CareerFoundry

I am now 2 months of 3 into the Web Developer course from Careerfoundry. 

You get daily text lessons for which you have to submit exercises at the end which are then revised/approved by a Tutor. At the end of each chapter you have to submit one project which is video reviewed by a Mentor. You also get  a total of 4 Skype calls with the Mentor. 

The first part of the course you work on a single page portfolio with HTML, CSS, JavaScript & jQuery. The second part is learning Ruby on Rails and creating an ecommerce app. 

First of all, the lessons themselves are limited and short, and not always easy. They can serve like the thread to climb along but won't be helping you enough by themselves. You do spend most of your time researching the internet and learning from outeside sources. I myself am enrolled in 2 other Rails courses in the internet, which are cheaper and explain the Ruby on Rails framework better. So why this course?

Well, the good part ist that you have a Tutor at your availablility which can help you out if you get stuck or have questions. My Tutor is quite available and really knows his way around Rails, so I am quite happy with it. My Mentor is also really professional and his video reviews are always very helpful. All in all it does motivate you to keep going and that is something that helps many people to not give up. 

A part where the course is lacking is the student community. You actually don't have any contact with your fellow students. There are some Slack channels but they are not very well visited because it is not enforced. Which is a pity because collaboration and team work are important parts of being a developer, too. There is a commenting system on the lessons where students can ask questions about the course, but 99% are not answered so you are better off just asking your poor Tutor. I think in this area, the course could improve and enforce the students to help each other out more. Additionally it would be great if someone would take care of those student questions, which sometimes arise due to unclear or outdated course material. 

The course comes also with a "Job Prep" course, which is supposed to help you change careers. I have not finished that part of the course yet, but what I have seen of it is indeed helpful. 

I feel that the idea of the course is really great and that it you can access it with a "Bildungsgutschein" is wonderful. But there are areas where the course could really improve, like the student community, and the lessons could be revised a bit more often. Finally, I personally don't think that the course is worth 3500€, but that is really my opinion, as I would expect a little more for that money. But it can help you to become a Rails Developer if you really fully dedicate yourself to it and use other courses and start your own projects soon - and it is a wonderful alternative to other courses that are available with a "BIldungsgutschein" - so my review is still 4 of 5 stars. 

 

CareerFoundry was definitely one of the best trainings I have done in my life. Indeed, I received on top of the skills acquired during the course some proper coaching from my mentor Darren (thanks again mate!) and the super friendly career advisors. What I enjoyed a lot is that my experience as a student was outstanding before, during and after the course. Indeed, CareerFoundry is not only teaching UX but really embed those human-centric principles into every single touch point with its customers and stakeholders. This is a true inspiration for me on how UX can be applied at scale within an organisation and its ecosystem.    Of course the program in UX design was for me the beginning of my learning journey as I continued to upgrade my skills in disciplines such as UI design, service design or even coding long after the class was over.    But the course helped me to find my true calling and to gain confidence in my abilities to drive a UX project from the brief to the final delivery. When taking the class I worked as a business developer for a Fintech company, I now work as a business designer for the innovation department of Nordea, the leading bank in the Nordics. My work consists at leading innovation project from facilitating workshops, prototyping interface or services to testing with customers. I still apply the UX process I learned during the course to the projects I run on a weekly basis.

I enrolled the UX design course in December 2016 and finished in August 2017.
I had a basic knowledge of design and psychology from my previous jobs, but I was totally new to a tech field.
At the beginning, I easily and often got overwhelmed because there were so many things to learn. I wasn't sure if I could finish the course. It was not easy and very challenging. But more I learned, more I enjoyed, and eventually my anxiety disappeared.
I am sure I couldn't have completed the course without the help of my very passionate and encouraging tutor, and very precise and perceptive mentors.
There are still lots of things that the course doesn't cover and I have to learn on my own. But I felt I was quite ready to start my career as a UX designer after completing the course.
Following the advice from the awesome career specialists, I updated my resume and LinkedIn, and a few days later a design director from a digital healthcare company got in touch with me asking if I'm interested in a UI/UX designer role, and eventually I got the job!
Even though it's an online course, I got to know very inspiring people such as my tutor, mentors, career specialists, other students etc... and I will be in touch with them for sure!
Taking the UX course was definitely one of the best choices I made in my life :)

I wanted to do a UX course for a while and tried to study UX on my own. Because there are some many websites, blogs and free courses out there, I didn't know where to begin. That's why I choose to follow a UX course at Careerfoundry. I hated going to university: studying books and writing papers was very boring to me. However, I love the UX Fundamentals course in Careerfoundry because you can start building up your portfolio right away. The exercises are hands-on, very practical and exciting! I really appreciate the help from my tutor and mentor, as they always gives me helpful and motivating feedback. What I like the most is that I can immediately start using my new skills in my current job. I would definitely recommend this course to anyone who is interested in UX!

