tradecraft

If you’re reading this, you may be at work daydreaming about what you might do next, or maybe it’s midnight and you’re researching other accelerated design programs.

I was there. I was working in tech for 2 years in support. I started taking classes part-time at UC Berkeley for UX Design to test the waters. Part-time really wasn’t enough for me to feel that I could make a career transition. I personally needed and wanted to dedicate 100% of my time to design and discovered Tradecraft through a friend. I have zero regrets, learned so much in three months, built a great network of individuals inside and outside of Tradecraft, and accepted a product design position in SF within a week of graduating.

Takeaways on why Tradecraft is worth it:

1. Client Work: Tradecraft partners with small startups where Tradecraft members get real work experience going through a full design process from research to mock up to shipped designs in 4-8 weeks
2. Mentorship: Zac and Jake are badass designers and wonderful instructors. The alumni network is strong and so are each TC members’ mentor network in the Bay Area
3. Community!: Although TC is advertised as a 3-month program, it’s really for life. I imagine I’ll always be in contact with some of the individuals I’ve become friends with in the program, and am constantly meeting new alumni and mentors through TC.

Boiled down, TC is not going to get you a job; *you* are going to get you a job! The folks at TC are well aware that every individual who is accepted into the program is capable of securing a job on their own. However, it’s through an ecosystem of rockstar mentors, knowledge about career development and tech, exposure to real client work, and spending days and nights with a group of driven individuals who are as motivated as you to get it done that you will reach new levels of growth for yourself and discover opportunities that you weren’t aware of before going through the program.

You got this - good luck!

I can't speak highly enough about this program. I first learned about Tradecraft from Course Report. Based on all of the great reviews I decided to apply. So I'm happy to come back to Course report and confirm that Tradecraft truly is that good. 

A few things to keep in mind...they are selective and if you don't have an impressive portfolio they will give you a challenge to see if you're a good fit for the program. In that way, they are different than some other programs like General Assembly. So prepare to work for it. The great thing about it is that the people you meet and work with in the program are legit.

My background was a little different than most. Coming from a lot of startup experience, I wasn't looking to switch carriers as much as refine my process and work with a variety of great companies. The program was great for this.

I couldn't have asked for better teachers. I learned a ton from Zac and Jake on the design side. They are super patient, insightful and awesome people. Also, Misha on the sales side...he makes you teach the classes, and it really was the best way to learn. Although I didn't take marketing from Thomas, I did sit in on his financial talk and rapped with him about marketing, investing, etc on the side and good lord these are all some top level thinkers.

Nick, Arianne, Kris and Russ are all super supportive and helpful. I am SO grateful!

Getting a chance to work on projects with a team made up of peers was challenging but in the best ways. You will really get a taste for working quickly, collaboratively, pulling late nights and weekends, attempting to churn out your best work. But the amount of work you take on is really up to you...so this may not have been true for everyone. I probably took on too many projects but I enjoyed it.

The mentors they bring in are also excellent. So I highly recommend attending the talks even if it's not in the area of expertise that you're in.

I've been working full-time ever since as a contractor for several startups and now for one of the biggest, most innovative companies in the valley. In large part thanks to TC. I feel like I'm part of the Tradecraft family now and plan on continuing to build on these new-found mentorships and friendships. I hope I can help others going through the program like many of peeps helped me. So yeah, I say, do it already!!

Can't say enough great things about the Tradecraft program and community. After 3 years in B2B SaaS sales, I knew I was ready for something new. I had very little hands-on growth experience as a sales rep, but I had sold to software to marketers so I could "talk the talk" when it came to growth. Tradecraft's curriculum, hands-on growth projects, and career development sessions helped me to not only "walk the walk", but prepared me to land my first two paid contract gigs as a marketer -- currently I'm on a month into a contract-to-hire gig and things are going great!

If you are serious about a career transition and you're willing to work hard and become comfortable with being uncomfortable, then there's no reason why you shouldn't invest in yourself and your career.

My experience with TC was pretty unique. I am a single mom and had just gotten laid off from a job I had had for almost four years, I was at the tail end of a long and nasty divorce and was feeling generally SPENT. I scraped enough $$ from family and through the generosity of TC was able to attend the 12 week bootcamp. It was the most expensive investment I have ever made in myself and hands-down the most beneficial. TC not only gave me the curriculum I needed to gain an understanding of the foundation of growth marketing, but it also provided a steadfast professional community, a group of mentors that believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself and a fully immersive experience of what it feels like to be fully supported in your goals - I was able to build a new self because of the love and support that TC provided during those twelve weeks. I can’t recommend it enough.

