CareerFoundry

I am about to finish the course in the next weeks and I can highly recommend the CareerFoundry UX Design Course. It's a great course with a hands-on project for your own portfolio work. With the help of my mentor and tutor, I keep staying motivated and... Read More learn from industry experts.

I have been on the web development course for 3 Months and the course structure is great, well written and suitable for those with no prior experience. There are regular appointments available with a mentor (which I take up every two weeks or so, or when... Read More I get stuck) and there is a tutor on line to help with daily questions via message.

I come from a Graphic Design background, but I wanted to change my career path from Print Production to something more Tech/Digital. Overall I've had a great experience with this course; The instructors are friendly helpful. The course schedule is very... Read More flexible. The skills I'm learning are very practical. I also want to mention I got a full-time job as a Graphic Designer/UI Designer before I finished the course. One of the interviewers knew of CareerFoundry which I think helped me get the job! I highly Recommend this Program.

I am loving learning using career foundry! They have a mentor program that’s super helpful so you get feedback and advice from someone in the field right now! The lessons are self paced and easy to understand. I’m not done yet, but it’s helped me a lot... Read More and I can’t wait to finish and get into the ux design field!

I’m through almost half the course and I couldn’t be happier. The instructors, curriculum and the guidance I’ve received has been incredible. This gives me much needed confidence for switching careers, as I feel that I’m receiving all the necessary support... Read More and have access to truly great knowledge base. With each exercise, my UX portfolio is growing, as are my UX skills and confidence in presenting my work. Unlike many online courses I've previously attended, this one has a practical value that I can't wait to put to test in the next chapter of my business journey!

I am almost halfway through the UX Design Program and I love it. I've done other online courses, even in UX, which gave me a good understanding of the field, but this course is very much deeper. You have two parts: the intro part, where you learn almost... Read More every part of UX casually - this is where a lot of other courses end - and then the second, immersive part, where you pick a project that you work on. In this part you learn everything a UX Designer needs to know and almost everything will be covered by Tasks, you have to submit. With every task you can see what a few other students have submitted - so if you don't understand the assignment, you can then get an idea. This helps a lot. From Day 1 you have a tutor and a mentor. When you are halfway through you can do the job preparation course, where you get another mentor, who helps you prepare for your first job. I can't say much about this, since I am not there yet. But my "normal" mentor already helped me with questions about jobs and work. The course is parted in little sections and it's viable to do like 4-5 tasks a week (full-time). I can recommend it.