Very dissatisfied with the Student Advisory team. More of that later.

The course is tough! Taking up more time than expected but I'm progressing and on track to finish on time. If you're a beginner like me, treat this as a full-time course. You may find it difficult to stay on track if you devote only 20 hours/week.

One thing I do not like is the excessive amount of links the lessons throw at me. Ruins my flow. I'd spend a bunch of time finally understanding a section, go on to the next section and get links to read up on other stuff. This happens a lot and pretty much in every lesson. It's overwhelming. Hard to determine which links are important and which ones I can save for later. If I were to go through each link, it would take forever to complete the course. Not ideal for a beginner programmer. Intermediate or Advanced, okay. But I'm not gonna read through all this stuff. I would have liked something more streamlined.

My tutor is okay. He responds to my lesson submissions within 24-48 hours. Maybe on 1-2 occasions, past 48 hours. If I'm stuck and send him a direct message, he'll respond in a couple of hours. 24 hours the latest. Good luck if you have a PC. It's hard to progress once you get on Achievement 3, Ruby. Easier if you have a Mac or Dual boot Ubuntu. Tutor wasn't able to help me with my PC problems so I ended up having to take my Mac out of storage to continue on with the course.

Not a lot of activity on the CF message boards. A lot of questions go unanswered. I might get better success on Slack but I don't see a lot of students posting lesson specific questions so I never bothered. From what I've seen, most of the posts on Slack are for career placement.

My mentor knows his stuff well. Hesitant to reach out to him, however, as he's very busy. He's a contractor for Career Foundry and I was encouraged to reach out to him on Slack only when it is urgent or if I'm really stuck on something. He also didn't sound too confident when I asked if he can help me get up and running on Achievement 3 using a PC. He said he'd try his best. I opted to just get my Mac out of storage. Our communication, for the most part, is via webchat. I have about 8 sessions(up to an hour) total. I need to have a list of questions prior to each session to make the most out of them. Outside of these webchats, it's tough to send quick questions.

I'm basically on my own. They highly encourage Google and Stack Overflow to solve your own problems and only reach out to your tutor/mentor when you absolutely need it. Since they take up to 24 hours to respond to you and not much activity on the message boards, it's hard to get a quick answer.

The course is ideal for intermediate/advanced programmers but for a beginner who needs a little extra hand holding, I feel the human element is strongly lacking. This brings me to the Student Advisory team. These are the guys you reach out to if you have general questions, concerns, requests for tutor/mentor replacement, etc. I'd like to compare the student advisor I was paired up with to that of a robot. This person felt that copying/pasting blocks of text to answer my questions was sufficient correspondence. Questions were only partially answered. I complained about it and another advisor volunteered to replace her when I considered dropping out of the course for a full refund. I believe you have a week or two to back out before you are financially committed. The thing is, once I agreed to stick with CF and knew I wouldn't get a refund on what I currently paid, the replacement advisor stopped answering my emails. It's funny, the only genuine conversations I've had with anyone throughout this experience were with the sales rep when she was selling it to me and the replacement student advisor who assured me I wouldn't have to go through the same frustrations I've experienced with the first advisor when I was thinking of getting a refund. When money is involved, I know they would put in their best effort to address your concerns. After that, you better be lucky you're paired with a good advisor, tutor, and mentor. In my personal experience, I've observed that CareerFoundry is driven most by revenue and will put in a minimal effort into my growth and development and a web programmer.

I haven't started on the job placement portion of the course yet. I'm only halfway done. Don't need to wait, however, to complete the course to write this review. I've already formed my opinion of CareerFoundry. They get 1 star for the overall experience, but I'll add an extra star because I am learning(ever so slowly) and for the job guarantee.

This course is really worth your time and investment. I was a COMPLETE beginner with a small tech anxiety too, so it was a challenge for me even see myself as a competent member of the tech industry. Of course, the imposter syndrome is still there and will stay for a while, but I cannot deny myself the huge progress I've made since the beginning of the course.
It is all down to my tutor/mentor team, honestly. They were so patient, helpful and knowledgeable, that I learned a huge deal from them. No task was ever approved just, so I get pushed along - NO, even if one took me weeks, it had to be on a great level for them to accept it. That's what I wanted, I don't want to finish a course and still have no idea what I'm doing - I put in the work, they gave me their attention and perfection seeking attitude. I genuinely felt like I'm seeing online products with completely different eyes, notice things that I've always taken for granted and seeing the difference between the good and not-so-good UX design.
The curriculum is great, easy to understand and presented in a non-techy language, so I was not confused at all, yet learned everything I needed to know (including the properly explained tech lingo).
You get to use industry standard software that makes you feel confident about entering a workplace.
Staff is super helpful, friendly and positive.
Even though I haven't yet finished the course, I can see that the career team is very active and full of energy to help me find a job as much as they possibly can. I talked to a career advisor once already and had a great session, I can do that as much as I want with CF, whenever I need some advice or say an interview prep session. They are like energy volcanos with a passion for getting things done.
There is simply nothing I can think of that I was not very impressed with and you can trust me, I'm not easy to please ;)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

