Coder Foundry

This is a great boot camp. I had previous development experience. In 12 weeks I've grown immensely as a developer. From the onset, the instructors are very all senior-level developers with years of experience. I loved building the real-life projects that we build in the boot camp. The instructors teach you to leverage your projects in interviews. If you want to become a .net full stack developer. This is the boot camp that you need. I got a job under a week after completing the boot camp. 

Great bootcamp. The projects were incredibly valuable and the way they teach you to leverage them in interviews made a huge difference in my interview process. The staff are all senior-level developers with years of experience, no TAs or recent grads teaching courses. C# and .NET are awesome tools but very complex and I appreciated having skilled developers teaching us how to use them correctly. I HIGHLY recommend coming into this bootcamp with a good working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as these are really easy to teach yourself and will allow you to focus more on learning the ins and outs of C#/.NET rather than struggling with the basics. I had self-studied HTML/CSS/JS for about 6 months using some Udemy courses prior to starting and it definitely made my life easier when I got to the bootcamp because having a foundation in JavaScript made it easier to transition to C# and let me focus more on learning how .NET worked. Overall I'd say this is the best bootcamp out there!

I held off from writing this review until I got my first job. I attended the April-June 2020 cohort. They don't give public rankings but I was told at one point that I was one of the top 2 students of my cohort. The benefits of that were getting to do interview practice with Bobby, the founder. That only happened twice, and instead of doing interview practice every week we skipped it for the last 4-5 weeks.

The good: Jason and Drew were the instructors for the course. They're both very approachable and knowledgable. I learned a lot from them. The portfolio you build is pretty good, if you put in the work. If you fall behind or write crap code that works but is obviously the wrong way of doing it, you won't have time to fix it and the instructors won't have time to hold your hand through the entire process. Which is a good thing in some ways. You won't have someone holding your hand once you get a job, you need to be able to do your own research and meet deadlines. That being said. You need to a moderate amount of knowledge and a lot of extra time to meet the deadlines for coursework. So in the positive, you get a pretty stellar portfolio and learn a lot of relevant information in 12 weeks.

The bad: The biggest problem I had during the course was they let anyone attend. The tests they have you do before accepting you are a complete joke. We had people in the cohort who didn't know what HTML and Javascript were. A decent amount dropped from the course in the first couple weeks but not before severely slowing the class down. By the 4th week we were a full week behind. This continued to be a problem as the coursework gets harder by the day and people who were behind face an increasingly difficult battle of catching up. To put that into context, we started with 25 students and only 12 were at our graduation.

The bad after graduation: Natosha and Mary-Hannah are the recruiters for getting into the bootcamp and they're also the job placement advisors. So basically, they're stretched way too thin to be effective. I'm sure having to choose between recruiting new students which earns revenue and helping alumni find jobs is a pretty easy choice. I had a couple messages never get responded to only to hear back a week later about a job they were presenting me to. After a couple months I knew I was really on my own and put all my efforts into job hunting on my own. Due to Covid-19 it took me 7 months to find a job after graduating. Out of being told I was an amazing candidate and I was being presented to an employer that had hired CF grads in the past a couple dozen times, I heard back from only 1 employer. They ended up hiring one of the weaker candidates in our class, who knew nothing coming in and barely graduated. Their tech stack was about 15 years old so it's probably a blessing I didn't land that position. However, I probably had to apply to about 300 jobs before I found employment. Getting a job as a junior dev is probably the hardest thing I've ever done. Getting flooded with rejection emails takes a toll on your sanity after a while.

Looking back: Coder Foundry definitely helped me but I would not do it again. For the amount of money you pay, you should be getting support from more people. if you decide to attend, I highly recommend knowing moderate levels of logic in at least javascript and being extremely comfortable working in html and css. Also know that regardless of what they tell you, getting a job after graduating is going to be very difficult and they probably won't have time to help you.

I came into the course with passing knowledge of front end web development, but it was nothing near the level of what is taught in the course. This is a boot camp not a laid back college style class. You will be pushed, you will wonder if you're going to make it, and in week 12 I looked back at my week 1 code and wonder how I ever wrote code that rough.

Jason / Antonio (main instructors) and Greg (TA) are both knowledgeable and, more importantly, approachable. In addition to teaching the requirements they also make themselves available to help with any tangents a student might go on.

While there are no group projects or group work collaboration between students is encouraged. Students who are further along are encouraged to assist other students, this both saves instruction time and reinforces the knowledge of the student doing the teaching.

I can't express how amazing this bootcamp is. After having a terrible experience with another program, I felt that I would never be able to successfully pursue this type of career, but Coder Foundry changed that for me. The staff here is so friendly and inviting, and they truly care about your success. Their support goes far beyond just teaching the cirriculum here, as they spend so much time focusing on developing your career and finding placement for you. I wasn't even able to complete the course because they found a position for me! They really went above and beyond to ensure that I got hired. They believe in what they are doing and will push just as hard as you do for your success. I won't lie, it is not an easy feat, and it certainly isn't for everyone, but if you put in the effort and truly dedicate yourself, wonderful things will happen. Coder Foundry can make dreams come true!