Flatiron School

I graduated from the Flatiron School in-person web immersive in May 2015 (Ruby-007 cohort).

I was one of the few hired right out of my cohort onto the school’s engineering team as an apprentice developer. Now it’s a year and half later, and I couldn’t be happier or more proud of where I’m at today. I went from zero professional coding experience to apprentice developer in three months, with a promotion to Developer I by month ten.

That’s a complete career change from a non-technical role in the fine art world to full-time fullstack developer in under a year. Yeah, kind of insane. Also yeah, my family’s pretty happy about that upgrade.

I’d done my research before applying, and I knew from talking to alumni and reading the annual jobs reports that this is what Flatiron does. If you put the work in, they’ll help you get these crazy good outcomes. Plus they’re one of a handful of coding schools that partners with the City of New York and the White House EQUIP program to offer fellowships and financing for under-represented groups. I knew if these institutions trusted them, I could too.

My trust was well-placed. My classmates were some of the most impressive, amazing people I’ve ever met, and our instructors were incredibly dedicated, putting in extra hours to make sure everyone had the support they needed to keep up with the fast pace of the course. The career services team are super heroes; with their help, I landed +5 interviews after graduating, with three full-time offers.

But most importantly, thanks to Flatiron, now I can do good work that makes me happy from almost anywhere in the world for the rest of my life. And that kind of beautiful life is well worth the (ongoing) effort.

The highlight of my Flatiron education was the outcome. After graduating from the on-campus web development immersive program, I was hired into a data scientist position and asked to immediately learn Python and other data science packages and tools. While the shift was initially daunting, after a mere few weeks I found myself already comfortable with the new programming language and libraries needed to conduct industry-standard analysis. The fact that I was able to smoothly transition to a non-web career in technology after Flatiron speaks volumes not only as to the quality of programming education, but also the mission of the school -- at Flatiron, you truly learn to code and love the trade, not just succeed in tasks expected of a junior web developer. 

From a curriculum perspective, most of Flatiron was a fantastic experience. The Learn platform was effective at encouraging learning and keeping track of process. My only qualm with the program was towards the end, during project time; independence was stressed, and I felt that I needed more support from the instructors who were sometimes unavailable to help. Also at the end the campus was getting quite crowded, with 3 cohorts filling the space. I'd recommend that Flatiron either expand the campus or cut down on the number of cohorts offered at once.

I had a good career before Flatiron School. I'd studied accounting and gotten a job at PwC where I was making good money, had a ton of job stability, and was moving up in the ranks. That was what I thought I should be looking for when I was in college, hence the major I had chosen. The problem was that I discovered I didn't really like accounting. I also really didn't like working 80 hours a week.

I thought I was taking a huge risk by throwing all my experience away to completely change careers, especially after having invested several years at it. I thought I'd have to start at the bottom and work my way up again. Much to my amazement though, my first job out of the Flatiron School paid $10,000 more than I was making as a Senior at PwC. I also work only 40 hours a week, which is still mindblowing to me, and best of all, I actually love what I do for a living now. Who knew Sunday doesn't have to fill you with dread?

It's been a almost a year since I graduated from the Flatiron school and I can wholeheartedly say attending the Flatiron School was the best decision I made in my life: I walked out of flatiron school not only with a new set of skills, but with an amazing community and circle of friends.

Prior to attending, I worked as a producer in news. I attended the full-time web development immersive and now work as a software engineer at a big news station. I get to build the products I used as a producer and combine both my passions: news & tech. The Flatiron school helped me take my first steps in to a field I love - tech -  and armed me with the skills to succeed as a developer.

They really care about your success and put effort in to helping you find a job after graduation. The people I graduated with are all doing amazing things in the tech scene and it is inspiring to see how much they have accomplished in such a short amount of time.

I can't even find the words to express how thankful I am to this school. I love my job and am excited for what the future holds. The future is very bright and so much of the credit goes to the flatiron school. If you are thinking of applying, don't think twice! 

I wouldn't be where I am today if I had not decided to leave my old career and attend the Flatiron School.

I was a Finance major with Information Systems Minor in college. After college, I worked in the banking industry in New York for several years. I left that job to work at a startup in product for a brief time. All that experience contributed to my decision to attend the Flatiron School. I would challenege anyone thinking about making the switch to think hardly about the decision to decide if they would really like a career in software.

After making the decision though, the Flatiron School comes in to adequately prepare developers for the professional world. The curriculum is challenging, and often throughout the course it can be overwhelming. The instructors and TAs are they to provide support but they also encourage students to figure things out. I would say the most important thing I learned at the Flatiron School was how to learn. As a software developer I am constantly challenged to learn new technologies and domains. Because of my experience at the Flatiron School I am not scared of that.

Overall I am so thankful for the experience. I have made friends from my cohort that I still talk to today. It is so helpful to ask them for advice and ideas based on what they have been working on at their respective companies. I am also glad that it has allowed me to be so flexible. Since graduating, I have moved from New York to San Francisco finally landing in Denver. I was able to easily work remote for a portion of time as well.

I am very thankful for the material I learned and the people I met at Flatiron. I attended Flatiron from Jan 2016 - April 2016 thanks to the NYC Tech Talent Pipeline Mobile Dev Corps Scholarship. The material I learned over those 4-months really changed my life and is the reason I am a developer now.

Background:

I was a Math major in college and had taken a number of CS classes. I was already familiar with Object Oriented concepts in C++, but had no experience in mobile dev. Prior to Flatiron, I was an Assistant Buyer.

