Flatiron School Reviews
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Lisa
Highly recommend
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Over the last several years, I have worked with multiple online programs. In each case, I have found myself frustrated for one reason or another. My experience with Learn Verified has been a welcomed change. The curriculum is clear and concise, while still presenting a challenge. The lab work provides a valuable platform to practice what you have learned. The entire program is well scaffolded, delivering lessons step-by-step, culminating in projects that demonstrate the bigger picture of how all the pieces fit together. The curriculum is open-source, so it is constantly being improved by students with the approval of instructors. The program has a valuable feature where you can ask questions and get answers from other students and instructors in a real-time chat session. The process of talking through a problem with another student or instructor as it comes up is a tremendous improvement from the message board approach I have seen in other programs. The feedback at Learn comes live, and prevents the types of roadblocks that lead to frustration and disinterest. One of the co-founders of the school is incredibly involved in the program. He typically gives three live lectures per week based on topics the students have requested. He’s active in the Slack channel and is constantly offering to help students with whatever they need to succeed. Even though this is a remote program, you really get the feeling that you are part of a community of students eager to help each other get through any roadblocks they encounter. I had considered attending an in-person bootcamp, but the flexibility afforded by Learn lets me move at my own pace. This lets me re-visit topics that I need to spend more time on. This would not be possible if I was attending an in-person bootcamp. I can efficiently breeze through topics that are more intuitive to me, while spending more time on ones that are more challenging. You still get the same material that students in the in-person Flatiron bootcamp get, but you can navigate at your own pace. Most importantly, I have learned more in the past few months with Learn than I learned in two years of self study. This program has focused me on the right topics to study, and the right order to study them. Finding individual free resources is easy, but figuring out how to combine them into a worthwhile lesson plan is nearly impossible. This program sets you up with exactly what you need to learn, providing a great foundation of knowledge that is setting me up to code in the real world.
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Tracy
A Great Fit for Me - Your Mileage May Vary
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Saw these reviews and thought I'd share as well. I've been in LV for about 4 months, so I feel like I can accurately speak to the program's strengths and weaknesses.
I found out about Learn while I was interviewing with in-person bootcamps in San Francisco. I definitely had a negative bias toward online bootcamps (Bloc and Thinkful in particular), but the Learn platform really impressed me. It was incredibly addictive working through the lessons. The curriculum is a treat- it's timely and funny stuff (Grumpy Cat, Kanye, etc.). I also felt better about the program because they make you complete a ~30 hr Intro to Ruby course before you can even apply. And it's hard. That's a good sign.
Beyond that, the burgeoning community atmosphere online is really nice. It's positive, encouraging and inclusive. People are really trying to help each other succeed.
Oh, also - in general, an online bootcamp fits my learning style better. I can speed through things I already know, like SQL, and spend more time really digging into trouble spots. There are multiple weekly live lectures that you can drop into if you need a review.
Of course, there are the usual problems that one might associate with learning online. This program might not work for you if you aren't good at pacing yourself. Also, the program's hours revolve around the east coast, so if you're on the west coast like I am, you may be out of luck if the “Learn experts” aka TAs have gone for the night. Oh also - Avi is awesome, but the TAs vary in their helpfulness/knowledge level.
Another issue some might have a problem with is the fact that this program is still so new. There are typos, there are bugs. Sometimes the TAs become overwhelmed with questions so responses take a while. If you don't have a Mac, working through this program may be technically annoying. It’s been an issue for me so much so that I’m considering biting the bullet and switching over as soon as the new Macbook Pro comes out. However, I feel like the LV team has been honest and responsive about these issues so I cut them some slack.
Overall, I'm really happy with my choice to go with this program. It works for me.
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Liz Denhup
Excellent program.
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I enrolled in the online version of the Flatiron School three months ago as I was looking to transition into a career in full-stack web development. I am currently in the program. In the past three months I have gained a ton of proficiency in programming, and I feel that I am being well-prepared for the job market. The instructors are really helpful, and the people at the Flatiron School do a great job of making the experience immersive. The Flatiron School's online bootcamp is also one of the only bootcamps which offers job placement assistance, which was a big factor in my decision to choose Learn over other bootcamps. I will update this review after I graduate to reflect my experience with placement services. Overall, I think Learn is a great value and that I have learned a lot from the program.
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Marsi M.
Awesome
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Started the Learn Verified program in November with absolutely no coding experience. I like that you can try the free Intro to Ruby course before applying to get an idea of how the program works. It is a very comprehensive curriculum with descriptive lessons and challenging projects and labs.
Since I haven't completed the program yet, I can't speak for the job assistance aspect; however, their jobs report is available to view. From the looks of it, it's very encouraging.
The staff is top notch and available to answer questions and help at any time of the day. You can tell they really care about each and every one of us. What is really awesome is that Avi is so accessible and can break down the most complicated concepts into easy-to-understand pieces. Even though he's the Dean, he takes the time to explain and help us, and it makes you feel like you matter. It's like getting on-the-job training from the CEO.
I love the community and feeling of connection as we all share code and vent our frustrations and cheer each other on from all over the world. I couldn't have asked for a better experience. Flatiron School rocks! -
Roberto
Student
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Note: I am a current student and have not graduated yet. If track record is anything to go by, alumni validation, and judging by my experience so far, I vote 5 stars for job assistance. I will edit by June 2016 if I find otherwise.
For me, choosing a program to get into web dev came down to these factors: credibility, quality, cost. Here is what I found.
Credibility:
The first factor was easy to tackle. If you go to learn.co you can read the jobs report. It’s an independently audited report that contains job placement (99%) and average salary for graduates. I called-up a friend of mine who is an alumni of one of their in-person programs to get more info. She vouched, and gave a great review.
Now take it from me. This is a great program.
One of my former colleagues joined another popular program (without me knowing, or I would have persuaded her otherwise) and is now hoping that she can find a job. I, however know that the school’s reputation is on the line over me. They very publicly advertise their audited placement rates.
