Ironhack

IronHack has been one of the most incredible experiences I’ve lived.

The professors were very good in their fields, always attentive and very close, although some of them never taught before. The TA (Teacher Assistant) was alumni on the first edition so... Read More he could understand our situation and helped us in every moment. However, the best of the bootcamp were my classmates. The selection process was very good because all of them were very motivated, hard-workers, fast-learners and close people. We helped ourselves in every problem, worked hard until 6am if necessary, and improved our programming skill together.

I highly recommend IronHack if you want to learn programming with top-teachers, incredible classmates and in a short period of time, but be prepared to work hard every day, because when the say intensive, it’s really intensive.
I started IronHack with almost zero programming skills, and now I’m able to make powerful webs by myself. I never thought of learning so much in this time.

Pros:

Barcelona: The location is beautiful and affordable. I enjoyed living there immensely, was able to meet a lot of locals, and lots of great people in general. It's also relatively inexpensive and very walkable.
Staff: People are really friendly, and... Read More I want them to succeed
Instructors: About half of our instructors were great to fantastic and we learned a ton during their weeks.
Class size: We had just 10 people in my cohort and we really felt like a family by the end.
Atmosphere: It's very laid back, and a comfortable and safe feeling space.
Network: They have a good Barcelona network, which is great if you want to live there and have an EU visa.
Job assistance for EU citizens: They have a strong network in Barcelona and can get you interviews. Instructors and speakers will also be looking out for you and helping make connections. However, once my colleagues who are EU-citizens left Barcelona they found that assistance dropped off like a cliff and there was minimal communication.
I learned a ton.

Cons:

Staff: Despite their friendliness, communication was a huge issue. Even before class started, I missed most of the Hangouts because I didn't realize the times were being posted to Slack. Emails were not returned in a timely manner before, during, and after my session. People were defensive when offered feedback. I was often told "So and so will contact you about your concern." and then silence.
Instructors: Two of our instructors were awful and it felt like they just wasted a week of our time which is a big deal when you are only studying for 6 weeks. We basically had to relearn everything we learned from our first JS teacher. They made up for the bad CSS class by bringing in a great instructor later on, but it meant we lost a day of working on our final project.
Curriculum: It was frequently commented by my colleagues that it felt like we were being experimented on too much and I agree with them. We alternated between JS and Ruby instruction and the context switching was very confusing. They started us off the bat with Ruby and OO which was completely overwhelming for most people our first week.
Visa sponsorship for non-EU: You will probably not be able to find someone to sponsor you for a visa. I wanted to stay and it seemed like it should be doable (I was one of the strongest students in the cohort), but even though there was some interest ultimately what I heard was it's way too hard to sponsor and very few companies are willing to do it. You are limited to large foreign companies and even then it can take 3 months.
Job Assistance: Good or bad depending on your needs. I'm going to move this out of the bullet, so read on below.
We lost internet for a few days and last a ton of class time as a result. They didn't have a contingency plan so we had already lost almost two days before they found us a temp new space. Internet was pretty consistently bad the whole time we were there.

Job Assistance:

They were great while I was still in Barcelona, but as soon as I returned back to the states they went silent. I had previously decided with the cofounder that we would work on Barcelona until I left and then switch to SF. After two weeks of silence (I pinged a couple people during that time), I sent another email and this time they apologized and said it was a new guy's responsibility.

I scheduled a Skype call with the new guy and I thought maybe things would improve. Well, he sent me a list of sites with job postings. And then the next week he sent me another email with one more site with a job posting. In the meantime I was adding the jobs I applied to on to a spreadsheet so they could see my progress.

I did know that they would have less of a network in the states, but the cofounders are well connected. So I knew that it would take more effort on my part. However, job placement is absolutely crucial for any startup bootcamp, and Ironhack is expanding in to Miami. To succeed in the more competitive bootcamp market in the US, you need to cultivate relationships with companies that are specifically interested and willing to hire bootcamp students.

My expectation was that they would reach out to companies and pitch Ironhack and their students– in other words be proactive. What actually happened was they checked my spreadsheet and if they knew someone there they put me in contact. Which is helpful and I don't want to discount that, except 2/3 of those contacts were for companies were I had already gotten myself an employee referral and since their contact wasn't in a position to hire me they couldn't really provide me any assistance. In my opinion this just isn't aggressive enough because if they can't hit a high placement % then they are doing good enough.

Ironhack's response is that they are working hard and this is what they told me I'd get, so if this meets your expectations you wil be fine. If not job placement is really important to you, you may want to look elsewhere.

Tl;dr: Can be good depending on your needs. They can help you get jobs in Barcelona if you are eligible to work there, but if you want a lot of help for a non-EU job search they are limited to providing contacts to companies you've applied to. So far from my cohort the only person placed through Ironhack was hired by Ironhack.

Summary:

It was a fun experience overall, and I don't regret it. I did learn a lot despite the hiccups. However, I can't help but feel like they could have done much better and the communication was consistently a huge issue. I felt frustrated by the time wasted because of bad or unprepared instructors and bad internet. I felt like they missed a lot of important topics such as code reviewing and interview prep. And job assistance didn't meet my expectations at all. So yeah, YMMV. Living in Barcelona though, that I can recommend with no hesitation.

