CareerFoundry

My experience at CareerFoundry was completely positive. It's a 100% online course designed for you to be able to go at your own pace. I worked part time and was able to complete my CareerFoundry course on time. I came from a Graphic Design background, so the course came more naturally to me than most people, BUT do NOT let that discourage you from enrolling! I think it is an excellent alternative to learning design at a much more affordable price than a college course. For anyone considering taking an online course, I would reccomend it! There are 6 modules each (for UI Design course at least) with about 9 exercises you complete in each module. You also have about 6 or so calls with your tutor/mentor to help you along the way with any questions and to see where you are in the course. The job guarantee is real. You have to complete the job prep course in order to qualify, but it's totally worth it. I got hired for a job in Phoenix, AZ about 1-2 months after I graduated. I honestly didn't do anything super special. So many people say networking is the way you get a job, but I don't think that's the only way you can get hired. I just spent about 1 to 3 hours every day researching (important) and applying to jobs online that I was INTERESTED in. I did exactly what my mentor told me to do with my portfolio (important af, seriously), resume, and cover letter when applying. It paid off. I got relocation expenses completely covered, and now I'm working at the best tech company you could imagine. Do CareerFoundry, you won't regret it.  

Half a year ago, the startup that I'd been working at for 3 years had to shut its doors. At the time, I wasn't quite ready to search for a new job right away. I wanted to take some time off and learn new skills with the hopes of having more options and potential for upward mobility when I returned to the workforce. I also wanted to do something that would allow me to be more creative in my next line of work. A week later, I saw an add for a UX Design course offered by CareerFoundry.

I'd been wanting to get into the design world for some time at that point, so I took it upon myself to call CF and get all of the information. After several conversations with their career specialists, it became clear to me that UX design was the career change I'd been wanting to make for some time. 

I enrolled in the course and was lucky enough to receive financial support from the German government. Over the next 3 months, I put all of my energy into completing the online UX Design course. It wasn't easy, but after completing the course I now feel that I have the confidence, knowledge and skills to work in the field of UX Design.

I've never been one for online courses, but the way CareerFoundry has organized their curriculum makes easy for anyone to stay motivated and on track. The lessons are thorough, well organized and feel relevant for today's job market. I always felt like I was learning things that had real value, and would be immediately applicable to the job environment.

The support from their mentors is a huge help, too. Never once during the entire course did I feel like I was alone, there was always somebody there to help. They also have a Slack channel with various groups so students can communicate, share feedback and work together on projects. I really felt (and still feel) like I was part of a community, and that made for a great learning experience.

Once I finished the course, I took advantage of their 'Job Prep Course', which is available to students who complete the UX Design course. For the three weeks that followed, I worked with their career specialists to refine my resume, create a portfolio and receive mentorship on things like how to network, how to search for jobs effectively, how to prepare for an interview and more...

For anyone considering getting into UX Design, I would 100% recommend looking into this course. 

The course is essentially one third HTML, CSS, JS and jQuery with the other two thirds being Ruby on Rails (building an E-commerce site specifically). The content is clear and well-explained and there are always links to further resources in case you want to go a step further and learn more on top of the core exercise material. I was always encouraged and motivated by my tutor whenever I handed in exercises. I didn't have much interaction with my mentor - only 3 or 4 Skype calls I think. I think he would have been available via PM if I had needed to contact him though.

What sets the course apart from others is being able to interact with CF staff during and after the course, whether it be to get help with exercises or to ask for career advice. Being able to reach out to industry experts in this way is something that I've found very useful.

On the otherhand, the information in the curriculum is nothing that you couldn't find online in other cheaper or free courses. That's not to say the content isn't good, just that there are a lot of great free or cheap resources out there to learn web dev at the moment. I also thought the course was a bit lacking on teh JavaScript front. There were only a handful of exercises out of the 67 total that focused on this.
 

I am so fortunate to have stumbled upon the CareerFoundry during my research for a career change. I studied Psychology in college and had worked in tech for some time so I wanted to make a shift into a career that would make use of my degree while being relevant in today's workforce. 

