The Iron Yard

Prior to attending The Iron Yard: I had worked in software and hardware customer support for a total of 6 years. I have a bachelor's degree in journalism and had never used it vocationally (and still haven't).

While attending The Iron Yard: I attended the Front End Developer course in Greenville, SC. It was grueling, but always pleasant. I averaged about 14 hours a day, including weekends. Some less inspired students spent less than that. My instructor was brilliant, and pushed us hard, all while simultaneously entertaining us and giving constant encouragement. About 2 weeks were spent on HTML and CSS, 1 week on Sass and front end tooling (npm, Grunt, Yeoman) and then the rest of the course (7 weeks) was all JavaScript. I was the 2nd class to ever graduate from The Iron Yard, and they only had 1 location (Greenville, SC) at the time. They've since exploded with growth, and their curriculum has likely been updated, so this is probably not a reflection of their current allocation.

After graduating: I took a break and casually searched for jobs that I actually wanted to take, not just the first place that would take me. As I lived in MN, I voluntarily opted out of their job placement assistance as I was comfortable on my own, so I can't speak to the quality of their job placement efforts. Eventually, I took a contract job working for an ad agency in South Carolina as a front end developer building sites in WordPress for medium-sized clients. I worked remotely. After getting the amount of hands-on experience that I wanted for myself (about 6 months), I pursued a full-time position and got one almost immediately. Obviously, the skills acquired at The Iron Yard allowed me to attain both of these positions and change my career path entirely.

I spent 4 years of my life and ~$100,000 getting a bachelor's degree. If this had existed in 2005, I'd have been far better off skipping the bachelors, investing the money, and simply attending The Iron Yard.

I chose TIY because the advertising and the people I talked to said that I could go from having no coding experience to getting a job as a developer in 12 weeks. I did the prework that was assigned, but struggled a lot in the class. Although the instructor was very, very good, he had to go so quickly in order to cover everything that I felt behind by the second week. I complained about this several times, and now they offer more prework and a small weekend pre-course to help people start off better, but this didn't benefit me. I looked for a job for three months despite feeling like I was not competent to work as a dev and was finally thrilled when I was accepted into an apprenticeship program that was an additional 12 weeks of learning on the job. Additionally, TIY provided basically no help in the job hunt; I received no personalized leads, no help on my resume, cover letters or thank you letters, and once the new cohort started I did not hear from the admin people at all. 

If code school wasn't difficult, it wouldn't be worthwhile. I was looking for a challenging track from the start, but I did not anticipate the degree of competitiveness I actually saw. The curriculum was ambitious, but the teacher and other students were unbelievable.

You can go into this code school (and even the Python track) without prior experience. But the idea that this describes the majority of the students is a fantasy. Out of my class, I would rank about half of the students as heavily seasoned. Lots of people have some background, but want an "in" to data science or web-development. I suspect that Python, in particular, attracts more experienced people. Because of this, the assignments were brutal. Since we don't use a grading system, it's natural to compare yourself to other students. This is what results in escalating standards which leaves the entire class feeling overwhelmed. This model of education works well, and it results in people getting a lot out of the course. It's stressful, but it worked. This class had complete job placement for the last class, and almost all of my class was interviewing heavily within 2 weeks of graduation.

The role of code school has evolved over time. To be honest, the Iron Yard is the largest in most of the regions that it operates and I expect the smaller schools to go bust soon. The organization, networking, and resources TIY offer dwarfs the other options that I considered early on. Sure, you can save a few thousand dollars with another school, but you're more likely to waste your entire investment. I should also add that the Iron Yard is slowly watered down its original statements about a job guarantee, and then a job placement program. I can't say I ever saw such a formal thing as a "job placement program".

In fact, if I were to give any constructive criticism, I would ask to make the job-related activities more targeted. For instance, they give general advice about improving resumes. It doesn't matter. I've looked at the other student's resumes, and the people who draft bad resumes still draft a bad resume. Almost all of TIY students are college educated, and if they haven't taken resume advice so-far, they're not going to start with you. The only thing that helped was the portfolio-building workshop. If you want to be useful, you have to be nosy. There was no systematic data collection that went on, just good-willed staff at the office, and this counts for zilch in the big picture. They give prospective students numbers like "28 out of 30 students in cohort #1 found a job", but this completely ignores the fact that many of them already had a job lined up before they started. You can't make heads or tails out of these statements. If they would approach the problem more systematically, I think they would be taking advantage of a big opportunity while at the same time, cutting out a lot of the BS. Otherwise, they do a lot of things right, particularly with managing their network in the tech community.

