Flatiron School

I recently completed the Full Stack Web Developer program at Flatiron School (completed in Oct of 2018), I took the course online using the self guided option. This allowed me to do as much or as little as I wanted every day, which turned out to be perfect for me. The online course is definitely a very self driven course, so if you have trouble motivating yourself, you might benefit from connecting with other students in the Slack channel, which is usually pretty active. I really enjoyed the self guided option because I had set a deadline of my own, and was able to keep a quick pace. 

I agree with others that the lessons at the beginning of the course (Ruby) are more in depth and fully explained compared to the ending lessons on React and Redux. Having said that, keep in mind that technologies are always changing, so the lessons will always change, and nothing is perfect. If you're having trouble, sometimes you have to take the extra step and watch some extra tutorials, or reach out to other students and coaches on Slack. There's almost always someone willing to help you out. After a bit of struggle, at the end of the React section, I definitely felt like I could make a fully functioning website with relative ease. 

Entering the job search portion of the program, I was pleasantly surprised by a couple things. The time spent correctly setting up your Linkedin profile, github profile, personal blog, and resume was really great. While I was applying, I looked over some other Linkedin profiles of people who had completed bootcamps similar to Flatiron, but they lacked a bit of professionalism and didn't seem very thurough. I felt like Flatiron helped me present myself in a very professional way, and I think that helped me stand out. I was also able to email my coach while I was negotiating my salary with a potential employer, and they were able to give me fantastic advice on how to handle it the entire way through. I will say that they sort of breeze over applying to companies online and almost discourage you from doing it. I agree that most of the time your resume will be passed over, but after talking to a few recruiters I learned how to make a resume that would be more search-friendly for big companies and ended up getting a decent amount of responses that way. 

In the end, I ended up getting a job with a company that I was referred to by Flatiron, so I feel like it was 100% worth my money and my time. 

In terms of what the program was supposed to do, I am technically a success. I left my job, learned web development (including React and Redux), and got a well-paying job as a software engineer at a tech company. But I wish I had paid more attention to some of the critical reviews. 

I did the online program, where it's self-paced. At least in this program, learning is VERY self-driven. Everything is taught through the Flatiron "Learn" portal, which is sometimes buggy. I've definitely had occasions where I spent an hour coding in the editor and was almost about to submit when it froze and lost all my work. Lessons, as I progressed, became harder to understand, mainly because they were more poorly written. The lessons on Ruby were probably the best out of all of them, given that they were the oldest and most groomed. On the other hand, the ones on CSS, React, and Redux honestly felt laughable given how sparse they were. 

For the projects, there's no real standard for quality. I put in a lot of work to make ambitious projects with pretty web design so they would actually look good on my resume. But looking at other students' work, I saw most people just did the bare minimum to pass the project requirements. I didn't feel like there was any incentive for people to try and become "great" web developers with projects they could be proud of. 

During the program, I had a friend who went to another intensive bootcamp (which I won't name). But he gave me access to his school's portal, and I did the majority of their workshops. Honestly, the difference in quality was staggering. Their information was much more so up-to-date and their approach to web development so much more engaging and serious. I learned about websockets, cyper security, flexbox, etc., all things I felt like my curriculum shorted me of. 

Lastly, the job assistance was fine. They did connect me with 1-2 interviews a week. But the final lessons were just a couple of paragraphs about Big O notation and binary trees. I don't think they drilled to the students how much they need to study and practice algorithms to do well on any of the interviews. Putting this all together, it makes sense that the students aren't doing as well as comparable bootcamp grads. The school doesn't treat its students like serious software engineers, and I do feel like between all the self-studying and catching up to other bootcamp and C.S. grads (if they even know to do this), Flatiron students definitely start out at a disadvantage. 

I attended Flatiron School's Access Labs program in Brooklyn, and graduated this past January. Since then I have been hired as Junior Frontend Developer, and I can say that it was the absolutely right decision to attend Flatiron.

I was very unsure how their reputation stacked up in the real world and what the quality of the education was. I looked into App Academy, and Fullstack as well, and was accepted at Fullstack, (I didnt apply to App Academy). Ulitimately I choose Flatiron because the timing of the cohort was better for me, and the finiancing option with the Access Labs program is awesome. I currently work with App Academy graduates and they are all top notch, and know other people who are Fullstack graduates that are excellent programmers too. 

