Flatiron School

Any program is all about what you put into it. Flatiron is no different, if you do the work and you put in maximum effort you are going to do great at creating great projects. There is only a few issues here, employers aren't just looking for great projects, they are primarily looking for SWEs that can solve algorithm problems. Flatiron does not teach that, at all. So after graduation, you will be forced to now learn that. Major problem here is that you are not prepared to start job hunting after you finish the program, because you will not be prepared for the tech interviews. 

However, I can let that go if it wasn't for the fact that anyone can graduate from Flatiron. One of our peers graduated with a final project of a spinning logo. No functionality, just a spinning logo. So, the there is little value to being a Flatiron graduate and if they keep just letting anyone graduate it will keep devaluing the certificate most of us worked hard to get. 

Dear Flatiron, be more selective with who graduates your program. Be more selective with who gets into your program. Focus more on programming fundamentals. Do better. 

If you are working full time and looking for a supportive Bootcamp with teachers that actually help and care than this is the wrong place to be. I took part time software engineer program as I am full time employee and trying to get to the IT a bit faster than through regular school. At the beginning we had a great teacher Chat, he took his time with explanations and I did okay in this program. But it lasted for a several months because they changed teacher and then they changed the second teacher as well. That's when everything went down. The last teacher we had didn't even respond to my text messages. I had to send it several times in order for her to respond. I mean this part time program is great when you don't have extra hours and you are good on your own learning but when it gets to questions regarding lessons you want do very well. It doesn't worse 15,000!!!!! Now I don't have a Diploma but I am stuck with loan for 15,000 that no one wants to return! Good luck! 

I had a positive experience with Flatiron School's 15 week SE course and was able to land a job about two months after completion. Due to covid, it was fully remote.

Summary
A solid program, but with a little bit of an instructor shortage. Like any bootcamp, you need to take full responsibility for your own progress, learning and the job search thereafter. If you choose to fully "be the driver" as Flatiron preaches, you will excel.

Pros
- Curriculum was solid (canvas, scrimba videos, lots of labs) Great principles taught
- A lot of post bootcamp job search support (career coach, additional curriculum)
- Good alumni network for job search
- Lecture instructors were solid
- my first instructor was incredible

Cons
- cohort instructor shortage (due to scaling to quickly?) - our instructor left halfway through and our replacement was not great. Also, another cohort expressed a lot of frustration with their instructor. It seems like you could get unlucky with a bad instructor.
- lack of algorithm practice, but that seems to be improving

Other thoughts on the bootcamp route in general
A bootcamp might be a good route for you if you:
- love to learn
- are a disciplined hard worker
- have a personality that fits programming (you're not just doing this to make more $$$)

However, you need to take full responsibility. You have to learn the skills. You have to get a job. The bootcamp doesn't do the hard work for you, however, it will provide you with the tools to get the job done. Don't underestimate the job search after. There are so many people trying to make this switch via a bootcamp and it is a grind. Again, if you put in the time and work, Flatiron gives you the tools to be successful. 

Flatiron School was largely a fantastic program. I'll start with the positives. I was looking for a boot camp to change careers and Flatiron was very affordable, especially after they offered me a scholarship to defray some of the costs. They have a variety of ways to learn, from full time to self-paced, so the schedule is extremely flexible. Full time is 15 weeks, so in less than 4 months I had obtained a new skillset and was applying to jobs. They have student loan partners if you need financial assistance, which is great because I found that many of the traditional lenders don't allow student loans for boot camps.  The staff is extremely knowledgeable and passionate about their topics, and they make learning the curriculum a great experience. Career services will email job leads every few days for partner companies or anyone they learn is hiring entry level, and you get a coach for 6 months after graduating to help you define your goals and hold you accountable to them. There's a variety of opportunities to interact with other students and alumni, such as Slack, game nights, virtual yoga sessions, and more...everyday there's an opportunity for you to do something other than just sit at the computer and code. At Flatiron I learned a TON about web development and I can easily spin up a full stack web application.

That said, I do wish there were more topics in the curriculum for software engineering from production to deployment, such as writing tests and working with algorithms. The number one block to finding a job after graduating was trying to pass the HackerRank and LeetCode-style assessments before ever talking to a person and demonstrating what I had learned. I had to spend 95% of my time on those sites instead of networking, applying to jobs, and working on projects to add to my portfolio. Almost all of the jobs that Flatiron sent required you to be open to relocation, even if they were currently remote, which was a major drawback to me. The ratio of students to instructor seemed pretty heavy- there were 16 people in my cohort and 1 instructor to help all of us with our individual projects. He worked late nights and weekends to make sure we had what we needed to finish our projects and pass our coding assessments. 

Overall I would recommend Flatiron if you want to change careers quickly, aren't committed to staying in one place after graduating, and want to get your feet wet with web development. This was one of the most challenging experiences of my life and I'm so proud to have graduated from Flatiron with a new skillset. I have a lot more to learn about other aspects that aren't web applications, but that's one of the most attractive aspects of tech to me- there's SO much to learn that you can define what path you want to go on. 

This year I graduated from the Flatiron School Software Engineering Self Paced Online Course and it has completely changed my life. If you love programming and want to learn the skills necessary to get a career in programming I can't recommend it enough. My advice to anyone deciding to take the leap would be to immerse yourself in the content of the course, and go above and beyond to supplement the information in the course. If something feels hard, that's how you know you need to focus on it more. All in all I graduated and 4 months later I got a job offer at an amazing company for 2x my salary at my old job.