Tradecraft changed my world. I finished TC a few months ago and couldn't have been happier with the experience. I'm now working as a full-time product designer in the Bay Area.

A year ago I was working in a job that wasn't fulfilling and I honestly felt pretty trapped. I had always been interested in fine & digital art, but got a degree in business to play it safe. After working about a year in sales, I knew I wanted to pursue a design career but it felt like such an intimidating field to break into without going to design school. So I quit, tinkered around in the arts without any real direction, and was starting to apply to grad schools.

Then I finally met some people in the TC community. After hearing (honestly pretty similar) stories to my own, I signed up and started two weeks later. A few spark notes:

The TC Mindset

Tradecraft sets you up for success in a way that is different than other bootcamps and traditional school settings. They basically give you a platter of skills and say choose and master the ones that will make you the most valuable doing something you love (emphasis on the latter). All of the instructors and staff want TCers to be successful and will support you as much as they can, but they do it in a way that allows students to tailor the experience to what they are looking for. This means a few things:

• A robust curriculum with the fundamentals to practice and learn skills in any track. But no strict weekly schedule and definitely no grading, just awesome feedback from wicked smart instructors.
• Project focused work with real companies
• The option to do multiple tracks (or to just learn certain subjects). In the startup world skills are what matter, not necessarily job titles. So having knowledge about growth/sales as a designer is useful and vice versa.
• A community: You get the TC community (student, instructors, staff, founders), but you also get to meet super successful mentors that come in and give talks, all past students, and access to a super valuable network in the valley.

Real world projects

TC whisks you off into the real world right away. The bootcamp experience is already really surreal, but TC does an amazing job of incorporating the startup world into your 12 weeks so you finish with hard skills. TC students & instructors connect with companies that need projects done (pro bono) and work on those while using the skills you learn in the curriculum. This not only gets you real world experience & portfolio work, but it makes the transition from you old career to your new career feel more fluid.

Career Development & Job Search Help

You'll get 12 weeks of super valuable career focus, planning, salary, & mental tips/tricks that help you land a job. Arianne, the Career Development Lead, is a master at helping people figure out their goals and planning out actionably how to get you there. A lot of people got jobs during the program and others after. This is where the Silicon Valley network is super valuable. TC founders/staff will extend their network to you which should give you a leg up in the first-job-out-of-a-bootcamp market. This is how I landed my gig!

 

Definitely, talk to Nick if it's something you're interested in. I highly recommend!

 

 

Joining Tradecraft has been probably one of the best decision that I have ever made in my life. I joined the Growth track last September, and from the first day there you could feel how this program was going to be a challenging and intense experience, not only because the quality of the curriculum is top-notch, but also because every day I was surrounded by incredibly smart, self-driven and friendly people.

Is hard to write a description that summarizes my experience there, but in a few words, Tradecraft was a personal and professional growth experience.

I'm a 100% sure that I'm a better and more complete person after the experience I had at Tradecraft.

Tradecraft's product design program was an amazing 3 months that helped me land a full-time role as a product designer. I was in the program from November 2016 - February 2017, and prior to that, I was a customer success manager for a year and a consultant/IT auditor for 4 years.

When I first decided I wanted to be a product designer, I was looking into General Assembly and Tradecraft like you probably are. Both design programs seemed great, but after talking to a friend who graduated from TC, TC sounded more intense, which I thought would better equip me with the skills I need to land a UX/product design role. After going through the TC program and talking to a few people who did the GA program, I'm glad I chose TC.

#1 value - real client projects

As a product designer, you're going to need a few projects in your portfolio to land a job. Personal projects are great, but at Tradecraft, I had the opportunity to work with 5 startups throughout my 3 months on various design projects ranging from app design to landing page design. This experience was invaluable and something I don't think you get at GA. On these projects, I took opportunities to lead and present to our clients, who were primarily co-founders of these startups. Having these projects gave me a lot to talk about in my job interviews. Most of your time at TC will be spent working on client projects.