What do they claim to offer? (the text is long and goes in depth of all the points, so make sure to read further to know my - upsetting - experience) - Text lessons with external resources - Excercises reviewed by a tutor - Calls with a Mentor - A side... Read More course to prepare you to the job applications - A reimbursement policy called JobGuarantee - A community to confront with But what's the reality? Let's talk about quality, because just clearing a check list could be enough to stand in front of a judge claiming you have actually delivered what you promised, but without quality it turns into a wonderful box for a less than mediocre product. Generally speaking they don't teach you how to approach critically to a design problem. You'll be taught a method that you are expected to coldly apply to all your jobs. Now, ok, there can be an egemonic methodology that emerged from the last years of evolution, but that's not the only way to approach problems. If the student misses this point he would be a mere executor, not a designer, and therefore, considering the leaps of AI (for instance, today is possible to convert text in illustrations with Midjourney) students will become less and less employable over the next years, making the investment progressively less worthed. **Text lessons** are shallow, clearly written by somebody who has not enough competence in the matter (probably copywriters, that's what they do, thay write about what they are told to using more words than necessary and overlooking the essential points), lack of analysis, overly verbose, lettering is subpar for reading and the whole layout is crowded with design patterns that are outdated and take too much space on the screen. External sources are where I've found value, but a collection of articles written by somebody else can't count for that price (other courses that clearly state that they provide external resources onlu cost around 500€, only 8% of this one). I see the point here: users want something quick, without going into critical thinking, but just a few buzzwords to understand the jargon and don't feel isolated; users who are more fond of understanding also the "why?" would end up quite deluded. Vote: 2,5/5 **Excercises and Tutor** are the main thing you are going to do. You have to be lucky finding the right one, it's kind of a raffle. Of course they onboard people with some experience, but they often have to deal with too many students, repeating the same wording for the same excercises over and over, again and again. At the end of the day they don't care about you learning the stuff; the only thing they care about is to check that your submission is meeting the requirements (and that's already of some value) and your feedback, that rates if they are helpful, supportive and timely. That's a good countermeasure to slacky tutors, but still the answers are easy to engineer to cover those parameters and then copy paste. Nothing inerenthly bad in this, if that wouldn't give the feeling of being played: you are there to receive a feedback on a specific job you've submitted, and that feedback can't convey neutrality and should actually talk about what you have done (and what could be done better), beyond the sugarcoating. I don't know who is to blame in this case, probably more CF that allows it. Vote: 3/5 **Calls with the Mentor** are an other very interesting feature and probably where most value is...but... They are supposed to guide you through the process. However kinda the same problem of the Tutor occurs here: are they actually interested in you learning? do they have any interest in you becoming more confident at what you are learning? do they foster critical thinking or are they just present, nodding at what you say? Like in many other circumstances the teacher (ok, mentor...call it as you like, it's the same archetype) plays an important role on who you are going to become. Vote: it can change a lot **Side course to prepare for the job market** NOT DONE YET **Reimbursement Policy** They claim to reimburse your fee if, after 6 months from the completion of the course, and you applying like crazy, you have found litterally nothing. Now this is a very nice thing to hear before such an economical commitment, and gives you the feeling that your money are well spent or not spent at all, but, like any other issurance, they are there in first place to be sold, and only in second instance to protect you (assuming you meet all the criteria). Long story short, you might land a wonderful job (that is what you'd naturally think before starting) or a crappy gig (that is rather more likely at the beginning) and in both cases you woul'dn be eligible for the refund. In my opinion it's more of a marketing feature: the cost of refunding some client is way smaller of the value of your serenity when buying. Vote: 4/5 **The community** is just non existent. For the sake of transparency I must admit it was not among the reasons I enrolled in this course, but still there's barely someone interacting on their platform or on the Slack/discord channel. The reason, I think, is that users have no interest in doing a favor to others...and that's terribly sad, to say the least. I grew up in the era of the file sharing, learning that offering my knowledge opens to other's knowledge, that it has to start from me rather than expecting it to happen, and that connections are great to make your life better. Maybe because of the context where CF grew, seems like isolation more than connection is a virtue, and the community is there just to say that it's there, but who cares if it is actually working? Vote: 1/5 So, is this course worthed 6k? Well, I'd turn the question into "what could I buy with 6k that brings me there in the same amount of time?" Well, you could buy 60hrs (CF offers 30hrs) of mentoring at 100€/hr (and that's a realistic price range for professionals in Berlin - city of CF) - maybe even a little conservative); you could buy lots of courses on digital products such as Figma or Webflow; you could buy books that have better content than what's in the lessons (and if you are concerned about reading them I see you, but you don't have to go cover to cover, use the index and find what you need); you can buy expensive tickets to events where you can connect with other professionals and stay up to date; you can participate to several bootcamps, that are quicker and have more projects at the end. You can do a lot of things with 6k, and if you are thinking to spend them on this course because you find everything already collected in one place, well, think twice: you are spending them all at once rather than using that budget overtime, diversifying on what you need contingently. In my opinion it should cost about 50% less, aka you can have double the value using the same amount of money on your own ;)

I am half way through the UX/UI Design Program of Career Foundry and I am really enjoying the course. I have access to all kinds of materials related to UX Design, the assignments are very well designed. I am enjoying every bit of the program as well... Read More as learning much more than I expected. I have a strong support system in the form of my tutor and mentor who are always there to clarify my doubts. The course covers all the topics related to UX design, consistent structure throughout and perfectly fits into my schedule.

I have had a very positive experience so far with CareerFoundry. I started the FullStack program in February with almost zero coding experience. My CF tutor has consistently provided specific, meaningful feedback on each task; his responses are so quick,... Read More usually in a couple hours. I've also had a supportive and engaging mentor who has talked at length about his professional experience in additional to offering constructive insights about my bigger achievement projects. The curriculum is fast-paced for my experience level, but also includes everything I need to complete the exercises. The embedded videos are extra helpful for when I'm stuck. If I could make two changes, the first would be more opportunities to practice programming language syntax, but the instructors also share links for outside resources that meet this need. Second, the Slack community for peer support can be difficult to navigate. The CF staff do a lot to promote peer engagement, but I have to search a lot of Slack threads to find students who have posted about whichever task I need help completing; maybe a student discussion board linked to each relevant task would improve peer collaboration. I would recommend CareerFoundry based on my experience so far.