Because of these issues, I can hardly recommend the course, not for $1900! Maybe $300. I have used Treehouse for more than a year and the content and overall quality is outstanding (unfortunately, there just aren't any mentors...for now).

I started the Web Developer course as a complete newbie and in the beginning felt the learning was well supported. As time went on, my mentor was little help, the course materials were lacking in places and my experience hasn't been enough to get an internship, let alone an actual job. When I got stuck in places, it was up to Google and Stack Overflow to save me. The feedback I received was minimal and if not for the online community, I never would have finished.

I do think they provide a lot of great resources and teach you the basics. It just isn't enough to get a job as advertised. 

I loved my time with CareerFoundry.  I found my mentor to be extremely knowledgeable and encouraging. The mentor was probably my favorite part of the course.  I also liked the format of the course material.  The assignments were clear and easy to understand.  They don't unlock the next section until you finished the previous one.  This made it easier for me to stay focused and on track.  My experience  was a very positive one. I will be continuing my education with them later this month by taking the Web Developer Course.