Flatiron School

Upon graduating I had intended to write an extremely in depth review. However, its been 3 years since Ive graduated and I dont remember all of the nitty gritty details.
I can say, however, that I was one of the first in my cohort to get a job offer. I do not have a college degree, I was not the "brightest" one in my cohort, and my starting salary was on the lower end ($55k), but soft skills start to play a much more important role when it comes job-search time.
Ive since moved on to another job in the suburbs making $80k using TypeScript, C#, and .NET... Im learning C++ and hardware programming in my own time which is fun.
My life is in every way better after attending flatiron.

My advice: 

All of the "behind the scenes stuff you learn in the beginning" which seems like you dont really need to know. You will be doing yourself a massive favor by taking that material very seriously when it comes to real-world dev (Sinatra, SQL, etc...).

Keep your projects small. Focus your project only what its intended for. If its a command line project, try to cram everything into the project that you've learned the past 3 or 4 weeks while keep the functionality/features small. Dont fool yourself. None of your projects are going to be used ever again after your first job. Dont try to think of an amazing idea for your projects. Simply use them to re-inforce what you've learned. (Except your last project, really go all-out with that one).

Lastly- I really loved flatiron. but I would now considering another school that does NOT focus on Ruby/Rails for three reasons:
1) Focusing that extra attention on Javascript is going to take you way further
2) Node backend is simply becoming more popular than Ruby. Ruby did not take off as initially expected
3) There's less abstraction with a Node API. Ruby has a ton of abstraction (which you DO learn about, i.e. Sinatra), but using the bare bones code and never using those abstractions will help you a lot more.

I write this sincerely as someone who put themselves in unnecessary debt with the hopes of turning my career around. Please, if you are someone who is looking to get into Cybersecurity, please explore your options when it comes to continuing education. Flatiron school is a scam. I am embarrassed to have partaken in the Cybersecurity cohort. Everyone, from the instructors to the career service personnel are well aware that this program does not provide for you what it says it does. I am now $17,000 in the hole because I believed in this program.

The biggest red flag was one of the instructors writing an article in regard to Bootcamps not preparing students for the workplace. Imagine your college professor writing an article saying "This is all horse**** and I know it!", then showing up to work everyday (I say everyday sparingly). There is no ROI here. I graduated in January and career services has "matched" me with companies that are looking for EXPERIENCED candidates. The promise of "Come in with no experience and leave ready for the workplace" is absolute trash and the administration knows it. We had one professor quit in the middle of the cohort. One professor not show for the first two weeks. One professor refuse to listen to our concerns and then would go on "vacation" every other week leaving us with a substitute instructor. So many red flags, but I tried to stay positive as I have immense pressure from everyone around me to succeed. This school and their practices has effectively destroyed my mental health and no amount of "Virtual Happy Hours" will fix that. I genuinely feel bad for anyone employed here. I could imagine they don't sleep too well at night. If they do, the sociopathy epidemic is worse than I imagined. 

As you can tell I am fuming writing this review so I am trying to be as objective as possible. Stay away. This school puts all of their attention on Software Development and introduced Cybersecurity simply as another stream of revenue. 

My parting words for Flatiron are simple: You know what you're doing. You know what it does to people. You're well aware of your price point. Reconstruct your business model. Save lives. 

I attended the part time online Software Engineering Bootcamp with Flatiron last year and had a great experience! Basically, we went through five main modules. Each module involved learning about languages/frameworks through reading written lessons, doing coding labs, having a couple of class meetings a week where our instructor reviewed the content, or showed us bonus content, and at the end, building an app with what we had learned. We also did pair programming every week with other students. The curriculum worked great for me, and I really appreciated the learning style of mostly reading about something and practicing doing it myself! Flatiron's online bootcamp also has feature where you could ask a question about a lesson and someone would come help if you needed it, which was great! 
My only quibble with the way the instruction was structured was because everyone was learning at their own pace, sometimes I would find the class meetings helpful and informative and sometimes I would find them difficult to parse, depending on where I was in the material. Where we should have been at by the time we attended a lecture to get the most out of it was wasn't made clear. This is a small critique though as most lectures were helpful and really, all of the information I needed was in the written lessons anyway.
For the job search, Flatiron has a lot of excellent written advice on how to prepare for and approach this, and in addition to that, I met with a career coach every week, which was great for staying on track! I have rated this one star less mostly because I am Canadian--Flatiron's advice is still great no matter where you live, but their employee partnerships are exclusively in the US and the UK, so I wasn't able to benefit from any of the opportunities for finding work emailed my way, and wasn't able to take advantage of their money-back guarantee. If you're Canadian, I would consider looking into more local bootcamps. That said, even though it took almost a year of job searching to get an offer, I am absolutely thrilled with the company I'll be starting with in a couple of weeks, and I couldn't have done it without the wonderful people at Flatiron! Also, I cannot overstate the benefit for me of being able to do a course part time instead of full-time--this was one of the main reasons I picked Flatiron as a bootcamp over more local offerings, and the pace was excellent. Challenging without being gruelling, and I was able to work part time through the program as well. 