I didnt find the bootcamp expierence to be crazy overwhemling, its hard work for sure, but if you have a mature attitude and work ethic you'll be fine. Flatiron will teach you how to code, how to build applications, provide a working understanding of how code operates and how the frameworks and languages communicate with each other. If you choose not to do the hard work, you'll still probably graduate but you've just cheated yourself. Like anything in life you get out of it what you put in, and Flatiron has a ton of resources for those who engage and want to learn. Flatiron does an excellent job of helping their students develop their soft skills too, and they offer talks and work shops with working developers.

When you graduate you'll still have a lot of knowledge to fill in, data types, and algorithms, CS concepts etc. You need to do the work and learn this stuff. 

Flatiron has a robust career staffing team that actively engage and assist their graduates find jobs, lifetime career coaching support, job fairs, mock tech interviews, and more. This aspect of the school can not be understated, they offer a lot of job hunting support. 

The teaching assistants are excellent, and extremely helpful, the teachers for the most part are senior devs that have switched to teaching. 

Flatiron can improve by implementing more code reviews of student projects, and by having stricter requirements for passing course sections. I saw some students that would have benefitted from more focused support from the teaching staff but instead were passed to advanced sections with out fulling grasping the concepts. IF you as a student feel like you are falling behind you need to take the initiative to get the help you need. 

All in all I very very happy with my decision to attend Flatiron, I now have the best job Ive ever had.

Speaking as a graduate, this is an outstanding coding bootcamp for several reasons:

1) Their full stack web development curriculum gives you everything you need to make web apps on both the front and backend. There are many other course choices but this is the one I completed. 

2) The curriculum is test driven; you write code that passes automated tests just like a real developer does. This means you are really being trained to write good code. Furthermore, there are 5 projects to complete and you are given 30 minute assessments for each one with a trained developer. This prepares you for the real world and ensures that you *really* do know your stuff once you graduate. 

3) You are given a lot of support. You can use the ask a question feature 16 hours a day (9 AM to 1 AM) and have technical coaches help you with your code. You also have a large Slack community and many study groups available. If you do in person immersive or the structured online track you get more support still. 

4) You push all of your labs and projects to github so that you have a portfolio ready to show employers (plus, most employers also use github). Your credibility is thus greatly enhanced when it comes time to job hunt. 

5) The job search assistance is second to none. You are assigned a career coach who teaches you specific skills such as networking, writing a resume, and preparing for interviews. You are given weekly check ins by your career coach. You have a huge network of business and graduates also helping you. Does all this work? You bet! Flatiron has the best independently verified job placement rate of all the bootcamps for a reason. 

Personal anecdote: I started with zero programming experience, worked my tail off as a Flatiron student and graduate in 6 months, then worked for them part time as a technical coach, and just got a 73K job as a junior software engineer just 9 months after graduating! 

This is an amazing place to learn to code and launch your career if you are willing to put the dedication in. Added bonus: you can do a lot of free labs they offer to see if it is really right for you. 

I should start with the ol' bootcamp adage of "your outcome/success is dependent on you and what you put into the program" as that very much holds true to my experience with Flatiron.  I did the Online Immersive program and managed to land a dream job, but I also passed on the opportunity to qualify for the "Job Guarantee" so I could spend more time post-graduation learning and polishing my portfolio projects (to be eligible for the "job guarantee or your money back" part that they advertise you've got to keep up with a pretty rigorous job search program that many have mentioned is more exhausting than the course work).  I should mention that even though I voluntarily waived my right to the job guarantee, the school still happily provided me with career coaching services that were amazing and impactful in helping me land my first gig.

Here are my Pros and Cons for the program.

Pros: 

-The program was flexible enough for a stay-at-home parent. This was the primary reason I chose Flatiron over other schools.  

-Excellent Ruby curriculum.  Avi is a master at teaching and his methods are sound.  Every Ruby takehome test I did for a job interview was really well received and I credit the Flatiron curriculum for that.

