iO Academy

If you're debating joining iO Academy, just do it! it's the best decision I've ever made. The training and support is great and they really help prepare you for your first role as a developer. And the support continues even after finishing the course,... Read More helping with any coding problems and searching for jobs.  I started the course in person and after a few weeks got moved to being remote which I was dreading but it was actually even easier than in person. Can't recommend the academy enough! I got a job a week after graduating and am excited to begin my career as a developer.

I can't thank iO Academy enough, the training is first class and the support is incredible. We had to switch from in person too remote during the course and even this was handled so professionally. In many ways it actually helped prepare us for the current... Read More workplace environment. If you're looking for a coding course that prepares you for the workplace, then this is really the one to do.

Having an established career already, it was a bit daunting to say the least to leave employment and retrain. However, the course at iO Academy has given me the best start to launch my new career that I could have hoped for. It was an amazing experience... Read More from the start and I honestly wouldn't change a thing. The course is structured really well, with a general format of one theory week followed by a project week to put your newfound knowledge into practice. You come out with a solid portfolio of work, which is probably the most valuable thing when starting as a new developer. As you might imagine, it is intensive and definitely hard-work at times. However the pace is achievable and the support is always there to help if you need it. The agile aspects are invaluable for those who haven't worked in a similar environment before, with the Scrum Master certification being a real bonus. There are also regular guest speakers which are really interesting and a great introduction to life in the industry and the dev community in general. I couldn't have asked for better trainers - they are really friendly and approachable, incredibly knowledgeable, excellent teachers, and always available and eager to help whenever needed. They are very conscious of continuous improvement, asking for feedback after each module. They also offer one-on-one chats (both planned and ad-hoc) where you can go through anything you need. The whole course is underpinned by an excellent office team, who do a great job at supporting students and trainers alike throughout. Learning remotely for the majority of the course wasn't a problem at all, in fact I think it actually worked better than it would have done in the classroom with social distancing. Towards the end of the course there are excellent job planning sessions, including support with CVs, interviews, tech tests, hiring partner events, recruiter contacts etc., which are essential to get the best start to the job hunt. Overall I am really pleased that I decided to go down the bootcamp route and wouldn't hesitate to do so again if I were to start over. It was an amazing experience throughout and I honestly wouldn't change a thing. I now am part of an ever-expanding alumni of like-minded individuals, who continue to provide opportunities as I start my career. I'm very happy I made the leap and couldn't/wouldn't have done it without the course - thanks to all at iO Academy!

Having been a stay at home mum for 5 years with absolutely no coding experience at all, I strangely decided that software development was for me and applied for iO academy. I am incredibly glad that I made that odd choice, because it turns out that not... Read More only is coding great fun, but I couldn’t have chosen a better place to be trained up. The content was great and has set me in good-stead to be taking on my first technical role with technologies that are relevant. The trainers were absolutely brilliant - patient, helpful and all round good eggs, and didn’t mind answering all my very basic questions. I generally felt incredibly supported and like being part of a really close-knit team. The on-going support after the course has been wonderful as well, with help offered searching for jobs, getting in touch with recruiters and keeping up practicing skills. Overall, I could not recommend iO Academy enough. It was a great experience and I now have a whole new career ahead of me with skills that I had never even heard of 4 months ago! Can’t be bad.

The course material is excellent, the trainers are beyond excellent -- knowledgeable, experienced, encouraging, helpful -- and the job support (and general support), during and after the course, is tremendously helpful. Can't recommend enough for anyone... Read More looking to get into web development, whether you're retraining or fresh out of school.

