The Iron Yard

Disclaimer: This review is based on my personal experience. I think the types of programs offered at The Iron Yard are ideal for some, but not a good fit for others. For me, it was the perfect launchpad into a new career. 

 

The format of the course was lecture 9am - 12pm Mon-Thur. And then project work from 12pm-5pm after. Friday is weekend assigment work all day. I was often there as late as 11pm. Personally, I found this format a breath of fresh air compared to college lectures, as we dug in and had to solve problems and think on our feet nearly right away. I lucked out in a sense, to have a terrific teacher, Jeff Newburn. He is a skilled orator and genuinely cares about his students. He was available for 1 on 1's to help or answer questions, another neat feature of the format. This format of lecture in the morning and application of what you learned for the rest of the day allowed me to learn at a rapid pace that I never experienced in college.   One of the more underrated features of attending the Iron Yard is the continued support afterwards. After graduating, we are still allowed basically 24 hour access to the beautiful facility. I took a breather once graduated, but after a couple weeks, I was back at the school studying and working. I still frequent the school to this day, and use it as a co-working space for side projects. Co-working spaces can cost up to $200+ / month, so being able to use the school as a co-working space is a great treat.   As far as job support, the campus director, Gabe Shepherd was instrumental in finding job placement opportunities. He was not the director when I attended, but when he came on afterwards, he was like a man on a mission in finding opportunities for students. It's not always easy finding the best fits, but he does all that he can.    Overall I had a great experience. The format is definitely conducive to those who like to learn at a fast pace, and are hungry to learn.    Advice for prospective students:   1. Most importantly, DO NOT come in cold. Do the prework. Do it twice. Be as prepared as possible.   2. Get a feel for your teacher before you sign up. At our campus, the teachers give free lectures once a month (or something like that) that are usually crash courses for the language they teach. GO and see if you gel with their teaching style.    3. It is what you put into it. Work hard. Act like you're paying ~$1000 / week to be there (you are). Use the beautiful workspace to your advantage.   4. Don't expect all your answers to be in a book. Google, Youtube, Stackoverflow and mini blog posts are all your friends in solving problems, both as a student and continuing into your profession. 

No resources were provided resulting in students spending much of their time scanning the internet for learning material. For the high cost of the school, the least they could have done was provide organized and relevant reference resource material. I have since discovered the education from the Iron Yard is not much more than what one can get online for free or for a small fee. I expected some well thought out and planned lessons but the program consisted of lectures and assignments that were inappropriate for the skill level of the students. The assignments were never properly evaluated so the learning opportunity was missed by lack of any sort of teaching method. The director and instructor were very upfront about the style and fast pace of the course but I believe the school should NOT promote themselves to potential students who do not have web development and/or programming experience as the instructors are NOT at all skilled to teach beginners as they claim. My experience at the Las Vegas Iron Yard was regrettably disappointing and somewhat demoralizing. 

Attending The Iron Yard was one of the best decisions I have ever made.  I moved to a new city after my husband accepted a new job and my options were to look for work doing something I hated or start over with a new career. I had worked on a web project in the past as a project coordinator and was amazed at what the developers could do and wanted to try moving into the tech world.

From the moment I met the campus director, Toni, I knew that this was the palce I wanted to learn at. This was not a give us your money and we will forget about you school, Toni took the time to get to know me and made sure that I spoke to another student and a faculty member before any final decisions were made. During my 12 week course I learned so much more than I thought I would ever walk away with. This is not an easy program to complete, the people that excel in it are the ones with passion and drive to work hard to learn these new skills in such a short time frame. It can be a stressful experience that is true, almost every graduate will tell you that, but beyond the stress is knowing that you were pushed to your limits and then even further. After you complete the course you know you can handle any task that an employer could throw at you.

Even after graduation I knew that I had support and a family in The Iron Yard. I've been a UI Developer for over a year now and I couldn't imagine not being a developer and I could not have made the career change without The Iron Yard.

All I can speak to is my own experience at the Iron Yard between May and August of 2016, but it was an amazing experience. Our interim instructor (the Durham campus was in the process of seeking a permanent Back-End Ruby on Rails instructor at the time) James Dabbs was brilliant. Our TA Daniel cared a lot about our success and helped us out however he could. I see someone who left a review on this campus had a bad experience with their TA, but there’s a different TA every cohort so whoever this person is is no longer at TIY anyway. My cohort was small (8 students, equally divided by gender) which was nice. There is a $1,000 scholarship available for women and minorities, and no cap on the number of people who can get these scholarships, so if you’re a woman or person of color you’re not competing with other women and POC for a pool of money. Speaking of money, you’ll probably have to use savings, take out loans, and/or live off a credit card for a while (I did all three) if you attend TIY because the curriculum is so intensive (you really are coding/learning 50-60 hours a week) you won’t have time for a job, even a part-time one. So just be prepared and don’t assume you’ll be able to hold down a job during it. I gave up my social life too for those 3 months and told the people I loved to kinda give me space and let me do this, so also make sure the people in your life know that TIY is going to be your life for a while.