-Excellent TAs. If you get stuck on a lab anytime between the early hours of the morning and late at night, there's going to be a TA to help you get unstuck. And if you need help with a project, you can schedule time with them, or bring your problem to one of the many weekly study groups.  Basically, if you need help you'll get it.  Also, most of the TA's are graduates and insanely smart, so I constantly went away from a TA session having more confidence in the program knowing the alumni were so competent.

-Excellent Career Coaches. My two coaches were tireless cheerleaders for me, helping me successfully self-promote and giving me confidence throughout the ups and downs of the job search.

-Excellent Instructors.  My interaction with my section leads was limited mostly to my project assessments, but there is an option to schedule office hours with them.  That being said, I learned quite a lot in each 1-hour assessment.

The Cons:

- The Javascript curriculum at the time that I was studying at Flatiron needed a reboot, and the React curriculum was still maturing.  If that's the still the case, I would highly recommend using Udemy courses to supplement your study.  If you feel like you're getting lost in those sections, you won't be alone.  It was a frequent complaint in the community slack channels.  That being said, the TA's and section leads are very competent in JS, so there's the option to lean on them a bit more.

-The Job Guarantee requirements are pretty insane, especially if you're a parent (I'm imagining impossible if you're a working parent).  Really really really check these out if you feel like you'll be reliant on it.

-I think at least one of the projects should have been a "group assignment" as I found many employers I interviewed with thought it was a negative that I hadn't worked in a collaborative environment with more complicated source control demands.  Flatiron could supplement this group project with more Github curriculum.

-----

Overall, I got exactly what I wanted out of the program, and my job offer pretty much exceeded the ROI I was hoping for, so I really can't complain. I'm very proud of being a Flatiron graduate, and I think this year you'll see the school make a bigger name for itself as it expands to new cities and as more graduates find jobs.  I know the month I got a job offer it was one of 60 offers extended to Flatiron grads (and in December, which tends to be slow for hiring).  That's a pretty impressive number. 

If you're looking for a flexible online program with plenty of support, I'd highly recommend Flatiron.

I earned my BA in Computer Science, but I had a hard time applying my skills to real world scenarios.  After working in a non-technical setting for about a year, I jumped into learning web development. It was a lot of fun but with no real learning structure to guide me, so I felt like I was always jumping around. I decided to attend Flatiron, and it was a great experience. So much information is thrown at you, but the instructors and fellow students are there to help you.  I think that was the biggest takeaway from Flatiron, the culture they try to foster. Being able to go through a program that is this intense is easier to do when you have people around you trying to push you to be the best you can be.  I graduated in November, and now in January I have accepted an offer with Amazon. The offer was initally set up through Flatiron's Business Development team.  Roughly every three months, the school offers a career fair for qualifying students (you just have to complete some mock interviews and meet with your coach a few times). This was one of the most helpful experiences I went through while at Flatiron. Over the course of 4 days, I met with 5 companies that the BD team matched me with. It's a great opportunity to hone your interview skills and also nail in person interviews so you can proceed to next steps.  Overall, Flatiron was one of the best decisions I made for my career, and I strongly recommend the school to anyone looking to enter into Web Development.

Completing the Flatiron Web Dev Immersive course in NYC was one of the best commitments I've ever made. I'm from Utah and after researching bootcamp options decided on Flatiron and a few others. I had no coding background and barely passed the technical interview during the admissions process so the coursework was difficult. However, since I was committed to putting in 12-16 hours/day the material was certainly manageable. By the end of each 3-week module, I felt confident in the material we'd covered. The instructors were absolutely incredible. The quality of teaching surpassed anything I experienced in college. We had 1 instructor for only 1 week who didn't meet this standard, but every other instructor was highly skilled. After a little less than 3 months I got my first (and only) offer and accepted immediately. The pay and growth potential were both outstanding. The job market in Salt Lake City is competitive and I ended up at a startup with a promising future. I couldn't be happier. More than all of that, though, I now have a highly marketable skill that allows me to build and create meaningful things.

Flatiron School was a once in a lifetime experience that changed my life. I challenged myself everyday and met a ton of ambitious and intelligent individuals (instructors, mentors and classmates) who I now call friends and most importantly, I walked away with a profoundly valuable skill: the ability to turn ideas into reality through programming.