#2 value - curriculum 

The instructors, Zac and Jake, are nice, helpful, and good at what they do. During curriculum, they'll teach you the basics of what you need to know from research to HTML/CSS, but you're going to have to read and learn on your own too. You can also schedule 1:1 time with them.

# 3 value - career development

We had weekly career development sessions learning how to craft our story, write cold emails, approach the job hunt, etc. It's hard to break into a new field on your own, and these weekly sessions motivated me to work hard and network, and taught me not to take the job hunt personally because it is in part a numbers game. Our head of careers, Ariane, helped us think through our career goals, what we want, and how to present ourselves to achieve those goals.

#4 value - the people

I spent a lot of time at TC, so thank god everyone there, including the alumni, are amazing people. There are about 3 active cohorts at a time, so you'll be surrounded by people who are just a motivated and ambitious as you are. I loved it. The people around you motivate you to work hard and do well. The TC staff are great. The alumni are helpful. When you join TC, you're forever a part of a community that will always welcome you.

#5 value - mentor talks

We have multiple mentor talks a week where product managers, designers, marketers, etc. from startups and established tech companies come in for an hour to talk to us and answer our questions. This was a great way to learn about the tech industry, different companies, and how design/product dev is like at other places.

You get a lot of value from Tradecraft. I feel like there's so much more to Tradecraft than what you can learn from their website or reading all the reviews, so definitely reach out to people who've done the program or are currently in the program. Everyone has a different experience. Mine was great!

I was successful. I'd spent a few years accumulating design experience in a dying medium. I didn't notice the decline until it was too late to course correct. I was early 30s.

I explored options. Advertising is surprisingly conservative, ad-school costs a fortune and CDs don't respect it. Anything technical like industrial or arch+viz is too education-obsessed for a late career switch.

Tech was the smartest move. I could prove myself with a few pieces of good work. Companies are starving for talent. Design is respected, growing even! And highly paid. If this environment exists somewhere else for designers, I didn't find it.

I researched every school- including grad programs. I had friends that went to a popular bootcamp in Chicago, another in SF. (Just come to SF, don't make this harder)

Tradecraft won in the end because I saw students succeeding. Nobody seemed to slip through the cracks. Just look at these reviews.

When Nick talks to you for the first time, it's natural to think it's a sales pitch. It's not. I sent my email address and he called me to form a game plan—every other school added me to MailChimp.

So now I'm out. I had a job before graduation, chosen from 2 offers with another on the way. My income immediately jumped more than the tuition costs. Everyone I keep in touch with is working, most of them with ZERO design experience beforehand. 

You can do this without paying for school, but if it takes you a couple months longer, you've lost income.

I should note that I was the last to leave every night (and sometimes didn't leave), and the first to get a job. You WILL exit with the right technical skills, portfolio, network, if you do the work they ask. If you can hustle, Tradecraft will work for you.

I had made a few career transitions since graduating college going from marketing to engineering with a couple of other odd jobs sprinkled in between (as it goes with startup life). Tradecraft was hands down the best thing I have done thus far for my growth - both personal and professional. I only wish I had found them sooner. I benefitted equally from the product design curriculum as well as the more general career development that happens every week. I now have the confidence to network and communicate in order to continue progressing my career - something I didn't have before (even though I have been in the working world for 6 years). I actually cringe thinking of the emails I use to send at my attempt at networking. My view on the whole tech industry has rotated for the better. With that being said, you will only get out of Tradecraft what you put in, do not expect this to be a walk in the park with a network waiting for you at the end.

2 of the biggest pros for me from the program were:

Real projects

My personal goal of the program was to get a job as a Product Designer. Having a portfolio of real projects to speak to and showcase in interviews was what helped me land my first gig after the program. I was able to see myself more as a design contractor as opposed to a student during my time at Tradecraft and that made all the difference. 

Community

When you start your job after Tradecraft there will still be so much to learn. It's important to know that Tradecraft will provide the foundation and the tools to get you to that next step however, it will taken more than 3 months to build your skills. The ongoing community that tradecraft offers will be the key to continuing this growth and to helping you shine in your next role even when everything is new. My first week on the job I was assigned two tasks relating to print design that I had never done before (you likely won't learn print design during the program). As the only designer on my team I was left to my own devices to understand how to do this. After stressing for a few days I finally reached out to the alumni network. Within a day I was able to hop on the phone and walk through the tasks with somone. After that conversation I was equipped with the tools I needed to move forward on the assignment in my new job. Never have I been a part of a community that is so willing to be involved, empathetic and supportive. While the job hunt can be competitive for some, everyone in the community is rooting for your success and that alone makes the program worth it.