I'm coming to the end of my UI Design course and I must say I'm a little sad that's it's going to be over soon. I have learned SO much & my confidence as a designer has excelled exponentially. As much as I'm excited to start applying my newly found skills to the real world, I am going to miss Career Foundry. I will especially miss the indepth, encouraging, timely and constructive feedback I've been receiving from my tutor, Henrietta Creedy. I recommend this course to all - especially those who think they have no business meddling in the world of tech. I was nearly computer illiterate before I started. Now I consider myself a Sketch master and a UI Designer on my way to the top!

CareerFoundry was the best decision I could have ever made. I make a transition from Graphic Designer to UI Designer and it was really easy because of the Curriculum and Mentors The school has. My mentor was always open to give me advice, critic my work so I can enhance my skills and also there were 12 calls available which was awesome. After finishing my course I got my first job as a UI Designer in just 1 month and about 2 weeks. They have some career specialist you can contact so they help you on your job hunting. 

Honestly CareerFoundry is growing and for now, I think is the best online tech school. Before enrolling I look for others courses and curriculums and the most completed and interesting was that one. Every chapter was well developed with enough information to understand each topic, examples and of course the orientation of your mentor. 

I'm very happy to have made the decision to go with CareerFoundry in my career change from the dead-end, unfulfilling role of audio/visual engineer to UI/UX designer. Being very creatively-minded since young, I think I had a strong advantage when it came to studying this course and finishing it in 4 months. 

It covers the fundamentals of (UI) design as well as UX in order to start working in this field. You'll finish with a solid portfolio, however, after I completed the course I still created a few more projects to add a bit more diversity to mine.

The Career Change Achievement helps in refining your CV, cover letter template and in general prepares you for entering the job market, but I think this is where you have to do most of the legwork. I haven't seen many job opportunities come directly from the career placement team, but I've been busy applying for jobs myself over the past two weeks or so since finishing. I've had two promising interviews so far with another tomorrow, and I'm confident that I will have a full-time job shortly. 

I am 26 years old Indian women who's marriage stayed only for 4 months and struggling to get justice. In such a terrible phase of my life I could not think of anything. I was completely shattered but CareerFoundry platform is the Only ray of sunshine into my life. For a girl like me who is been dominated by society and family became confident about herself. Careerfoundry helped me to envision , plan , take actions to redesign my life again. My tutors and mentors are always supportive. Whenever I get stuck whether in code or in some personal problem by tutor is always there to guide me and help to resolve issues. Slowly and gradually with the course I am becoming confident in my skills and knowledge . Slack community is always active and provides huge resources. Its career specialist team is there to help to get the job that we love and offers 100% full refund if we don't get job we love. Also helps in grooming our interpersonal skills , building resume and making us a better version of ourself. Everything is transparent and this build a confidence between me and CareerFoundry. Today I will say joining CareerFoundry was the best decison of my life. I will always be obliged to the entire Team of CareerFoundry and proud to be a part of its family.

I started with my Certified UX Designer Program in February. I was a bit concerned since I work full-time and the program requires aprx. 15 hours per week. But so far, it works perfectly. I managed to have two dedicated days per week to study in the evening and a half day at the weekend. So far, I am in time and had not to skip a social event.

The class itself is super much fun although it is very challening. I am working as a customer relationship manager, so I know a bit of the topic, but there is so much to learn that I would have never expected before. It is interesting because of very good written texts, links and great examples to get further information, but no videos. When I was at University, I studied history, so I am used to dealing with a lot of text. Therefore for me the style of learning is perfect. Content-wise I do learn a lot about design theories, flows, how to sort and structure thoughts and insights, as well as to present my findings. 

The programm is sheduled in doable lessons. One takes me an evening or sometimes more, when I have to shedule interviews or other appointments.

My tutor gives me extremely detailed feedback, much more then I expected. This helps me a lot, especially when I think I did well and than get so many new perspectives from my tutor how to improve.

I am happy to learn so much more until my graduation in December 2017!