Quality:
The curriculum is based on the in-person program. So, not only are the instructors good at coding, the actual material has has proven itself several times (results seen in jobs report). Not just that, but there is material that is not included in the in-person program. You are simply exposed to more content, and one could argue that this will make you a stronger job candidate.
What’s more, I encourage you to actually do the free coursework. It will only cost a little of your time, but you can see what the program is all about and why students are so addicted. Yes, I said addicted.
A note here on quality. The Flatiron School selects students in what I consider a unique fashion. There are people in the program who have tech backgrounds, have worked with big data, or majored in math, and there are artists, writers, comedians, etc. I say this because the curriculum is extremely accessible. Everyone can get through it, and everyone becomes stronger from it. This is largely due to the content and the format, but also due to the community. At the end of the day, despite their different backgrounds, everyone I have come into contact with loves the program.
Cost/Pace:
You go at your own pace. If you finish in 4 months, good for you. If you finish in 8, fantastic. For the most part people don’t pull out their rulers and start comparing. And why should you? However everyone’s budget is always at the back of their mind.
The team recently launched a second version for $500 instead of $1000 per month. The $500 version is just the Premium version with some support services stripped away. I am glad to be in the Premium version because it suites my needs, and I budgeted for it. However, the basic version students are by no means treated any differently in the community. Honestly most of us don’t know (or care) who is in which plan.
Added bonus: Community
This is a big one. Communities are not perfect. Anywhere. But having been on several on-line learning platforms before, and having worked in education, I can say that the community that is cultured here is very supportive and open. Whether you are outgoing or reserved, you can find a place here. There are virtually no rules to follow though. It just seems to be a product of the people who are admitted, and of course the tone set by the community leaders.
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Ashley M.
Best Decision Ever
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Before coming to Flatiron I had spent 4 years in college to get a degree in Game Design from a school with a less than reputable reputation. After achieving the degree, I was left with no actual programming skills, no job, a ton of debt and no will to get out of bed in the morning. After moping around for a while I stumbled across Flatiron schools learn verified program and it has completely transformed my life. I have gone from knowing the bare bone basics of programming, to being able to develop complex applications and soon I will be ready to start looking into the working world and turn my life around.
The coursework has proved to be challenging but not overly so. It is well written and easily accessible to those who have no background in coding in the beginning. It slowly builds up and things do become more abstract and difficult as time goes on, but still nothing that we can’t handle. The “ask a question” feature is very useful. During typical east coast working hours experts can answer within seconds to help you with your program. Students may also help other students if no experts are available.
The community is real tight knit. We all do the best we can to help each other, after all we are in this together. Every thursday we have something called “Thoughtful Thursday” where we express our feelings as a group. It is really helpful to hear that others are struggling the same as you. Or that someone finally got over that hump and is doing well this week. When someone is really struggling with a program, students also tend to collaborate together using screen sharing as well.
As of right now the Learn program is still very new and ever evolving. The developers and staff are always asking for our feedback and opinions and integrating it within the platform which is a huge plus.
Avi, who is the Dean of Flatiron School will often make time to assist students whenever they need help or offer words of encouragement. His lectures are a huge help to the lessons that are difficult and unlike many other professors there are no stupid questions for Avi. Each question is treated with the same respect and answered thoroughly. During assessments (which we get after every major section) he will often provide positive feedback on what we could do to improve our code and ourselves. He is always very warm and will never yell or belittle you. He really wants to make sure you succeed. -
Anonymous
iOS Immersive AKA Awesomeness
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Around March of 2015, I was unemployed and lacking any semblance of direction in my life. A friend (an Alum of the Flatiron School) recommended the program and seeing as I had nothing else going on - decided to take the leap for the sake of change.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that I would be taking the first step towards a career where I genuinely love the work that I do and the people that I work with.
From the first day, you will truly understand the word "Immersive." Laying out the foundations of their guiding principles, they set their students up not just as wonderful developers, but people. Nearly every student came from a different background and one of the fundamental principles was the idea of always supporting each other.The instructors and staff at the Flatiron School do an exceptional job at fostering a true sense of community at the program - and it was so easy to get wrapped up in the culture that you'd find yourself just hanging out sometimes (without coding!). From class outings and workshops - it was never just about the code (and that was 100% intentional).
Post-graduation, there are tons of resources available when you go job-hunting and the staff are always just a Slack message away! Any issues or concerns, no matter how small are overlooked by the staff who are truly there to help - they want you to succeed, and it shows.
If you're expecting to come out as a top-rate professional developer, make no mistake - it's possible, but not likely. BUT, trust me when I say this, you will come out armed with the knowledge to create amazing things and if you take nothing else away from this review - the Flatiron School teaches you how to learn.
I'm currently an iOS Engineer based at a development shop in Brooklyn, and I wake up every morning excited to go to work. Think about that.
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Anonymous
Absolutely amazing
Perfect in every possible sense. How could I not say it was the best decision of my life considering I completely changed industries and was placed into a higher payng job that I love? If you can get in, you'd be nuts to attend any other coding school. Period.
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Anonymous
:)
Best decision of my life.
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Anonymous
Best decision I ever made
I made the leap and quit my job a little over 2 years ago so that I could attend Flatiron School, and it was the best decision I ever made. The instruction was amazing, and the sense of community that was foastered among students created the most incredible learning environment I've ever been a part of. I was placed in a job almost immediately after graduation, and have loved my work ever since.
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Anonymous
Web Immersive Review
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I was part of the on campus web development immersive this year and my life has trasformed in ways I could not have imagined. Here's my review broken down into different aspects that you may be interested in:
Curriculum: When I took the course the curriulum was based on ruby and built up to ruby on rails. We started from writing basic ruby, into object orientation, then sinatra, and eventually to RoR and javascript for client side interactions. The really nice part about the curriculum is that we start at a lower level to understand how some of the abstractions work. An example is when we built our own ORM which mirrored the pattern of Active Record. Another example is building our own log in system that used the same implementation as the Devise gem. Since there are a lot of abstractions in programming, its a nice way to introduce newbies like us to a large framework like RoR. Oh, and of course, we were always using git like a real developer for version control :)
Content delivery/organization: Obviously I haven't gone to any other bootcamps, so I don't know how they deliver their content, but at Flatiron School, we used a system called Learn that had our daily schedules each morning, our assignments and "readmes" that explained the concepts we were going to cover, and any announcements from our instructors. The tool has all of our labs organized by topic and you can also see who else is working on it so you can group up and code together. It also has a built in chat system so you can ask for help from instructors or other students! Outside fo the tool, we had lecture and lab reviews everyday up until project mode. Those were pretty helpful to ask as many questions as you needed until you understood the lab.