The coursework is extremely well curated and includes outside links to articles and videos that can help further explain the lesson. All homework tasks have a relation to a real work environment, from learning how to write an email to your team about design developments, to understanding how to approach your stakeholders, to going through all the stages of a design cycle. 

I always felt supported by the advisors, mentors, tutors and careerfoundry staff I was in touch with. When I had to extend the course several times due to medical issues they were extremely accomodating and comforting. I felt championed by the CareerFoundry from start to finish and even after finishing. 

I am grateful to them for what I learned and for providing an all star platform for me to finally make the career change I have been needing to make. Thank you CF!

I would recommend the UX design course, it gives you the basics, you get a holistic overview after the course and you'll know where and how to develop your skills afterwards. Don't expect to be an experienced top-notch designer at the end of the course, but it definitely helps in your career. I got even two job offers within a month after I finished the course but I also have to admit, that the challenges were higher at my new workplace than expected. Creating wireframes for an MVP (for a UX case study) won't necessarly prepare you for the challenges of a real app with a complex navigation. As I said, it's a great course, but be ready to make an internship in this field after you finish the course.

CareerFoundry was a decent bootcamp. The staff is great,very helpful and supportive. I just finished and still looking for job. Hoping CF will be able to place me somehwere :)).

I want to say one thing here. Maybe its just me, but my experience with my tutor and mentor has not been very good. I was not getting response for questions from my mentor and only got a response when I submitted an achievement. I was told that for day to day queries I should talk to my tutor but my tutor was also very sparing in his responses. I have the option of changing mentors but I already had 3 changes as a result of mentors leaving or something else, so I decided to not ask for a change.

Some of my other friends have had good experience with their mentors....soooo...

Another thing is I think the curriculum could be revised to include more javaScript and small coding exercises for each lesson. I am going to meetups and I feel that there is still lots to learn (which might be the case with most bootcamps).

Overall my experience was good, there is lot of support and help from slack community and for the price I paid for the course I think I got a good output. I will still keep learning more courses from careerfoundry as when u pay for one course you get lifetime access to all other courses as well so thats a terrific deal in my mind and a big selling point.

I signed up for the web developer course due to the more affordable cost compared to some bootcamps. I ended up leaving after one month. To the company's credit, they did offer me a full refund due to my dissatisfaction. Below are the reasons I left.

-- Their curriculum is confusing and not clearly written. I understand they are a German company, but that's no excuse to have unclear, run-on sentences and poorly explained directions. I spent hours just trying to decipher what they were asking me to do. I would end up signing on to my (paid) Team Treehouse subscription and watching their video on the same subject just so I could learn it. I am not the only person who had this experience, just read the other reviews.

-- My mentor hardly bothered to reply to me, and when she did, she would either only partially answer my question or just send me a link to StackOverflow. Bear in mind I had already searched stack overflow and read the same threads she sent me, on my own. I am not paying a large sum of money for somebody to google my question and send me links. In addition, she would take days to reply, often not replying at all. It got to where I didn't bother asking anything any more.

So, to sum up, the curriculum was not even on par with the free courses out there. And the mentorship, which I think is most of what you're paying for, was basically nonexistent. One bright spot was my 'tutor' (who is considered more of a lower level helper I believe). He was actually wonderful and helpful, even though many times he could not answer my question and ended up googling things himself. At least he actually TRIED to help me, which I appreciate.

The company asked me to reconsider leaving a negative review online because it can hurt their business. I did think about it a lot and I let a month pass by before I decided to write this. In the end, I feel others should have the opportunity to weigh my experience before spending money. I feel that the curriculum and business model at CareerFoundry needs a significant amount of adjustment before it would begin to be more effective than other online sources already available for much less money. I believe they are motivated to keep improving themselves and they have told me they are already making changes to their curriculum based on my feedback. However I cannot recommend them as of the time of this writing. 

I am writing this review because I think that CF is perhaps heading in the wrong direction and needs to fix some things to be truly great. I sent this feedback to them so they know what I think, but I don't know how seriously they have taken my concerns and I think potential and new students need to know what they are getting into. I started the Web Development course in March and finished in September. 