When I decided to learn UX, I wasn't really sure how to go about it. I researched several places, whether it was online-only or in person, full-time or part-time, and I finally decided to try out Tradecraft after seeing reviews and talking to someone who had already gone through the program. And I'm really glad I did!

There's really good culture, everyone tries to help each other out if someone doesn't understand something. There's strong support while you're in the program, and especially impressive support after you graduate. And there's amazing resources like the mentors, other students, reading materials, and teachers that give you a process.

I was really surprised by the integrity of the program. 

I come from the social science field and was already working in tech and UX, but wasn't learning at the speed I wanted. I felt stuck in my career, and couldn't find the mentorship I was looking for in Argentina.

I was reviewing other similar programs before I founded Tradecraft. The others were very nice until I mentioned I was latin american...

When I had my first call with Tradecraft, I cannot express how grateful I was for that call. The program's director expended 40 minutes explaining me full details about the program (that I loved, the curriculum looked amazing). And the most important, for me, when I mentioned my nationality, nothing changed! He talked about their experience with foreign students, and pointed that working hard on my skills, the program would help me find my next job.    The program was everything I expected, and more. It's not just a UX bootcamp. It's a full carreer committent, that forced me to focus and learn about what I wanted to become and why, before just jumping into the roles I thought I wanted.    In terms of curriculum, I learned a tone. And what I founded amazing was the way of teaching: regardless your previous level, you would learn how to get better every day in that field.   During the whole program, you have career developement tracks too. It's so important! We can learn whatever you want, but if you don't know who you want to become and where do you want to go, that knowdledge is useless. I believe the success of Tradecraft has a lot to do with their career developement coaching.    And last, but not least, Tradecraft connected me with the most amazing community of people I have ever been part of. It's such a strong network of mentors, teammates and friends! They helped me learn new skills, to train them and get practice. It' doesn't dissapear once you're done: I'm back in Latin America and the community is still there, ready to help when needed. 
After 3 months of job hustle in the US, I wasn't able to find a job there, but the possibility of analyzing my performance during the job interviews with my mentors, was priceless. It was one of the most frustrating experiences I had, but it didn't feel so bad: I had great coaches helping me to get better from interview to interview.   One of the (outside) mentors I met during my experience offered me a job in Colombia. Now I'm proud to be building the future of online education for Latin America at Platzi, one of the most dynamic and promising startups in the region.  Doing Tradecraft was one of the best inversions and decisions I made. It is a program great for people that want to give the best of themselves everyday. And being part of Tradecraft means belonging to an amazing community of people looking forward to build a better world through technology. I'm extremely grateful for being part of it.

A year out of college, I moved from Toronto to San Francisco and aimed to transition into tech. I found Tradecraft online, and once I had my initial call with the team it became clear that it was the best option for me. I have a marketing background, but I had been unfulfilled by my work experience thus far and have always had an interest in design. I thought that Tradecraft would be a great opportunity to see if design was a good fit for me.

I joined the program, kept an open mind, and spent a lot of time during my three months at Tradecraft exploring opportunities in the Bay Area, deliberately working to figure out what role I want and what my skills are. In the meantime, I made a ton of great new friends, both in my cohort and in the Tradecraft community overall. I ultimately realized that while I loved product design and UX, my true passion and skill is in content marketing, specifically for fast-growth startups: I wanted to help interesting, mission-driven companies grow by writing and creating great content. Without Tradecraft – its guidance from professionals, a constant stream of interesting mentors, top notch teaching and career training – I wouldn't have gotten to this level of clarity and direction about what I want out of my career and how to get there. 

I came out of the program and doubled-down on finding a great content marketing role, and a month out of Tradecraft I landed a job as a marketing specialist with a B2B SaaS startup. It's the perfect role for me, my skills, and experience. I would not have been in this role without Tradecraft. 

The leadership team says that Tradecraft is a kitchen, not a restaurant. By that, they mean that it has the tools, resources, and network to help you on your journey, but ultimately you are responsible for your experience there. That couldn't have been more true for me: Tradecraft helped me figure out what I wanted, and then provided practical training and ongoing support to help me get there. It was the most valuable career decision I've ever made.