The Iron Yard

I went through The Iron Yard's Front-End Engineering course at the Charleston, SC location.    The school was absolutely the best decision of my life.   I went from painting houses for 10 years, with little computer knowledge, and next to no programming knowledge, to working as a contractor for a large company in the area in under 4 months.   The course work was hard, it was intense, and very much so full time.    However, it was an incredible experience, and really did get my moving in the direction of a career I absolutely love.

From day one you receive incredible support from the campus staff.   They are always available and totally eager to help you with your goals and questions.   If you're looking for a career change into IT, and don't want to spent years going through college (no degree here!),  I highly recommend looking into the courses offered through The Iron Yard.  I have been coding now for just over a year, and am working full time as a Software Engineer at Blackbaud in Charleston.   

Everyday I love my job and look forward to going into work.   Growing up people always said 'If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life'.   I always thought they were just full of it,  but now I know first hand it's true.  A great portion of my new career I owe to the incredible instructors and campus director at The Iron Yard, Charleston.  If you decide to go through this course, definitely give it your all.  The more you put into it, the more you will get out of it.   

Attending The Iron Yard was the best decision of my life. It was a way for me to live life without regrets, and I can say fully that I no longer regret the journey I took during college. I was originally on a path through a technology degree while attending Purdue University, but due to personal reasons I switched over into a more sales degree. After college was done and I began my career, I knew that the path I was on was not one that I was passionate about. I missed technology. I missed the problem solving and challenges that came with it. I regretted the degree I had.

Then one day I heard about this new "school" in town that seemed like the answer to what I was searching for. I saw a way back into the technology world and I took it. I attended TIY during the summer of 2016 and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. The teachers were personable, knowledgeable, and taught us well. The courses were fast paced, but not at a pace I couldn't keep up with. The networking events that were hosted got me plugged into the tech scene almost immediately. They did everything the right way to ensure my success as long as I worked hard at it. 

I have now been graduated for a little over a month. Five people from my cohort of 10 students total have found jobs, and 1 returned back to school (he basically was here as a summer school). The rest of us (including me!) are in varying stages of the interview process with several companies and will hopefully be having offers shortly. I fully believe that in a few more weeks, we will have a 100% job acceptance rate from our cohort (excluding the continuing student). 

I love The Iron Yard, and you should too. If you have any concerns about attending, I hope this review helps you with your decision. Go meet with the instructors and staff and check out the campus. You won't regret it.

I am a recent Iron Yard front-end graduate from the Dallas campus and this review is real and genuine.

Sure, you could do the whole self-taught programmer route. But what coding bootcamps, such as The Iron Yard (TIY) , do for you is speed up the process tremendously. TIY provides a safe and nurturing programming environment for newbie coders. 

The teacher, Eric, is an extremely experienced programmer who has TONS of REAL world experience.  He will calmly and patiently explain the ins and outs of whatever topics you're interested in.  Just make sure to slow him down as he is a fast typer!

The curriculum is intensive just like all other bootcamps. You have 3 months to learn what could be done in a year. So it's non-stop knowledge all up in your face. Eric won't mind slowing down, but there is a lot to cover in class. Thankfully, he's very available after class to sit down and go through it with you.

The homework and projects are either very "real-world" or help you think like a Javascript programmer. We actually got to make a website that is now live online.

The admin is extremely helpful to all students. Caitlin and Colin work very hard to make sure we're taken care of.   Tons of networking opportunities.  Towards the end it gets a bit hectic with final projects, resume building, portfolios, and career support. Time management is essential if you're going to be a bootcamp student.

Speaking of career support, it's definitely available and it's really helpful.  They helped me restructure my resume and LinkedIn, as well as gave me advice on my portfolio. They constantly send job openings our way and keep a look out for anything in particular we're interested in.

Other than that, we had guest lectures almost every week where we got to speak and listen to people who are out there in the field.  We had a field trip to a big tech company which was really nice. Wish we had more of those though.