Community/student support and growth: One of the reasons why I chose the Flatiron School over other schools is because of the student support and community involvement. And I must say, they definitely delivered! For community involvement, Flatiron hosts a meetup every Tuesday where students present a project of their choosing. It's required to do this if you enroll, but it really expands your ability to talk about technical stuff in a concise way. At the meetup, current and aspiring developers show up so there's time to talk to them before or after the presentations. There are also a lot of guest speakers that come in and talk about their experiences as a developer, CTO, product manager, etc. Another awesome part about Flatiron School is that they provide tutoring and mentorship for students that need/want it. Unlike some of the other schools, Flatiron won't just kick you out because you don't understand something. They'll help you out and make sure you get the support you need. The only reason why a student might be kicked out is if they do something really stupid like steal monitors or punch another student in the face.
Job Assistance: I think this is one of the biggest questions for most applicants coming into the program. How long will it take for me to get a job? What's the most effective way? Who's gonna help me out? All these are legit questions. What I will tell you is that you're in great hands. During the semester, you build at least three projects to have in your portfolio (1 from the Flatiron Presents project, and 2 project mode projects) and they are all on topics that you want to focus on. There's also a dedicated Placements team that helps you in numerous ways ranging from resume reviews, mock interviews, or how to interact with potential employers. There's also a speed-interview session during the last week of the semester so you get to interact with people that are looking to hire developers. I could probably keep going on about the placements assistance, but you can see how great of a job they do by looking at their jobs report on their website.
In summary, Flatiron School is filled with people that truly care about your well-being and are interested in your success to switch your career from whatever you were doing to a developer. I highly recommend Flatiron School and hope that you have a great of an experience as I had.
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Anonymous
Amazing program
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The best thing about FIS is the quality of teaching. This comes from both the instructors who are very helpful as well as your peers. They do a great job of selecting the students and forming well-balanced classes. I learned a ton from them.
Other great things are:
-Teaching you programming concepts that are transferrable to any language. We learned Ruby but you can take the methodologies they teach you and apply it to any programming language.
-The placements team is awesome. They do a great job prepping you for interviews and connecting you with lots of job opportunities.
I would highly recommend this program to anyone who is serious about becoming a web developer.
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Craig C.
8-week Part Time Program
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Hello! I wanted to take some time to review my experience with The Flatiron School. I completed the 8-week Part-time Front End Web Developement program here back in May of 2014. It was a pretty good experience being my first dive into web development.
It was a combination of video projects and in person once a week classes. The videos were somewhat long but they were broken down into seprate projects so it was pretty easy to follow. At times the videos weren't posted as far in advance as I would have liked. But being the first time they did something like this it was understandable.
The classes were spent either catching up on the videos or working on an in-person project. It was great to get some in person coding experience to work through problems with a partner.
We covered Git/Github HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery, responsive design. I wish that we spent more time on the javascript/jQuery part and suggest that they extend the course a couple weeks to include more projects for that.
Pros: low cost ($750), good venue, knowledgeable instructor
Cons: No job placement assistance for part time students, felt like I needed a next step
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Suma Reddy
Flatiron School Alum
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Flatiron's iOS program is an intensive 12-week bootcamp program, with 20 students. We were a varied bunch! Students were from England, Catalonia, Canada and the US with experience in: computer science, programming, finance, engineering, teaching, law, politics and entrepreneurship. The majority were in their early-to-mid 20s, with a few folks in their late 20s and early 30s.
Pre-work: Before you begin, there is 80 hours of pre-work walking you through the fundamentals of Git, Objective-C and iOS. Depending on if you have a programming background, this could be insanely challenging or fairly easy.
"Be nice": When you enter Flatiron, you learn Flatiron's first rule - be nice. This sets the tone for the entire community and course. The founders, instructors and fellow classmates are genuinely good, nice people!
The work: Be expected to work at least 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, if not more. I regularly worked 12+ hours per day. Each day you have a morning lecture, a lab, lunch, afternoon lecture, and more labs. There is more work than anyone can possible manage. It is overwhelming for the first few weeks, but you learn to manage your time and expectations over time.
Here are the best things about the Flatiron experience:
1. Immersion - you live and breath code 24/7. It's an amazing way to learn. As someone who tried evening classes, I found this type of bootcamp experience the only way to learn and learn fast.
2. Instruction - Joe, our iOS instructor, is knowledgeable, helpful and an overall great teacher.
3. People -- your fellow classmates are a smart bunch. And you will learn a ton from them! learned more from my peers than from classroom instruction, purely because I spent most of my day doing labs with peers! As an added bonus, your classmates become your friends and, who knows, maybe even colleagues or co-founders in the future.
TL:DR: The Flatirion school is intense, but its the best way to learn. Instructors are great. The community is a supportive and engaging one. It's a fantastic environment to grow and learn, as a developer and as a person. I'd highly recommend it.
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Anonymous
Very Expensive Disappointment
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I enrolled in the Full Time Software Engineering Bootcamp in April of 2024. I was very optimistic about the experience, and things were going well for a while, until our instructor abruptly quit in the middle of the second module. She knew she was leaving, but was asked not to tell us until the day before. So... goodbye, see you never?
This was the start of a great churn that started when the bootcamp was sold by WeWork to a private equity firm. There were previous churns that were equally damaging if you look back to earlier reviews and reddit threads. But the one I witnessed saw everybody leaving. First our instructor, then our class coordinator. Our replacement instructor took two weeks to get in place, and while she was OK, she did not adequately replace our original instructor. Our new teacher was unhelpful with our projects, and much less flexible in giving her time to the class. I suspect this was because she was handling other roles at the company, or just too many classes to manage. They also changed their policies on group work for the module projects. While groups were an option with our previous instructor, our new instructor made them mandatory, so a few times I got stuck working with the worst group of students in my cohort.