I competed the full time online software engineering program at Flatiron, and overall it was a good experience.  My issues with the program design have been addressed with the newly revamped curriculum, which debuted right around my graduation date, so I'll leave that out.  
Program/learning: My instructor wasn't very engaging, or organized, but our coach and the support team were all really great, so that helped balance it out.  Student services was quick to respond to an issue I had, but some of my cohort mates didn't have that experience when dealing with a recurrent problem with a specific project evaluator.  I definitely learned programming skills, but the lack of attention to data structures and algorithms until after graduation is a huge issue (as many companies expect that knowledge as part of the interview process).  
Career services - my coach was fantastic, and although it took 6 months to receive a job offer, that speaks more to my lack of DSA prep and the current job market than anything career services helped me with.
Overall - I don't regret choosing Flatiron.  The connections I made with cohort mates (even in a virtual setting) are awesome, and I've successfully transitioned into a technical role (support engineering).  This program really demands a lot of self motivation (specifically when doing online classes), and may not be the right fit for someone who needs more hands on instruction.

The course covered a wide range of materials over a 15-week period, which made it both comprehensive and at times unorganized. The best part of the course was career coaching/development. The course taught materials that are pertinent to entry-level positions and the coaches were really helpful at finding the right job afterward. However, I also think that the courses could've been more efficient and organized by cutting down lecture times and focusing more on labs. Some of the materials weren't updated quickly enough. COVID-19 turned the originally planned in-person boot camp into an exhausting all-day zoom session but felt like everyone was trying to make the best of the situation.

the worst decision of my life, the flatiron cybersecurity program is nothing more than the CompTIA A +, CompTIA network and CompTIA security courses, summarized and without the possibility of certification,
If you do not have any IT background, this course will not be able to hold you in any job position, in the group with which I graduated, not even those who had an agreement could get a job, one of them is even working in a pharmacy, another He got a job in real state, another still works driving trucks and I still drive.
The same that you get in this course for $ 14,000 you can find it for $ 10 in pages of online courses and with the possibility of taking the tests and obtaining real certifications that can really give you a job

I completed the fullstack software engineering program online through Flatiron School. I elected to complete the program part-time, over 10 months. The curriculum is separated into phases including Ruby, Sinatra/Rails, JavaScript, and React/Redux. At the end of each phase, you complete your own project (one of my favorite parts). I had the best classmates and instructor - Flatiron did a great job of building community, even in an online environment. The career services team is top notch and I was able to land my first job after 2 months of searching. Would absolutely recommend! 

Get out while you still can.  This program offers 0 support for individuals that are struggling to grasp this material. 
They don't support their teaching staff or their students.  
They would rather offer settlements to individuals that request support then provide other avenues of access. 

0 support after end of day
0 support on weekends
A severe lack of structure 
You will be spending a ridiculous amount of money to sit online and be directed to watch YouTube videos and third party walk-throughs
Many of you that get help from non flatiron staff in this prework support channel may think it will be the same in your program. This is unfortunately not the truth.  You only get support during class hours from staff.  But there will be so many of you that getting assistance will be almost impossible.  Because their time is spent focusing on fixing computer environment issues.  
I was originally started 051721 and projected to complete the course 082621. Unfortunately 50% of the individuals I started with will not be completing the course on in the 15 week timeframe. Due to the lack of support.  
When I reached out to advocate  for myself and other that seemed to be struggling,  I was told that was acting like a child (needing someone  to hold my hand. )

This program is but a mere fraction of its former self
They offer 0 soft skills trainings (Excuse me.... they think that learn how to google things (albeit very vital) is a soft skill) 
They have 0 focus on Git and Github ( Version control) 
They spend 0 time on focusing on the most powerful software developers (the command line) 
In the unfortunate event you don't pass a phase the force you to wait 3 weeks (which turns a 15 week course in 21) with 0 ability to reach out to staff to gain understanding of materials you've clearly failed to grasp.

Apparently they could care less whether or not you complete the course.  
They may offer you a settlement but no one will ever hear about it because the make you sign a non disparagement and confidentiality agreement.  
Absolving themselves of any responsibility to actually offer a quality education. 
I'm not posting this to because I had a piss poor experience.  
I'm only but providing a short-term temporary warning to those who will put everything  they have into a program like this to only be discouraged should similar circumstances happen.  
I can't say things won't get better I sincerely hope they do but at this current time this program is having severe quality issues making the adjustment to a pure online format. And they refuse to work with student that offer very valid an easily implementable suggestions to increase the rate of success for full-time students. 
The confidentiality agreements allow for this organization to outright present false information about the success rate of participants because I binds those who fail to secrecy of failure and magnitude. 

They have removed their money back guarantee and the ability to qualify on income share agreement terms (offered pre-pandemic) which was a balance in quality assurance.  They know the quality of education has suffered and in order to protect their bottom line have removed these terms because they cannot provide the quality  this once great program could offer. 

I hold out hope that in the future they can provide the quality but as with most organizations at this point they are holding on for dear life to survive this current recession and the quality of this program has greatly suffered. 

Not to mention the horrible mistake this company made by getting into bed with WeWork. 

Avoid this program until the can get they can get themselves together and once again provide quality education for the ridiculous cost. 

They make over $600,000 per cohort and the start every 3 weeks and they can find an adequate way to provide support to students. 
Sounds fishy to me

My Google review was flagged by this organization 
https://support.google.com/maps/thread/118215416/i-m-curious-as-to-why-my-review-of-a-software-development-program-was-hidden?hl=en&msgid=118215416

The decision to take the software engineering immersive has absolutely changed my life. The operations were handled wonderfully and I felt supported whenever I needed it and whatever I need. The instructors were fantastic. They do a wonderful job of teaching you what you need to know, but also forcing you to develop your own thought process and problem solving abilities. My career coach was extremely supportive both emotionally and technically. I am extremely grateful for everything Flatiron provided for me and more so happy to say that I am part of the outstanding community that has been created. Joining Flatiron is becoming a part of a lifelong network that will always be ready to support you when you need it.