Software Guild

I went into The Software Guild hating and dreading Object Oriented Programming, since throughout the years I had tried and tried and tried to get my brain to wrap around the crazy concepts. What I learned at the Guild though, is that those concepts weren't crazy at all. The best thing that the Guild does for you is break down big concepts/problems into simple small ones you can understand and teaches you to do so on your own too. As soon as you start the bootcamp, boy it does feel like a bootcamp. Things happen so fast and the days go by in a blur. First week in, and I realized I know more Object Oriented than I ever did before. I couldn't believe how much information we were given in 1 week, but at the same time it was NEVER overwhelming. The pressure was there, but it was never so insane that you couldn't keep up. As weeks went by, I realized how comfortable I had gotten with something I had dreaded so much all my life. I even got a job in programming in my 10th week there.

The reason I say it was the best decision I ever made is because it really did turn my life around. The curriculum is designed to help you succeed. Everyone at the Guild is invested in your success. The instructors, the TA's, the alumni, and literally everyone else. I got great advice from each of these at some point that helped me not only in getting a job, but doing well in it. Especially having the support of my instructor Dave Balzer made a huge difference. With him around, I never felt like I had no one to talk to about my struggles and challenges. I could go panicking to him with the stupidest of problems and he would help me calm down and find a solution. That I would say is the best thing about the Guild. The kind of support system you get here is unmatched and if you work hard and want to succeed, this is the best place you could be at.

These guys make programming look easy. 

I attended the Java 2015 August cohort with Pat Toner as my instructor. This program was an incredible experience and helped change my career. 

After studying programming on my own for roughly a year, I knew that I needed help not only understanding more challenging concepts but also job assistance/advice. The program is designed for complete beginners with no experience in programming, but since I had almost a year of programming under my belt, my experiences may be different than those who come to the program with no experience. I found the pace of the course to be challenging at times, but overall manageable. The program begins with the basics but quickly builds off of that to give students a solid foundation of not only programming skills but also useful and sought after skills like the software development lifecycle (SDLC), Agile, N-Tier Architecture, and methodological thinking. Although the program moves quickly, there was always an instructor or TA that was available during and after class hours to answer questions, give advice, or give a more in depth explanation of things covered in class. Both the instructor and TAs were extremely helpful, informative, and went above and beyond to make sure that everyone understood concepts and themes. 

One of the most important and worthwhile things about this program for me was learning how to be a full stack developer. Sure, there are a lot of tutorials to teach you specific things like Java, SQL, or HTML, but this program helps you put everything together to build dynamic web applications. I strongly believe that I would have not been able to learn all of this had I not attended the Guild. Another thing that I really appreciated was that the curriculum was up to date; I learned things that employers were looking for. In my current position as a junior developer, I have been able to apply what I have learned from the Guild and build upon them. The curriculum gave me a solid foundation that prepared me for my job. 

It is important to note that you get what you put into this program; you can't expect to master everything if you only work during class hours. Putting in extra hours before and after class and on weekends makes concepts easier to understand and master. Since the program moves rather quickly, it's important to put in that extra time so that you can understand concepts and not get left behind. 

On to the one of the most important things: Jobs. Obviously, this program is a huge investment, and every student attends the program hoping to walk away with a development job. The Guild does a good job helping prepare students for interviews and helping them find jobs. During my cohort we had several events to help us prepare for jobs including resume reviews, LinkedIn reviews, and, of course, the "speed dating" event where students were able to meet with employers. Outside of these events, you can reach out to your instructor or TAs for further assistance, which was extremely helpful for me. The Guild also has one person that is solely designated to find employers to higher Guld graduates. Unfortunately, the person that had this job during my cohort did not do a great job helping students, which was frustrating and one of the only bad things I have to say about the Guild. However, that person has since been replaced, and I have heard very good things about their replacement. To make finding a job easier, I would recommend that you not limit yourself to the companies that the Guild partners with; be proactive! I applied to multiple companies before most of my peers, and I believe that it helped me find a job quicker. It's recommended that you apply for jobs around week 8 or 9, but I started looking at job postings around week 5 or 6. Looking at job postings help me understand what skills and qualities employers were looking for, which, in turn, help me know what to study up on more. I received a job offer by week 7 or 8, which I accepted. I believe that most of my peers started receiving job offers after they attended the "speed dating" event. 

Overall, I feel like the Guild was a worthwhile investment that help prepare me for my current position. It's given me the necessary skills to be a developer! 

TL;DR- Worked my butt off, learned a TON, and ended up with an amazing development job! 

I spent several months researching different bootcamps, languages offered, reviews of bootcamps, and job placement stats.  I picked The Software Guild (previously Software Craftmanship Guild) because it had some of the highest ratings, offered a more stable and professional language (Java/C# instead of simply web development), and had job placement %'s as high as almost anyone else.

