Flatiron School

First and most importantly I started listening listening to the girls on the podcast 2 years ago and i loved listening to them. I was in the first DS cohort and it was pretty intense, i mean i only thought about DS for 14 months and i took about 5 days off where i didn't code or read code. I had a bachelor mathematics degree, that was getting a little stale and switched to a completely different field (environmental) however i had a job within two weeks after i had applied to 4 position. I also had 2 second in person interviews. My salary was increased substantially with the career change.

If your looking to self teach yourself and pay $15,000, then Flatiron is your school. If you want to learn the pure basics and then have to Google everything else, then say YES! Otherwise, this is school is an utter rip off. They don't have a plan, it is all lecture, and very little study time. You will end your day with daily challenges on topics you barely touched on. This is where Google comes in. You are told that in the real world, you will have to Google the answers so this is preparation. I say NO WAY! I am here to build a solid foundation and if I have to, research the harder bits. I am not about to GOOGLE the most basic tools of the trade. For that, I can stay home and take a less expensive route. APPLICANTS BE WARNED. Prepare yourself for an incredible bright future elsewhere.

Flatiron School was the most challenging yet rewarding expereince Ive had in life. The highs and lows are real. There were days I thought about giving up, I thought I couldnt make it through, I thought maybe this wasnt for me. Yet I kept showing up, putting the time and effort in, taking advantage of the excellent help of technical coaches and tech leads...and after 5 months I graduated. I think the cirriculum and technical assistance is top notch at Flatiron. It wasnt until maybe a month after graduation that I realized all of the information floating around my head finally made sense. It all started to fall into place and I could see clearly the effectiveness of the Flatiron cirriculum. It no doubt teaches you what you need to know to be valuable in this industry. I can proudly say that two months after graduation I received my first ever Full Stack Web Developer job offer. I am excited for this new journey and thankful to Flatiron for the dedication to excellence and providing such a truly robust program as well as an amazing experience. My advice to all who are considering is this:

1. Be prepared to put the time and effort in. Some weeks I spent more than 60 hours studying and coding.
2. Take advantage of the Ask a Question and meeting with your Cohort Lead and join the Study Groups. This is where I feel I learned the most. 
3. Dont give up. We all doubt ourselves at some point. Whats important is to stay positive, keep showing up, learning and doing what you can.

Before Flatiron I'd had several years of experience working as a front-end developer and previously paid for education at a community college and through Harvard Extension School. I had known of bootcamps for a long time and not had much interest or belief in them. But, I was hitting a plateau in my particular niche and within 48 hours of seeing a Flatiron ad on Facebook or Google, I was all in. For me, with mostly HTML and CSS experience, I could tell that this program would fill foundational gaps in my programming knowledge and teach me to use the hottest library in town: React.

The Good

The program really did provide me with everything that I hoped it would and brought me to a level I don't believe I could have acheived on my own. I had several interviews before landing a job, and in the final, live, 90-minute code test, I was tested on everything I learned at school and nothing that I had prior knowledge of. This was hugely gratifying because 1) it confirmed that I had been taught the right way to do things and 2) that any of my classmates who were making complete career changes could also have passed this test. It is not an easy program to get into or to complete, but if you can do it, it really means you have the skills to do it professionally.

Tuition

This will apply to any bootcamp, but really do the math on tuition options. The $15,000 price tag turns into something like $21,000 if you take their loan. On their income share agreement webpage it says "With Flatiron School, you’ll never pay more than 1.5x the ISA portion of the tuition amount." 1.5x is A LOT more than 1x and you're on the hook for 48 to 96 months (8 years), depending on the loan option you take. Read all the fine print.

Career Services

I felt that the career services were a little bit over-sold. I don't live in the city where I went to school, so maybe I had a different experience, but I expected Flatiron to actually provide more job leads than they did. I got a handful from them, but I live in Virginia and the opportunities were in places like Florida, Texas and Ohio.

Mock-technical interviews were handled by a third party and none of my classmates had a good experience with them. We all had our asses kicked by questions that were over our heads. I'm a good developer and I was rated a 2 out of 5 in this interview. A classmate, who was the first or second best programmer in our class was similarly crushed, and we all walked away feeling very discouraged about our abilities and hireability.

