Turing School of Software and Design

Pros:
- Very solid instruction. The four modules lasted six weeks each, and covered:

Mod 1: Programming in Ruby, Object Oriented design, testing, etc.
Mod 2: Sinatra, Rails and ActiveRecord basics
Mod 3: Advanced ActiveRecord, Authentication/Authorization,... Read More creating/consuming APIs, etc.
Mod 4: Node and JS frameworks. A little React.

- Job hunting and technical interview prep throughout
- Culture "stuff" throughout. Gender and bias problems in tech, how to be an advocate for marginalized groups, etc.

Cons:

- I did a ton more pre-work than was required, and felt well prepared going in, but I feel like the recommended pre-work between the mods didn't quite serve the goals. I felt behind the ball on mods 3 and 4.
- Large group instruction is hard for everyone, but I felt often a little underserved by the group instruction, compared to how much value I got from working through written lessons.

As a whole, Turing was a great experience. I'm four months into a new job, doing exactly what I wanted to do. I whole-heartedly endorse Turing to anyone who's interested, and I've convinced three friends to do Turing. One is almost done, two are about two start. :)

The Turing School of Software & Design changed my life. I am now making twice as much money as I ever have before at a fulfilling job. I am incredibly grateful to Jeff Casimir and the staff at Turing for their work and vision. I can vouch for the legitimacy... Read More of the program and career prospects for graduates. I am not an anomaly, either. Read the Jobs Report. The numbers are in line with what I saw. I won’t say that the program is necessarily a good fit for you, though. I saw a lot of people drop out of the program, so I encourage you to try to determine if this is the right path for you or not before dropping 20 grand on it. I’ll spend the rest of the review describing what I think a prospective student should do or consider before signing up.

Turing did not hand me anything. It’s not a place you show up, attend the necessary lectures for a few months then wait for a job offer. I worked very hard to learn the material, build up my professional materials to be an attractive candidate and then slogged through the emotional torment that was the job hunt. Can you work hard 6-7 days a week, 10 hours a day or more? Can you continue working hard when you’re sure it’s futile and you’re wasting your time? Because you will feel like that. Doesn’t make it true, but you will have those thoughts.

Do you like programming? When I applied to Turing, and this is still the case as far as I know, you could get in without ever having touched a computer before in your life. They assessed my problem solving skills and personality via collaborating on an LSAT question. I do believe anyone could learn to program, but I do not believe everyone would enjoy it. Luckily, there are so many free resources to explore you can easily get a feel for programming and whether or not you want to make a career switch around it. Please, spend 50 hours or so playing with codecademy.com and codewars.com before you decide to take off at least 7 months of your life and pay a lot of money to pursue this career change.

Are your ducks in a row to take 7-10 months off work? Family, pets, financial obligations can all derail a Turing career. Don’t underestimate the time commitment, as well as the emotional drain the program takes on most people. It is fun and rewarding, but also incredibly difficult. Don’t hamstring yourself by overextending yourself.

Last, have you done a Try Turing event http://trycoding.turing.io/? It will give you a good idea of the Turing culture and teaching style, and save you $500 if you decide to do Turing.

I chose Turing over several other programs because I wanted to go somewhere that was more than a job factory. I wanted to have an experience that was a wholesome place to truly transition into a new career. If the only thing motivating you is the paycheck, you’ll have a tough path forward. If you like challenging yourself and working closely with others, Turing is the best place in the world to start a career in software development. 


The decision to take a break from life to spend a lot of money to go back to school was hard but MORE than worth it. Turing was the hardest 7 months of my life. There is no getting around the fact that it is a HUGE commitment and sacrifice, but it is... Read More truly life altering. I went from having zero career direction to a lifelong career with the ability to provide for my family. The education I received at Turing is invaluable and I recommend it to ANYONE willing to sacrifice 7 months of their life. 7 months is NOTHING compared to the rest of your life.

I will admit, my choice to attend Turing was a little biased. I worked at LivingSocial when the Hungry Academy(the predecessor to Turing). I saw first hand how successful the graduates were at that program.

Pros: Turing taught me how to learn and how... Read More to think with an engineering approach. It was a lot more than just memorizing the syntax. Learning how to learn was critical when I took my first development job that did not use Ruby on Rails, but I was able to apply the concepts and be successful.

Mentoring. Turing has a great mentor network that is very active. As a student, I relied on mentors to solve problems when I was stuck. Now I help by using my contacts to help people get their feet in the doors at companies.

Curriculum - they do a great job at iterative learning where the lessons build off of each other. They make you learn it the hard way and then show you the Rails solution for that. It's very helpful for working in other languages that might not be as friendly as Rails. But it also gives you a deeper understanding.

Cons: It's financially hard. Leaving a job for 7 months with no income was hard on my household. I don't regret it, but make sure you are in a good position to be without income for 7 months. It would be hard to have a side job and be successful in the program.