The instructors were very knowledgeable, always willing to answer questions, assigned increasingly difficult and complicated work, and very easy to work with.  The work itself scaled very well starting with learning C# then adding in SQL and javascript to build increasing complicated programs using all 3 languages.

One thing to be very aware of is that you MUST ask questions if something is unclear.  Do not assume that you can catch up later, the course is almost too fast for many students and you will not have time to figure it out on your own and then catch up on new material if you are lagging.

Final note, for some it is possible to learn programming without attending a bootcamp.  I probably was one such, however the ability to have instructors to help explain difficult concepts/problems, the solid hiring network, and the pain of having paid money all make a huge difference in where you end up.

I graduated from the Software Guild in May 2016.  I was in the Java cohort.

1. It was a tough program.  The pace was frantic, especially at the beginning. 

2. There were times we were going so fast, I didn't receive the kind of feedback I was looking for.

3. The material, opportunity to practice, my fellow apprentices, and the quality instruction from Austyn Hill made this an overall great decision for me.  I had done an online bootcamp that was excellent, but the Software Guild filled in a great deal of understanding I was missing.

I have been working as a full-time software developer since May.  My experience at the Guild prepared me for real dev work.

About me:

-Career change

-36

-No programming background

-Bachelors and Masters in another field, non-technical

First and foremost, one of the best decisions I've ever made. Went from manual labor to actually getting paid to think and solve problems. I spent two years learning on my own and by the end of week 2 I covered everything I knew plus more.

This is very very demanding of your time, but if you have the right attitude and self-motivation you'll get back twice as much as you put in... if not more. The best part of the experience was the teacher, Pat Toner in my case, and utilizing his decade + long career and knowledge to help better my understanding of software engineering.

This will be your entire life for 3 months and at times you will feel very stressed. But the guilds reputation and the success I've seen just from my class leads me to be able to say I highly recommend this course to any one serious enough learning how code.

I attended the Febuary 2016 C#/.Net session in Louisville. While the coursework is no cakewalk, the instructor (with ~10 years experience as a .Net developer) was very helpful along the way. He helped us focus on what we're expected to know as a junior developer, and made sure that we had ample amount of time to go over any material that gave us problems. In addition, the classes are small with mine having 6 students.

The Software Guild placed me in front of some of the biggest companies/recruiters Louisville has to offer. Employers were impressed with what we were able to do with sush a short time, I was hired immediately after the program. I currently work for GE Appliances and I get to use my experience from the Software Guild to build and grow their website. With all of the knowledge, technology, and employment opportunities the Guild has to offer, this bootcamp is worth every dollar.

I was part of the Java cohort at the Software Guild from Feb to May 2016 in Akron, OH.

My background: I got my bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 2012 and worked for about 3 years in the offshore construction industry. While working on a side project, I started to learn web development on my own. My interest in programming grew and I decided to pursue a career in software. I considered the option of going back to school to get a computer science degree but it was way too expensive and time consuming. Luckily, I came across information about software bootcamps and immediately started to research into them.

Why ‘The Software Guild’? I spent a long time looking into several bootcamps but I finally settled on the Guild for 3 main reasons:

1. One of the few bootcamps that teaches object-oriented programming along with web development. OOP is a very important concept in computer programming and the course is designed in such a way that you will be learn and implement OOP principles.
2. Awesome instructors and staff. They’re all pros with many years of experience and a passion for programming.
3. Low cost of tuition. Total cost of studying at the Guild including tuition, accommodation, transport etc. is considerably lower than other bootcamps on the East/West coasts.

Is it hard? Yes and no. You will be bombarded with a lot of information over a short span of time. Some concepts are difficult to understand right away and need time to assimilate. However, if you put in the hours and utilize the resources that are available - you will have the “eureka” moment where all the pieces fall into place and make perfect sense.

What’s the outcome? You will learn and implement OOP concepts, unit testing, n-tiered design, web development using MVC design, agile software development and also various other dev tools and technologies. If your aim is to get a job after the bootcamp - rest assured the skills that you will learn at the Guild will put you in a good position to apply for entry level software developer jobs.

Conclusion: The curriculum at the Guild was cohesive and relevant to the requirements of my first job. This helped me transition into my new career as a Software Developer and has provided with a solid foundation of knowledge and skills. I would recommend the program at the Software Guild to anyone who is serious about a career in software development.

I attended the Software Guild's .NET track in 2016 at their Minneapolis location and I had an exceptional experience.  The staff is professional and the coursework is very relevent; teaching you the skills that you need to get hired.  I already had an MBA before entering the program and this was a fast-track way for me to jumpstart my career in the tech industry.  The Software Guild puts on an employer network day where students interview with a number of potential employers and although this was an extremely valuable opportunity I didn't attend because I had already accepted a job offer and this was 2 weeks before graduation.