Personally, TIY directly led to me obtaining the position I wanted. The job responsibilities overlap perfectly with what the class taught. I had prior experience, but the offer reflected that background as well. Many people have been frustrated with conventional University options and failing to translate that education into a career (even for skills in demand). TIY is much more effective. It fills a need that very clearly exists.

The way that TIY teaches isn't concducive to learning code for me and I suspect for most people. I learned very little from the instructor. Most of what I learned was on my own or from another student. If you're going to be learning on your own anyway, it makes little sense to pay someone exhorbitant amounts of money to "teach" you.

The style of instruction is that they go over material that's new in a very slap-dash fashion and then you're assigned homework. If you have little or no coding experience the homework will be problems that you're not familiar with and rather difficult. You're expected to figure out how to do these projects on your own. So the basic teaching methodology is to overwelm you with a problem that you don't understand but you "learn" through trial on error mostly on your own or with other students. It's hopped that understanding the problems and solving them comes with doing things through trial and error (and hair pulling?). But often you don't really know how to begin to solve a problem because you lack the experience and instructions to even understand what the problem is.

If you look at the literature in cognitive science about learning, you'll see that this method is the oppsoite of good pedagogy. There really are best and worst ways to learn. The best ways to learn is through breaking things down into smaller steps and to emphasize understanding at each level. It's not to overwelm with problems that's way beyond your ability and to "learn as you go". That's a recipe for burnout.

Now TIY might respond that since they have so little time (just over two months of instruction) they must cover things in ways that emphasize understanding at every step. However, most of the things you need to learn to be a fluent or expert coder will be learned outside of TIY anyway on the job.

It takes years to be a good coder. There's no short cut for that. So if most of the things you will learn is going to be outside of class, class might as well set you up with solid foundations steeped in understanding of core concepts. But TIY doesn't do that.

It's not only me who had this view, I've heard it from other students in my class as well. I dropped out after 5 weeks and others have told me that they thought of the option too. It just wasn't right for them and they weren't progessing in the ways they expected.

Again, this didn't surrprise me because as I mentioned, the learning envrionment isn't conducive to the type of learning that coders need. The style of teaching might be good for learning natural languages such as Spanish or Japanese but learning to code is far closer to learning math than natural languages (no surprise since the people who developed computer technologies were mathematicians and computer scientists) See the current research into learning math which suggests that the best methodology is essentially exactly the opposite of TIY's methodology.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/a-better-way-to-teach-math/?_r=0

I think a lot of students would have taken the path I did but they wished to get a recommendation for a job after completing the course. That's their main reason for staying the course, imho. But honestly I doubt that the recomendation will help in securing a good junior developer job. What will help is very good project portfolio and your abillity to demonstrate your understanding of coding in interviews. But these things take time and a solid grasp of the basics which TIY does not provide. It's much cheaper, less frustrating and effective to learn on your own.There are now very good online and free resoruces to help you if you're serious.

I also wish TIY made it mandatory and very explicitly clear in assigning prework. The prework they do assign won't help much. But books like Head Start Javascrip are good resources that would have helped a lot. They claim that there's only about 40 hours of prework that they assign but it's actually about 80 hours and that isn't sufficient to prepare you. Also since I had already done some of the prework they never made it clear to me that I needed to do the rest, just that it was optional. You really need about four months of doing significant amount of work on your own to prepare for the kind of work your going to be expected to learn.

Ruby on Rails Austin Inaugural Cohort. Jan 2015 

   Much like any school its what you make of it. But that holds true to several things in life.  If you need your hand held in majority of what you do then understand TIY will not walk you into a career. Its ultimately up to you and how hard you hustle.  Yes you will have to hustle! Did I say hustle again? Yes there it is.   

