Flatiron School

I must say that I am very disappointed in Flatiron UX/UI bootcamp. I’ve been working in Graphic Design area for the last three years and I’ve signed up for this program after many hours of research and comparison hoping to learn from experienced UX/UI designers coming from the field, presentations from quest speakers, and sponsored workshops as listed in the contract but unfortunately none of them happened.  I highlighted the items from the contract, which were not provided at all.Please find below list of provided instructional class hours:-       Phase 1: 6 weeks 6x15min=90 minutes-       Phase 2: 6 weeks 6x120min=720 minutes-       Phase 3: 4 weeks 4x20min=80 minutesSo, in total it makes about 15 hours + several short recorded videos and makes up less then 1/50 of the promised 810 total clock hours (everything is recorded).  Moreover, some of the workshops quality was well below than described in the contract.Based on all reasons listed above, it is obvious that this program did not deliver services described in the contract and definitely is not worth $15,000.

My time at Flatiron was one of the best experiences of my life. I was constantly pushed and learning new things. Learning there was not rigid, like in a traditional educational environment, but rather it was encouraged for me to ask my own questions and pursue projects that interested me. Also, I was surrounded by such wonderful people who were also curious and driven. The networking opportunities that I gained from it were really invaluable to me, as someone who is brand new to the tech industry.

I was fortunate enough to find a job one month after I graduated. Within six months, I have learned so much, made some amazing friends, and doubled my salary. This experience has truly changed my life.

Flatiron was great for me. Because it is self-paced, the online program allowed me to start slow while I was working full time and ramp up once I resigned from my job to focus on the program. Every person I encountered from instructors to coaches to fellow students was nice and helpful. I found the progression of the curriculum logical and, even after starting with little programming experience, I was able to complete projects independently. I landed a job within a month of graduating. I owe my knowledge and success largely to Flatiron.

Attending Flatiron School was a great decision for me in starting my career as a Web Developer. The campus and staff were all very supportive and open. Additionally, the other students were all dedicated, helpful, and genuinely passionate about code. The learning materials were very accessible through Flatiron's Learn platform, and there was no shortage of additional practice/labs. I genuinely felt that any questions or concerns I had were heard and addressed in a timely manner, and the overall support to push oneself in a new field was crucial to my progress.

I did a lot of research on bootcamps before landing at Flatiron, quite honestly overall it seemed the best choice at the time. Would I make the same choice? absolutely! I won't lie it was very difficult but calm seas don't make good sailors! I feel as though I'm stronger not only as a person but as a developer. The fast pace learning was intense at first, it felt like a pie eating contest where the prize was more pie. After you hit a groove and trust the process it shaped me to become a fast learning developer. You really learn how to learn. 1 month after graduating I was able to pickup python and mongoDB like it was nothing because of this ability to have learning down to a science. All the friendships in my cohort and with my instructors are strong and have not faded. The support post graduation is just as strong as when I was attending. They leave you with the tools to continue on and spark the drive to want to dive deeper. I love flatiron 3000.

Avoid! I couldn't complete the course and left after the first week, they charged me 1k?! Even after knowing I couldn't keep up with course, had a newborn baby and mortgage and bills! Heartless company! 

I'm 34, working in finance. I wasn't happy in my career and looked for a career change. I tried the sample course on a few sites and enjoyed the flatiron course and the way the website looked as well as the job guarantee.  after speaking to the admin team at flatiron I joined up. 1k deposit and 9k loan for a career change seemed great. But...I struggled at the end of the pre course work. Speaking to admin about this they pushed me to join the full immersion course before I was ready/confident. They informed me that I made enough progress to get through it. 

I was going to take a career break, knowing I can return to my current job and if it didn't work out with flatirons job guarantee, that I have a job already so risk wasn't too bad. Upon joining I was told I was people were being made redundant. I had to take calls during the course and attend meetings. The stress caused me to fall behind. I struggled to keep up with the course material. 

I was told I was keeping my job but had to return sooner than expected and to a further location and different job. I had to drop out.

