iO Academy

Summary: I got a certification in PHP recognised globally.

Having little experience with PHP since I joined Mayden this has been extremely helpful in furthering my own knowledge in the language. The Zend Certified Engineer exam requires a lot of studying... Read More the nuances of PHP and is extremely daunting as it covers the entire language.

Thankfully the training made me more confident in developing PHP professionally as well as being prepared for the exam. Not only did I learn a lot, I also got a cerification that is recognised by industries globally.

As somebody with an academic background, but negligible experience with software, Mayden Academy was just what I needed.

The course provided me with the ability to write code in HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, and SQL in order to create interactive web applications.... Read More As well as these core technologies, we were taught many peripheral components of the development process, such as Git, making us far more than code-writing machines. This was done in an environment where questions were absolutely always welcomed, and answered thoughtfully; and if the answer wasn't known, then other's would be consulted until it was!

The learning took place in an active development environment, with the academy students forming an additional Scrum team. Doing it this way enabled us to prepare for what is ahead of us in our careers and to take examples from people who are doing it already.

Before joining Mayden, I had been an office administrator for around 20 years.

It wasn't fun. It wasn't well paid. Most of all, it was depressing.

I wanted a job career that I enjoyed - I wanted to be happy about getting out of bed and going to work in... Read More the morning.

Mayden offered the opportunity to achieve this - I didn't have the time left in my working life to study at OU. I didn't have the financial stability to drop out and go to Uni for 3 years. I needed a quicker solution. Enter Mike and the Mayden team...

The course was great. Tough, but great - the content is current and constantly evolving to be relevant and most of all, backed up by practical work - as Scrum teams on big, full stack projects for real World experience. Invaluable for a new portfolio of work!

It will be a long, tiring and mentally challenging four months, and you'll have to be prepared to put in the hours outside of the classroom, but it will be worth it.

Mike and the Mayden team have been as helpful as they can be in finding a job after graduating and in the other alumni from the course, I have a support network of people in the same situation, with the same experience.

Give it a try. You won't be disappointed...

I joined Mayden as a software developer in september last year. It was a career change for me as I had just graduated with an MEng in structural engineering. I had good problem solving and analytical skills from, but little knowledge of PHP.

I joined the... Read More academy for one month while they were taking the PHP modules. I was very impressed with the course.

There was a really good blend of theory and practice. We would spend one week being taught course content from the front, followed by one week with a group project. We would alternate like this the whole time. To drive, you need theory but also practice on the road. This brings the same approach to programming.

The main instructor spoke clearly, and at a very good pace. He was patient and would put care answering questions thoroughly, often typing code snippets, which were projected onto the board.

I marked the curriculum as 5 stars because I found that when I started programming there are so many technologies which interact to put together a web application. HTTP, Apache, HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, Virtual Machines. When I was working here to start with I was learning PHP but I didn't know how it interacted with all the other techniologies. But the fact that the course is full stack really helped me to join the pieces together.

I also wanted to mention a couple of intangibles. The first is the quality of the other applicants. It seems they recruit on ability but also passion. This made the time spent relationally rewarding as well as technically helpful. I met some really interesting people from a variety of backgrounds who really enjoyed what they were doing.

A final thing that really stood out to me, was the support given to the academy by the company as a whole. Often we would have a guest speaker, which would be a current Mayden developer. But people would even stop by to help from other departments without being asked.

Why I chose this course: I dropped out of school without A-levels because I didn't think it could provide any more value to my future. I wanted to learn relevant job skills, fast, so that I could crack on with life and get a job I love. I wanted to be... Read More challenged, taught a lot to a high standard, with support for the "I don't get this at all" moments.
The company that set up the Academy have very high internal standards and started Mayden Academy because they and the UK more developers, with the hope that the graduates would be as good as, or better than, the computer science university graduates that they employ as entry-level developers.
Having met the instructors (real, current developers, not someone with theoretical or outdated knowledge) and discussed the pace of learning and the reasoning behind the course content I knew I would be set in good stead for a career from this course. After all, it was as important to Mayden Academy that I be a good developer as it is to me.

What the experience was like:
- Conten and Delivery: As well as how to build and structure things, the content included knowledge on current best practices, why things work the way they do, a history of the internet and each of the languages as we covered them, brief introductions to old practices we might come across in the future and why we no longer use them, specialist guest lectures and discussions on modern tools we weren't using in the course (for lack of time or need). Mike gave balanced overviews of each topic and taught us how to figure things out on our own, too.
- Tools: A special mention goes to the fact that all the tools provided were very good, we learnt to use them very effectively for a fast, personalised workflow.
- Pace and Support: At one point Mike rewrote an entire lesson for us overnight when we didn't get it the first time. He always offered extra support on an individual or team level and continually responded to any feedback we gave him. He also helped me revise for our ZCE exam, gave us all advice when we acted as scrum masters, gave us career advice and at one point helped me solve with some interpersonal issues. Additionally the other developers in the building were always willing to help, they even helped us discover what we loved by teaching us more about their jobs. The nature of the scrum team also meant that we supported each other, we all wanted to help each other move towards our goal of becoming an excellent developer.
- Atmosphere: We had been working in our team in the same way the developer teams around us worked, producing real work that was being submitted to the real world. I grew really close to my team and made great friends with the developers in the building. We came out feeling like software developers.

What I got out of it: In writing? I'm a certified scrum master and a zend certified engineer, which helps demonstrate the standard of my education. The experience I've gained in not just writing code but being a software developer shows through in the technical decisions I make and how I approach new problems, this has been invaluable in interviews.
I'm now a scrum-master-slash-developer, I currently work in Typescript using the OOP structures I learnt on PHP. I keep learning every day and I'm a valuable resource to my company, providing robust applications and informed opinions.

TL;DR: I'm now a successful developer and scrum master, working effectively in a different language to the one I trained in, using the knowledge from the course daily. I loved the course, every minute of it, it was incredibly valuable to me. But I did get turned down from my first interview for being overqualified...

I had an excellent experience at Mayden Academy and would heartily recommend it to anyone wanting to jump start a career in software development.

The course is equally divided between theoretical learning and practical projects, so that you get a good... Read More mix of real development experience, working as a scrum team to write entire applications to requirements and deadlines, along with a strong theoretical background to programming which can be transferred to other languages.

The curriculum is really relevant and engaging, and the academy instructor and guest lecturers tailor their teaching to your learning style, so it's also a very dynamic program. After trying to self-teach various programming languages over the last few years and struggling to get further than the very basics, I found that being taught in person by instructors with a wealth of experience is the best way to learn, and it definitely helps that everyone is really friendly!

You'll learn more in 16 weeks than you'll imagine is possible, and meet some amazing people along the way!

I had a very basic knowledge of HTML and was keen to learn more. Mike, our trainer, was very patient and explained things clearly and when needed, was very patient.

There was a good mix of practical work and theory and I am keen to keep expanding my knowledge.... Read More

Thank you.