Don't think you'll be handed a job though.  It takes a lot of hard work and dedication (on average I probably put in 60 hours per week) but as long as you put in the time and effort and you enjoy programming then you'll be rewarded in the end.

I highly recommend The Software Guild if you are looking for coding bootcamp that will help you land a job. Before I enrolled I showed the "Full Stack Java" curriculum to a local IT Project Manager and she thought it looked excellent. As it turned out, the Guild did exactly what they said they were going to do. I got a VERY intense 3 month FULL-TIME experience (plus a 6-8 week "pre-work" part-time segment). I agree with other reviewers - you will not have any time to do anything else during this bootcamp.

Within 2 weeks after graduation I ended up getting an excellent job offer and although I just started I can tell that my Software Guild education will serve me well in this job.

The instructor in Minneapolis - Michael Gaffney - was excellent. He was very patient and very knowledgeable. The split of lecture/lab time was good - there was plenty of time to work on Pair Programming (or Group Programming) projects in class. But I also needed lots of time outside of class to work on individual exerices / projects. You should plan to spend about 20 hours per week outside of class working on projects. Some could certainly get by with less but I would not count on being able to do a part-time job while taking this class.

I was especially impressed with the tools we were using in class. The company I'm with is using the exact same Collaboration / Source Code Management tools. And the emphasis on "Agile Development" in class is also very impressive. That's one of the first things my Project Manager friend complemented.

I had IT experience but not in object-oriented programming. So this class was very challenging for me even thought I had some experience. It might actually be easier to learn OO programming if you haven't done other types.

The support given to us - by the Instructor, the TAs, the Career Services expert, and the administrative staff was superb. And it's a very good sign that we're still a part of The Guild even though our Cohort is over. Overall - I was impressed that The Software Guild delivered exactly what it promised and enabled me to land an excellent job in IT Development.

The Software Guild is exactly what it says it is, an intensive program that will pound you with information and you will get out of it what you put into it. If you think you can hold a job while in the cohort, you're wrong. This program is challenging and requires 100% of your focus and dedication, so if you can't take three months to be a full time student this is not for you. That being said, I could not have asked for much more than the education and job placement that I received at the Guild.

I atended a small liberal arts college for 5 semesters before leaving. I did not feel I was receiving a worth-while education from Luther College and began searching for better opportunities. Eventually I came upon The Software Guild and had a great experience with the Instructors, Students, and and every other aspect of the guild. They are very professional and sincerely want each student to achieve their goals of being a software developer.

The one aspect that slightly shook my confidence was the fact I did not have my Bachelor's degree. However, I do want to note that I am currently employed as and associate developer and absolutely love my new job. In my job search, I became slightly frustrated with employees that would overlook my abilities simply because I did not complete my bachelor's, even though I had just completed the same cohort with the same classmates that did have their bachelor's. But I did still get two job offers a week after graduating as did my fellow classmates without degrees.

Bottom Line, know you want to write code for a living and dedicate yourself to the course for 3 months and you will almost definitely have a job at the end of the road. The software Guild has opened the professional world to me and supplied me with any assistance I needed along the way. Absolutely no regrets and I would do it 1000 times over again. They greatly surpassed my expectations and would not trade what I learned at The Software Guild for anything.

I know most of these reviews sound too good to be true, but they're not. I graduated from The Software Guild's Java Cohort, and this is my actual experience. No one at the Guild edited it, or looked it over, or influenced it in any way. It is 100% me.

The Short of It:

Was it worth it? Yes! I now have a salaried job with good pay, benefits, and an amazing career in front of me, and I got this job through the Software Guild. After 4 months of training, and three months of job searching, my starting salary was more than double what it used to be. The other members of my cohort had starting salaries similar to mine. The numbers don't lie. If you can commit the time and effort, it will pay out, and your life will take a change for the better because of it.

The long of it:

Background

My previous experience before the guild was in the education sector. I had worked as an adjunct professor for a couple years, and wasn't even able to cover all of my bills doing that. I was very frustrated, struggling to keep the lights on and the wife and kids fed. Like many others, I believed that having an advanced college degree would make me more desirable and employable, but my career had not taken off like I had expected, and despite years of hard work, I was not seeing any end in sight. I had actually decided to go back to school and become a dentist (like most educated folk, thinking the answer to my problems lay in more schooling) when my sister randomly sent me an article about some guy who graduated from a coding boot camp and started a career soon afterwards. I was initially hesitant to believe such claims, but began reviewing different boot camp, their published success rates, and whether or not attending one of these boot camps was actually a viable option (are these places legit). After a couple months of looking into it, I was unable to uncover very many negatives, and most of the rave reviews I read of these different camps seemed genuine. After the wife and I talked it over, I decided to apply to one of these camps and see what happened. As I was emailing back and forth with a boot camp in Denver CO, I happened across the Software Guild's website, and saw that they were opening a new location in Louisville, where I was currently living. After talking with the guild for a couple weeks I applied and was accepted to Louisville's first Java cohort (and quit my dead-end labor job that same day).