I begged the team to help but had no help. I have a new born baby, mortgage and bills. Redundancy would give 2minths pay so had no choice but to keep the job. I couldn't risk my families future. I had to make a choice to leave the course after the redundancy. 

Flatiron showed no compassion whatsoever, pointing me to generic terms and conditions and disregarded my personal circumstances.  They kept 1k even though I had not used 1k worth or resources or tutors time. Utter shameless company!  Begged them to return our savings as 1k is a lot of money as I am the only one working. They said, tough and that they won't return it

Alright, to start off, I am about half-way through the Online Part-Time Software Engineering Bootcamp at FlatIron School so this review is based on my perspective of the Online program only.  I had intended to write this review at the conclusion of the bootcamp but given the current state of the coding bootcamp industry and of Flatiron, I decided it was worthwhile to post my opinions now.  I do intend to either edit this review (or write another one) when I finish the course but I think this review has some merit and is worthwhile at this point.

Another important point that I think is important to state before I begin is why did I decide to write this review?  As unbelievable as it sounds, I am doing this purely as a 'Pay It Foward' gesture.  I do not work for a competitor bootcamp nor am I being paid by Flatiron (or anyone else for that matter) to write this review.  Before I joined the Flatiron program, I scoured this website (and others) in search of legitimate, unbiased reviews that seemed to give an honest, realistic perspective of the program and I would have loved more than anything to hear an opinion from someone who's currently in the program like myself, so here it is for all your critique/learning/enjoyment.

So to start off I'll tell a little bit of my background as a web developer.  Before starting Flatiron I had no formal education in computer science or web development.  I took an undergraduate college course in Turbo Pascal back in my college years and prior to beginning Flatiron I took a few Code Academy courses in Ruby, HTML, and CSS.  But I would not say that I was at all knowledgable about programming or web development before starting the Flatiron program.  And after about 6 months of Flatiron, I definitely feel more knowledgable and skilled about the subject but that doesn't mean all is roses and daisys.  

I'll start off by summarizing the good's and bad's of Flatiron's Software Engineering program and then elaborate a little more afterwards.

Pro's:

• The curriculum has some good material and has been "battle tested" over the 5-6+ years of teaching the program.
• The curriculum is pretty well structured and organized from a student's perspective.
• Having 'tech coaches' at your disposal to ask questions when you get stuck is nice.
• Flatiron's reputation is generally known one of the more established, veteran coding schools in the industry.

Con's:

• Cost - The price of the program has nearly doubled from the time I started ~6 months ago and it's now at like $17k I think!
• Curriculum - I know this sounds counter to what I said earlier in the Pro's but the curriculum still needs quite a bit of work.  There are lots of obvious bugs in the labs and it's obvious the curriculum team struggles with keeping everything updated & working.
• Technical Ability of Online Coaches - While Flatiron markets itself as having technical 'mentors' at your disposal while you go through the program, the experience and knowledge of these technical coaches is very limited in lots of cases.  Flatiron tends to pull the majority of their tech coaches from list of very recent grads of their own program and some of these coaches quite likely may have less knowledge than you (even if you're even an entry level developer).
• Job Placement Numbers - While Flatiron markets their job placement % numbers all over the place, the truth is that they hire a substantial number of their own graduates to be tech coaches and instructors for their own program.  What this means is that they can claim this as legitimate employment for their graduates but it doesn't really satisfy the true perception that the industry as a whole thinks about their graduates in terms of programming skills & knowledge, as much as their job placement numbers hope to lead you to believe.  In reality it's a win-win for them because it allows them to report high job % placement numbers as well as hire relativley cheap instructors for their school (they only pay these guys $20/hour and it's a part-time gig with no benefits).
• Project reviews are a joke, and that's putting it lightly.
• There are not enough technical coaches on staff to satisfy the demand of students asking questions, therefore the wait times to get your questions answered can be frustratingly long (~30min to 1hr).