They also moved the goalposts for the final project, I was led to believe that my project met all the criteria to graduate, but it didn't, and our instructor did not provide me adequate feedback or support to help me graduate. As a result, I had to repeat the project module TWICE. I was forced to take a leave of absence for medical reasons at this point and could not finish the project until taking a month's break. This policy, by the way, is awful. Mandating that students step away from coding for a month is not the way to build your skills.
I was then re-enrolled in the project phase with another teacher, and she was very good, and helped me reach my goal of completing my project and graduating. She helped me clean up the mess of code I had made and turn it into something decent. Then, on her last day, she quit too. I guess she was as sick as I was with this place. I wanted to publish my app online, but since it was not in a complete state, I have not yet done so.
The career services support I received after graduating was disappointing. Again, my original coach left the company, and I was assigned to another one. Basicly having to restart the whole process. They were not helpful, gave me a lot of general good advice, threw me tons of resources, more than I could ever make use of, and wished me good luck. None of it really addressed the real obstacles between myself and meaningful work. The fact that I was starting my job hunt after wasting 6 months trying to complete a 4 month program, was also unhelpful. Never mind that you graduate with only about 60% of what you need to actually get hired. There's tons of gaps that you have to fill in yourself. Nobody at Flatiron is going to teach you Data Structures and Algorithms. You're going to do it yourself, on another coding site, on your own time. Same with deploying your project to the cloud, they expect you to go sort this stuff out on your own, and if you don't, it won't happen.
Anyway, after a few months, they kick you out of the student discord, lock you out of the course material, and you find a new way forward with your life I guess. Their weird rebranding into something called the Bletchley Institute seems like a confusing distraction to real problems I had at Flatiron. I love the hoodie, but wish I had not spent $16k for it. -
Anonymous
Challenging and Well-Structured
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Bootcamp is challenging and very well-structured. Languages and frameworks highly relevant. A lot of hands-on practice with labs, and projects allowed a ton of creative freedom as to topic and structure, etc. My instructor was extremely good and I felt I had total support. Job search was challenging just because of market conditions, but that is independent of the bootcamp experience. Flatiron teaches you how to think and solve problems and really equips you with the relevant tools to be a successful software engineer. -
Anonymous
A solid introduction
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I recently graduated from the in-person NYC program, and can say that my educational experience was pretty much everything I hoped for. I was glad that I chose an in-person program, as working with others to solve problems, and learning how to communicate effectively about technical subjects were big takeaways. The current tech stack of JavaScript/React for frontend and Python/Flask for backend seems aligned with what the market is hiring for. I wasn't sure about learning a second language for backend (Python), but the experience really helped cement the transferable basics of coding and gave me the confidence that I can pick up new languages as necessary.
The NYC campus is larger than I expected, with plenty of workspace, monitors, and free coffee :) The program is divided into five 3-week units, the first two on JavaScript and React, and the second two on Python and working with databases and web services / APIs. Each three-week section wraps up with a project (generally in small groups, though this varies by instructor), and the final three weeks is a self-directed solo capstone project, with the instructor to guide you. The day involves about an hour and a half of lecture, followed by time to work on labs and projects by yourself / with your peers. This surprised me at first--I thought it would be a lot more of the instructor staring over my shoulder--but ultimately being self-directed, learning how to read documentation and how to ask for help are really the key skills of software development. There was pretty much always an instructor available to help us solve problems when we were stuck, and again, you can always work with your peers to get assistance. But you have to ask for help!
Overall, the program is not easy! While the instructors break down concepts and the curriculum is very thorough for even a beginner, it is A LOT to learn in 15 weeks. That's the nature of an intensive bootcamp. For the record, I was working on-campus 7-8 hours a day and then generally putting in 1-2 hours of study in the evening, and it still felt like drinking from a firehose at time. I liken it to learning basketball: anyone can pick up the basics, but can you achieve a high enough level to play competitively? That is dependent on your motivation and to some degree your natural aptitude. If anything, by the time I graduated I realized I had so much more to learn, but I felt comfortable about HOW to go about learning all those other skills to make me competitive.
And now, the big caveat: the market in 2024 for junior software developers is...rough. The days of completing a bootcamp and immediately being offered a high-paying job are gone, and its uncertain when or if they will return. The career assistance Flatiron provides is solid: how to make your resume show you in the best light, how to use LinkedIn to stay visible, how to network. The career coaches really invest time in you. But Flatiron does not have a secret pipeline of jobs that are not available to the thousands of other bootcamp grads and out-of-work mid-level engineers. At the end of the day, you will be directed into this tough market. Is the cost of tuition worth it, when there are very good learning resources available for free online? For me, the in-person instruction and accountability of an in-person program and a peer group motivated me to choose Flatiron. But a bootcamp certificate is just the start of your career transition or upgrade. There are currently very few internship opportunities for non-CS majors or people who already have a four-year degree. A very possible outcome of completing this program will be accepting a tech-adjacent role (sales, customer support) or working on your own projects, unpaid, for many months after graduation until you build up the portfolio and connections to land your first role. Best of luck out there! -
Anonymous
Horrible experience, do not go there
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So where do I start.
I am a former science major who was looking for a career change after realizing that lab work was no longer the road I wanted to travel and decided to leave my comfy position that I had for over 4 years to pursue something that I always had a strong interest in. It only took about a week for that dream to quickly die and realize that I made a dumb mistake and wish I would have though about my decision more carefully. Needless to say, I feel that I closed a chapter in my life and still want to use my degree to pursue something closely related to my original major.