I WORKED EXTREMELY HARD AND WAS CHALLENGED!!!

On average, I spent 10–16 hours a day (~75–80 hours/week, including weekends) dedicated to code. I sat in lectures, watched lecture videos and programming videos, worked on labs, wrote blog posts, and built my own projects. Many times during the week I still found myself on campus past 12AM and during the final weeks of Flatiron School in building my final portfolio project, I still found myself on campus past 2AM especially on the weekends. And honestly the only reason why I didn’t stay later was the support of my family, friends and instructors who requested that I take care of my health and not burn out (seriously take care of your health…). But when I got home, I still wrote code. Truth be told, no one should ever tell you that programming is easy because it isn’t. It’s very invigorating and challenging; like really hard. It’s mind-bending work and you constantly have to hold a million different puzzle pieces in your brain in order to solve the problem. There will be days where I go to bed thinking about how to solve the problem and feeling defeated while other days where I felt like I was the champion of the world. Programming, with its instant feedback loop, will constantly play with your emotions. But when things click and you “figure” it out, you will feel a sense of accomplishment like no other. It really is ADDICTING. 

The instructors at Flatiron School were all absolutely phenomenal; highly intelligent, humble and experienced individuals who genuinely want you to succeed and do well. Up to this day they still reach out to me and check up on me to make sure that I am doing well and very excited for me when I chose the software engineer role that I wanted.

The career services at Flatiron School stand out among any other Bootcamps in the world and work hard to get you leads and interviews and the job that you want!

 I graduated from Flatiron School's immersive Web Development program in 2018. It is a great place to learn. The staff is committed to your success and even after graudation there is plenty of support to help you find a job. The best part of Flatiron is the community you build with both students and staff (a lot of the staff are former students). Most classes build really strong bonds that continue even after graduation. Additionally Career Services does an amazing job and can help connect you to companies.

Overall wonderful experience. I came to Flatiron as a recent college graduate with a CS degree, so I had a certain expectation with programming classes. I was pleasantly surprised by my experience at Flatiron. They have a great community where everyone is helping each other out. I did take issue with one instructor who wasn't as engaged with my class as the other instructors were, but they were all extremely helpful and approachable. The only main problem I had was with career services. Although I appreciated all of the tools they provided to help me look for a job, I felt once I received my first job offer, the school pushed me towards taking it just so they could add me to their jobs report. I could be pessimistic but it left a sour taste in my mouth. I would still recommend the course to anyone because of how much you learn in such a short period of time. Just be wary of their career services once you start looking for a job.

I graduated Flatiron School's online web development program at the end of the May and recommend them highly. I did a ton of research before enrolling in their program and they really have the best program out there. I felt supported and challenged during the whole process. The online tech coaching was invuable as I got stuck with trickier concepts. 

After I graduated the career coaching was AWESOME. It was so helpful to me to have someone go over my resume and linkedin profile. I had weekly check ins with my career coach to help in my job search. It was really great and helped me to no end in landing my job!

I graduated from Access Labs on September 14th and just finished my second week at my new job as a Software Engineer. I had a really 3 months+ at Access Labs this past summer. The instructors were really attentive and always made themselves available for us. There were pretty clear expectations on how we should be progressing through the materials.

The most valuable part of the experience for me was the job assistance. They assign you a career coach to meet wtih you weekly and offer advice, give feedback, proofread email correspondance, anything you need. I got a lot of interviews through Flatiron School's business development team (including the one which ultimately led to my job). The job search is incredibly painful and difficult, but I know it would have been much more so without Flatiron's career services.

Overall, the experience has been pretty life-changing.

The online data science bootcamp prep course on learn.co was the best course I have taken. Before applying to flatiron, I took multilpe online python/data science courses (Udemy, codecademy, edex, etc.). So, when I started this one I quicly realized I was learning fundamentals that many didn't touch on. What I loved the most was that they are preparing you to do the data science immersive program, but they want you to be a great programmer as well. Instead of simply teaching you libraries that will be useful, they teach you the basics and build onto it. I was challenged and I learned so much. The bootcamp prep was definitely a huge factor in my decision to go to flatiron--including all the feedback I recieved from alumni, and I can't wait to begin the immersive program. Try the bootcamp prep, you won't be disappointed.