The Program

The coursework of the guild is intense. Class is held 9-4, M-F and requires hours of work after class every day in order to keep up on the assignments. Like many other reviews have pointed out you are learning many different technologies (Java, CSS, html, JavaScript, maven, spring, git, etc.) and it is all coming at you 100 miles an hour. It is confusing learning so much at such a rapid rate, and not knowing why you're learning it (it all becomes clear as the cohort continues), and the stress can really pile on. If I could only give one piece of advice before going into the guild it would be DON'T FALL BEHIND! I lost my babysitter for a couple weeks in the middle of the cohort and was unable to keep up with all of the assignments, and I was almost not able to graduate. I had to dedicate myself and stay till midnight almost every night in order to catch up, and I still did not graduate on time with the rest of my fellow classmates. If you can’t commit the time and effort, then this program is not for you.

The Staff

Well, I can't say enough good things about the staff. Here is a quick review on each of the people we had contact with on a day-to-day basis:

Austyn

She is the lead Java instructor, and is awesome! It probably felt like pounding her head against a wall sometimes, but she never gave up. She would attack things from different angles, and try to find different ways of explaining it so we could all understand. And she only got better as the cohort continued. When I was having problems understanding the course material, she took her personal time after class and tutored me one-on-one. Her commitment to her students was very admirable. Even after graduating I occasionally email Austyn with a question or two, and she is always willing to point me in the right direction.

Erin

As Operations Manager, Erin is in charge of the day-to-day operations of the cohort, and she is always quick to answer any questions you may have. When I was drowning in back-logged assignments, I cried out to Erin for help and she arrived the next day with a written plan on how to get me the help I needed. That was very comforting.

Jacob

Jacob is the hiring manager, and works with you as you job search. What you learn at the guild is phenomenal, but what really sets them apart is their hiring network. You can teach yourself the things the guild teaches you (albeit in a much longer time frame) but you can't leverage the hiring network and skill that these boot camps have access to, and that's where Jacob comes in.

After I graduated Jacob and I sat down in his office, set some goals for my job search, and then Jacob would have me email him my excel spreadsheet every week and follow up with me on every lead I had (or call me to task for not applying to as many jobs as I said I would). We talked over the phone or in person at least once a week, usually twice or more. He would email me jobs he found and thought I would be a good fit for, and was always working to make connections with companies that he could exploit for my advantage. His advice and tips on how to be more effective in my own job searching were invaluable. And he did this with every one of the Guild's graduates. Having Jacob in my corner while job searching was what made the difference between success and failure when it came to finding a job.

It was Jacob's job to build the Guild's hiring network, and he is extremely good at it. A week before the cohort ended he set up a meet and greet with around 12 or 15 companies and we had a sort of speed dating activity where we signed up for so many time slots and spent about 20 minutes with each company. A couple of the guys in my cohort got hired by companies they met at this meet and greet. When it comes to finding a job after graduating, Jacob Knight is the best resource you have at the guild. The job offer I eventually accepted was from a company that Jacob introduced me to.

The Result

**A quick caveat: I do not recommend falling behind. My experience graduating late was a very stressful one, and I would not wish it upon anyone. If you are applying to The Software Guild, or any coding boot camp, you need to be dedicated to it 100%. You need to make sure your spouse, or family, or significant other understands that you will be otherwise detained pretty much all day, every day, until the cohort ends. If you are having difficulty in the guild, then clear, early communication is imperative. If you can commit the time and effort required to be success at the guild, you will get a great job and career from it. If you can't, I believe the guild now offers a 9-month, mostly on line program that is a little slower paced.**

When graduation day came, I was not ready. I knew it, and the guild knew it. Erin, Austyn, and myself all sat down and we worked out a plan so I could graduate. I followed the plan, and a month later Erin and Austyn signed my graduation certificate. But the best part about that extra month is I felt like I was ready to work as an entry-level developer by the end of it. That was one of the great things about the guild to me, they don't just take your money and throw you through a program and hope you make it. They are invested in their students. If they hadn't been, I wouldn't have graduated.

I received a job offer right around the time I graduated in January (the rest of my cohort graduated in December) but it wasn't the right fit for me, and I passed on it. 90 days after the cohort ended (to the day) I received another job offer and am now working as a Software Developer with a great company, and my career has no where to go but up. A huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders, I am able to cover all of my debts, and then some. Out of the seven people in my cohort six of us now have jobs in the software field (the last guy was self-employed).