The career coaching aspect was good. My coach gave good advice and helped me plan answeres to questions that have been historically difficult for me. The résumé help is also very valuable.

Caution: The Money Back Guarantee

When you officially declare your job search after graduation, you begin working off a spreadsheet with specific requirements for networking and continued education. The requirements are signficant and if you do what they say for 6 months, you'll almost definitely get a job. However, if you miss a single checkbox for a single week of that 6 month period, you are out. There is a lot of legalise on their money-back page (https://flatironschool.com/career-services-commitment/) and I have no doubt that if I had followed the procress for six months and not been hired, they would have found some bullet point on that page that would take away my refund.

You're going to work hard after graduation. Think of this as a 25-week program and not 15. If you 100% follow their process you will get a job, which is great because if you 99% follow their process you won't get your money back.

Overall

Flatiron was definitely the right program for me, based on what I had to learn. (It may not be that way for everyone, so think about what you actually want to do.) I came out with the skills I wanted and made great friends. I expect that my 4 months at Flatiron will stay will me for the rest of my life.

The Flatiron School will change your life --- if you put in the work. They hire Incredible staff, support your learning with fantastic materials, and work alongside you after graduation to keep you motivated. The entire environment is designed for your success, but as with many things in life, nobody does the work for you.

A year ago today, I was a senior music composition major in college crying over my grad school rejection letters --- this morning, I signed an offer for a full-time C# position. This mind-blowing transition is all thanks to the incredible instruction I received from the Flatiron School in Denver.

If you signup and put in the work - you will be exposed to a neverending world of learning, and given the tools to explore. The skills you learn at this school make any technology and concept possible for you to master - only for you to shift into learning something else.

I would recommend this school to anyone who is very motivated to make a career switch. It will be hard, sometimes very hard, - but the outcomes speak for themselves.

First thing I want to say is that enrolling in the Software Engineering Immersive program at Flatiron was the best decision I had made in some time. 

I found the course to be challenging and I expected as much; but I am not saying that the course being challenging is an aspect to deter anyone from taking it. Parallel to the difficulty of the course, there was my enjoyment of understanding a topic, which is mostly due to the amazing help I received from my instructor and coaches.

Instructors, coaches, and staff

I value a lot the initial efforts made by the school during the first week in order to break the ice betwen the members of the class, both for students, instructors, and coaches. I feel that it did have an impact on starting the social interaction more smoothly, and creating a friendlier environment.

The school hosts a great place of learning for people of all degrees of familiarity with coding. I was able to feel that I could make mistakes in front of anyone and ask about it and get positive feedback.

Curriculum

While I learned more code than I could have imagined, not everything can be covered, that would be impossible. Considering that each module is three weeks long, I would argue that what students can do at the end of each mod is impressive; it does highlight how well curated and presented the topics are. Needless to say that there has to be some will on the students part.

Job Assisstance 

Both my career coach, and the career prep track were extremely helpful. The career track has important information on how address interviewers, good interview practices, good habits to keep after graduation among other things.

My coach was great in guiding me with a mock interview and preparing possible responses to some common questions. Also feedback on body language, speech speed, diction  and articulation of ideas. Additionally, she advised me on useful mindsets to have when interviewing and overall job searching.

Overall Experience

I am glad that I pushed myself to to go through the course. I am grateful to everyone who I met and contributed to that journey. Even though I had to repeat a mod; I still found the same support to continue. Hopefully, what I just said made some sense, and helps someone to make a clear decision.

Flatiron School totally changed my life in a lot of ways, I not only gained the tangible coding skills to be a developer, but Flatiron achieved their goal of getting me to a confidence and skill-level in my coding where I can go off any learn any language, framework and software system via research and practice. To me that is the biggest technical gift that I walked away with.

In addition, I would not have been able to complete the course if it were not for the incredible coaches, lead instructors and fellow cohortees that all made up the Flatiron community day-to-day. 

Flatiron's curriculum not only gets you to a level of coding and understanding where you can build a beautiful, full-stack, ReactJS-RoR site, but they teach you the fundamental parts of programming that allow you to be adaptable outside of JavaScript and Ruby. 