I was recently accepted into the Immersive Software Engineering Bootcamp and have had an extremely pleasant experience with Flatiron throughout the whole process.  I began teaching myself to code using a variety of free and paid resources (Codecademy, Udemy, Edabit challenges, auditing classes online of some esteemed professors, etc), but I found Flatiron's Pre Bootcamp Prep with Learn to be definitely one of, if not THE, best.  I began working through the Prep course without any immediate intention of applying and kept at it because I found it so useful.  It is one of the major reasons I chose to apply to Flatiron.  It can be difficult building your own curriculum when you are using diverse resources to teach yourself, but Flatiron lays out a great curriculum for you, complete with digestible information and challenging, instructive labs.  The lessons and labs build on each other to help your skills stick, and if you ever get stuck, the people behind the Ask A Question feature are immediately responsive and very helpful.  Even if you're not applying, but trying to self-teach, DO THIS COURSE!

The interview process was also totally pleasant and the team at Flatiron seems A+. 

12/10 would recommend!

I recently got in to the flatiron software engineering immersive, and so far my whole experience with flatiron and learn.co has been incredible. A note: if you are applying to flatiron, doing the bootcamp prep course is the most important thing you can do. 

A while ago I tried to learn more about programming and web development on codeacademy, but did't stick with it because I was often frustrated and confused. But with the learn.co bootcamp prep course it just felt easier to learn and I made it totally through the javascript curriculum way faster than I excpected, and it felt great! Learn.co is designed to have you apply everything as you learn it, and the concepts it teaches are really well ordered. The best part about learn.co is the questions feature, which is super easy to use, and always has either other students who have already completed the lesson you're on, or instructors available who make getting through tough spots super easy, and even enjoyable because the people who help are so kind!

For the actual application the admissions team is super involved, and really easy to communicate with if you have questions. The online interviews with them were easy to schedule, and super convenient. If it's possible I would reccomend starting on learn.co and applying to flatiron to anyone. But even if it's not, I would still reccomend doing the free bootcamp prep course on learn.co because of how great the platform and curriculum are.

The online curriculem at learn.co is amazing! They show you multiple ways to solve a problem, which is very useful in programming, especially when trying to read someone elses code. I am new to Ruby and this curriculem has really made it really easy to learn. 

I initially started self-learning on Codecademy and found that there weren't enough practice problems for all of the material to stick long term. After finding Flatiron's Bootcamp Prep Course, I was making notable progress. I've since completed the course and in my experience, it was the best free resource for learning the fundamentals.

The course is designed so that you're required to think pragmatically which helps improve upon your problem-solving abilities. What's also super neat is that there's a chat function to ask instructors and peers for help if you get stuck on a problem. The response rate is within seconds and the responses have been extremely helpful every time!

Before doing the Flatiron Bootcamp Prep I was self teaching myself from various sources including a free cource on web development from Udacity and a course I purchased from Udemy. 

Learning from the first two methods I always got confused when I got to Javascript Arrays. I just could not grasp the concept. It wasn't until I started the Flatiorin bootcamp prep that the lesson on Arrays started to click. 

The way the lessons build on each other in the Flatiron prep is very helpful. What is more helpful is the ability to interact with your code through their IDE (integrated development environment) learning system. 

Through this I learned how to problem solve and understand better the errors I was making in my code. 

Since completing the bootcamp prep I have been accepted into an upcoming cohort and am excited to get started. 

love this school! It's very easy to understand, and if you get stuck there is a chat so you can get help from other students, and instructers.

I decided with my husband that we both wanted to go back to school and learn software engineering. It was a bit of an endeavor of course, but I am thankful that the school offered a free boot camp prep so I could feel out the program and see if it was achievable to take on going to school. The boot camp prep for the most part was pretty easy for follow along and I really liked doing the labs. At times, it was challenging, but as long as you’re comfortable asking questions or looking things up at times, you’ll do just fine. I was also very thankful that the school worked with me on financing the program (as it was a bit challenging to budget two people in the house doing this program!) I am still in the course work and I have enjoyed the experience so far. Everyone has been very nice and worked with me as needed on any challenges I have come across.