Makers Academy

I believe you've heard many Makers graduate saying that they love Makers and those 12 weeks are their best time of their life ever. I heard that too from several of them before I started the course, and I could hardly ever believe it. It almost felt creepy and I rather felt rebellious and decided that I wouldn't be one of those worshippers of Makers Academy. As you could tell, I failed; I genuinely LOVE Makers Academy and I honestly recommend this school to anyone who's considering changing their career.

I was a Pastry Chef before Makers for various reasons, but I had always wanted to work on some intellectual career. I studied Python on my own for a year, but felt like it wasn't going anywhere. I couldn't decide if going to Makers was the best option even after I paid all tuition (I...

If I had the chance to go back in time to the day when I made my decision on which Bootcamp invitation I would accept, I would choose Makers Academy again. Great CV, great projects and best practices all in a friendly and welcoming environment.
Don't doubt it go for it!

I did this course last year. Totally recommend it. I've got a degree in AI and used to be a software developer years ago, but when I tried to get back into dev work it still wasn't easy. So I decided to do a boot camp. Dedicating 3 months to nothing but coding would get me back in the right frame of mind I thought as well as showing potential employers I had commitment. It would also be a start getting up to speed with the latest tech.

I looked at the options and chose this course carefully. It's exceptionally well thought out. In many respects it's the most helpful training I've ever done - even more so than my degree. If wondering what's the most useful stuff you can cram into just 3 months, this is it. If you're a complete newbie then by the end of it you still won't know very muc...

Makers Academy was undeniably the best educational experience I've ever had. That's coming from someone who has a degree, MSc and an ACA qualification. This is due to a huge number of reasons but I have tried to mention the most pertinent ones for me below.

1.) The coaches are genuine and authentic. They really want you to learn and are driven to improving not only you but themselves. Feedback is taken seriously and if someone makes a comment like 'that was really helpful' the coaches will jump on it, they want to understand why what and how and they use that to constantly better themselves. This is what makes them so good.

2.) The coaches inspire you to solve your own problems. If you get stuck and call a coach over they won't just tell you the answer. Instead, they will reframe...

Makers is not only a great coding school with a well-thought curriculum. It's also a place, where you learn how to cooperate with others, plan your projects and talk about your challenges and successes. I took a big risk in coming to Makers, but now I think it was the best possible decision. The job support is also great - me as well as many friends of mine got a few offers. Most of my cohort found a job within a month after graduation.

If you wan't to be a Software Developer, Makers Academy is your place to be. The course is tough, but the principles, the methodologies, the techniques you learn, are in the highest demand on the market. You don't only learn to write code in Ruby or JavaScript, most importantly you learn how to learn. So when a company you apply for is working with C# for example, you put your 'Makers learning to learn' smile on your face and start writing your first lines of code with C#, without any hard feelings. After finishing the course, I've been writing code in Java and PHP for my upcoming interviews and for the sake of trying it out and thanks to Makers I was enjoying it even tho' it is always hard.
The people you meet at Makers are all and again, they are all amazing. The people I've met duri...

PROS - Learn the best coding practices from the best in the business.
- Increase confidence week on week by building on what you learned the previous weeks.
- Learn how to solve big coding problems in a scientific manner, starting by breaking the problem down then tackling the smaller pieces. This approach means you will amaze yourself with the complexity of what you are able to do by the end of the course.
- Learn to work in pairs and on group projects. In this way you'll develop the soft-skills that are becoming increasingly important in the industry, as well as using version control and git workflows to build your projects in a similar way to 'real-world' projects.
- Coaches are always on hand to help guide you and make sure you are asking the right questions.
- Excellent works...

- Really felt like I came out the course learning something.
- The course gave me confidence in the skills that I had learnt and I was sure that I could meet the job specifications for the jobs that I was applying for.
- Had a lot of fun playing about with different technologies.
- Improved my table tennis skills.
- GOT A JOB!! :)

Back in September 2017, after learning to code by myself for some time and getting nowhere, I have decided to do a boot camp course in software development. During my research, Makers Academy has always appeared on the top of the list for the top boot camp courses in London. I came to their demo day and I have been amazed by the web/phone apps every group has been able to build in such a short amount of time (the last two weeks of the course). I have decided to apply to Makers Academy and from the beginning, I liked how organised they were/are. You don't just apply and get a place. You have to prepare yourself for the interview and pass it, after studying all the materials they give you, in order to secure a place on the course. I actually didn't pass my first interview and have been as...

I took the Makers course in November 2017 and would thoroughly recommend it as a way of (i) learning the basics of software development and the standards expected in the industry, and (ii) "learn how to learn" new things fast and effectively.

The course is very much a hands-on experience, structured around pair programming and weekly challenges as opposed to formal lessons. I found it exhilarating and extremely effective but also very hard work. The atmosphere was incredible and support was also very good on both the technical side with the passionate coaches, as well as the human side with Dana being a superb joy officer looking our mental and physical wellbeing.

