CareerFoundry

I felt it was necessary to put this up here as CareerFoundry has done a whole lot in the last four months that needs to be recognized so future students can get an inside look at how well the school is progressing.

I started just a few months ago and prior I was extremely skeptical being within the UX community for quite a few month prior to that. I got the chance to give CF's completely new curriculum and school a go as one of the first students to hit the ground running when they released it. So far I am extremely happy with everything and couldnt have made a better choice looking back at the anxiety I had choosing a school.

I have a wonderful Mentor and Tutor who support me the entire way and have different jobs when it comes to making sure I succeed. The community on Slack is wonderful and you always feel like you have other students by your side as if you were going to normal college. The course is well laid out and definitely not easy, you need to put your head down and dig right in to make sure you are getting 120% out of all the material they provide as there is an abundance of information you get on every topic along with assignments, direct feedback and skype calls from your tutor and mentor. The layout is well planned and visually beautiful as well as they just updated the look and feel again of the course which has made it easier to navigate and see your progress.

The biggest skeptiscism I had with all the UX and UI bootcamps was job placement. This is something that I know for many people feels like a safety net almost if your coming from a unrelated field and making a leap of faith. CF has a full blown team dedicated to not only working with you on job placement at the end, but from day one you'll see specialist hanging out in Slack getting involved in the community with different events like portfolio challenges or local meetups and special holiday events. This really intrigued me when I first saw it because not once in the past have I EVER seen involvement like this from a career team. I could talk to any of them about anything from accountability meetups to improving my resume. Super useful!

I could go on for hours about other things that have pleasently surprised me with CF but I dont want to waste anyones time here. All in all 5/5 for CF. The experience has been wonderful and I look forward to continuing and finishing my journey as a student with them!

I signed up for CareerFoundry's "Web Development" course with the belief that at the end of the course, I would be ready to apply for junior-level jobs in my area, as per their online promise.  I was suckered in by their cutesy-poo story of some developer who was unemployed and after three months was working as a freelance developer.  That may be well and dandy, but it would be nice to see a roadmap as to how to go down that path.  But this is my review of CareerFoundry.

PROS

CareerFoundry is affordable.  It is cheaper than other bootcamps where you pay 10% of your mortgage, but you pay for what you get.

My mentor was nice and knowledgable, but per CF you are only entitled to one Skype call per week.  So Google and StackOverflow become your friends.

The community on Slack is (somewhat) engaging.  There's a lot of "Hi, I'm from [insert country here]" where you can meet other people.

CONS

CF is more geared toward UX/UI development and freelance web development.  So if you're looking for support in web development for a company, you won't find it here.

There are NO CAREER RESOURCES.  No help for technical interviews, job preparation (they don't do placement), resume writing, nothing.  Sidenote: how do you call yourself CAREERFoundry and provide no career support?  They claim to have an "extensive job network", but that's for European jobs in UX/UI.

The majority of their lessons leave a lot to be desired.  They say that no programming experience is required, but if you've never even looked at HTML before, you'll be blown away by the early assignments.

Good luck asking for help on the forums.  I've come across problems with assignments and tried to post questions and received no help.

Your portfolio consists of "two" projects: the personal website and a Ruby on Rails app.  Nothing to really impress a potential employer.

If you're a PC user, you will struggle with the RoR portion and they provide no support.

Bottom line is, you can go through Treehouse and get the same skills at a fraction of what you pay for CF.  I cannot recommend this program to anyone.

I am finishing up the UX course now and overall I think it was a decent experience. I am the type of person who can easily commit to self-learning, but I like the structure of a lesson plan, so CareerFoundry was perfect for me. You do a series of lessons online over the course of 3-6 months that eventually compile into a portfolio. A portfolio is key to landing a UX job, so I thought CF would be a good fit for my goals.

The curriculum was generally good but not without its flaws. I am transitioning into UX from a related role, and I think certain parts of the course would have been a huge struggle without my previous experience to fall back on. Some lessons were pretty hit or miss at times or seemed vague in their instruction or strangely ordered. For those reasons, I would probably recommend this class to someone either with at least some previous tech experience or a little self study under their belt. I think someone completely new to tech might struggle a little bit. That being said, CF does seem to do a good job of giving you an overview of the various responsibilities a UX designer may have, which allows you to get your feet wet and figure out what type of role you want out of your next job. 

My mentor was very nice and was somewhat available. I can't speak for all the CF mentors, but I know my mentor was very new to the UX field (less than 6 months). If you're expecting to have direct access to a senior UXer as your mentor, you might be pretty disappointed. I haven't checked back on this, but I could have sworn that CF promised their mentors had at least 2-3 years of field experience, which is clearly false. However, it is a self-learning class, so as long as your mentor is knowledgable enough to help you where you need it and you don't have tons of deep industry questions, the mentorship should be sufficient.