In conclusion, is it expensive? Yes. But is it worth it in the long run? YES. Once you graduate, you're still a "student". You get all the ongoing support, you can always ask Eric how to do something new you're trying to learn, they'll always keep a look out for jobs , and you can always go in and talk to them. Totally worth the lifetime membership.

I took the Front-End Development course at The Iron Yard here in Dallas, Tx. It has been one of the greatest learning experiences that I have ever encountered. I was shocked that one could actually learn so much within a three-month period. One of my favorite take-aways is the fact that The Iron Yard set me on a path where learning on my on is very possible! The instructor is very knowledge on a wide-range of technologies and really puts forth the effort to make sure that we had a good grasp of the concepts that he teached. The staff here in Dallas is nothing short of amazing! Oh yeah, you will probably become a ping-pong master if you decide to enroll! 

I went into The Iron Yard, with a little background in programming already, I knew basic HTML and CSS, plus I've had some previous programming experience with Swift. So I was a little skeptical at first, joining a course for absolute beginners.

However, I ended up in an amazing class with the best teacher I've ever had. She acknowledged that I was ahead of the class, and pushed me to my limits. Spent extra time creating a more challenging curriculum for me, and held me to a very high standard. This allowed me to learn sooo much more than I otherwise would have at any other coding school, where they don't tailor the curriculum to fit their student's skill set.

Besides the teacher, the campus director, is quite simply the nicest person alive. Halfway through my course, I lost my home. I came into school the next day expecting to have to quit and take a plane back home, as I had no other options. But the campus director, offered me a place to stay for a few days, then found another alumni I could live with for the remainder of my course. This just goes to show how much these people care about their students. It's truly incredible.

needless to say, you get out what you put in. I don't think The Iron Yard is necessarily for everyone. But if you are the type who isn't just going to do the bare minimum requirements for a passing grade, but want to put in the effort and aim higher, The Iron Yard is the perfect place for that.

With an incredible support system, teacher's that really know their stuff, and a great environment for learning. Going to The Iron Yard was by far one of the best decisions I've made in my life.

Attending The Iron Yard Front End Engineering class was probably one of the best decisions of my life. I knew I wanted a career change, especially into anything in the Tech Industry, so when I found out about The Iron Yard and researched what they were about, I was immediately onboard. 

Mike, who was my instructor, made the stress and horror of learning something so foreign not be as scary as it seemed. Though, there were times things didn't click right away, it eventually did and you always had amazing support, not only from the staff, but your class mates as well. You walk out of The Iron Yard with not only a new skill, but many new friends. 

Once I graduated, there was a moment that I did feel lost because I wasn't sure what to do next. However, Gabe, the Campus Director, was quick to get me back on track and make me feel more confident in what I was doing. He was not only helpful in the process of getting me back on track, but he made it easy and a lot less stressful than it could've been. I've never experienced an establishment with people so eager to see you succeed and it's truly a breath of fresh air.

This course was great. The instructor was very knowledgable and well fit for the job since he has prior experience in many tech companies and several of his own apps on the app store. For the most part, the daily routine was the same: we came in and had a lecture for about an hour and a half to two hours, then we had a lab session where we completed an assignment based on the lecture. The information you learn in the course is presented in a pretty decent curriculum that made it easy to understand with each day's lecture feeding off of prior lectures.  

That being said, be careful taking this course if you don't have at least some prior experience in programming. I had been studying programming basics for about 6 months before taking this course, and still found parts of it difficult to grasp. When it's over though, you'll be comfortable using Xcode, writing code in both Swift and Objective-C, and using Web Services and APIs in your apps. On the last day of class, we had a demo day where about 50 employers/recruiters came in and viewed our final projects, which was great networking and proactive in getting you set up with a career if you're willing to do the folllow-up work.

Joining The Iron Yard has been the best decision of my life.

I dropped out of a design degree and joined The Iron Yard. I did the Ruby on Rails course back in 2014 and went from 0 knowledge to about a 75 after graduating. 

I took a good job right out of the bootcamp and a few months laterI went on to start a company. 

I recently finished the new iOS course at the Houston campus and already have 4 apps on the AppStore and making revenue off of them. 