    Also be realistic.  Sure Hired.com  advertises developer salaries 100+ plus but that is no where near what you will make coming out of a bootcamp. Expect market rate in your city and maybe little less given your 3 months of coding experience.  In Austin you can expect 45-55k wit a big pay increase there after. Also DO NOT go to networking events and talk about your bootcamp.  Chat about what you can build or how awesome you are. Opening up with 'Hi I attend a bootcamp for 3 month and now I am qualified to be your developer' is naive.  

• This segways into job assistance.  Its pretty lacking but then again this isn't Career Point with ton of admin staff. Its a startup.  The Campus Director will help you all she can but you have month before next cohorts starts so prepare to be left to your own resources thereafter.  Also it doesn't help that she moved to Austin 1 month before school she has no network or real bearing on the scence.  But kudos for her hustle. She will get there.  So again. Be agressive. Build a portfolio after school and freelance a bit to build your 'chops' up.   
• So Instructors .  The Rails instructor and JS haves TONS of experience.  They have been coding for years and both self taught. They can definitely save you time by helping you on what not to worry about, do this not that, and real life work experience.  As for the Design instructor whats the saying 'Those that can't do teach'.  I mean she is fine designer. Its evident on how particular she can be.  I would feel more comfortable with an Design instructor that actually worked for Design shop.  Do you homework and check their linked in profiles.  
• Curriculum:  real world examples for RoR and JS course. Design has lots of theory but I guess that what designers need to know. I don't know  I thought these bootcamps were about getting you HARD skills not soft skills about design theory.  Every student will have nearly the same 'porfolio' upon graduation so you need to immediately breakout and make your own. You need to understand you will be competing with your fellow graduates so dont expect the resume you built at TIY to be anything impressive...even if you styled it with Bourbon instead of Bootstrap.    The meek will not inherit empty developer jobs. 
• Demo day :  Imagine Americas Top model but less drama.  Expect any agenda an instructor has had on you to pop up.  I mean instructors are humans too so don't piss them off.  At this point you are sleep deprived and have to demo what you built.  If you are smart you won't shoot for the moon and make something granola that works so they approve it.  Also they do science fair style to cater to the one or two introverts (usually design students). So expect to give same pitch over and over as oppose to pitch it on stage then answer questions later.  Next is the location . Great chill spot but it is not in the tech scene of Austin . That would be downtown.  So recruiter attendance is low.  They hold demo day at mid day too which is additional deterrrent for team leaders of anyone who could actually hire you. So expect alot of family but free BEER

In all great people and you will learn alot but you are in charge of your destiny. Does it require a 12k ticket. Thats up to you

 

ps I did not proof read this...I gives it raw. 

So I read a lot of coding school reviews before choosing a bootcamp, and I tended not to trust the ones that raved unconditionally that their coding bootcamp was the best thing ever. 

With that said, I give my experience at the Iron Yard 5 stars. The program met and, in many ways, exceeded my expectations. Some of the reasons I chose this one; 

First of all, it has small classes and a lot of personal attention. We all could ask questions of instructors and TA's, we didn't have to wait in line. I never felt like just another number. They constantly asked for feedback on how they were doing, and were open to ideas. As the course progressed, we were also able to choose topics that we wanted to focus on. All of the staff knew their stuff, and genuinely seemed to enjoy working there and teaching/coaching us (everyone is full-time,too).

 Second, this was not a "full-stack" program. There was a front-end and a back-end class. The approach was to teach one aspect of development in-depth, and teach the process of development.  

Third, the company has a reputation for quality. When I asked around before the program, I got positive reactions, which told me that the people who had graduated from the Iron Yard had left positive impressions on employers. (Some other bootcamps had a reputation for quantity over quality, having expanded too quickly).

I have graduated, but I am brand new to the job market. The nice thing about the Iron Yard is that they tell you to stay in touch for 6 months after graduation. We have online "portfolios" that are due after the course ends, and we get feedback on cover letters and resumes. I have just started this part, but I am thankful for the help. Still having support for this part is incredibly helpful. 

I am very happy with my decision to choose the Iron Yard. It was, of course, intense, and now I feel prepared to enter the job market. Highly recommended!

 

I was a part of the Iron Yard's 2015 inaugural Ruby on Rails course and have to say that it was not worth the 12k. Most in part due to the class instructor and lack of support. 

