| | Stanley | The Iron Yard is one of the most challenging parts of my life. The course is very intense, so you must be all in. Slackers will not make it. Students are given all the resources needed to succeed, so there is no reason for anyone to fail. Before TIY I had been teaching myself PHP for about two years. The Iron Yard taught me in two weeks more than I had learned on my own. The knowledge they give you is not obvious when teaching yourself. It would have taken me another five years to know why the things they taught me are important. These twelve challenging weeks cut years off of my learning curve, and has taken my career to the next level. I now work with developers who come from many backgrounds, and about half of us are TIY grads. Life has never been better. |
| | Marshall Thompson | I attended the Fall Cohort in 2017 at the Greenville campus for Front End Engineering. I was working as the IT Director at a small marketing firm prior to making the decision to pursue web development as my career focus. I had some experience with front end technologies prior to starting the course as the job required me to be versatile, working with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and some PHP. For me, the first few weeks seemed like review for things that I was already comfortable with (however, I was still learning and loving every moment of it!), but I knew that sure enough it would get harder as we dove into libraries and frameworks that I had no prior experience with.
The course is definitely designed to get those with minimal skill up to speed quickly. There is some pre-work that should be done prior to day one - I highly recommend anyone looking to switch to this field via immersing themselves at the Iron Yard, or other code school, to do the pre-work and some exploration on the topics because you won't be spoon-fed every minute detail. Being a resourceful self-starter is a crucial skill to have not only in this course but in professional life as well. We had a good bit of practical application and some computer science theory (although I wish there was more time for that!)
I started to struggle about half way through when the course started to dig into the meatier parts of Front End programming. Having the little bit of experience that I came with helped me think through the daily assignments, but there were a lot of new ideas being presented around software development that required a good bit of trial and error and googling. A pro of being enrolled at the Iron Yard is that there is help nearby should you need it. The instructors and assistants are there to help you along should you need it, but be prepared to explain your issue thoroughly, what you've tried, and also be ready to listen in for clues as to how to solve your problem. They won't flat out give you the answer at first, but the staff in Greenville is great and they care a great deal about the craft and helping you earn your stripes to get started in this industry.
TIY in Greenville also offers student housing, which was a huge plus in my situation. I had to uproot and move to Greenville for the 3 months that was required to be immersed in the course. The apartments are an extra cost on top of the tuition and are for students only, so be prepared to supply some extra funds for that. They're reminiscent of your typical 2 bedroom college dorm with a shared bathroom, kitchen and living space. The apartments are only about a mile from the campus building downtown and there are bikes in the hallway for students to use but they may need some TLC to be ridable. I brought my own bike to ride and it was about 10 mins either way and about equal parts uphill and downhill on the route that I took.
The Career Services at the Iron Yard are worth signing up for. They provide mock interviews, both behavioral and technical and have much experience in the matter of resumes and portfolios, so they know what works. Listen to them. After you have completed the course, you may opt in to the Career Services support program, where you'll have some time to design and build a portfolio site (to take advantage of your sweet coding skills you've been building up for the past 12 weeks!). You will get in what you put out of this portion of the process. You'll be expected to apply to a certain number of job postings per week and you'll periodically have contact with your Campus Director on the progress of any leads that lead to interviews and second interviews and more. Since the Iron Yard is geographically positioned in certain cities, they'll have plugs into local businesses in the area and can introduce grads to potential employers.
Overall, the experience is a worthwhile one if you're willing to put in the effort. You'll make friends with your cohort mates who struggled alongside you into the wee hours of the morning trying to get projects done and turned in. You'll likely check in every once in a while in slack to see what all is going on with all your mates and may even ask or offer help. It's a great community to be a part of and may lend itself to be a great networking resource various times in your career. If 12 weeks sounds impossible to learn everything - well, it is. What you gain at the Iron Yard is a wealth of working knowledge in and of itself. However, I believe they hope to instill in all of their students that burning curiosity to keep on learning and getting better with time, and that is what anyone in this field should be doing to stay current.
Having landed a job as a junior developer 4 months after graduation, it felt good during orientation/training being able to recognize patterns and making good guesses at what technical things were and asserting how they worked and might be used. You most certainly aren't guaranteed that sexy startup gig, or a job using the latest and greatest frameworks that you just learned about at the Iron Yard, but you most certainly will be able to mentally parse the technical things you weren't totally sure about beforehand. Remember to keep on learning, find a good mentor and never give up! Making the investment in yourself to take your career further is a daunting task, but can be done with some willpower and motivation, and I think the Iron Yard is well equipped to get you started on your journey! |
| | Joe Bumbuli | When I began this course three months ago, I could hardly write an html tag and css. I'm proud that in the past two weeks, I created and coded a functional web app using React and Redux (javascript frameworks). In reflection, I'm blown away by the amount of knowledge and exposure I have been given in front-end web development. The course curriculum builds depth and confidence in HTML/CSS and Javascript. While it would have been helpful to be more exposed and knowledgeable of javascript before entering the course, I was able to build a strong base to grow. The Iron Yard environment is very supportive and values a diversity of voices. We were given opportunities to meet and be exposed to other professionals in the Austin tech community. What I've witnessed and experienced at my time at TIY is that you truly get out what you put into the work. TIY supports, nurtures, and creates a strong environment to learn how to become a developer. |