So let me elaborate a little more about of the Pro's of the program.  First, the curriculum is quite strong.  By that I mean it has decent examples, explanations, and the labs do a decent job of testing your understanding of the material.  Even though there are lots of little bugs scattered throughout, it's still manageable to get through them.  Having someone to ask questions to when you get stuck is almost priceless (it may make the difference between you giving up completely or pushing through it).  Flatiron has established itself as one of the veteran scools in the coding bootcamp industry and has a great marketing team focused on getting their name out there.

And now for the Con's of the program.  Firstly, at $17,000 - $18,000 (which is the current cost of the Software Engineering Program now, I think), I expect the quality of the curriculum and the entire program to be much higher.  While the curriculum material is decent, I just personally dont think it is worth what they are charging now.  For the cost of the program now, you could nearly get a degree in Comp Sci from a fairly reputable university.  And while Flatiron will say that their program gives you a better ROI than a college degree given that you finish it in much quicker than a full-fledged degree, if you can't find a decent paying job after finishing the program then it kind of defeats the purpose.  The technical coaches that are supposed to be there to guide you through the program have very limited knowledge (and extremely limited real-world coding experience) many times.  A large majority of these coaches have only really mastered the labs (because they did them when they were in the program themselves) but when you ask them basic theoretical programming questions outside of just the obvious answers to the labs, you can see them struggle hard.  You will find that there are a few really good technical coaches that understand programming concepts really well and can convey them but the large majority of the tech coaches will have mediocre knowledge (at best) and are not really qualified to teach you any fundamental programming concepts.  It really boils down to the old adage of "you get what you pay for".  It's hard to entince anyone with a strong knowledge of software engineering & web development to come work for you for pennies and no benefits, so they aren't able to attract the talent that is desperately needed.

On that same note, one of the frustrating things that I have encountered in the program is the fact that when you do utilize the tech coaches to ask a question, the wait times can be frustratingly long (and by that I mean 30min - 1hour).  This may not seem like a big deal but when you have 4-5 questions per lab that adds anywhere from 2hrs - 5hrs to your studying time and these labs can easily take 2-3 hours a piece even if you don't have many questions to ask along the way.  Also, I've noticed that some of the tech coaches (who are being paid to tutor you) seem to have a bit of arrogant attitudes at times and will make you feel dumb at times for asking a question.  There definitely seems to be a real lack of quality coaches as well as a lack in leadership put in place to manage this whole process.  And at $17,000, I just personally expect higher quality in terms of mentors.

The last point to discuss in my lengthy discussion of the Con's of the program is regarding the projects.  You will have 4 projects throughout the entire course and each one is supposed to test your understanding of the concepts of the section you just completed.  While this sounds great in theory it doesn't necessarily add up in execution.  The biggest problem is the lack of technical support and feedback during the projects.  Firstly, you are not allowed to solicit help from the technical coaces for your project (they will literally tell you that they cannot assist with any project related questions).  Secondly, after you've spent countless hours and nights pouring your heart and soul into the project and are finally ready to present it to the project reviewer that they've assigned to you, you will only get ~30 mins max (if you're lucky) of that person's time to actually look at your project.  And out of the 2 projects I've done so far, the feedback that I received during my project review was very minimal at best.  Basically you will get little to no constructive feedback on your project, there will be little to no code 'refactoring' during the review, and you will probably feel shafted after you've poured your heart and soul into this project only to realize that the person reviewing it has little to no interest in what you actually did nor cares to take the time to actually critique your work and help you improve.