The instructor for the Ruby class was great for about the first 3-4 weeks and then totally lost the class from week five on. Most of the time there wasn't any preparation and we spent hours of lecture time "yak shaving" as he would say. Trying to figure out why something did not work, something he should have tested out or checked prior to presenting it to us. Many times that process would leave the class very confused, silent and disengaged. He was a smart "programmer", but not a good teacher and did not know how to communicate with his class. We were left feeling like the problem was us, not his teaching ability and it was our fault that we were not progressing. Unfortunately, despite the complaints we made to our campus director, he is still teaching the class.    The class started with eight students and by the end of the cohort had six. The situation got so bad towards the end that two students dropped out week ten. Two other students were clearly further behind the rest of the class but received no support or extra assistance during the cohort so they were unable to present on demo day. The other four students had a very basic understanding, but no one felt as if they learned nearly enough to get a job even as a junior developer.    There is no "Job Placement". You get a few talks about how to write a resume, cover letter and create a portfolio, but that's about it. They say there's a ton of interested companies telling them to send grads their way, but since we graduated there has been nothing. Not one job recommendation for any of us. Most of the time we cannot even get a response from the campus director when were are asking for support or job recommendations.    This is clearly a startup and ran very much like one. The people are nice, but they do not deliver on any of their promises. You will very rarely see negative comments because speaking out against a boot camp will pretty much shun you from the Tech community that you are trying to be a part of. I cannot speak for other campus's, but would stay far away from the Orlando Ruby class.    Do not be fooled by "there's still room to get in, but spots are filling fast" cause they actually had to push the start date back for the Ruby class due to not having enough students sign up. Proving that making money comes over the students. The original start date was May 1st, but changed to May 18th one week before May 1st due to lack of student sign ups. Now the students who already made a sacrifice of 3 months to attend the class have to wait three more weeks before they can start, so the Iron yard can try and make more money.

I would NOT recommend TIY - particularly the Durham campus. Save your money and your sanity and look elsewhere if you are truly looking to learn to code.

Just a few of the major problems:

1. TIY hires teachers with ZERO TEACHING EXPERIENCE even though they promise you are paying for in-person classes with someone who knows how to teach. Teaching is a complex skill in its own right and to assume that someone with industry experience won't crash and burn when struggling to explain abstract concepts is ludicrous. This "teacher" will take all of their students along for the ride and if they lack empathy and self awareness (not in abundance for software developers in general) they will not be too concerned about the implications for students who are forking over tons of cash for the experience.

2. TIY's main concern is about raking in the money (seriously how can the quality be anywhere near decent when they've opened 10 schools in one year?). Need more evidence of the corporate greed factor? Their top dog worked as a broker on Wall Street with Jordan Belfort (aka the Wolf of Wall Street) and brags that "Through that relationship, guys convinced me I could make a whole lot more money on Wall Street than if I finished school." Google Peter Barth and Jordan Belfort. This is who you'll be giving your money to. Beware.

3. They do not have your best interests in mind nor do they care about you - this is all a marketing ploy (see above).

4. Your opinions and particular needs as a student will be ignored and you will be demonized if you don't follow the campus agenda set by the particularities of the campus admin -- not your instructor. The admins wield all the power even though they are not developers and they absue that power quite freely.

5. The Durham space is WAY TOO SMALL for 45+ students - you will want to leave as soon as lecture is over if you require any peace of mind to focus. Can't they at least afford to upgrade the campus location with all the $$$ they rake in from students? Oh they don't care about student well-being?! Right. Enough said.

6. The Durham CAMPUS INTERNET IS OUT OR EXTREMELY SLOW AT LEAST 50% OF THE TIME. Guess I gotta repeat myself : Can't they at least afford to upgrade the campus infrastructure with all the $$$ they rake in from students? Oh they don't care about student well-being?! Right. Enough said.

7. It's a CATCH-22 for students - those who may be critical of the program are not able to speak out, for fear that it will impact their future abilities to land a job through TIY connections.

Even with all the above, I learned how to code -- but due to my own efforts and working with fellow students. I hope that in the future pseudo-schools like this will be held accountable for their actions and not allowed to behave in such unethical ways. Supporting students and their success is the point of a school and sadly TIY doesn't recognize that at all. Instead prepare for "group think" and persistent bullying if you give them your money.