The program is definitely intense in terms of the volume of work that you are expected to complete, but within the first module, most students got comfortable with understanding how they learned the material best and could adjust their schedules accordingly. 

As a new coder, it is very easy to explore the internet and find people who are extremely passionate about certain ways to go about learning how to code, what's most important. Examples like "Python HAS to be your first language in 2020", which are completely BS, but not obviously so if you are a new developer.

Flatiron surrounds you with professional software engineers throughout the program who not only reassure you that statements like the one above are non-sense. But they also help you understand being a good person and teammate is when it comes to coding. No company nor any development team wants to work with people who are selfish about their coding knowledge, aren't team players, or are just jerks in general. But you can certainly find a lot of those people spouting their "wisdom" online. 

There's something to be said for a former senior software engineer looking at your cohort dead in the eye and saying "You are developers." Imposter syndrome is an enormous reason why people quit teaching themselves how to learn coding, and Flatiron does an excellent job to help people navigate all of the technical AND emotional questions that arise through a developers coding bootcamp journey. 

I am forever grateful for the people who I met at Flatiron!

I am very glad I changed my career and I kind of went by with a lot of things. But the course is quite bad, run by instructors with not much experience, in an environment very hostile. I have seen many stories on their greediness. Many people who thought they were not able to make it and wanted to leave in the "free to leave" two weeks were convinced to stay and then left by themself totally behind. I swear out of 20 people of my cohort all of them wanted to leave negative feedback but they were afraid the post-job assistance would not provide anything in that case. I was also told that explicitly from Oliver Beach after I argued that we could leave bad reviews if not listened on some basic needs we had (he was the former campus director) who was fired (or as he preferred to say, left to focus on his project) after I reported the event to NY.

I completed the Web Development Immersive Program at the Access Labs Brooklyn Campus which offered deferred tuition. It's very misleading that the program is called Software Engineering Immersive when their content is web development. I can honestly say I enjoyed the time I was there there, but my overall experience is a bit of a mixed bag.

About the deferred tuition...

So it's completely irrelevant to my overall experience but I am grateful that Flatiron has offered this option for those who can't afford to pay the tuition upfront. You can only qualify for this program if you are making under 30k. I am a bit disappointed that once you finish, it's not an option to make over an X amount of money to start paying off the tuition. After my 3 months grace period was over after graduation, I had to pay 10% of what I earned at my part time job (During the program, I was still working part time). I thought it was a bit unfair because I was making very little at the time. I heard from a friend who attended a bootcamp (one that I won't name) that after completing and once they earn over 40k, that they will start to pay back the tuition. 

In other words, once you get a job (or if you already have a small part time gig to support yourself for the time being) it doesn't matter how much you make. You got a job, now it's time to pay them back. That sort of aggravated me on my job search but on the flip side, they're lenient to you if you don't have the funds. This was something I needed to rant about. I know it's in the contract about the payment but it definitely peeved me. 

The Curriculum​

The program is meant to prep you on how to build your own website using a Ruby on Rails backend, and a JavaScript and React frontend. You learn everything online from Flatiron's learning platform, Learn. You are given readings and labs for the night and the next day, the instructor talks about it the next day. That is when you can ask questions to clarify while the instructor talks about the material. The readings will also throw in some extra resources for you to read about if you want a more deeper understanding.  

What I didn't like about the curriculum: 

• It wasn't very self-sufficient. Most of the time, I found myself reviewing material outside of Flatiron's learning platform to understand it
• Some of the topics on the learning platform were not introduced or taught in lectures
  • ie: There was a section on object orientated javascript that was lightly touched in lecture but we never see ever again and is not required when we code  
• We were taught the basics but I felt like I didn't have a strong grasp on the foundations of either JavaScript or Ruby

What I did like about the curriculum: 

• Application- being able to build something from scratch

The Instructors

In my first week at Flatiron, I was given the impression that the instructors and teaching assistants really care about you and your growth. To be honest, they really do. They're open to any questions you have and that's what they're there for.

My only complaint is this one instructor who told us that we would receive limited help in order to be more independent. I get that being self driven is super important in the tech field but at the same time the learning process of asking and understanding is just as important. 