CF doesn't offer any job placement, which you might not really expect for the price anyway. It is much much more affordable than something like General Assembly, which at press time is charging $11.5k for their UX class. Even with all the flaws of CF, I can't imagine General Assembly being over 6x better. For what its worth, I know many people who have gone through the GA courses only to seriously struggle to find work... CF certainly won't make you immune to those obstacles, what with so many industry newbies flooding the market with only bootcamp experience, but if you are resolved to take this route, you might be pretty happy to have that extra $10k in your pocket while you look for work...

Overall if you're looking for a way into UX, CareerFoundry is a decent option that doesn't require you to quit your job or take out a second mortgage against your house. Obviously or not so obviously to some people, tech bootcamps are not some magic way into a perfect, high salaried tech job, but CF is a less risky option due to its pricing and flexibility. I would say its a good investment for the money and would be especially useful for current tech workers looking to expand their skillset or transition their career if UX is a lateral move.

The content was decent, although there were plenty of errors in the lessons, some that would completely throw off your learning until you inquired to your mentor or the community only to find out it's an error in the lesson. I'm not clear on why these things weren't corrected immediately, even after they'd been brought to the attention of CF multiple times.

My mentor was very little help. This is the worst part since it was the EXACT reason I signed up...for mentor access. He was often not available when he said he would be and often took a week or more to respond to questions or lessons. Also, we are promised 12 skype sessions, I got exactly 0 (it appears they no longer provide that, lol). My guess is this is more mentor specific, as many other students have raved about how responsive and helpful their mentors were. So, you'll want to make sure you get a good mentor and if you don't, ask for a new one.

Also, there isn't any job assistance whatsoever. The "student success manager" never checked in, although I received a few automated broadcast emails with general advice. I was surprised that after six months, there wasn't one personal check in.

Because of these issues, I can hardly recommend the course, not for $1900! Maybe $300. I have used Treehouse for more than a year and the content and overall quality is outstanding (unfortunately, there just aren't any mentors...for now).

The title speaks for itself. I researched many diffrent schools and bootcamps, but having a wife and a baby on the way, I needed somthing I could do from the comfort of my own home. I also wanted someone to keep me accountable, and then I found Career Foundry. With their online course and mentorship program (and don't forget the awesome price!) I decided that it was the program for me. I started my journey into Web Development in July 2015 and completing the course within 6 months, I applied to a company and after 45 mintues of sending out my resume, I got a call to come in for an interview and was hired on the spot! I now work for an amazing company, building fully responsive websites and enjoying every moment of it.
I definitely would recommend Career Foundry.

I took the web developer course with CF.  Well written material overall, and it directs you to start building a profile page a small portfolio that you can leverage when you're finished the course.  I finished the course material in 3 months, and spent the next 2 and half months rebuilding my own project.  Course material is good and understandable.

The mentorship piece is where everything falls apart.  Obviously your mentor's will not know everything and part of code is learning how to Google many of your problems -but the mentors seemed disengaged, often just told me to Google my problem (like I hadn't been doing that for 2-3 days already) and many times are not easy to get a hold of even during their scheduled hours to help.  

I signed up with CF for the mentorship and cost, and I can't say I regret using their program, but just be cautious if you are looking at the mentorship piece as a key deciding factor on using CF.

If you are beginner in the field please avoid this UX designer course or you are in for a bad time. No previous experience necessary? That's not true at all!

The first section asks you to write a proposal to a company including an analysis, timeframe and pricing. Sounds great? Well, don't expect to get any help or material relating to how to write a real project proposal. In fact, the majority of the material was completely irrelevant to the task and the little help you get are some outdated links to web applications and blog posts. The submitted answers by fellow colleagues are clearly made by professionals with previous experience in the field.

Finally, the platform is buggy. My mentor didn't receive some messages or the submit button wouldn't work. I have also noted some sudden changes in how you are supposed to submit a project without prior notice. For instance, all of a sudden i'm supposed to use Adobe's Behance to submit my paper without explanations on what it is or why. My colleagues, however, were able to send their papers as PDF files not long ago.

I tried to like this course and i believe that I gave my very best. But I seem to get more from a good book at a tiny fraction of the cost. The mentor is nice but Skype calls only once a week are not enough since the course material itself just leaves you hanging. Overall, I regret my decision to pay such a large sum of money and i cannot recommend this Careerfoundry course to anyone.