The truth of the matter is that Flatiron is a for-profit technical training company.  What this means is that their ultimate goal is to maximize the bottom-line and however that needs to be done is what's going to happen (and that almost always means not maximizing what's best for the students).  This is obvious to see when you're in the program and one glaring example being the extremely long frequent wait times required to actually get a tech coach to assist you when you have a question.  If they cared that much about their students' experience they would put more money into hiring more quality tech coaches.  Also, the behemoth company formerly known as WeWork (now the We Company) aquired Flatiron back in 2017 and you can definitely see the negative effects of the changes in the vision of the school as well as the overall quality of it's offerings and culture.  WeWork's (We Company) strategy is to grow as big and as fast as possible as a company as a whole, and that means buying up it's competition as fast as possible so that it can eliminate it.  But the We Company is not a tech company (as much as their glorified S-1 would like you to believe).  In reality 95% of their revenue comes from subleasing out office space (cowork space) in some of the biggest business oriented cities in the world.  They are not a technical training (or education) focsued company but they decided to start buying online training schools (like Flatiron) because it fit their business model and they can also utilize some of the vacant rental space that they have and are struggling to lease out by allowing the schools to operate there.  Basically it's an accounting game and if you read any of the financial investor's critique of their IPO (as of September 2019) you will see that there are a lot of fundamental problems with this company as whole.  

So in the end you're probably hoping for me to tell you affirmitavely if you should join Flatiron or not, and unfortunately it's not that easy for me to do.  I personally quit a highl paying 3-figure job before joining Flatiron and while I do like some aspects of the program, I do not necessarily feel that I'm going to easily get a job after finishing the course.  I would say ultimately it boils down to your personal goals and situation in life.  If you absolutely cannot go to college and have to decide between joining Flatiron or flipping burgers the rest of your life, well that decision is easy.  If you're unsure if you really want to do web development as a career (or are just looking to add some skills to your arsenal) then I think there are a lot cheaper ways to learn web development skills than through Flatiron.  You'll quickly notice that Flatiron tends to publish a lot of 'feel good' stories about individuals who generally don't succeed in obtaining lucrative paying careers in the general workforce and therefore these are the people who they try to focus their marketing efforts on.  While there's nothing wrong with this necessarily, it does skew the picture quite a bit.  The truth is that your success in finding a job (and starting your web development career) is going to depend mostly on your general intellect and problem solving skills, your ability (or lack thereof) to interview well, and how intellectual (or unintellectual) the person interviewing you perceives you to be.  You will not get a job just because Flatiron recommends you for one nor will graduating from the school itself get you one.  You're going to have to stand out amongst all the other applicants and the truth is that there are lots of coding bootcamps that teach almost identical skills to Flatiron.  

So to end this review I'll say this, if you do decide to join Flatiron just be prepared for the problems & Con's that I mentioned in my review.  And don't get your mind into a comfort zone thinking that the Flatiron curriculum alone will set you up for job success because it won't.  There's a ton of other coding bootcamps out there today and unfortunately I do not have personal experience with them to offer a comparison but I would advise you to seek out alumni of those other programs to try and get honest feedback about the programs before making your decision, because with the costs that these programs are charging now, it's not a minimal amount by any stretch of the imagination.

P.S. I cannot review the Job Assistance section at this time since they do not "assist" you in finding a job until nearly the end of the program.

Please note that this review is based on my own experience and it doesn't necesarily speak to the quality of the bootcamp itself.

I tried their online part time software engineering bootcamp and it just didn't work out for me, I started off as a complete newbie, and while the pre-work was tremendously helpful to understand a lot of programming concepts, but it simply took a very steep hill and I wasn't able to keep up. Granted, I had some personal life things come up at the time, which did not help, but I couldn't continue after the first big project. I personally benefit more from the brick and mortar type of class for a variety of reasons.

That said, their resources are good, their staff is friendly and helpful and this bootcamp might be ideal for someone who has time. I did see many of my classmates do much better than I did, so it's just a matter of whether if this will fit you or not. 

Overall, I had a great experience with the Flatiron School's Online Web Developer program. I took the course as self-paced, and it took me just over 7 months to complete. I felt that the curriculum, which consists of README's, labs, and portfolio projects, to be well-written and reasonable in difficulty. The support through Section Leads, Techinical Coaches, Educational Coaches, and Career Coaches was great throughout. If you get stuck on a lab, there is an ask-a-question feature that allows one-on-one feedback and coaching through a school Technical Coach. The Career Coaching after graduation really helped me find a job and a career I'm excited about! Overall, I highly recommend the Flatiron School.