I'm an American who attended the September 2014 Web Development cohort in Barcelona. I came to Ironhack with little-to-no programming background, though I had dabbled in web design/some front-end stuff in the past and had (unsuccessfully) tried to learn... Read More some Ruby on my own. I had already applied to a few other bootcamps in the US when I heard of Ironhack, but as soon as I was admitted, I knew it was the best choice for me. Not only had they already had many successful cohorts in two different locations under their belt, they also offered scholarships for women, and a great location (Barcelona!) to boot.
I won't sugarcoat it and claim that Ironhack isn't difficult, challenging, and at times frustrating- but ultimately, these are the things that made me realize I had made the right choice. I always felt challenged, but if there was any doubt in my mind about a certain topic, the staff was always there to help and give me the support I need. While the program offers a certain degree of freedom and autonomy that might be intimidating to some, there were always people watching and making sure I was understanding everything, which was comforting.
Apart from the actual program and teachers, the connections one makes throughout the programs played a vital role in developing our skills as programmers. We connected with the local tech scene, but also learned the necessary soft skills to network in any part of the world.

Overall, it was a truly wonderful experience. I finished my cohort just a few days ago, and have received job offers and requests for interviews from many different companies around the world, which was my goal. I built my own (pretty great) app from scratch, which I would have never assumed I'd ever be able to do at the beginning of the bootcamp.

I can fully recommend IronHack for any of you wanting to learn real-world practical programming skills in short time span. I am a Norwegian student of Computer Science, and before IronHack, I really enjoyed programming. However, every time I intended... Read More to apply some of the knowledge I had learned at university and tried to build something for myself I would eventually reach wall I never managed to succeed. No matter how many online tutorials I went through, I would always reach gaps of knowledge that were to big for me to overcome. That is the main reason my I applied to IronHack. I wanted to get exposed to the entire process of building an entire application, and be able to see how the independent elements connect with each other. This full-stack understanding is exactly what IronHack provided me with. It took all the knowledge I had previously learned about at university and linked it with each other offering the whole picture. With the knowledge I learned at IronHack, I can know build any idea that comes through my mind, or at least prototype it.

Everything else about the program exceeded my expectations. The instructors were all from leading companies and surprisingly good at communicating in a didactic manner. The course also gave you the opportunity to interact with the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. Throughout the boot camp, we had very interesting speakers come by to explain their products to us and to discuss any topics we would be interested in raising.

In conclusion, if you are thinking of attending IronHack, do not think twice. There is only one thing I regret about IronHack: not having applied earlier!

Asistí al primer bootcamp de desarrollo de iOS que han hecho los chicos de Ironhack y la verdad es que solo tengo buenas palabras para describirlo. Aprendí en solo 2 meses profundos conocimientos sobre Cocoa y Objetive-C tanto es así que tuve la oportunidad... Read More de publicar un articulo que recibió muy buenas criticas en un blog de desarrollo iOS de referencia en España y ¡¡no había programado nada de iOS antes de entrar aquí!!

Y no solo los conocimientos, hice muchísimos contactos y grandes amigos. Creo que uno de los puntos mas fuertes de Ironhack es que te hace formar parte de la comunidad de desarrollo existente. En nuestro caso, íbamos a reuniones de la NSCoders en Madrid y así conocimos a la mayoría de profesionales de desarrollo iOS. Gracias a Ironhack conocí a mucha gente, que aun ahora después de acabar el curso, sigo en contacto con ellos casi todos los días.

Por ultimo mencionar que a pesar de mi situación especial como estudiante universitario y que por lo tanto a la hora de buscar trabajo yo solo quería puestos de media jornada y que me respetaran el horario de la universidad, tuve varias ofertas y ahora mismo estoy trabajando desde casa a media jornada en una empresa con producto propio y en un equipo de desarrollo espectacular.

Excellent product. Great experience. Worth every euro.

I´ve been involved in digital products for years (VP of product in 2 start ups) and felt like I needed technical knowledge to become a better professional and a better entrepreneur.

After the Ironhack... Read More I am now capable of:
i) digging into a complex RoR application, understanding the way its back-end works and being able to contribute code myself solving tickets in the pipeline
ii) building from scratch a RoR application using best practices
iii) having a better understanding on how several digital technologies are created, the way they evolve, grow and interact with each other

Ironhack excels in several ways:
i) Great teachers. There was consensus within alumni that 9 out of 10 teachers were simply outstanding.
ii) Great materials. Most of the alumni will be using materials from the Ironhack as a guide and as a repository of knowledge to come back to from time to time for review.
iii) Great student selection process. An adequate mix of backgrounds, including technical profiles, entrepreneurs and technology corporations engineers has created a rich environment which contributed to both a great leaning process and an unforgettable networking and bonding experience.

I met my main goal, which was to improve in all product related aspects of a digital product start up, from product ownership to pipeline planning or technical hires.

But most importantly, I now feel capable of building a digital product, a process which I am passionate about, challenging, addictive and enjoyable at the same time.

I was part of the first English run of Ironhack in Barcelona, and it was an amazing experience for me. One, I learned a lot. I could now build simple web applications on my own with Ruby and Ruby on Rails, as well as Javascript. The program was really... Read More intensive because the curriculum had to move very fast, that sometimes even on weekends we still had to practice just to get ourselves ready for the following week. Second, I like the learning environment. The people who also got accepted into Ironhack were equally motivated and passionate to learn. The TAs (Teaching Assistants) were very supportive and answered our questions. Our coordinator was also very helpful in finding jobs after the program, although most of the job openings were just for start-ups in Barcelona. The teachers and speakers were professionals and I also liked that we each got a mentor for our final project.

I attended the Ironhack Madrid Bootcamp on Jan 2014. I am a frontend dev, web designer and businessman and wanted to learn to code my own applications, not only design them. Ironhack was definitely the best choice. After the 8 weeks, I could code my own... Read More product from scratch, becoming my own developer, emphasizing on best practices and clean code, testing, etc. I recommend this awesome experience to anyone that wants to learn to code , make great networking, and build great, tested products.