For the uninitiated, SwitchUp.org is an awesome website that helps students figure out the tech sector path they want to take in life, and then helps to match them with a great place to do it. We love sites like SwitchUp because their student reviews section really allows Coder Foundry to shine and give prospects a real look at what life is like in our bootcamp.
Recently, the folks over at SwitchUp sat down with our President and Co-Founder, Lawrence Reaves, to discuss our students, our program, and his feelings on the state of the boot camp industry.
Here is an excerpt from their interview:
The coding bootcamp/immersive program is a recent trend, and new courses continue to pop up every day. Is there a unique feature to Coder Foundry?
We have a curriculum dedicated to full stack .Net development because our focus is for full-time corporate job placement for our students. Ultimately we are the program for the guy that is looking for a full-time corporate job developing software. Someone that is looking for the salary, benefits, paid vacation, 401k. I.e. the full corporate job package. The career in software development. We are working with hiring companies that rely on .Net to drive their business and that is why we chose the .Net curriculum. These companies chose .Net because it is mature, scalable, well-supported and proven. If the companies we were working with were demanding Ruby developers then that is what our curriculum would revolve around. So it is not a religion war with us, we are just responding to the market demand for coders as we see it. So we want to do more than teach you to code, we want to put you in a job where you use what you learned.
I also have to add our staff makes a difference as well. We have a professional lead instructor
that has been teaching CS at the university level for years. He knows how to code, but more importantly he knows how to teach and has a passion for it. We also have a job placement arm that is staffed full time, working with our students and employers.
What backgrounds do you find your applicants usually coming from? Is there a particular kind of student or learning style that excels in your programs?
Our typical student has relevant background in coding, technology and/or education. The typical student has an undergraduate degree or about five years professional work experience in technology on average. Some have advanced degrees. All students coming into our program have a basic understanding of coding with a level of proficiency. That profile is what we what we tend to look for because those seem to be the most successful with the program. We also find that recent CS or IT undergrads excel as well, they are able to leverage a solid broad conceptual background with the hard coding skills we teach. We tend to look for the students that will excel in our program and most importantly graduate with the ability to add value to a corporate development team from day one on the job.
To check out the whole interview the SwitchUp had with Lawrence, head on over to their blog, here! While you're there, you can also take a peek at the Coder Foundry page on their site and see what some of our graduates had to say about their time in our program.