I left my job in Sept 2020 (in the middle of Covid... perhaps not the soundest decision but it turned out very well!) to attend iO (or Mayden Academy, as it was named at that point. The name changed, nothing else!). Before iO: I did some research on coding... Read More generally, some short courses on Codecademy, some of the free tester sessions you can find online. I wanted to be as sure as I could be that I actually would *like* coding - nothing I saw put me off, so I started researching bootcamps in my area. I was optimistic that I would be able to find one I could attend in person (at this point we were in between lockdowns, it was summer and it sort of felt like that would be feasible... yeah, I know). Anyway I did a lot of reading reviews, lots of digging into old blogs and so on, and I interviewed at two bootcamps. I already had iO pegged as my favourite and the interview confirmed it. There was also an entrance "test" - I got really hung up on this beforehand but would reassure anyone reading not to get too worried. It's not the kind of test you can revise for, and if you're the kind of nerd who's considering a coding bootcamp, you're probably going to find it fun. I took it online, in my own time, and had my face-to-face informal interview later. During iO: We did actually start in person, which was really nice. We were masked and behind plexiglass, but still. We moved to remote working in week 4, I think. I was worried about it but honestly it was actually really easy, and working in pairs over zoom is actually much more intuitive than working in pairs through plexiglass..! So if your cohort look like they're going to be fully remote, don't worry. The course is intense. It is fast, and if you've been out of education for a while, like I had been, it might take some getting used to! I would advise you to do any and all of the prep work you get sent beforehand (I did it for about half an hour an evening for a month or so beforehand, just to get to grips with things). You do a week or two of theory, followed by a project week. The first couple of projects are solo (you can obviously ask for help and so on, but what you make is personal to you), and then the rest are group based. Programming in a group was probably the biggest learning curve for me; it was so not what I was used to, but by the end our final project was something none of us could have achieved by ourselves, and we were all really proud. There are well-timed talks throughout the course from people in industry; these range from broad overviews of how certain companies work to fairly in-depth looks at how certain software works. Lots of the speakers are ex-students and it's really nice to see them and how happy they are in their work. After iO: Well, I'm only just after iO now, and I start my new job in two days! I had a few interviews during the final couple of weeks and the role I have accepted is a Masters degree apprenticeship - I do not have a computer science degree, I have a very doddery Film & Media degree from the dark ages, but in a couple of years I will be a software engineer with a masters degree! It would have been unthinkable to me this time last year, I'm thrilled. iO have lots of hiring partners within Bath / Bristol, and they will introduce you to whoever is hiring at the time you graduate. We graduated at Christmas, during covid lockdown, during a time when it is really hard to get work, and still had a handful of partners keen to interview us. Other notes? There were eight people in my class. We were all totally different in terms of learning styles; and all of us were accomodated. The size of the team means you get to know each other well and you get to learn how to work effectively with people who have different styles to you. It also means your tutor can take the time to give you each the individual support you need.

I never write reviews, but IO genuinely deserve all the fantastic reviews they continuously get, so I wanted to add mine.
I joined the course without any prior coding experience, just a genuine interest and desire to learn. Everyone there is so supportive,... Read More and genuinely wants you to succeed. Even after graduating and securing my first developer role, IO are still very much there for their alumni. Class sized are kept small, and set up like real dev teams, so even from day 1 they are preparing you for a career in tech. They alternate theory and project weeks, so you really get to practice what you learn and consolidate your knowledge, rather than feeling like you've rushed over content.
The curriculum and teaching is done in a way that gives you a strong foundation to build your career on, rather than feeling like you've just had a brief introduction on things. I've really felt this going into my first developer role, for example when my team are discussing OOP concepts, and I can contribute! My advice to anyone thinking of taking the Full-Stack Track at IO is take the 100% do it! It's one of the best decisions I ever made.

The Mayden Academy course is more than just a coding bootcamp, It's one of the best things I've done and I would recommend it to anyone considering a career in tech! It was a friendly, fun, and supportive environment and during my time there I felt that... Read More the trainers and everyone involved in running the course wanted the students to do well. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience: the wonderful trainers; the team of students; the course content; the structure of the course (love the alternating project and theory weeks as it helps you solidify the concepts and build up a great portfolio); the small class sizes; and the great place you get to study. Overall I really enjoyed everything I learnt and made some great friends; and even though I attended having barely written any code before and from a totally different career path it prepared my for my first developer job - thanks to the number of hiring partners the academy put you in touch with! Thank you Mayden Academy :)

I had a really good time attending Mayden Academy's Full Stack Track. The content is excellent, the staff and students friendly, and the course is structured in such a way that you get a good idea of what it is really like to work in a dev job. The general... Read More principles of programming are covered, so you won't have to fear learning other programming languages to increase your skills.

Where do I start? One of the best experiences I've ever had and in the space of 6 months I left behind an unfulfilling career in admin that I fell into accidentally and started a new career I'm genuinely excited about! On the course I looked forward to... Read More Mondays and was a bit sad on Fridays for the first time in my life.

I first heard about Mayden Academy on a Quora post Mike answered and ended up coming here to look at reviews. With so many glowing reviews I knew I was either applying to an amazing, genuinely life-changing course or a cult. I won't be able to convince you it isn't a cult so won't try but happy to add my voice to the chants of 'do this, it's the best' and 'Mike, Charlie, Ash (trainers), Margaret and Emily (operations team) are my leaders and I will do anything they say and would die for them, er...where was I?'. Anyway...

If you're asking 'is it for me'? My experience:
I applied to the academy late one night when I was off sick from my previous job with flu. My job at the time was so stressful that even with the flu I was working from home to keep on top of it. After years of being unfulfilled, simultaneously stressed, bored and underpaid for the level of work and effort I was putting in, I'd had enough. The highlight of my job at that time was when I got to use Excel. I loved continuously learning (mainly self-taught through Google) and problem-solving using it as a tool and even felt guilty for enjoying it too much, like it wasn't really work because I was having too much fun.