Before attending TIY I had some minor experience working with HTML & CSS. I was coming from a completely different career (mostly project management in non-profit settings) trying to break into the world of web design/development. It was really difficult finding the time & resources to learn, especially in the area of learning JavaScript. I had read books, blogs, online tutorial sites and traditional college courses. What I was learning was very slow going and sometimes I wasn't sure if what I was learning was really the best practice of the day. I also have a family which really upped the pressure to get to a livable income all the more pressing. 

I found TIY and did some research. It was relatively new at the time, but everything I found really impressed me. I made the leap and while it was perhaps one of the most difficult undertakings I have gone through it was so worth it. I learned cutting edge technology, best programming practicing, and industry standard workflows. They went deep very quickly and the process felt like taking a drink from a fire hose, but I was learning things to a greater extent then ever before and at break neck speed. After completing the program it took about 4 months to find a front-end junior developer position, but the wait was definitely worth it. I received four different offers! Now I'm working working with a great team of talented programmers.

At TIY I didn't learn everything, but I learned a great foundation that I'm now building on. They helped me learn how to think like a programmer and become a better problem solver.

Your Iron Yard experience is going to depend very much on a combination of a great number of factors. I'll list some and fill in my own experience where I'm comfortable. You'll see why I'm not so comfortable in a moment.

 

1. Your level of experience - Are you already an experienced programmer? You may very well be better off not dropping $12K and 3 months of your life and finding other less intensive ways to gain the skills you're looking for to redirect your career. TIY must also cater to those with little-to-know coding experience, and you'll be hard-pressed to find an instructor to tend well to both sets of students. If you are new to coding, TIY might be a great option for you. You'll learn a lot, be pushed hard, and be able to find some entry into a new field that you might not find otherwise. 
2. Your instructor - How long has your instructor be teaching at code skills? Are the glowing reviews you see about them from the same people who are their Facebook friends? Seriously...good technical people have fans who think they walk on water. That doesn't mean they're great instructors for a code school. Really scrutinize both their resumes and their teaching styles. If they express a sense of continuing to experiment with their teaching methods, be wary...they haven't done something like this before. From campus to campus, TIY instruction quality seems to vary widely.
3. Your local job market - Some markets have a dearth of coders, and employers love all the grads from TIY. In job markets where employers have a higher bar for talent (think Austin-Durham-Washington), employers may like the idea of hiring TIY students, but, in practice, no matter how hard students have worked, very few will have an easy time finding a job. For every person who raves about how TIY helped them find an awesome job, there's someone else who worked their tail off and struggles many months later. And should your job search flounder, TIY will put the onus on you. YOU are not marketing yourself well in interviews. YOU aren't applying to enough places. It's never about how they may have failed you.
4. You'll be beholden to them. They do network well with local employers. This is also means that, if you have some rough patches with TIY, you may want to tell others about this, but this is going to get back to TIY, and your reputation will suffer. They've got you by the metaphorical balls, because their recommendation is valuable.
5. Your life. Can you drop everything for 3 months? Because you'll need to in order have a chance at the best positive outcome.
6. Campus logistics. Are the chairs and desks comfortable? Do you care about such simple ergonomic things? You could be miserable spending 8 hours a day in cramped quarters with the noise of dozens of other students. Would taking an intensive internet only program from home or coffee shops be better? Or do you think you'll thrive off all of that "energy"?  TIY doesn't make any attempt to make you physically comfortable. It's a boot camp, for sure.

The course moves from one application to another at such a rapid pace that if you do not understand something your screwed. Every ounce of information acts as a piece to a puzzle..Without understanding all the pieces your screwed. You go to a 3 month school but most of the employers in Houston require at least 3 years experience. If you do not have the 3 years of experience you might get hired but the pay will be way under what TIY promised you would make. The cousre consists of 35 percent lecture and 65 percent lab. During lab time you are limited with your instructor because everybody is so confused they are begging to spend time with the instructor, thus your time with the instructor is very limited. TIY use to guarantee you a job upon graduation but you had to complete all the homework on time to qualify for this guarantee..( it's impossible for even the seasoned veteran ) TIY has sense done away with this guarantee because it is fictional..My adivice would be either hire a personal tutor ( it's cheaper and more hands on ) or learn on your own through books, application, and practice. The course ranges from 10 - 12k. It's expensive, it's fast, and in my opinion not worth the money..