I was extremely excited to start the Flatiron School Full time Online program in September 2023. The best people at the company are those in admissions because they do a really good job at selling you something that turns out to be completely the opposite. When I enrolled for the class, it was underneath the guise that we would be doing a full time lecture with coding projects along the way. However, that turned out to not be the case at all and the only "lecture" that we received was a 1 hour code along in the afternoon. The only other time you have with your instructors is to answer questions from the self-guided online material if you didn't understand anything. I have no idea how you can market this class as a full time course when you're literally only teaching for one hour of the day. The reason why people are paying almost $18k (yes, it's that much) is so they can be lead by a teacher and so that knowledge gets passed down. If I wanted to grind material on slides, I would've just used freecodecamp or literally any alternative that doesn't cost nearly as much and actually gives you advice on how to write the code. The fact that something that is free can give you more advice that a program that cost almost one year of school is pretty sad.
Speaking about instructors, the instructor himself was laughable at best. He literally did not have any teaching background prior to Flatiron School, and it was very apparent because even though he knew the material himself, he did not do a great job explaining and going into great detail about the subject matter. As a matter of fact, he was a previous student through the school, which makes me wonder if they literally just hire instructors from their student pool and not consider anyone who has a full CS background. I feel that most people that join this course are those who have no idea how to do code to begin with, and in order to keep you students engaged you really need to go the extra mile to help those that are struggling. Even after completing the pre-course material, I was still completely lost in the lectures because he would just plow through. I learned more from other students with more hands on experience than I did from the instructor, which really says something about the people that they choose to teach this course.
The only thing positive I can say about the course is that there were legitimately a lot of good people who made a discord group for our cohort and had chatrooms to help those in need. They were very knowledgeable about the topic and honestly, I wish the best for them. They made the experience a lot better and hope they land a good position in the future, because they deserved it. The fact that other cohorts were more instructive than the "instructor" was my red flag, and I knew that it was time to get my money back and go look for a new position.
So, to sum it up
- Full-Time online is not really "full time"
- Lackluster material which you can find online for free
- Bad instructors (one of them literally did not even start the week I was there)
- Admissions will lure you in for a class you thought was completely different in reality
- Expensive!
- Other cohorts will probably be better teachers than your own instructor
Seriously, do your research. Sure there may be a lot of good reviews but there are also plenty of bad ones as well. I wouldn't be shocked if most of the reviews that are overly positive are those still relying on thee school to find a good placement or alumni that got hired by the school. Do yourselves a favor and avoid the same mistake I made. -
Anonymous
Recommended to Jump Start Tech Career
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Instructors are phenomenal. They are approachable and are very helpful with projects. There are also people available to help with programming exercises after hours. The languages that they teach are mostly consistent with what the industry requests but a little behind although I am glad they are teaching Python. They may want to consider teaching Java, although it is a very high level and intensive language. The career services and career coaching are fantastic and I got a job offer in just under 5 months considering that the tech market is unprecedentedly slow. -
Anonymous
Potential Students Beware!!
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I started FlatIrons Full-time Online course but decided to withdraw after the first week due to lack of technical assistance being offered to our cohort. We had about 32 students and only 1 instructor. As well, they only offer one hour of lecture a day. However, during the lecture you don't actually go over any concepts or material, instead you just watch your instructor do a quick code along over one topic for the day. As well, the entire curriculum for our first phase was extremely unorganized with zero direction on what we should be learning each day. When our entire cohort complained to the instructor and to our student advisors the school sent an email to our entire cohort essentially telling us "to get over it" and that we should get a second instructor available to us our second week. If I knew I would be essentially teaching myself and doing it all on my own I would not have signed up for the program or agreed to pay their tuition which is higher than a lot of the other bootcamps I looked into. When I requested to change to a later cohort in order to give myself some more prep time to get the fundamentals down since we were going to have to teach ourselves, the school informed me I would have to completely withdraw from my current cohort and pay for the current tuition I owed then restart the application process all over including the 2 weeks of prep-work I had already completed and then pay full tuition for the next cohort. We had about 10 students drop from our cohort due to the school's lack of care for their student's needs or frustrations. FlatIron is definitely more centered on money and not what's best for the students that are paying a lot of money to learn. I will say they did start out strong in the career prep and had us already doing career workshops the first week of class. I know several other people who have completed bootcamps (GA, Code Platoon, Full Stack) and when I went to them to discuss my experience with FlatIron, they all told me their bootcamps actually provided lecture over material and had several TA's available for help. This is what made my final decision to lose money with FlatIron and go to a different bootcamp. -
Anonymous
Good, But Not Worth Price
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Flatiron School is one of the few boot camps that offers an in-person program, and I delayed my entrance to the school so that I'd be able to attend on their Denver campus. I was pretty excited for this program, but when I and my fellow students showed up, we were surprised to find out that the lectures were going to be administered via Zoom. This was a pretty big disappointment to all of us, since we had expected in-person lectures. I have heard that they are now lecturing in person, which makes me feel gipped, to say the least.
Beyond the Zoom lectures, the curriculum was really thorough. But in the 6 months since the class, I've learned things that should have been taught in the first few weeks, but weren't. Such as the difference between development and production environments, which is crucial to the process of deploying a website.
My cohort was also one of the last to learn Ruby on Rails as the backend technology - they've now switched to Python and Flask, which I was able to snag the learning materials for upon graduation. Ruby is a bit of a niche technology at this point, so it's a bit annoying to have spent 6 weeks learning it instead of something more in-demand.
I loved my cohort and the technical coaches were pretty good. But, honestly this school isn't that equipped to make people job ready in the 2023 job market. Their jobs report on their website is called the "2022 Jobs Report", but it was merely released in 2022 and only includes numbers from the entire year of 2021. This is a huge red flag, and extremely misleading at 7+ months into 2023. So, I recommend requesting the most current jobs numbers from them if you're applying - they will be significantly worse than those of 2021. I have talked to fellow grads applying to 400+ jobs with single-digit interviews.
I don't regret doing the program because I am not sure I would have learned this amount of these skills on my own by now, and I don't recommend avoiding Flatiron entirely. But, just know what you're getting yourself into before committing almost $20k to paying for something that might be worth closer to $10k. Also, the student loan options start huge payments about 4 months after graduation, so be prepared for that as well. You should be able to request a 3-month interest-only grace period.