The morning lectures are held in classrooms and then after lunch all the classes do lab in the large student lounge. TIY Durham offers Back-End Engineering Ruby, Back-End Engineering Python, and Front-End, but the timing for the 3 classes don’t always line up concurrently so the Python class was ending a couple weeks after the next Ruby and Front-End cohorts were beginning. Which meant that for most of the cohort, it was just the 8 of us Ruby folks and about a dozen Front-End folks, so lab time never felt super crowded (plus you’re welcome to go do work in other parts of campus, and American Tobacco Campus is huge and full of lots of comfy places to work on your own, although I always wanted to be around my Ruby classmates to collaboratively learn). We did a couple of cross-class projects w/ the Front-End folks and because we ran concurrently, our final project was cross-class as well.

Yes you are on the “basement floor” which means no windows but it’s super nice and renovated with lots of glass and metal and comfy couches/automated snack bar/big screen tv/kitchen area in the hallway lounge area; a few startups make their home on the basement floor as well. The student lounge itself has a fridge & industrial sized coffee machine, and the hallway lounge has a microwave, sink, dishwasher, and another fridge, so you can bring and store your own food, or just buy some from the little cafe upstairs that serves food or the many restaurants at American Tobacco Campus (Mellow Mushroom etc.)

I went into it with zero professional tech experience (I had taken a part-time Ruby on Rails class before but it was only 6 hrs a week), and no college degree. After graduating from the Iron Yard it took me like 80 job applications and lots of rejections due to my lack of professional experience and almost 3 months, but I finally got a contract job as a back-end RoR engineer! I found Dana Calder the Campus Director and Nicole Palumbo the Operations Manager to be extremely helpful in helping me write and edit and rewrite my resume and cover letter(s) towards the last few weeks of bootcamp, as well as always being available via Slack to give me career advice. Also, during bootcamp there are plenty of guest speakers who come in and talk to you about what they look for when they’re hiring developers/engineers, common interview questions in the industry, what to expect during your technical interview, etc. Plus field trips to bigwig companies as well as small startups. Make sure to participate in whatever career-prep events or activities are offered and take notes because this will all really help you with the job-hunt process.

The Iron Yard is a huge amount of work/dedication/time-commitment, but ultimately worth it in my opinion. I spent a lot of my life in the service industry and now I’m finally doing something I love! And honestly it was harrowing and stressful and I broke down a cpl times in the first few weeks thinking I could never succeed at this, that I was too stupid for this, but almost everyone goes through that. And then immediately post-graduation it felt so weird to be out of it and I missed TIY!

I decided to learn to code through a boot camp when I found that I could not be desciplined on my own to work all day and then learn to code at night. For me, I needed the boot camp environment. 

I looked at a few in the Austin area, and what made me choose The Iron Yard was that right away I had someone calling me to discuss The Iron Yard and the tract I should take. I was not just put on a mailing list. In fact, I never received mail that felt like it was a mass mailing. Ever. I had emails specific to my stage in the application process and then later from the instructor.

I also loved the campus. It is in the renovated Penn Field tucked away just south of St. Edward's. You're in Austin but surrounded by greenery, not high rises. Students from The Iron Yard and people from neighboring companies are often found in and among the greenery with a laptop open. Since this is where you'll spend almost every waking hour once classes begin, it is nice to have a beautiful campus.

The course is rigorous. You'll have the morning dedicated to instruction and the afternoon for lab. That is not, however, when it ends. If you want to do your best, then you must understand that after lab, you go home and continue where you left off. You will not have the same 9-5 hours you had before. You'll probably go early to tweak your homework before 9a. You'll go home after class, have a quick meal, and get to work on the homework if you want to submit your best. Realistically, expect an 8a-10p day with time for lunch, dinner, and to walk the dog. 

Then instructors are generous with their time both during class and after class using Slack. Not only do they know what they teach, they know that every student is different and learns differently. They do their best to explain it in a way you'll understand. Karly, the Campus Director, and Quincy, the Campus Operations Manager, work together well to make sure students have a safe place to learn and are there when you need someone to help talk you off the ledge. You will get to know that ledge. 

Would I do it again? Yes. Definitely.

*This is an honest review of my own, I am a real person and I didn’t receive anything to write this review*

The Iron Yard has changed my life forever. Completing the front-end engineering course has been my best accomplishment. When I first got to the Austin campus and met the campus director, Karly, I was blown away with her sincerity, knowledge and support to do what was best for me. No pressure, just information.