I enrolled in Turing on the recommendation of a close-friend and completed the program in 2015. Being an adult with a previous career and history I hope this will be a more clear-eyed and less infatuated review.

Anyway, what they expect out of you at Turing... Read More can border on the unreasonable but what can you expect when they are trying to pack 4 years into 7 months? They are trying to take someone with no experience and make them hirable as a junior software dev in 7 months. You need to be very serious about becoming a dev, intelligent, and not a dick if you want to succeed at Turing.

Honestly, to their credit they pull it off brilliantly.

I feel like overall my Rails and Ruby knowledge that came out of the program was very strong, with my JavaScript knowledge being somewhat weak. The fact that I now am employed as a Python and Django developer and am excelling at my job goes to show the power of teaching one language and one framework very well is all you need to enter into software development.

As far as the curriculum, beyond feeling weak in JavaScript overall (they have since changed their curriculum to be more focused on JS), I think the complete lack of focus on HTML and CSS was somewhat of a detriment as it has a basic skill that has been required for being a full stack engineer. 1-week would probably be sufficient honestly.

The community itself is very strong and Jeff Casimir's support network/guest speaker list was truly incredible. Jeff has an uncanny ability at attracting quality people.

That said, the two main criticisms I have with Turing are:

First that the job search was much more difficult and time-consuming than expected, which was very difficult financially, even with Turing's help. I feel like this is less of Turing's fault than a shift in the market and a flood of other bootcamp graduates (who are likely less qualified in my opinion).

Secondly, while the Turing community is very strong, this strength was sometimes abused; I feel like the focus on non-software topics constantly is distracting and at times even felt like they were trying their hand at social engineering and experimentation, even if the progressive intentions of such were mostly positive. Turing is the brain-child of Jeff Casimir, and I have never met someone with a stronger personality or higher ambitions. Turing is in many ways a reflection of this personality for both good and ill.

Nonetheless, I strongly respect Jeff Casimir and all being said I still recommend Turing to anyone I know and still appreciate the fantastic quality of the instructors (Jorge Tellez especially). They aim their sites very high and for the most part achieve them for the majority of students.

I had been working as a technology coördinator/person-who-handles-everything-that-plugs-in-and-teaches-classes-on-the-side for seven years prior to enrolling at Turing. Unfortunately none of that transferred to programming and I started with basically... Read More nothing.

The program was rigorous. All those water analogies (drinking from the fire hose, being thrown into the deep end, &c.) described my experiences, especially at first. As the program progressed though, so did my understanding and looking back week by week, my progress was real and impressed me.

The staff are committed to turning out the best alumni in the world. That goal is lofty and they take it very seriously. Add in a non-trivial social justice mission, and you can see that the staff are holding themselves to at least as high a standard as they do the students. This can lead to a greater good mentality that can be difficult for individual students while beneficial to the community.

I was lucky to have a job the night before graduating. The first few months were very difficult as I had to get up to speed with topics and skills I had not learned at Turing, but my colleagues were helpful and understanding. After over two years at my first job, I took a new job as a Senior Software Engineer with another company. The work is challenging and satisfying and I work alongside people with many years more experience than me. Working remotely allows me to live where I want.

Turning my career around was a scary and difficult process, but one that I am glad to have undertaken. Turing was not easy, but I left prepared to do meaningful work that I continue to enjoy.

I attended the Turing School of Software and Design back in 2015, so while some of my specific information will be outdated, my perspective of my experience now out in the industry will hopefully be helpful for perspective students.

Be forewarned, this... Read More program is hard. It is also a more than full time commitment. Also while you don't need to have experience with coding/programming beforehand, it will definitely give you a leg up when you start. I have now been out in the industry for two years, and Turing gave me a great foundation to start with. I think Turing's advantage though is the growing network of Turing Alumni and connections through mentors. With the saturation of junior developers coming from "bootcamps", having the foot in the door through Turing's network and their emphasis on building soft skills completely sets it apart from other programs.

I would definitely attend Turing again. Without Turing I wouldn't have the job as a developer I have now, and it was so much more valuable than my 4 year college degree.

Turing is designed to push you to your limits. Every day is packed with several new concepts that you are expected to absorb and begin using right away. It's difficult, the pace never slows down, and it is exactly the program I was looking for. The pros... Read More and cons are tied together: you will have to drop everything else going on in your life at the time to focus on this program, but without that, you wouldn't be able to graduate so quickly with so much exposure to so many topics. After starting my first job after Turing, I was able to contribute to development right away, without much additional training (other than processes very specific to our team). Turing prepared me very well for my career, taught me how to continue learning on my own, and even though I look back on my time there as some of the most difficult months I've ever been though, I wouldn't have done it any other way.