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Anonymous
Choose a cheap Community College instead
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I graduated from Flatiron School Feb of 2022. For 2 years I took my time delving into Full Stack development within Flatiron’s Online Part Time Software Engineering program. It still wasn’t enough. Peer programming should have been mandatory. Data structures and algorithms should have been mandator. I wasn’t communicated the importance of these subjects throughout my schooling and it’s frustrating. No wonder the Ed coaches told me not to worry about it until after graduating. More people would have flunked out if said topics were mandatory. Now I am currently left tutor-less and further in student loan debt. I am possibly apt enough to work at Revature starting with a low salary gig and tutoring assistance. Needless to say, I am skeptical about a low salary Indian company with a 30,000 employment contract break. This isn’t what I signed up for. Anyone thinking of joining Flatiron School or any other coding bootcamp, it’s not enough to even be remotely considered for 60,000 + jobs nowadays. You’re better off perusing an associates degree at a community college. -
Anonymous
A Disorganized Mess
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I was given misinformation over the phone about the flex program which led me to apply for the full-time live session. Afterward, I was corrected and told the course takes a maximum of 40 weeks. I was then emailed by a separate department that stated you have 60 weeks to complete flex. It's clear that the departments don't fully understand their own program and will give whatever information they "think" is correct, which led me to a decision that was not good for me. They are hard to get a hold of, and student support is almost non-existent. The curriculum often repeats itself and is not very hands-on. Often you read about a concept and then complete a lab later on, which is helpful but usually looks for a "specific answer", meaning your answer can be correct but still fail if it's not exactly what it's looking for. Unfortunately, my time at FlatIron was not good, so I cannot recommend it. -
Anonymous
Would Not Recommend (At Least for Data Science)
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This specifically pertains to the Data Science BootCamp. I cannot speak about the other fields, though I imagine cybersecurity would be in a similar boat, and software dev and UI dev would be better as it is more acceptable to enter into those fields without a degree.
I entered into the Data Science Online bootcamp ($17500) with 3 previous years of programming experience and the following expectations that were not met:
1. Flatiron curriculum was taught by experts in the field and would equip me with the skills needed to be an asset in a professional role.
2. Flatiron makes finding a job easier than if you did it on your own
2A - they have hiring connections / a network of companies that respect their degree
2B - they have an expert career coaching program to make finding a job easier
3. Employers respect the BootCamp certificate to be somewhat similar to receiving a Master's degree.
Here is the Reality:
1. at least for the online course, the entire curriculum is free and open source on Git Hub as the learn.co curriculum. Most of the lessons had not been updated since early 2021, which is not only an issue because tech is rapidly changing, but also many of the functions used were deprecated or in the process of being deprecated, links were broken or had moved, and overall 1/5 lessons on average would not run all the way through. Lectures happened to rarely live so it was very unlikely you would be able to catch on on a flex schedule, but from watching the recorded sessions, you weren't missing much. The lectures were just going through the learn.co assignments. You are connected with a personal coach which may meet with once a week, but it is very hit or miss who you will be assigned to, and some are much better than others. I was assigned Joe Commex, who was fired by the company for an undisclosed reason halfway through and I was transferred to Morgan Jones. Joe was ok, but not super knowledgeable of Data Science, more of Python-Dev. Morgan Jones (Yeah I am naming and shaming) was utterly terrible. He knew nothing of the subject matter, and would often get tripped up on even the simplest of DS questions. He showed us one of his projects that had glaring errors in the NN, and when I questioned them, he got defensive and was rude to me. Also, you need to schedule a time to review each project you complete, and there are often no times available for at least a week ahead of time and you are not allowed to work ahead until a project is graded. so you often find yourself in a week of limbo where your time is wasted.
2A Flatiron has NO connections other than the FDM group. The FDM Group is a seemingly good company that pays for you to obtain training in a particular IT field and then guarantees you a position with an employer. They require a college degree usually, but let you wave that req if you are a Flatiron alum. They do not look for previous coding experience tho, so if you already have e degree, just apply to them and skip Flatiron. They have several other companies like this, such as TheDataSchool and Revature, and they have even said that graduating from Flatiron does not make you more attractive and that they expect you not to have prior experience. They have literally 0 connections with any real companies.
2B Although they do indeed provide you with a career coaching program, and my mentor is very nice and helpful, it does not provide any information you could not find online or better yet ChatGPT. Thus, My complaint is that it simply does not justify the $17,500 I spent on the program, given that it is the only helpful thing, and it is not that helpful.
3. This is the biggest one, for data science at least, NO ONE CARES that you went to a BootCamp. Data Science is a complex field and most hiring managers expect either a master's or PhD to be qualified. Even if you received a real BS in Computer science, you would not be considered very competitive for true DS roles. Instead, you would need to settle for much lower paying and less interesting Data analyst roles, or maybe get lucky finding a startup that doesn't have a lot of options and can't pay you well or offer any benefits.
TLDR
The Key takeaway is that Flatiron is for all intents and purposes not worth your time and money and that you would be better off either applying to a company like FDM or the Data School, or learning these things yourself on youtube or with the help of an LLM like ChatGPT, making a portfolio of simple projects on GitHub, and applying broadly along the way -
Anonymous
Worth the experience
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I went to Flatirons with the intent of breaking into tech immediately after leaving the teaching field. I didn't quite achieve that timeline, but within 1 year of leaving teaching I completed the bootcamp (full time, online for 15 wks) and a 6 month job search. I have just received an offer and am excited to be in the content area that aligns with my previous career. The bootcamp was very difficult and rigorous as I knew almost nothing going into it outside of the prep work. I definitely recommend doing it full time, and making sure you make connections and friends within your cohort. If you are a hard worker, and enjoy working through difficult problems/working with others this will be great for you! I feel like I particularly excelled because I know how to target areas of learning for improvement, was always making connections, and was constantly learning throughout the bootcamp and after. They teach you really well how to find those resources.