In my experience the curriculum was excellent. The labs and help chat were awesome! You can talk to your instructor about curriculum you aren’t undeterstanding annnd the hard working team in the help chat(I forgot their title). The projects were my favorite part of the curriculum. But, the community is what got me through. I went in with minimal knowledge of html and css. I graduated with 5 projects completed. My projects were impressive to me but there were projects that made my jaw drop. It’s amazing what we can create once we learn. I recommend FlatIron if you are serious about making a career change. When I say serious, you have to understand that the hardest part is getting a job after you graduate. It could take a really long time before you find your first job. BUT, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. I put in the work and I am a better man for it. 

I attended the 15 week intensive full time software engineering bootcamp at Flatiron. I was part of the Seattle cohort, but because of Covid-19 the program was conducted entirely online. I thought that would be a drawback but it ended up being great. With no commuting I had more time to dedicate to coding and I was able to fit in a few more to-do's each day, like going for a run or getting an errand done. This program is an amazing way to learn a new skill very quickly. The structure of the program is excellent, and allows for self motivated learning but also provides a lot of much needed direction. I came from the performing arts so I was afraid I would be a fish out of water, but I had no trouble jumping right into the new material. My instructors were truly top tier educators, and really cared about my success. I cant say enough positive things about my experience at Flatiron. I feel it gave me the boost I needed to change my life and launch into a new career with confidence and momentum.

I submitted an application on 3/1/21 and was contacted the next day by Maryssa Medley to schedule an interview. I wanted to review their free "Hacking 101 course" before scheduling my interview even though it's not required. I scheduled my interview two days later and was not able to get a slot until 3/16. I had already received an offer of admissions to another bootcamp and they needed my acceptance/enrollment by 3/12, so I emailed Maryssa to see if I could get in earlier perhaps with another admissions officer and received an automated response that she was not in until the 10th and had limited access to emails. In her automated email, she refers urgent matters to her colleague, Michael Krashes. I emailed him and cc'd Maryssa, explaining my dilemma again and emphasizing that Flatiron was my first choice of bootcamps. I received no response from either by the next day. So on the 5th, I called the general admissions line and left a voicemail since apparently no one is in due to covid. I also sent an email to the admissions office, as was suggested in their outgoing voicemail recording. By the 10th, which is also when Maryssa was due back in the office, I still had not heard from ANYONE. That evening, Fullstack had a seminar with a panel of their alumni. One of the questions I asked is if any of them had considered any other bootcamps and why they chose to enroll at Fullstack. Two of them had looked at Flatiron's curriculum and decided that their program was not inclusive enough to set them up for a successful career in cybersecurity. One also commented that they did no seem to have the infrastructure to accommodate a virtual learning program. That's a nice way of putting it! They flat out ignored me even knowing that I really wanted to enroll and I reached out to four different people!! Today as I'm writing this on 3/11, I still have not heard from ANYONE, even though I canceled my original interview stating my reasons. If they are this unresponsive during the application process, I can't imagine what the experience would be like during the program itself and when looking for a job, especially for someone like me who is a novice and is putting faith into an institution like this bootcamp to guide me through the work to successfully start a career in a completely different industry from where I'm coming from. My cohort with Fullstack starts tomorrow. I will definitely add a review for that bootcamp once I've completed it. I feel REALLY good about the people there. Every question I've had along the way has been promptly answered and, on some occasions, by multiple people reaching out to me. 

