The Tech Academy

I'm a Game and UX Designer originally and one of the major issues I had was communicating with the dev team who'd use language I never understood and made coding seem very confusing to me. Their materials are very thorough and explain things really nicely... Read More and simply. Their LMS system is super easy to navigate through and videos are easy to follow along with. I did a lot of research before starting with The Tech Academy and I have really enjoyed my experience so far. My interactions with their team has been really smooth and are some of the nicest people I've come across! Each time I progress on my course, I feel confident that I'm moving one step closer to becoming a tech professional.

I am so happy that I chose the Tech Academy bootcamp. It really is so worth the cost. I was able to learn so much and in such a meaningful way. The staff is also incredibly helpful, I felt their genuine want to help me every time I reached out to someone.... Read More I cannot thank all the staff enough for their kindness and willingness to teach and guide me through this process.

The Tech Academy was recommended to me by two others who went through the course and were offered positions before they even completed their camp. Both are currently happily employed at those same positions. My youngest son graduated a four year college... Read More as and is a full-time remote software engineer and knew them both. He recommended the course to his older brother and to me. My middle son decided to plunge in and is currently half way through the same Tech Academy boot camp and approves of the courses at the time of this review. All of their approval encouraged me to understand that even at my age, I‘m 54, I could learn how to do this and find a new career in this field if I wanted to. I had always wanted to learn programming but had not found the opportunity to do so. I took a beginners Python class outside of the boot camp before signing up to make sure I would enjoy programming as much as I thought I would and was happy to have done so. Although I have worked on computers for over three decades I have never programmed. Taking the course assured me that I could and that I did enjoy it and that I was ready to begin the camp. This may not be necessary for others, but it did encourage me set aside my hesitations and to pursue enrolling in the camp. At the time of this writing I am a full-time on-line student of the Software Development boot camp, about three weeks in. The staff is great and the course is pretty well put together for anyone, whether or not you have ever programmed or even know what a computer really is or how it really works. They will start you at the beginning and make sure you are familiar with the basics and give you a good foundational footing and launch pad to succeed from. I hope this was helpful; the course I am in is self paced and requires 40 hours a week of study, it is a "boot camp". It can be done full or part time, both of which are different subscription levels. I had the opportunity to go full-time and jumped in both feet and am enjoying it so far. Pros: It is very basic in the beginning and increases in difficulty as you go forward. The instructors and staff have all been very helpful when needed and easy to contact. Cons: The first couple of courses can "seem" like repetitive basic material for someone who has a lot of experience working with technology and computers but even so, if you pay attention you will learn new things and discover basic holes that exist in your understanding that turn this con into a real pro. I have no other cons at this time. I thought that the time difference from CDT to PDT might be an issue but has not been a problem.

The journey from having little coding knowledge, to graduating from the boot camp, to getting my first software developer job has been one of my hardest. But if you use all of the resources that the Tech Academy provides, you will get there. I am testament... Read More to that having just accepted a fantastic job offer! The instructors were always so helpful and if not available immediately to help you would get back to you within minutes. The curriculum was great, covering all the important tools and topics that you will use on the job. It also covered computer science concepts giving a well rounded education. It was great having the support of the Job Placement team. It wasn't easy getting my first dev job but they were always there to pick me up, to practice interviewing with etc. All new terms were explained before watching a video which made understanding it much easier. Only downside I can think of is sometimes while studying, I found there was a lot of pages of text, but not too many illustrations. Being a visual learner that would have helped me.

Overall a very thorough coding experience involving both front end and back end languages. While the online curriculum might be difficult for some, I found it very rewarding and informative. My only negatives regarding my experience is that I felt very... Read More uncomfortable actually staying on campus, and I had very little interaction with other students. Otherwise I would definitely recommend it!

Pros: easy access to the instructors for help on assignments. a steady increase in the curriculum, so no steep learning curves to contend with. 12 hours of access to Instructors on days the school open. Cons: no access to instructors on the weekends.... Read More Pay for allotted time means that you might run out of time to complete the course, depending on what happens during the time you are taking it.

I attended the self-paced online "Software Development" overview course with The Tech Academy. All-in-all, I believe it allowed me to establish a foundation for software development skills. The main point I want to make is that it is more important to... Read More learn "how" to learn. It is impossible to learn everything there is to know about software development (especially during a boot camp). This course helped me to be able to ask the right questions and get the right answers. Pros: -Self paced course -Access to instructors during normal business hours (very helpful and kind instructors!) -"Live Project" (A real project simulating working with an Agile dev team) -Good "basic overview" of software development principles -Technical terms are very clearly defined (at beginning and throughout course) Cons: -Some of the course materials are somewhat outdated (technology moves quickly!!) -MUST have self-discipline to stay focused on course work -MUST be able to "self-start" and seek additional information outside the curriculum -If self-paced, may have to wait for instructor's response to get help (if not working during normal business hours) -Impossible to cover everything in the boot camp time frame (there will be much more to learn after graduating. This boot camp should not be treated as a "ticket to a new job", but rather a baseline foundation for understanding principles of software development)

I am about 2 months out from finishing the course but am very happy overall, especially with the pragmatic curriculum it provides. You get at the very least two live projects where you have full simulated work days in an agile framework so uou get a good... Read More taste of the job. You somewhat work with a team on the live projects in that you can ask questions in the discord server, but teamwork overall is very minimal so if you learn best in a social setting, you may be better off with other programs. It is also outside of the projects entirely self-paced so if you want more direct supervision and accountability, yhus might also not be great for you.

