Flatiron School

I began my studies at the Flatiron School in 2014 in the web development program.  I had very little code experiencing but I knew that this was a career path I wanted to take. I spent many years in retail as a buyer/merchandise planner but was getting bored with my career.  After considerable thought I decided to just leave my job and embark on this journey and I have never looked back.  

Flatiron was warm welcoming environment, they provided me a solid coding foundation, gave me the confidence to write blogs, prepared me to speak intelligently about coding, allowed me to create really cool apps and meet some great new friends.  The part that was most appealing about Flatiron school was that they promised to find me a job upon graduation.  I was nervous but withing 4 weeks of graduating, they held up their end of the bargain and landed me a job.  I now work as a Front End Developer and everyday I get to enjoy the work that I do and the people I work with.  None of this would have happened if it were not for the Flatirons School.  

Attending Flatiron School’s iOS Immersive Program was bar-none, one of the most life-changing decisions of my life. 

Coming from a non-technical background, I’d always seen apps has “magic,” in the sense that, you downloaded it, and it just…worked. So the idea of making apps as a career was beyond daunting, but with the guidance and support of the fantastic instructors, classmates, and staff at Flatiron — the overall experience was enlightening and fulfilling.

The course isn’t easy, and it isn’t meant to be, so if you’re thinking of signing up on a whim without any real motivations — you will not get out of the program everything you can. But if you put in the time, the effort, the blood, sweat, and tears, you’ll leave the course with an almost fundamental shift in your thinking (how to think like a program-solver).

No programming bootcamp is the be-all end-all destination for aspiring developers and I’d be wary of any program that claims to be. Don’t get me wrong — Flatiron can, and will teach you all the fundamental basics of iOS development, but that is only the first stepping stone on a path that leads off into the distance.

The greatest gift from Flatiron was instilling and nurturing my passion for creation and problem solving, and more importantly, the means by which I could continue that trend on my own. The Flatiron School teaches you the how, and it’s up to you to discover the why. 

Post-graduation, I got an internship turned full-time and for the first time in my life, I can’t wait to go to work every morning.

I completed the Ruby Bootcamp at the Flatiron School.  This was one of the most intense, memorable, and transformative experience of my life.  The fact that I have now mostly switched from Ruby to using full-stack JavaScript but can still apply what I learned in this program is a great testament to the high quality of the program.  While we on one level were learning the Ruby programming language (and then, once we had that foundation in place, building web apps with Rails), the real goal was to teach how to think and works as a software engineer.  For example, one of my favorite activities we did early on, was to try to explain to an alien in pure logical form how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  This might sound silly, but in fact, the exercise is highly instructive of the process of writing code.  Another important learning experience was that of learning how to collaborate with other developers.  Inter-personal skills may not seem like something one would associate with coding, but it is in fact an absolutely essential skill.  In terms of cons of the program, it was probably a bit on the high end in terms of cost, and it is not possible to deduct the tuition on your taxes (I tried) but at the end of the day, this program was worth every penny.  Oh, and one last thing, after you've completed the program, you will receive the most amazing support in helping you find a job.  The Flatiron School is highly connected in the industry and will be able to connect you with numerous companies and opportunities. 

I attended Flatiron School as part of the school's partnership with NYC Talent Pipeline, which offered a full scholarship to underemployed/unemployed NYC residents (BK00 in the house).    My experience at Flatiron School was extremely challenging (get ready to learn at an intense pace) but the reward has been tremendous. Not just in terms of job opportunities but friendships forged with really smart and compassionate people. If you are considering a non-traditional path to a career in software development, I would encourage you to apply to FIS.    PS: Shoutout to Jackie, Kevin, and Joe who together make the career service team AMAZING. These folks will HUSTLE for you and will ensure you get a good job post-graduation. You still have to carry your weight eg:  updating portfolio, following-up with folks they introduce you to, etc.

I’m a recent graduate from Flatiron’s iOS Development course. I came into the program with zero programming knowledge and determined to change my career. Flatiron’s education was crucial in my future success as a software developer. At Flatiron I learned to develop applications with a team and individually. I currently have two applications in the app store, and developing my third app as an iOS Developer freelancer.

Flatiron has build an environment where creativity and learning is at the forefront of every activity. This energy to learn is felt throughout the halls, common rooms, and class rooms. Learning to code is hard, it requires 100% commitment to the program and an amazing team of teachers / educators.  At Flatiron you will not only learn to code with the latest programming languages and techniques, you will also learn to think critically, to solve complex problems by breaking down complexity. You will learn how to continue to educate yourself after the program—technology is an ever growing field and to stay current you must keep up with it.

During my time at Flatiron, I have had the fastest personal growth in the shortest time.

Thank you to the entire team at Flatiron for all of the hard work you do to make us into great developers.

I attended Flatiron School's Learn Verified online web development course from February to October 2016. Overall, it was a great experience! The key difference I noticed between Flatiron and other bootcamps/schools is that Flatiron focuses on building a love and passion for coding while building the necessary skills to make a career switch, not just churning out people to get jobs. 

