CareerFoundry

There are three ways how to learn a new tool / skill - dig and learn it by yourself, study at a school / university, find an intense course that focuses on explaining one theme that interests you the most. 

A year ago I realised that I am a great graphic designer and media artist but to make good money with it I need to jump to a next level. Taking into account my skills in design, digital media, research and writing I decided to learn UX Design. 

I did a lot of research online and found CareerFoundry. First, I went to UX meet-up in Berlin and saw how professional CareerFoundry team is. After that I applied for UX Design course and since then almost every day within next 7 months was filled with new and useful information about how to develop digital projects. I learned how to form and develop my own business idea, about user-centred thinking, information architecture, interaction design, wireframing, prototyping, user testing and more.

I had to put a lot of effort in it and in the end I felt self-confident. I went to a first job interview after the course and got that job. The only thing I can say from my experience - it works! 

If you still have doubts, just give it a try!

I chose Career Foundry to make the change from working as a healthcare professional to become a User Experience Designer.  Taking the UX design course has enabled me to build a great foundational set of skills and knowledge with which to start my new career.  I had no prior knowledge of UX design before starting the course, and although it was challenging at times, I was able to successfully complete the course.  My mentor was brilliant, really supportive and always gave me very helpful feedback to ensure that I did my best work. The team at Career Foundry are always very helpful, friendly and supportive, and take the time to interact with and listen to their students.  Highly recommended.

When I decided to become a Web Developer I tried many online tutorials and books without success.

The problem was that I was jumping from one tutorial to another without following a path or a defined objective.

Not only CareerFoundry gave me a defined path that starts from the basics up to advanced programming, but I was also assisted by a mentor which is the CareerFoundry most precious feature.

The mentor was always present to explain complicated concepts and helped me every time I got stuck at some point. Having a mentor was also a big motivation for not being lazy because every week I had to report my progress to someone and have precious feedbacks about it.

Now I feel confident enough to keep improving my skills and looking for my first employment as Web Developer, I strongly recommend CareerFoundry to anyone who wants to learn web development but doesn't know where to start or how to do that. 

I started Career Foundry having done some free online tutorials in HTML, CSS & Ruby and having struggled though the Michael Hartl Ruby on Rails Tutorial not really understanding how things were put together. The structure of Career Foundry really motivated me to get through the course because after each lesson you have something to show for your work. The tutorials are clear, structured and as you progress through the course it prepares you for life after the tutorials. In addition you have a great knowledge of so many elements of web development by the end you really understand how everything is put together.

I finished having built a personal portfolio site, e-commerce site that integrates with Stripe to process payments, learning about the bootstrap framework, github, triggering e-mails, creating a review system, form validations, user login, automated tests, the list goes on! and the most exciting part is that the foundation gives you the confidence to then go out and find a solution to a problem youself/for a new feature, so that if you've never done it before you know you'll be able to find a way.

The mentoring part was a key element to speeding up learning and motivation. Without a mentor you might get stuck for hours looking on Stack Overflow for an answer, but your mentor can help breakdown a problem you face so that you fully understand how to overcome it much faster so that you can move on.

I work as a Product Manager and Career Foundry has given me a great understanding of the day-to-day work of our Development team. In addition I am also tinkering away on my own projects, and am confident that my skills will help me test any business idea I have in the future much faster for for without the cost of needing to hire a developer at the very early stages! I am now able to build more complex features myself due to the great foundation from Career Foundry.

Thank you!

I'm someone who has more of a marketing background with some development experience, but not much. I'm currently taking the UX course and really enjoying it. The mentor experience is much better than I imagined. My mentor is great and super engaged. She gives me great feedback to start thinking like a UX professional.

It's definitely a big committment and I'm struggling to keep up with the pace just a little bit with my full-time job, but it will pay off in the end. I'm hopeful that the course will help in my efforts to shift my career.

Overall I'm glad I signed up for the course and I'm excited to continue learning about UX.

When I first encountered with the course I was excited about their Mentor-driven and Project-driven approach to teaching. It felt like what I needed to be able to do an online course. Also the price was unbeatable, and still is I think. I do have some quite minor problems with the course, but at the bottum line, only with the CareerFoundry I was able to learn programming. 

The biggest thing I was excited about was the mentoring part. It actually what made the difference for me. It was somebody that I could always ask questions, help me when I don't understand the material and the fact that I needed to "satisfy" someone was what kept me always motivated.

Having said that, I was kind of dissapointed with my particular mentor. I thought he will push me outside of my box and the curriculum boundries, but it never happend. He never challanged me by his own. Another thing is that when ever I encountered with a big problem, instead of pushing me in the right direction, he just gave me the answer. At the moment, it was a great relief to see what was the right and professional way to do something, but as soon as I tried to do it by myself I realized I don't really remember/understood how he actually done that (it mostly happend in the weekly skype call, that's why I always prefred to communicate by messaging, which are always availabe as future references, but my mentor prefered to answer the big problems in the skype call). The thing is, my mentor has a vast knowledge and he is a really good teacher, just our communication wasn't perfect.

The corriculum is really okay. The frontend part, is written in a fun and descreptive way which makes the learning really enjoyable. The backend part is no fun at all, mostly because it's way more technical and way more difficult. Naturally there's a lot of room for improvement in the lectures, but they are by no means in a bad shape.

The CareerFoundry team is also really great. I had the chance to meet them in person more than once and they're really nice and helpful. They gave me great and valuable career advices which helped me a lot. 

A new thing that was started at the middle of my course, so I didn't have the chance to take advantage of, was the Slack community. A place where you can talk with fellow students, the CF team and the mentors. There a student is able to ask all kind of questions. Actually I'm still using the Slack community even though I am long after graduating. 

Overall, although it's not a perfect course and there's a lot of room for improvement, I really recommend this course to people who are looking for an affordable web dev course (online or not). I was actually able to take my first steps as a web developer in the industry after finishing the course, a thing that says a lot.

My experience at CareerFoundry has been very great! Before the course I tried to teach myself web development. But I had a really hard time keeping myself motivated. So I looked into various options to learn coding properly. Compared to all the other online bootcamps out there CareerFoundry had the best price and still a very comprehensive curriculum. The course material covered the most important topics. My mentor helped me a lot when I wanted to learn more than what the actual course contained. 

Throughout the course the CareerFoundry team has been really helpful and always there if I had any questions. Even after the course they were very supportive, helped me with my CV and forwarded job offers.

I would recommend CareerFoundry to everyone who wants to get into web development, learn everything important to get started and have the skills and the support to find a job. 

I enjoyed my experience going thru the CF web development course. Before attending CF, I wasn’t too sure what kind of area of development I would like to specialize in. There are so many specialities, frameworks and languages out there-it can be confusing and overwhelming at first... I’m very happy I chose CF because they teach, in my opinion, a broad spectrum of the popular frameworks out there such as Bootstrap and Ruby on Rails - it really helped me understand the bigger picture of web dev. Now if only they cover mobile dev! :)

I found I really enjoy the front end aspect of development, and thank CF for discovering that. Since it is self-paced they are really flexible with what you create as a project and the time frame it takes you. It’s also a pretty economical price, considering some other more intense options like Bloc and full-time online immersive type programs. However, CF is a good fit if you have yet to figure out what area of focus you want to delve into your tech career and you’re pressed on time due to a full time job, like myself. Their staff is extremely helpful and open to feedback as well (Blake was my student advisor). Overall, very positive experience throughout and I recommend their online course.