Let me preface this review with my background. - I got a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts with zero programming-related classes in 2020.  - In 2022, I took Google's Data Analytics course which in hindsight gave me an extremely small taste of SQL and R knowledge.... Read More - I took a 1 week Coursera trial of the University of Michigan's "Python for Everybody Specialization" course to determine if I enjoyed programming in general, and if I felt it would be worth taking the boot camp. In a nutshell, a very small understanding of programming. - I had a sibling with a Bachelor's in Computer Science, who helped me out whenever I didn't understand concepts or ran into problems. He would never give answers, instead guiding me as he was taught in college. He was basically like one of the instructors, except he was in the other room as opposed to an email away. - Said sibling had a friend with zero programming knowledge who also enrolled in The Tech Academy, same boot camp, and got himself a job after finishing the JavaScript course. This was a big plus for me, as I indirectly knew someone who successfully landed a developer job through the skills made in this boot camp. A few points to know before you pay. - They will recommend the Software Developer boot camp as it is the complete package of courses, minus the Cyber Security and extra self-paced courses. It's a 22-week course for full-time. At the time of this review, it was $11,660 for this boot camp. - They will recommend for full-time students to work 40 hours per week, or a standard work schedule of 8 hours per day/5 days a week in order to graduate on time. I feel that my collegiate study experience gave me an edge here, as I had plenty of extra time built up halfway through the boot camp.  - You are effectively buying a subscription to use their learning system, you can buy extra weeks for extra fees if you run out. If you end with extra time leftover (very possible), you can get additional classes if you want. - You get a certificate, letter of recommendation, and 90 days of Job Assistance after you finish  - You are NOT guaranteed a job, and this is not a bad thing - it is realistic. They will not do your interviews for you.  - If you take the boot camp online, you will only interact with the instructors if you run into problems with assignments. There is no real social connection with other students, I imagine the experience is different if you go to the campus. The instructors are very nice in my experience, though, and give decent tips and helpful guidance! - I am fairly confident they give every student at least one extra week. Overview: I enrolled in The Tech Academy's Software Developer boot camp in hopes of beginning a new career as a programmer. There are a variety of boot camp packages to choose from; I chose this one specifically because I felt learning more languages would give me more experience in programming, and also give me a more impressive looking resume in the end.  The first three courses are required regardless of which boot camp you take, and they are 95% articles on concepts, videos on concepts, and quizzes on concepts, and a few assignments to ensure you understand these various topics. If you know a decent amount about computers (like me) or programming, these classes will likely bore you until something new pops up. Just power through it, take notes - the final exam will be related to what you learn. After that, though, you get to the fun part of learning new computer languages! The courses are taught with the idea that you know nothing. The difficulty of the courses increase as you go; you start out with what is basically hand-holding, to eventually being let go and having to craft entire functions or applications on your own. I'd say up to JavaScript is pretty much copying down code, and ensuring you understand what that code does - you gain good debugging practice from this. Python was when I finally felt I'd be able to make it as a programmer. Because JavaScript, Python, and C# are all object-oriented programming languages, each course could be considered a single step to further understanding object-oriented programming as opposed to mastering a single language. My experience: I personally decided to work a standard 9-5 work week to mimic that of a normal job environment. It was pretty grueling at times - some days I would take half a day off, or even a three-day-weekend to revitalize myself for the following Monday. I have been told I worked far harder in this boot camp than I would in any job as a developer, so that in itself was a kind of motivation. Once I got to HTML, I was having fun. I absolutely love learning and every day there was something new. I was slowly picking up the skills and tools to do the work, and my confidence grew along with it. Putting together websites, creating databases, small game applications, all of it was a thrill even if some days were more difficult and (usually unnecessarily) stressful than others. But I believe it was all worth it - there is nothing like finally crafting something all by yourself, spending hours debugging it until it finally all comes together and just works.  I did have my moments of skepticism and concerns in the beginning, but I kept going and once I hit Python course I felt that I could easily recommend this boot camp to anyone. I'm planning to take additional courses, as The Tech Academy does have some extra self-paced courses that aren't included, the more I know the better off I am - do note these self-paced courses do not offer certificates at the time of this review.

The Tech Academy instructors are there to review my work any time of day, even late at night when I do most of my studying. I appreciate the full-time support and being able to see that my work is complete and valid even when I submit it at 3 in the morning.... Read More