The instructors were very helpful and the material was clear and concise.  There were some lessons that could have used some improvement and a deeper dive (such as the Angular material near the end) but there was plenty of material and it was written in such a way that made it easy to grasp a lot concepts, even the complex ones. Working on test driven labs was a huge plus for applying the concepts that we learned. The student community is a very active as well - having a community of other learners as well as Learn Experts available on Flatiron's online chat for most of the day to help with coding is a huge benefit too - and it's only improved since I graduated! The post-graduation career support (preparing for interviews, networking, and job referrals) was excellent too.

While the online web development course does require a lot of focus and self discipline (since you work at your own pace), overall I would highly recommend Flatiron School to anyone who wants to learn to love code (as well as make a career switch!).

I was lucky to be in the first Flatiron class and since then the trajectory of my life has been altered in ways I couldn't have imagined. A rewarding career is the minimum students walk away from Flatiron with. The program also provides a supportive community and a transformative experience. As a graduate, I was able to get the job of my choice at Carrot Creative where I had a blast. Since then I've returned to Flatiron School where I work on Learn.co.

I'm proud to call myself a Flatiron School graduate when I see the school continue to push itself to improve with better learning tools and become more accessible via its Fellowship programs.

Simply put, attending Flatiron School was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

The Flatiron School is hands down the best school you could ever choose. Everything about the program beats any other program's offering by far -- from the instructors, course content, the other students, the culture, and more. I know many people that have done other programs and they don't finish nearly as strong of developers as those that have gone through Flatiron's program. Given how well Flatiron prepared me, I'm now running an early stage startup that I've built from foundations I learned there.  

It's an amazing time to work in tech, but this journey is not for those not willing to fall down repeatedly and get right back up. I joined Flatiron's web development immersive in its early stages (3rd session in summer of 2013) and it was an intense experience of gaining the superpower to build anything with code.

What Flatiron gives you is a chance to focus all your energy for 12 weeks in learning and building as much as you can, with individuals who are as talented, diverse, ambitious, multi-skilled, and crazy as you are.

It is really this new model of immersive and collaborative learning that will drive you up the rather steep hill that is going from not being able to write a "for loop" to building whole applications, together with your peers.

It was about at the 8 week mark of 12 weeks where for me everything coalesced and I started to see much further in terms of what I could do with code, with Ruby on Rails. In that next week, my team and I built BikeWithFriends, a CitiBike gamification web app that won Hack of the Month at the NY Tech Meetup in August 2013, which we got to present to a crowd of over +800, and we were still coding students.

Since then, I've worked at Huge, an awesome digital agency in DUMBO with amazing people. Now I am looking forward to my new journey at Spotify in 2017, which will marry my longstanding passion for music with my growing skills in technology.

I think to succeed in the field of web development in 2017 is to learn to think like an engineer where your domain is technology and your tools are your programming languages, your development environment, and the knowledge base of your peers and the wider tech community.

Flatiron for me was only a jumping off point, and you will only see your abilities and knowledge double every few months for the first few years as you start working professionally. It's really about building up core skills in programming and continuing to become more sophisticated and refined as you go along. 

The best thing is that a good employer will expect that you are coming in with junior programming skills and will give you space and time to grow and mature. Like any other meaningful endeavor, there is no magic bullet. Time and energy/effort will result in increasing skills, which will make you a more valuable team member until you can start mentoring and leading teams/projects all on your own. 

I think it does help to do as much pre-work as you can, especially if you don't come from a tech background. Particularly knowing whether spending a lot of time staring at the computer screen deciphering where your code went wrong (and what your machine is trying to tell you) is something you can put up with and even enjoy day in and day out. 

Great troubleshooting skills is really what determines how much longevity you will have in this field in my opinion. Always review how you and your peers fix issues and code errors. That will be the difference between finishing your work on time and being able to help your teammates or getting increasingly frustrated and falling behind, eventually becoming a liability on your project. 

Also, the program is structured in such a way that each week builds upon the previous week's material. Make sure even if you don't 100% understand why the material is necessary that you can still get through the exercises on your own starting from scratch aka "the blank screen". I definitely realized I was out of my depth understanding some aspects of Object Oriented Programming in the early weeks and just did the exercise over and over again until I could get through the entire thing without referencing another team's solution. The understanding came in pieces and formed a whole eventually, but building the intuition and "muscle memory" of what I was doing was key in getting there.

Practice writing all your coding basics like looping through and getting data in and out of arrays and hashes so that stuff doesn't bog you down when you're doing the really important stuff, like designing an algorithm to count the frequency of any word in the text of Moby Dick. Speed and accuracy does kind of matter here. It would be like trying to learn algebra/trigonometry when you have trouble with basic addition/subtraction/multiplication/division. 

Flatiron was the best program I believe when I started (curriculum, instructors, job interview and placement help) and has only gotten more refined as time goes on. Listen to your teachers, take the advice of your career advisors, don't get too overwhelmed by the job interview and placement portion of the program or your salary. It's a long journey to be an excellent developer/engineer. Any opportunity to learn and grow will be a good one and be in it for the long haul. It's an awesome time to be in tech.