Before the Iron Yard, I worked in non-profits, graduated from the University of Texas, at Austin as a triple-major and was extremely unhappy with where I was going in life. A friend recommended I look into a couple bootcamps and do some coding online to see what I thought. I ended up falling in love with coding and tried to skip tuition costs and teach myself to code the hard way... This was a slow and unproductive process. I had a million questions, didn’t fully understand what to focus on or how to learn the materials...I had no one to discuss the topics with, so my motivation fell quickly. Fortunately, I realized this method wasn’t for me, and I knew I had to be in a classroom with people. I researched for months trying to decide on which boot-camp would be the best fit, price, education, etc. I am a person who has to talk things out, I learn very well with lectures, examples and visual displays.

(Some of) The reasons why I chose TIY (in no particular order):

1. Inclusivity/Support
I love TIY so much for its inclusivity and moral code. I highly recommend contacting your local IY campus director to get more information about the Student Catalog, specifically their mission statement and student conduct expectations. There is zero tolerance for discrimination (age, race, identity, gender, etc.) and they mean it. As a minority in a male–dominated industry, I would be more inclined to feel shy, afraid, or stupid. Not here. I felt safe and accepted. This made is SO much easier to ask for help or ask all the questions I needed to get through the course. The campus director and campus operations manager check–in with you regularly to make sure you're doing well mentally/emotionally. It’s the best support system I've had at any working/educational institution.
 

2. Student to teacher ratio
At big universities, big schools come with big price tags, big classrooms, and little to no support... In a classroom of 15(max) people (mine was 10), your instructor will remember who you are, what problems you struggle with regularly, what you need to improve on (something that you may not even be aware of), how to learn, how to relate to you and so much more. At TIY, you’re not treated like a number, you’re treated like a person. You become close with classmates extremely fast, and get that much more support throughout the course.

3. Cost & scholarships
TIY offers scholarships! Be sure to check out if you qualify. If you don’t, it’s still such an amazing education and you benefit with networking, community, moral support, how to actually change your career into a new field (the career support is excellent!). You’ll make back the tuition cost extremely fast. It’s a brilliant investment and you’re going to be glad you made it.

4. Curriculum/focus
There is too much code out there on the internet! I couldn’t narrow it down...I didn’t know where to go. TIY is able to update their curriculum a lot faster than many universities’ CS programs. You’ll be learning frameworks/languages that are the highest in demand and get to build projects that are fun, modern and advanced! I started off teaching myself the basics of JavaScript. I had no idea what React.js was and probably didn’t think that was very important. I rarely come across a job application that isn’t looking for the frameworks I’ve learned. The schedule is great in terms is focusing: Lecture. Practice. Homework. Repeat. The process works, even if you feel like you’re struggling. Your brain is challenged, but it can adapt better than you’d expect.

5. Texas Workforce Commission 
TIY is a licensed career school/vocational program with TWC. That's pretty awesome! This shows how legit they are to get the TWC to licence them! You’re hold to high standards in order to graduate. 

6. Network/Community
On TIY’s twitter page, their little bio explains that they are the world’s largest coding school...that’s pretty impressive. Across the US there are TIY campuses that I can go to for support if I’m looking at moving to that area of the country. The community is so genuine and open, I feel like I’ve got an army behind me to help me get to where I need to be. There’s no aggressive competition with TIY alums. We help one another and are happy to do it.

7. Career Support
The times have changed from writing cover letters like you may be used to. You will be working hard to get your portfolio up/looking good, writing awesome cover letters that employers are interested in reading, make your linkedIn professional and impressive, learn what to say in interviews, how to negotiate salaries, etc. Bottom line is, TIY covers it all (always). You’ll speak with real industry leaders and get all the important tips/info you could ask. I graduated a month ago, and the director & operations manager still check in on me to see how my job search/interviews are going or how they can help. 


Seriously. Check them out. Go to a free crash course and see how the instructors are, what the campus/students are like, what coding is like... You’ll learn a lot more in-person and there is ZERO pressure. If you are dedicated and hardworking, you will get through it and it will change your life for the better.

I was part of the inagural Front-End Engineering cohort at the new Minneapolis campus. I had been working as an assistant manager in retail for the past 3 years and came to the realization that my job was going nowhere and I was not satisfied with my career. Completeing a CS degree would take too much time and money, So I sought out other options. That's when I came across TIY. After learning more, I decided to take a leap of faith. I quit my job and started the 12 week immersive course. It was amazing how much I learned in those 12 weeks. I can now confidentally say that I'm a Front End Developer and for once I'm excited about my career and future.

If you're thinking about joining, Do it. You will not regret it.