If any of that sounds familiar (maybe note the Excel bit, I know it's not everyone's cup of tea) - being totally fed up and bored in your work because there isn't enough problem-solving and loving to continuously learn/teach yourself new ways to use tools then becoming a developer could be a really great fit for you.

General info
The academy course is very holistic, it's not just teaching you to code but how to become a developer who is able to work well in a team in the real world. It takes you from not knowing what http stands for or what Scrum project methodology means to being ready to start an actual, real life, paid developer role in an Agile team in 16 weeks. You'll learn the technical and the non-technical skills (project management, guest lectures) both in theory (during theory weeks) and in practice (in the project weeks).

One of my favourite things about the course was the spiral learning approach where we would learn about a topic at an introductory or less complex level and then revisit it throughout the course diving deeper each time and furthering our understanding. We also learned how to do things the hard way first rather than using tools which would do everything for us which sounds like a pain but I'm really grateful for this because I think it armed me with way more understanding of what I'm doing. For example, starting writing code in textmate manually to later using a PHPStorm which can complete typing syntax for you and tell you when you're getting it wrong!

People
The trainers were excellent (I had Mike with Ash supporting) and incredibly dedicated to the students' experience and job prospects. I loved being in a small team, 8 students to 1 teacher was a perfect size for the class. Margaret (Business Development and Marketing Manager) and Emily (Office Coordinator) made everything run so smoothly - from onboarding to keeping us stocked up with toast and hot chocolate, to running events like the hiring partner evening and everything in-between. The whole team work very hard to make this this the once-in-a-lifetime experience it is.

Preparing
Before the course you'll be sent information on prep work you can do ahead of the course. I'd done a small amount (3-4 evening classes) of html and css a few years ago and did a big chunk of the suggested JavaScript prep ahead of the course which really helped. I strongly recommend doing as much of the prep as you can - it's not a pre-requisite but it really helped me not feel overwhelmed by all the information and pace of learning.

Money... :(
I didn't have savings before the course so wouldn't have been able to do it without the option of EdAid so it was fantastic to have this option. It's a no-interest loan where you pay a small % admin fee and pay back at the cost of inflation but only begin paying it back when you're working again. I was also lucky enough to be part-funded through WIDJET. The Academy has itself started a scholarship fund which aims to help people who might not otherwise be able to afford doing the course so please don't be discouraged from applying due to the cost if that's what's standing in your way, get in touch with the team to see what your options are.

During
The course is intense. I didn't have much energy outside it to do anything much more than sleep and more learning! I exaggerate a bit but it really did take 100% of me for the duration. I also found it incredibly rewarding; many days I wanted to stay later and would happily get my laptop out on the bus on my commute to cram in more practice.

16 weeks is a good length, more than that would have been too long, less than that and I wouldn't have been ready to get out there and feel confident in my skills. You don't have to learn outside of the course hours but I wanted to and it really helped me to consolidate my learning. I should add that I was commuting from across Bristol so my commute was longer than if you were to live in Bath or near to a station heading into Bath and that took its toll.

During class time ask questions. Lots and lots of questions. The trainers are really friendly and approachable and love getting questions. If you think you're the only one in the class who isn't getting something because no one is asking the question you want to ask, I guarantee you there are others thinking the exact same thing and will be grateful when you ask it so they don't have to! An interesting thing about the academy (and I would think this is universal, not just at Mayden Academy) is that many of us felt underconfident and worried we weren't good enough because we were finding the material hard. I would like to reassure people in advance: the application process is geared to ensure that if you're on the course, the trainers are confident you can do it. It's quite an unusual situation to be an adult learner on an intensive full-time course in an area where everything is so new day-in day-out. As adults we're not used to not knowing/understanding things straight away and this course puts you in that position for 16 weeks - it's ok to not be good at something straight away but it can feel very uncomfortable and make you question your abilities and bring up fears of failure but ride it out because it's a normal reaction and likely not at all reflective of your actual abilities.

After the academy
The academy don't guarantee you a job at the end of the course, however, their training is so comprehensive and of such a high standard, the network of hiring partners so big and the support given to help you with job-hunting so good, that graduates receive job offers in developer roles within three months of graduating. I won't lie - the job-hunting bit is a stressful process, I experienced a lot of imposter syndrome and worried about when I would have money coming in again - but they do try hard to support you during that. I was fortunate enough to be offered a position in my last week in the course and began my new job a couple of weeks later. I'm two weeks in now and loving it, despite the imposter syndrome rearing its head!