Job Assistance

Once you reach towards the end of the program, you're assigned a career coach to help you along your job search. I really like the idea of having a coach to support you and give you advice during your job search. Your coach is always there if you need to ask questions or draft some emails to potential employers. In addition to that, you receive a Career Prep course on the learning platform. You're also given an excel sheet to keep track of blogging, networking, and coding. 

Honestly: 

• I found some of the readings for the Career Prep to be useful; I still ended up reading external materials 
• It's a plus that Employment Partnership for Flatiron connects you with multiple opportunities

Overall and Advice

There are things that I personally liked:

• The amount of support you receive from your peers and instructors 
• You get to meet amazing people with different backgrounds and experiences 
• The friendly and open environment  

What I felt was lacking: 

• It did not really teach a strong foundation for JavaScript and Ruby
• There was no foundation in teaching computer science topics, algorithms and data structures
• No logic but pure application

Some Advice

If you really want to attend Flatiron, I'd say go for it. But I suggest you really grind on some computer science topics, master a language, get into theories, algorithms, and data structures for a year or two. I feel like Flatiron is the next step after you learned a chunk on your own. It leads you to apply everything you learned and continue going forward. Stay hungry for knowledge (advice from one of my teaching assistants), be curious, and always ask why. 

About Me

• Graduate of the Full Stack Web Development on-campus immersive course, 2019
• Found a Full Stack role (React and C#) with an above-average salary 4 months after declaring a job search
• Bachelor's degree in a non-traditional background (not tech-related)

The Flatiron Experience in a Nutshell

Expect Flatiron to prepare you to be a shoo-in for an internship, to land a lower-paying full-time gig after some additional self-directed study, or to obtain a higher-paying role after some months of dedicated study.

The Good

• Knowledgable instructors who cared about my success
• Inclusive, fun and supportive culture in a fast-paced, immersive learning environment
• Gained practical industry skills for a solid foundation

The Not-So-Good

• Flatiron is not (at this time) set up to bring graduates' technical skills up to par with industry expectations for higher-paying full-time entry-level roles
• Career support did not provide even the most basic job-search optimization tactics

What You Can Expect

I loved my Flatiron on-campus experience. But after graduation, I realized I wasn't prepared to reach my personal career goals and expectations without months of additional study. 

Technical Expectations

In my job search, I've found what I learned with Ruby, Rails, SQL, Object-Oriented & Functional Programming, JavaScript and React/Redux are no doubt essentials for grads looking for Junior Engineering positions; But that isn't all you need anymore. 

Instructors expect interviewers in 2019 to ask us questions like the FizzBuzz problem. That may have been the case 3 or 4 years ago, but with so many bootcamp grads getting churned out the bar has been raised much higher. In interviews, I was asked to create algorithms implementing data structures including linked lists, binary search trees, heaps, stacks & queues and sometimes even graphs. To land a job at a top company like Hulu, Amazon, Facebook, etc. you need a solid understanding of system API design (I believe this will soon be the norm for less prestigious companies as well). Regardless of what may be advertised online, Flatiron does not teach data structures or system design.

Career Support Expectations

My career coach gave some solid advice on cultural interviewing. However, through my own study, I found there are a lot of really cool ways to optimize your job search that Flatiron career counselors should be sharing with their grads. I really could have used a job-finding expert on my side. Flatiron has a partnerships team that sends mass referrals out to graduates, but most of these were for low-paying contract work. 

I met with my counselor almost weekly at the beginning, but most of my one-on-ones felt a lot more like emotional support meetings than focused tactical strategy sessions aimed at getting my resume in the hands of decision-makers and nailing the interview. The great news is you can check out the resources listed below to fill in those gaps.

Is Flatiron For You?

All things considered, if you're a dedicated self-starter willing to put in the hours after graduation Flatiron could be an excellent option for you. I know grads from other noteworthy bootcamps experiencing similar struggles, and some that didn't have a positive on-campus experience. Flatiron can help get you where you want to be, but you have to set yourself apart from the thousands of other bootcamp grads looking for the same job opportunities.

Resources

Technical

• Leetcode (consider the premium option. check out the problems broken out by data structure)
• Data Structures & Algorithms Masterclass (JavaScript)
• Grokking the System Design Interview

Job Search Optimization

• Cold Emailing
• Mail Merge
• Clearbit Connect
• Hunter.io