The slack/discord channels were a great way to make friends and work with others to learn the content together. I heard other cohorts did not like their teachers/lead but I personally loved mine. My cohort started at 15 people and ended with 8 I believe, so it was nice to be in a small cohort. The code challenges were very stressful and challenging, but if you are willing to attend extra meetings and work on your own it is easy to be successful and pass. Career services during the program were not very professional or organized but after the program when you are actually in the job search they were great. I felt well prepared as I job searched and knew that the circumstances of the economy where mostly my problem at the start of my search. -
Anonymous
Just another predatory for profit school
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They talk a big game about caring about your success, community, etc. but at the end of the day, they are just another for-profit school out to make a buck.
They engaged in what I believe was predatory false advertising to get students in the Seattle area to enroll. I enrolled in Dec 2021 while the world was in turmoil and all physical campuses were closed due to covid. The message being given to students was the campus will reopen per CDC guidelines. This narrative was peddled until May 2021 when most all things had reopened and students noticed Seattle had been deleted from the school's website. Only then after several ignored messages about the subject were slack questions (not mine personally, another student was answered) on the matter and it was finally revealed that the building had been sold as it didn't align with business interests. The sale of a building takes a long time, (to be on the market, accept offers, go through escrow, etc) and I believe at the time of my enrollment they had no intention of re-opening the campus, and covid was the convenient excuse/nail in the coffin.
Many more months later someone with flatiron admitted this was something they had been exploring for some time and failed to inform any of their students. When I inquired about this I was told a campus is not necessary for my success(?) and they would be offering no refund in any amount despite the fact they are more than twice the cost of many other fully online boot camps.
The good/caring teachers either get promoted or leave for other positions so the positive reviews are essentially meaningless as those instructors probably aren't there anymore. I was dumped into a new cohort mid-program and when I reached out to student services about it not being a good fit (my new cohort lead was really disconnected and inactive) they offered me to withdraw and re-enroll (and pay tuition again!).
There is no community there except what you make for yourself. My first cohort lead was excellent at community building but he soon got promoted. The "community managers" will try and get students to do all the work of organizing, hosting, and maintaining meetings. Otherwise, the "community" is pretty nonexistent, especially being in a city that they essentially abandoned and abandoned all the students there.
The flex program you will essentially self study so you may as well save your money and go to a more affordable BootCamp or Youtube U. No way without the campus is the tuition worth it and if I could do it all over I would not go to this school. They promise the moon but the moment you sign on the dotted line they stop caring. -
Anonymous
Loved the Instructors
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Instructor who was the sole reason the course wasn't a complete bust was fired the day before we finished. This is a scam and absolutely ridiculous. Look else where for getting into the tech field. Severely disappointed with the curriculum as well, the instructors criticized the curriculum as well and went above and beyond to educate the students. However, after the ending I will not recommend it to anyone, absolutely ridiculous. -
Anonymous
Lackluster experience after they receive your money
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I received numerous emails about requiring a deposit but have yet to receive a call back as I requested. I wasn’t even made aware that everyone was out of the office for winter break. There weren’t any automatic replies when I sent emails but I surely was reminded that the due date for my deposit was approaching. Piss poor communication. When I did pay my deposit I still didn’t have access to TCs because once again, I was not notified of holiday hours. I had access to the chat feature for one day only and I’ve yet to see the chat feature again. They leave you on your own to code during prep. How is this novice friendly? Also, having to pay $17,000 to be told to bounce off your peers if your need help is unfair to students. -
Anonymous
Part-time flex program
The part-time flex program is self-directed and you are on your own. You have to read page by page and watch YouTube videos to learn some things. It just wastes your money. -
Anonymous
Pretty much a scam
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The module curriculum was pretty good for what you could fit into a few months, although the free Odin Project is better if you are self motivated and can teach yourself. There is no way it is worth $17,000, and I assume the job placement numbers are massaged or falsified. They let in almost anyone, and I would estimate anywhere from 33%-75% of my class will never get a software engineering job. Most people had zero knowledge going in. Many did not seem to take it that seriously or work that hard, and many could barely grasp basic concepts or build a non-broken site by the end of the program.
The Denver on site campus was a joke. It was set up as remote, where you basically just work on modules by yourself all day, and there are lectures on zoom from people in New York. I never watched a lecture because it is a questionable at best way to learn how to code. If I wanted to, obviously it could have been from anywhere. The on site instructor had no industry experience and seemed to have the knowledge level of a recent bootcamp grad at best (very, very minimal and surface level). There was basically no value added whatsoever by being on site, as the occasional group activities were terrible. For example, in a coding walkthrough, the instructor robotically typed out a solution someone else had written, and did not do anything to encourage discussion, talk about best practices, or anything. He did not seem to fully understand all of the solutions.
Feedback I've gotten on LinkedIn and my resume from a career services person was reasonable, but was minimal and not substantive. I did not get the sense these people have industry specific knowledge, but rather they seem to be generic HR / resume writer people.
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Anonymous
scam school
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They scammed me out of 15k 2 months before graduating & told me there was nothing I could do and they were kicking me out so 8 months of work down the drain for THEIR error in clarifying, I've been doing the same thing since I started and all of a sudden what I was doing was a problem when they told me to do it that way in the first place... 10/10 scam wasted my life my money my time DONT DO IT -
Anonymous
Flex Program is not Flexible enough
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I joined Flatiron as a part of their Flex program for Software development.