Flatiron School's Online Data Science Immersive was a fast-paced, rigorous and exciting experience throughout which I felt supported by my instructors, cohort, and career coach. I had completed undergraduate and graduate level calc + statistics coursework prior to starting the program, which absolutely helped to make the pace more manageable throughout the math-heavy modules. I would recommend this program to other graduates who are looking to expand their knowledge of coding and data science methods, and who would benefit from having structure and community throughout their learning journey. If you're willing to put the required work in, you'll leave with a project portfolio, a data science blog, and the skills to continuing building upon your work after you leave Flatiron.

I don't think I can recommend this program enough. I am in awe on how they delivered exactly what they laid out. My teacher was absolutely incredible. She always went above-and-beyond the call of duty, and she was an expert in debugging and resolving issues even related to our individual computers. She was an excellent teacher, and laid out concepts ideas in a clear, easy to understand way. I love the interface that was created along with the many levels and different ways to support yourself. I learned so much from the peer programming, and although we were online, it was easy to figure out who you could connect with and learn from that way. I also love that we were later split into pods with others that learned similarly, so we could conquer new concepts together each week. I always felt like I was with people who were smarter than I was, and learned exponentially more because of it. I also love that the "Ask A Question" feature was open really early and really late. It was nice to have structure, although we were allowed to be a little bit behind in lessons and a little bit ahead as fit our individual scheduling needs. If I missed a lecture I could go back and review the recording on my own time. I have a young child and I was able to serve my family while I went to school. I learned a ton from the technicians available online as well. I also was so proud of each project I created, because I learned a lot while being forced to figure things out on my own. There was a wealth of online videos to watch to help support the ideas, lessons to pass, and although each project review with a different instructor was a bit nerve wracking, it was the closest thing to an interview at each step of the process. 

The support I received while at school was also admirable. I took advantage of the Educational Coach while I was at school, which was a huge part of my success. He helped me process through stress and helped me focus on goals, while providing practical solutions to better myself and my overall disposition so I could survive. I was blown away that I had this resource available to me during this time. 

After I graduated, I also received an amazing amount of support. My Career Coach challenged me and asked difficult questions to help me identify my negative patterns, and walked me through step-by-step instructions on how to improve my connections on Linked In and get my applications noticed. His approaches and techniques were practical, useful and 100% successful. He was extremely helpful in getting a job and improving my gratitude for opportunities in my life. 

Flatiron School has embraced the future of education in a way that has completely changed my life. I cannot speak highly enough about the school and its organization. 

As a graduate of the Software Engineering Immersive program at  Flatiron School, I have nothing but great things to say about the school, the program, and the Chicago Campus specifically. The program is a rigorous course designed for absolute beginners to launch a career in tech. I previously studied opera performance and hold a Bachelor of Arts in Music and Master of Music in Voice. I had completed no previous engineering or computer science coursework prior to my studies at Flatiron. They truly are there to support you every step of the way for this career change.
First of all, they have a free bootcamp prep course which is designed to give you fundamental skills in Ruby, JavaScript, and programming logic in general. They have technical coaches available to answer any questions you may have during this free course. If you decide that you enjoy programming and want to apply, you will have a few different interviews before you are admitted into the program. There are numerous options for financing your education. Once you are admitted and have all of the logistics taken care of, you will be assigned pre-work prior to the course. You will have opportunities to meet your instructors, coaches, and fellow cohort mates in the pre-work office hours sessions leading up to the first day of the bootcamp.
While a student in the bootcamp, you will have 5 different learning phases. After each phase, you will have a coding assessment, a blog, and a group or solo project. Throughout the entire duration of the program, you will have instructors and coaches available to answer any questions you may have, and to help guide and mentor you through the challenges of the day.
You will have many opportunities for pair programming with fellow students. You will have the opportunity to attend numerous community events, where you can hear from recent graduates about their experiences with finding a job in the industry. You will have the opportunity to learn from students in other cohorts, and community events geared towards building connections across campus. After every phase, you will complete a survey where you can give your honest feedback about how to improve the curriculum and overall experience. The campus team truly goes through all the feedback and actively seeks to improve the experience for all students. It is a very inclusive and safe environment, and Flatiron takes pride in their company values.
As a graduate, you are placed in the hands of the career services team, where you will have a dedicated career coach to help you reach your job search goals and get you your first software engineering job. You will also have a separate section of the curriculum dedicated to polishing your resume, job search etiquette, and technical and behavioral interview questions. I can confidently say that Flatiron School is well worth every penny, and I would recommend them wholeheartedly to anyone hoping to make a transition into a career in tech.