The main issues I think need to be addressed: 

1. The new tutor/mentor system. Incompetent and inexperienced tutors. I believe that CF may be hiring less capable tutors to cut costs (and improve their graduate statistics.) 

I was undertaking the course during the switchover with the new tutor/mentor system. I was unhappy with it, so was able to switch to the old system. My problem with it: my tutor was very bad. She didn't seem to know what she was doing, she gave me code with mistakes, told me to just look at the code of other students' submissions when she didn't know what was wrong with mine. She couldn't help me when I had problems and had to refer my code to my mentor to him to look at and fix. He later told me I had all these mistakes in my code (which was code my tutor had given me.) 

My tutor had only finished a coding bootcamp this year. She was not capable to tutor others yet she was given a tutoring position. I see now in the Slack channel that CF graduates are becoming tutors after completing the course. If you are taking this course for the tutor/mentor system, you may be very disappointed as I do not believe these tutors are experienced or knowledgable enough. I was extremely lucky that I could switch back to the old system, but all these problems wasted about a month of my time. 

CF really needs to get back hiring experienced and capable tutors and mentors, otherwise the quality of their graduates' work will go down. 

2. I found no value in the Placement Team. I think they need to be better trained.

I am not sure how well they have been trained in terms of what students are learning and what companies are looking for. I constantly see job postings in the Career Slack channel of developer jobs, but many of them are for other languages. I realise that some students may have Java experience or C++ or whatever language, but I am guessing that most students only have Ruby on Rails experience which they learned from CareerFoundry.

Also, as my boyfriend is a tech recruiter for several Berlin startups, I trust his opinion and knowledge of what companies want. Some small things posted by the Placement team as advice, my boyfriend disagrees with. 

I was lucky to not have to rely on the Placement Team for help as they never sent me any job leads or anything like that. While my contact with them was pleasant, it was nothing of real value. For those reading this review though, do not be discouraged. While I was able to get interviews with companies thanks to my boyfriend's connections, the job I took was one I had applied to on my own. So, it can be done. I found a frontend position within two months of completing the web development course. 

Another thing to note:

The javascript / jQuery side of this course is very light. You will need to take additional courses (even free ones like codecademy, freecodecamp) if you want to become a frontend developer. 

TL:DR

This course says its written for beginners, but its not. The lessons are written by something other than a human being, and you will spend a lot of time asking other students to help you understand the instructions needed to complete an assignment. This course will make you feel dumb and confused. Also, you don’t really learn much – this course consists of a lot of “copying & pasting”.

1. You don’t really learn anything.

Yeah I said it – actually I typed it. Everything in this course you can find for free somewhere else. And I promise you, it’s just a google away. Do you want to know how I know this? I spent so much of my time looking at other resources than what CF had written it it’s lesson.You learn Bootstrap, Javascript ( haha that’s a joke – you actually just copy and paste javascript- you don’t learn anything.), APIs, and Ruby on Rails (haha another joke!).

     2. The Course is written by something other than a human being.

One of the things that bothered me was the way things were phrased in the course. Apparently this course was written for beginners, but I beg a differ. I spend about 2-3 hours just trying to understand what CF is trying to say in a lesson than I do actually doing the work. I have to re-read things 3-4 times and it makes the work very confusing. That’s not what I paid for and it’s absolutely frustrating.

    3. Mentor/ Tutor

One of the things I enjoyed was the Mentor/Tutor. But I undrestand why they are needed – they are needed because students have a hard time understanding the instructions that have been written in the lessons. The tutor and mentor are the only things good about this course. The tutor I had was super helpful and the mentor really helped me understand the industry.

As a current student at CareerFoundry, I have struggled imnesly. Every time I start a lesson I immediately get depressed.  I think to myself – “ Here goes another 3-4 hours of wasted time”. I really wish I would have gone to a different school or spent more money. If I have to spend $10k -$20k for something that I can atleast understand – I will TAKE IT! You may be wondering why I’m still enrolled – its simple – I spent money and now I can’t get my money back unless I graduate and then wait 6 months to get a job that never comes. Only then will I get my money back. I honestly feel like I was robbed through this course. I advise anyone considering to just think long and hard about what they value most from an online school. Once you've established what you want cross CF off your list.