Pros : Course content for the time I was on seemed organized
Cons : I joined the flex program because i was in a full time job with kids. I joined the program based on flexibility and during the time i was on had a job change due to which i could not commit to the corsework. I asked for extension multiple times, but they mentioned since it was a flex program, i had flexibility. However, they emailed me that they had to process my dismissal since i could not keep up with their timelines. Which meant i was out of pocket for thousands of dollars. So folks looking to join their flex program, do understand that it can only flex so much and at the end of the dismissal you have spent thousands of dollars already -
Anonymous
Admissions Cybersecurity Engineering
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Applied for the Deloitte Career Advancement Program. I received an email stating that I need to take an admissions assessment. Requested a copy of the assessment and I was told it was not part of the admissions process. Confused already. Then I was told not to apply online to the Deloitte website. So why is the opportunity listed on several job boards? Sketchy. Then I received an email redirecting me to apply for another program at Flatiron from the same admissions person. If the admissions person wanted me to apply for another program other than Deloitte then why didn't she send the test results? The Flatiron website literally talks about the admissions personnel discussing the test results with the prospective student. It is possible the HR recruiter had something to say about my dislike for the CSU program I went to because she is a CSU graduate. Academic writing is not APA peer-reviewed literacy. The scientific method is required which is not taught at CSU global. The graduates don't know much about quality and are concerned with quantity which is why I left for a more thoughtful education. It is bothersome to get an inconsistent application experience. I do not recommend Flatiron for many reasons. 1. This program should not be difficult to get into because the core content is not challenging. 2. The program mentions Kali Linux which I am familiar with since the inception of Backtrack. This penetration testing environment is not used for higher end corporate environments and is strictly for developmental usage. 3. The program is ridiculously expensive and I wouldn't pay for another bootcamp after my previous experience. These bootcamps are never going to prepare anyone enough for a high paying career. I think businesses will make people feel insecure before not having formal education so they can pay them less. Be careful with bootcamps and higher education. Research the courses and ask for syllabus outlines of course content.
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Anonymous
Awful
I am so profoundly disappointed in Flatiron School that I am considering full scholarship tuition for people to attend a different school. My company and I will do just that. -
Anonymous
Waste of time
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I attended their online program 3-4 years ago. Unfortunately, I have to agree with those students who say their program didn’t teach the basics well enough. After much struggle I had to leave the program prematurely because I could just not keep up! The majority of my time was spent on trying to find tutorials or additional information (Google/ Youtube) trying to grasp a basic understanding of the material so I can keep up with what they were teaching me. I asked for additional support, which I did receive, however it was still not enough to complete the projects! They were not able to explain things on a level that I was on. It’s sad as I even had a scholarship. If I knew it was so advanced, I would have let someone else benefit from it. I feel like it was a total wasted time and effort for months and months.
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Anonymous
Please don't
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Don't think of this as an college education, this is a pure form of business. The first thing you should know is that there is "no money back", engrave that to your brain. Second you need to work your butt off after finishing the course, i mean u really need to do a lot of supplement study which in my opinion make the course itself useless. I will admit that i only got my job because one of my good friend - i would had gotten this job with or without flatiron, my friend didn't even ask for my resume- my friend had to hold my hand when I first started because i was nowhere near ready. Think of it this way, flatiron for few months , few months of self studying and learning, then insane amount of learning and practicing on the job. i would said flatiron contributed the least among the three and cost some chunk changes, i can afford it but for those who can't, shouldn't put their money on this, there is far less expensive and better choices out there. -
Anonymous
totally not worth it
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First thing first, if you are self paced don't bother the material on udemy is better. if you are doing immersive which is all online now, still not worth the price, you are basically paying someone to keep you on track. You are basically there to do some networking and hoping you can get hire. The instructors are nice and encouraging but tats about the full extend of it, better off just learn it urself and create a profolio, it is a joke -
Anonymous
Ok Bootcamp - Data Science Immersive Program
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To be more practical and succinct I am going to use bullet points:
Pros:
- Good material. You have a lot to learn and not only on the "canvas/learning" website SOME instructors are no-nonsense and give you other websites to practice that are not linked to Flatiron.
- Nice people. I feel that majority of both students and Flatiron staff are trying their best. To be a nice person and to do what they want to nicely. Some exceptions I will get into in "Cons".
- Good lectures and instructors. The lectures are good, sometimes compressed and "in a rush" so you don't have time to ask questions. A lot of content for 1 hour I guess. The instructors are nice and pleasant, they would go out of their way to help us out and even answer slack messages out of business hours.
Cons:
- The material can be and will be overwhelming. It is expected that you don't manage to finish all the material OF THE DAY, THAT DAY. But they do expect, and on the behalf of your career you should, finish on the weekends. Which is not the most fun, since you are normally studying 10 hours a day on the weekdays. A solution? Make the length of course longer or cut some of the subjects that are not applied in every company (Deep learning, NLP, Semi-supervised models and so on).
- Some of the staff is not the most pleasant/most professional. I had a semi-bad experience with my coach where she would go over each word I said and correct me in a "better" way to say it. I also heard of several cases where the coach started to be unpleasantly opinionative about the students PERSONAL LIFE. Both scenarios the coach instead of being a co-pilot/friend in the job search is being a "parent" and treating the students as kids in the worst possible way. The other mention here would go to the senior lead. She hosts events sometimes with her personal friends thinking she is super special and makes you feel excluded. Why host those events in the first place?
- My other con would be the career service team. They are nice people, but I think they have pressure from management since the companies they partner with and the positions they offer the recent grads are not good. Often IT Related and not even a Entry/Jr. position. It gives me the impression that they need to show results and numbers.
Overall an overpriced average experience. If it was half the price, would be worth it.
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Anonymous
Scam
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The school is a complete scam. They take credit for students who find jobs but many of them found the jobs on their own. Career services does nothing. No job connections, just tells you Google is your friend. They do not care if you can barely afford to live as long as they get paid. If you can study on your own then do it. You do not need to spend thousands of dollars to learn how to use Google. If you have a cpmplaint, do not respect a response back. If they do respond they will laugh in your face. -
Anonymous
UX Design
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I went to Flatiron because I had friends that successfully completed their Engineering program. The UX Design program is much newer so it's still evolving and they're still learning to perfect it as they go on. Some things felt disorganized and scattered but for the most part, it was a really solid experience, I learned a lot and... got a job! It is a lot of work especially post-graduation. It took me 9 months to get a job and it felt impossible at times but if you stick with it, and put in the work I promise you'll be fine! I didn't commit 40hours a week to my job search because I had a lot of going on and took breaks in between. I noticed that all my peers that worked hard post-grad got a job a lot sooner. I always appreciated the fact that they take feedback very seriously and really try to improve upon it. Advice: If you have any concerns about your teachers or education I encourage you to be upfront and notify someone - they will listen. Their Career Services is definitely one of their biggest assets - utilize it as much as you can even if you opt out of the money-back guarantee!