Software Engineering Certificate (Full-Time)

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.

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.

Flatiron School provided an exceptional learning experience! The curriculum is well-structured, and the instructors are incredibly knowledgeable and supportive. The hands-on projects and real-world applications helped me gain practical skills and confidence in coding. The community is welcoming, and the career support is top-notch, guiding me through job searches and interviews. I highly recommend Flatiron School to anyone looking to jumpstart their career in tech! 

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!

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 instructorSeriously, 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.

As a former computer science student in college, Flatiron will teach you things I never learned, or even expected to learn, in a coding bootcamp. Upon graduating, I became even more impressed with the overall experience when using the career services. I felt incredibly lost leading up to graduation when thinking about the job hunt because I had no experience in the corporate world. I was not switching careers, but still pursuing my original one. I now feel fully equipped with knowing lots of corporate etiquette and certain formulas and procedures you just have to follow for things. There were a couple downsides, and I'm hoping one was due to a unique situation. I dealt with instructor roulette due to layoffs and curriculum restructuring. Even though I was on the FLEX self-paced path, not having a static instructor the entire time was rough. The other is lack of focus on algorithmic, typical coding questions you will see in tech interviews. There is a curriculum for that post-grad, but I would have liked to learn more and be tested on them during my education. 

My time at Flatiron was fantastic. I connected with some truly exceptional individuals in my cohort. The bootcamp is fast-paced and demands discipline; it's not a fit for everyone. The hands-on experience of working on technical projects allowed me to develop a strong portfolio. The instructors were knowledgeable and supportive. Looking back, I regret not enrolling when they introduced the new curriculum with Python/Flask.

BE CAREFULLY!!Some of the advertising like "Don't pay if you don't have a job". That is right. You have to understand the word they are playing. If you join to this school with that program, you have to pay even you work at the job which does not related anything to what you have learned from this school. For example: If you join for a Full Stack Dev then you work at Walmart for $15/hour, then you still have to pay. (Their threshold is ~$3000/month). If you make less than ~$3000/month then you should be fine. Otherwise, they will chase after you to get their money.  About the course, be honest, I don't recommend this since beside the certificate and the assistance in job hunting, everything else is not worth it. Basically you spend ~$17,000 for those 2 things. The lecture is always quick and not many assistant. Nowadays, there are a lot of online course much cheaper (with certificate) and some are free. Besides that, there are a lot of coding communities online for asking questions. 

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

I chose Flatiron School so that I could attend a bootcamp in-person. It was important for me to establish working relationships and gain experience working in an office-like environment while programming with other developers. Flatiron was really great for that since you spend a lot of time on campus and can mix in with other cohorts to see what is coming in your next phase, or help others in phases you've already completed. The campus also provides a nice atmosphere to foster collaboration - it's not about doing better than anybody, it's about making sure everybody gets through the program. My major critique is about organization. I attended right before they transitioned from teaching Ruby on Rails to Python so it felt a little bit like the instructors were scrambling to figure out things they might not have had experience in. That being said, I still learned a bunch of resources and concepts to explore which set me up with a gameplan after I graduated. It's important to understand that the bootcamp is not an all encompassing, teach you everything experience. It's a really good jumping off point. The more you can be self-sufficient and plan for your time after bootcamp, the better.Some advice I would give: be organized. Most of your success comes from how well you can organize and prioritize. If you are switching careers, make the bootcamp the priority above all else including family, friends, relationships, etc. It's difficult to do especially if you are older, but all of the time you spend in the program will pay off much quicker if you are able to do that.

I had a great experience at Flatiron. I met some really great people in my cohort. The bootcamp is very high pace and requires discipline. The course is not for everyone. I got to work on technical projects and build out a great portfolio. The instructors are knowledgable. I wish I would have enrolled when they rolled out the new curriculum (Python/Flask).  

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.  

Flatiron School is without a doubt, a great bootcamp for receiving the fullstack engineering experience from true industry professionals. When I say great, I mean it's great because of the community. The community really does motivate you to code. Everywhere you go, you see people work together or alone, drawing diagrams on whiteboards to design user interfaces and systems, and students constantly finding new technologies to incorporate into their next project. If that isn't enough to fuel your hunger to learn the trade then I don't know what else will. But while that is where it shines, it falls short in the fact that there are no transitions between phases. Learning Vanilla JavaScript is great but when you suddenly crash straight into React, without having truly experienced the full extent of Vanilla JavaScript, many students end up confused or discouraged. This might not seem like a valid point as this is a bootcamp that only lasts for about 15 weeks but this is something definitely worth considering. This is a concern that the majority of my peers share as much as I do. Other than this, Flatiron School brought me a memorable experience that I will never forget in my life!

When I started Flatiron School, my cohort was my instructor's first coding bootcamp cohort ever. This person, with years of programming experience and a background in education, struggled to adjust to the fast paced, high demand bootcamp atmosphere and was very overwhelmed. Initially, I was upset and insecure with an intimidating workload, and seemingly no guidance from an instructor who was just as confused as I was. The way Flatiron is structured is that you have modules with lessons, exercises and practice code challenges that you can complete to gauge your understanding of the concepts at hand, as well as lectures for every phase on that particular language/framework you are learning, AND technical coaches. I leaned on these other resources to make sure I was leaving this bootcamp learning to code. Halfway through my 15 weeks, the instructor was let go and replaced with someone who had not only attended Flatiron School, but had taught multiple cohorts already. Many students were upset with the sudden layoffs, and some couldn't let go of what could be seen as an inconsistent learning environment. However, my new instructor was amazing and not only did I graduate with two full stack projects under my belt, I was hired for an entry level position less than a month after graduating. Flatiron's curriculum gave me a solid foundation to pass my first ever technical interview. To quote my now direct manager, I made it farther into the tech assignment "than some mid-level and senior developers we have interviewed". The technical foundation and career coaching I received at Flatiron was solid and I left prepared with projects, a resume, and useful skills, that have yielded real results for me, regardless of the hurdles I had along the way. Although Flatiron's bootcamp experience is intense and challenging, it works. 

I really enjoyed my time at Flatiron and feel that I got what I wanted and more. You learn as much as possible in a relatively short amount of time so it constantly feels like trying to take a sip of water out of a fire hydrant, but that kind of immersion leads to rapid growth if you're willing to put in the work. The support from teachers and classmates is fantastic and the continued support through career coaching after graduation was critical during the job search. It's not easy, but if you can put in the work and stay consistent the program can lay the groundwork you need to find work as a software engineer.

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.