Finally the post-course assistance with job hunting was first class and just what I needed as a new developer

I may have stolen the review title from them, but it could not be more true. My passion for technology has reached a whole new level, and it is pretty much due to this amazing organisation. The whole system works pretty well. You need to be prepared to be challenged and to become a problem-solver. Luckily, you will have a lot of support from coaches and other fellow students, so the same is expected from you when others need it: to be able to help out.

It is a really intense experience, but it is totally worth-it!

The Curriculum:
-Workshops that have been improved with student-feedback for years
-Chances to focus on learning a stack you are into and build your own project with it
-A 'learn-to-learn' -focussed curriculum. This sounds like a cliché, but Makers Academy really teaches you how to approach learning a new language or framework.

The coaches:
-They are there to help you solve your problems, and by that I mean point you in the right direction so that it's you yourself who solves the problem.
-They take every single piece of feedback into account and are constantly updating and trying out new ideas for the curriculum

I think you need to be cautiously optimistic about the fact if i do this course i can get a job straight after. Whilst that did happen to a lot of the folk on my cohort, and my mentor struck up a job literally a day after completing the course! It did not for me. I am also profoundly deaf, so my learning process was slower and my job search even slower! I was still able to obtain a job within 5 months after completing the course! And on top of that I got to move up Yorkshire as a result! Makers teaches you how to code yes, but they were also huge preachers of self learning, self research and pair programming. I found pairing hard at first because of communication issues, however my coach was able to devise new innovative ways to expand on this such as 'silent pairing'. Silent pairing w...

The program is very well structured and is recognised by the industry as being the best of its type. The emphasis on TDD from day one puts the graduates of Makers Academy a cut above the rest of the bootcamps. Yes, it is very hard work and it is quite a fair sum of money. However, both of those things are investments in your future and I can easily recommend Makers Academy as being worth your time and money.

From 40-something crabby accountant to light filled software developer!
The best review I can give is, being made redundant in Jan17 as an accountant (with no programming knowledge), starting Makers Academy in May17 and then getting hired in October 17 as a junior software developer.
I can't recommend the course enough, it's incredibly hard but with effort and focus the investment can really pay off, I'm living proof a new career can be forged from this course (old dogs can learn new tricks!).
If I had to complete the course again I would have prepared a little more and gone in with extra programming knowledge but extremely happy I made the leap when I did.

I could write paragraphs about how great Makers Academy is, but I won't. It's all summed up in the other reviews...and it's all true. What I will say is that Makers enabled me to change my life. I was previously very unhappy in my career. I wanted to do something which I was passionate about, so I made the scary decision to change careers and pursue software development. I now work at one of the hottest tech startups (voted within the FinTech top 10 for 2017 and shortlisted for Best Use of Data & Analytics for 2018 - FStech awards). I work with some of the most brilliant and talented people in tech and psychology, building amazing solutions, learning at an accelerated pace and I love I what do. I never thought I would actually say that I look forward to going work.

It came with a LO...

I'm sure there are going to be a lot of people out there who will relate to my story. I started out coding early on in life and very quickly became disillusioned with the learning paths and degrees out there. The broadness and generality was tedious at best and everyone promised results and a job afterwards. In short I gave up my dream and decided that I would stay a bedroom coder and that was that.

15 years later, with 12 of those years spent in a dead end job, I had a conversation with a family friend who had gone through a bootcamp and walked into a job within weeks. I was sceptical at first but the more I investigated and spoke to people the more I was convinced that this bootcamp could be an option. An opportunity to take voluntary redundancy came up and recklessly I put all o...

If you love to learn, interested in coding and challenge motivates you and want to change careers then Makers Academy is definitely the place to go.
Amazing vibe, knowledgeable and patient coaches and the curriculum is the absolute best. You'll have the chance to learn the best codecrafting principles,
and the course enables you to reach your goals and become a better developer day by day.
Do they really teach you to code? I'd say the course gives you a very strong base that you can further build on. You have to put the work in if want this to work (just like with everything else), the course provides a pragmatic structure and guidance so you won't get lost in the maze of this beautiful new world.
The after course support is outstanding. They help a great deal to find you a job, an...

I can honestly say that Makers Academy was one of the best experiences I've ever had! I spent 3 months learning how to code in an engaging and supportive environment. The course is taught through pair-programming with guidance from coaches when required. I definitely learned far more at Makers than during my time at university, because it was so much fun. Whilst that might seem like a trivial statement, getting into software development (like most things in life) is difficult and is a career path where you have to carry on learning every day on the job, so having fun whilst learning makes it feel light and rewarding. In addition, the careers team at Makers have gone above and beyond to find the right role for me as soon as possible afterwards - I could not be happier with the way my ca...

Like a few other reviewers, my story is a little unusual in that I was a successful programmer in the financial services industry for about twenty years (using VBA & SQL). I was basically self-taught, but with some discipline I became significantly better using VBA than anyone else I'd worked with in years. Unfortunately, I was unable to break out of my comfort zone and I was seriously stagnating as a result. What's more, the jobs market was definitely not favouring my skills. My enjoyment of work and, frankly, my future viability were ebbing away and that's no way to live.

I tried a number of online training sites (both video and more exercised-based) in the evenings and early on weekend mornings. After some time I'd pick up a few keywords / methods in a language before stressi...