I couldn't recommend this school enough. They treat you like family and help you at all times no matter what the situation is.

Before going to The Iron Yard in Indianapolis, I had a good job.  It was incredibly stable, paid plenty, had fantastic benefits, and I loved my co-workers. I hated it.  I felt trapped, spending the majority of my waking hours in an environment with minimal mental stimulation and career advancement prospects that, while lucrative, made me about as excited as hitting myself in the head with a hammer.

Fast forward to my post-TIY experience.  I make more.  I work less.  I love when I work.  I have incredible schedule flexibility and can do my job from virtually anywhere.  Most importantly, I've learned more in the last 8 months than I have in the previous 5 years.

I almost didn't go through with it.

Before attending, I did my due diligence, like you clearly are if you are reading this review.  The one-star reviews frightened me.  It's a big investment of time, money, and effort.  It's incredibly frightening to take a risk and walk away from all the known quantities of your current life, especially when it's obvious that it didn't work out for some people.  Sure, it seemed like there were plenty of five-star glowing reviews as well, but what if I ended up as one of those one-star people?

After meeting with Emily, the campus director, and Chris, the instructor, my fears were assuaged but not banished.  The thought of becoming a one-star person kept me up at night.  I practically had the refund policy memorized.  I was a bundle of nerves and nearly drove myself insane in the month leading up to the class.

Then, a realization hit me.  I am not a one-star person.  

All my fears of failure were based on the assumption that I had no influence over my own experience.  That is the complete opposite of reality.  

If you're smart, you know it.

If you're willing to work hard (really hard), you know it.

If you're willing to ask for help, you know it.

If you're willing to do all the things for career support that Emily asks you to do and you temporarily hate both the things and Emily but that's fine because it's for your own good, you know it.

So, I put 5-star effort into my pre-work for the course.  I made sure to do 5-star work while I was there.  I made 5-star friends amongst my classmates.  I now have the 5-star life I wanted, and that's why I'm writing a 5-star review for TIY.

Bonus material: 

Here's a clip from the movie The Edge.  Go watch it now, get AMPED, and then sign the f**k up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9ajZhH-yds

I graduated from the Iron Yard - Front End Engineering course that ran from Oct 2015 to Jan 2016. The course was very well taught, very challenging, and I believe it was pretty open and honest in regard to expectations after graduating. Nobody guaranteed me a job, but everyone from my cohort got one... I personally love my new position (7 months strong as of writing this review), I'm sure that differs case by case. So for what it's worth, I think TIY Nashville is a great choice for people that like making stuff and thinking hard.

Sure, I could have learned much of this stuff on my own if I had the time and resources to do so, but would I have? No. I wouldn't have the confidence, connections, support, or wellrounded perspective I got from TIY. I knew I couldn't get myself job-ready in 12 weeks. The Iron Yard did! I suppose I could have gotten bitter during the Career Support portion after graduation, when they weren't applying for jobs for me, even making me write my own resume and be an adult and everything! ;) Some people did get disillusioned, but generally those were the same people who were getting bitter and having bad attitudes during school too. But even in the face of real difficulty finding work for some students, Josh and Bethany at TIY Nashville gave nothing less than legendary levels of support while I was job hunting. It has really changed the course of my life in a great way.

When you apply, they ask you why you want to attend... really think about it. Do you really want to sit behind a screen looking at lines of code for the rest of your working life? It isn't for everyone! I tend to like it! And as is the case with most thing worth doing, you get out of it what you put into it. Of course YMMV! For me, I had a wife and two kids to provide for, so I busted my ass on school while working part time on top of it, applied to more jobs than most people in my class in the first couple weeks after graduation, and got a great job! Part support driven, part luck, part timing, part personality, and a large part effort.

If you're considering TIY, go talk to someone there. Everyone I had the privelege to learn under was so generous, helpful, genuine and skilled. I recommend it highly. The internet is so polarizing, with mostly 1 star and 5 star reviews, don't believe the hate... or the hype! See for yourself at your local campus. Who knows what good could come from it.