Makers Academy has earned a good reputation as one of Europe’s best courses for learning code. The Makers coding bootcamp isn’t designed for absolute novices but for those who know a little bit of code and want to advance in skill. The physical academy is based in Shoreditch, at the heart of London’s tech industry, but if you can’t make it to the Big Smoke for a 12-week course, remote learning courses are available.
In this evaluation, we’ll assess if Makers is one of the best online cloud learning platforms for coding available today. By examining Makers’ pricing, services, and support options — before comparing it to the competition — we’ll help you decide if Makers is right for you.
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Plans and pricing
Makers Academy promises participants a new career within four months for an £8,000 fee, which is reduced to £7,500 if you’re a woman or a gender minority. However, having the money in your pocket isn’t enough to be accepted onto the bootcamp. All applicants have to go through a selection process.
First, you must send a written application, and if your application demonstrates you have some coding experience, Makers will invite you to an interview. The next stage of the process is an interview and pair-programming session with a Makers coder. If you demonstrate sufficient skill in the programming session, you’ll be invited to pay a deposit to reserve your place on the course. Be sure to pay your deposit ASAP, as the course places quickly fill up.
Makers are clear that if you fail the selection process, you’re able to try again at a later date.
How it works
Courses at Makers Academy last three months, from Monday to Friday, full-time, and most weekends require you to complete a coding challenge. Makers promise that the average graduate earns £35,000 as their starting wage. As Makers is both a coding bootcamp and recruitment agency for top brands, you can be assured that your course guarantees some level of employability. Makers proudly advertise that they’ve placed graduates with over 300 companies.
Your coding bootcamp begins with a pre-course that ensures every developer in the class has the same knowledge base prior to starting. The aim of the Makers’ program is to produce ‘language agnostic developers’ who can acquire new languages in weeks. However, first, they want you to develop a good knowledge of the back-end coding language, Ruby.
After Ruby, you’ll progress to Rails, then Javascript and front-end development. From the beginning, Makers bootcamp aims to recreate the atmosphere of a real office by encouraging team collaboration on projects. Makers train would-be developers in agile software development to increase their employability among organizations that require coding team collaboration and individual flexibility.
The final assessment is in Week 11. You’ll be asked to produce a portfolio that reveals the goals you’ve achieved on projects throughout the course and explains how you achieved them. A coach will assess your portfolio and then schedule a meeting with you to determine whether you’re employable or not. If you fail your review, you can resubmit a different portfolio for assessment. If you pass, you’ll be encouraged to apply for vacancies with Makers’ hiring partners.
Features and services
Makers Academy distinguishes itself with a collaborative learning process which creates employable developers with flexible thinking and team collaboration skills.
Makers acts as a recruitment agency for big-name brands and has placed graduate developers with over 300 businesses, including Tesco, Starling Bank, and the BBC. Because Makers must guarantee graduate quality to maintain relationships with hiring partners, you know they’ll train you to the highest standard.
Makers developers are encouraged to take command of their own learning as they would in a coding team. Learners are encouraged to solicit help and clarification from their coaches, instead of their coaches coming to them with advice. In addition to that, learners are encouraged to pursue their own side projects, which will be assessed positively during their final review.
Agile Software Development is taught to produce team players and adaptive problem solvers. Over the 12-week course, Makers developers will have to submit a minimum of two team projects, during which they’ll have to navigate communication and leadership dynamics with other developers in training.
Makers aims to produce ‘agnostic language’ developers who’ll always choose the best language to meet the demands of their current project. Learners will be trained in Ruby, Javascript, and Rails so that they can understand the fundamentals of programming languages and then apply that knowledge to mastering others.
Support and customer care
The year 2020 saw Makers change its guaranteed job offer upon program completion to a guaranteed career support program. Every developer who passes the Makers Academy course is still able to apply for vacancies at hiring partners through the Makers career service, as previously. However, now Makers cannot guarantee you’ll be hired at the close of the process due to increased economic uncertainty.
Every graduate gets personalized career support, and they’re expected to share evidence of applications with the Makers Career team. Regular check-ins with career team personnel aim to keep Makers developers motivated during the job application process. If graduates experience difficulty getting hired, they’re placed with a Career Coach, who’ll set tasks to improve their employability.
The competition
One of Makers’ fiercest competitors is Bloc. Whereas Makers only teaches you Ruby, Rails, and Javascript, Bloc also educates students in HTML, CSS, Heroku, and Git. Another way Bloc improves upon Makers is with price, as Bloc only charges £2,499 for online learning in comparison with Makers’ £8,000. However, Bloc does not have a career support program, which puts it at a disadvantage.
DevPointLabs is another rival and improves upon the Makers academy by offering part-time courses better suited to those working alongside coding training. The scholarships DevPointLabs offers reduce the $5,500 tuition by 50%, which is more generous than the £500 Makers (and Bloc) deduct from their price. DevPointLabs scholarships are available to people of all minority backgrounds, not just gender minorities.
Final verdict
Makers is a great choice for a novice coder who wants to acquire technical expertise and become attractive to hiring managers. As the Makers Academy mimics an in-house agile software development team, employers take a pass as an indication you’re able to conduct yourself professionally.
Course participants can feel confident their course is of quality as the success of Maker’s recruitment arm depends on keeping hiring partners happy.
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