Flatiron Experience:

I would say my memories of Flatiron are mostly positive, with a few less positive memories peppered in. The curriculum was challenging, but not overwhelmingly so. My instructor at the time was a bit of a rambler and the lectures often took longer than they should have, but he was thorough and smart and very helpful. The TA's were also very helpful, though sometimes they were swamped with other students questions and you'd be left without any way to proceed. Final projects were definitly a bit of a roller-coaster. It would have been great to have more guidance and mentorship - for my cohort, each team had a mentor from a specific company and we were encouraged to build something somewhat related to that company. My team was able to make something, but it took an extra week because we really had no idea how to plan out our work or how to scope it or delegate tasks. There really was not enough guidance on the how. But we learned a lot and ended up with something we were able to show at interviews that was in the App Store.

Career services:

They're really smart and kind and I cannot say anything bad about them. They were responsive to all of my emails and always calmed me down when I was stressed about the job hunt. To this day, they email me to check in on me and I could not appreciat them enough.

Everyone at Flatiron is kind and it feels like they are invested in your success. They provide you with the materials to change your career, but you are responsible for putting in the work. I really didn't believe that you could become a developer after 3 months but Flatiron provides a strong foundation for begining your career and when you go out and get a job, you have enough knowledge to fill in the gaps.

I was apart of the Ruby 03 winter 2013 web development in person class. My story is alittle different then the typical flatiron student. I had graduated college with a EE degree in 2006 and while I had taken coding classes in college, I realized that after 7 years of being in the electonics industry; my technical skills were not what they used to be. I needed new skills for what was happening in the software industry because software was becoming more and more apart of our daily lives because of smart phones and web apps. I moved from the west coast back to NY, which is where I grew up, I moved into my parents basement and decided immerse myself into code for the next 4 months. I was very surpise by the technical depth that we cover over 3 months and was even more surpirse by the caliber of students that were in my class. They were all smart, diligent and some of the most fun people I've ever been around. I loved the fact that we built a community over the past 3 month and were all willing to help each other code and learn. I learned alot from all the instructors and the friends I made in class. To me the magic of the flatiron school is not the 3 months you learn about ruby, rails, linux etc. its the ability to think in a way, where you can accept failure and keep trying, where your not scaried to learn something new and you develop the personal skills to work with other developers.  

Going to the Flatiron School (BK-000) was the best career move I've made. I graduated from college with a history degree, and then went directly into account management at a tech company where I realized I wanted to do what the product team was doing, so I quit to pursue that goal. Flatiron School helped me transition from an unemployed/contracted worker to a software engineer at a great NYC startup, and I've been going strong since.

Nevertheless if you're thinking of going to Flatiron/another dev school, note that it is a lot of hard work. For the five months I was at Flatiron, I basically dropped everything to devote all my energies to learning. So, be ready to work hard.

Overall, I'm incredibly grateful to what I learned and how I grew at The Flatiron School and would recommend to someone who was serious about learning web development.

I can't say enough about how fantastic my experience with Flatiron's Learn program was. The entire curriculum is well structured and extensive. And I truly mean extensive. Many online coding programs will focus on students building portfolio projects (twitter clones) but don't go into how things work under the hood. Not only does the program teach you how Active Record works in a practical sense, but they also have you build your own ORM framework so you understand in detail how Active Record works underneath all the Rails magic. Having this extensive knowledge of not only how things work, but also why was crucial to my success in my new career.

Secondly, in addition to the well thought out curriculum, I can't express how much everyone on the Learn team truly cares about the students. All the instructors, learn experts, career coaches and everyone on the dev team expressed such a sincere sense of compassion for all the students. The Learn team should be extremely proud of the community they have built and continue to grow. Additionally, the students are some of the most positive people I have had the pleasure to learn with. Like learning anything new there are times of frustration and having such a positive student community to connect with is one of the many things that sets Learn apart from the crowd.

Thanks to my fantastic career coach and the Learn curriculum, I was able to secure an engineering position at a fantastic company within a month of graduating. Learn is the best online program for anyone wanting to pursue a career as a software engineer. 

Flatiron School was probably the hardest thing, and the best thing, I ever did.

After dabbling in a few technical tasks at work, I knew I wanted to make programming my career.  Flatiron School helped me realize that dream.  The curriculum is designed to give you everything you need to make web applications and land a job as a Junior Developer, whether it is general programming concepts like MVC or data modeling, to learning web frameworks such as Sinatra and Rails.

I came to Flatiron School with no prior college education.  But what they expect from you is to work hard, collaborate with your fellow students, and give it all you've got.  It is 3 months of rigorous work, including nights and weekends, but the instructors are there to help you succeed. 

After graduation, you prepare for job interviews by going through a cultural and technical mock interivew. I was job seeking for several months, and had weekly check-ins which my Flatiron School career coach.  She  always made sure to keep me motivated and on the right track, and was always ready to proofread emails or answer any questions I had.  I received a back-end full-time position at a marketing agency, which was exactly what I was looking for.

Applying to Flatiron School was probably one of the best decisions I ever made!

Learning to program through the Flatiron School’s Learn Verified platform was one of the best choices I’ve made. The online program was a perfect fit for me as I learned how to program while still keeping my day job to support myself. Not only do they have a solid curriculum (Ruby, Rails, JavaScript, Angular, etc), but they have exceptional instructors, a supportive online community, and an amazing Career Services team. Learn Verified’s focus on learning in a community and building real world projects prepared me for my first job as a developer - it taught me how to ask good questions, how to approach problems, programming concepts that apply to various languages and frameworks, and how to present myself as a developer while making a career change. To anyone interested in learning how to program, I’d highly recommend the Flatiron School’s Learn Verified program; you won’t regret it.