Flatiron School

Attending Flatiron School was a great decision for me in starting my career as a Web Developer. The campus and staff were all very supportive and open. Additionally, the other students were all dedicated, helpful, and genuinely passionate about code. The learning materials were very accessible through Flatiron's Learn platform, and there was no shortage of additional practice/labs. I genuinely felt that any questions or concerns I had were heard and addressed in a timely manner, and the overall support to push oneself in a new field was crucial to my progress.

I did a lot of research on bootcamps before landing at Flatiron, quite honestly overall it seemed the best choice at the time. Would I make the same choice? absolutely! I won't lie it was very difficult but calm seas don't make good sailors! I feel as though I'm stronger not only as a person but as a developer. The fast pace learning was intense at first, it felt like a pie eating contest where the prize was more pie. After you hit a groove and trust the process it shaped me to become a fast learning developer. You really learn how to learn. 1 month after graduating I was able to pickup python and mongoDB like it was nothing because of this ability to have learning down to a science. All the friendships in my cohort and with my instructors are strong and have not faded. The support post graduation is just as strong as when I was attending. They leave you with the tools to continue on and spark the drive to want to dive deeper. I love flatiron 3000.

Avoid! I couldn't complete the course and left after the first week, they charged me 1k?! Even after knowing I couldn't keep up with course, had a newborn baby and mortgage and bills! Heartless company! 

I'm 34, working in finance. I wasn't happy in my career and looked for a career change. I tried the sample course on a few sites and enjoyed the flatiron course and the way the website looked as well as the job guarantee.  after speaking to the admin team at flatiron I joined up. 1k deposit and 9k loan for a career change seemed great. But...I struggled at the end of the pre course work. Speaking to admin about this they pushed me to join the full immersion course before I was ready/confident. They informed me that I made enough progress to get through it. 

I was going to take a career break, knowing I can return to my current job and if it didn't work out with flatirons job guarantee, that I have a job already so risk wasn't too bad. Upon joining I was told I was people were being made redundant. I had to take calls during the course and attend meetings. The stress caused me to fall behind. I struggled to keep up with the course material. 

I was told I was keeping my job but had to return sooner than expected and to a further location and different job. I had to drop out.

I begged the team to help but had no help. I have a new born baby, mortgage and bills. Redundancy would give 2minths pay so had no choice but to keep the job. I couldn't risk my families future. I had to make a choice to leave the course after the redundancy. 

Flatiron showed no compassion whatsoever, pointing me to generic terms and conditions and disregarded my personal circumstances.  They kept 1k even though I had not used 1k worth or resources or tutors time. Utter shameless company!  Begged them to return our savings as 1k is a lot of money as I am the only one working. They said, tough and that they won't return it

Alright, to start off, I am about half-way through the Online Part-Time Software Engineering Bootcamp at FlatIron School so this review is based on my perspective of the Online program only.  I had intended to write this review at the conclusion of the bootcamp but given the current state of the coding bootcamp industry and of Flatiron, I decided it was worthwhile to post my opinions now.  I do intend to either edit this review (or write another one) when I finish the course but I think this review has some merit and is worthwhile at this point.

Another important point that I think is important to state before I begin is why did I decide to write this review?  As unbelievable as it sounds, I am doing this purely as a 'Pay It Foward' gesture.  I do not work for a competitor bootcamp nor am I being paid by Flatiron (or anyone else for that matter) to write this review.  Before I joined the Flatiron program, I scoured this website (and others) in search of legitimate, unbiased reviews that seemed to give an honest, realistic perspective of the program and I would have loved more than anything to hear an opinion from someone who's currently in the program like myself, so here it is for all your critique/learning/enjoyment.

So to start off I'll tell a little bit of my background as a web developer.  Before starting Flatiron I had no formal education in computer science or web development.  I took an undergraduate college course in Turbo Pascal back in my college years and prior to beginning Flatiron I took a few Code Academy courses in Ruby, HTML, and CSS.  But I would not say that I was at all knowledgable about programming or web development before starting the Flatiron program.  And after about 6 months of Flatiron, I definitely feel more knowledgable and skilled about the subject but that doesn't mean all is roses and daisys.  

I'll start off by summarizing the good's and bad's of Flatiron's Software Engineering program and then elaborate a little more afterwards.

Pro's:

• The curriculum has some good material and has been "battle tested" over the 5-6+ years of teaching the program.
• The curriculum is pretty well structured and organized from a student's perspective.
• Having 'tech coaches' at your disposal to ask questions when you get stuck is nice.
• Flatiron's reputation is generally known one of the more established, veteran coding schools in the industry.

Con's:

• Cost - The price of the program has nearly doubled from the time I started ~6 months ago and it's now at like $17k I think!
• Curriculum - I know this sounds counter to what I said earlier in the Pro's but the curriculum still needs quite a bit of work.  There are lots of obvious bugs in the labs and it's obvious the curriculum team struggles with keeping everything updated & working.
• Technical Ability of Online Coaches - While Flatiron markets itself as having technical 'mentors' at your disposal while you go through the program, the experience and knowledge of these technical coaches is very limited in lots of cases.  Flatiron tends to pull the majority of their tech coaches from list of very recent grads of their own program and some of these coaches quite likely may have less knowledge than you (even if you're even an entry level developer).
• Job Placement Numbers - While Flatiron markets their job placement % numbers all over the place, the truth is that they hire a substantial number of their own graduates to be tech coaches and instructors for their own program.  What this means is that they can claim this as legitimate employment for their graduates but it doesn't really satisfy the true perception that the industry as a whole thinks about their graduates in terms of programming skills & knowledge, as much as their job placement numbers hope to lead you to believe.  In reality it's a win-win for them because it allows them to report high job % placement numbers as well as hire relativley cheap instructors for their school (they only pay these guys $20/hour and it's a part-time gig with no benefits).
• Project reviews are a joke, and that's putting it lightly.
• There are not enough technical coaches on staff to satisfy the demand of students asking questions, therefore the wait times to get your questions answered can be frustratingly long (~30min to 1hr).

So let me elaborate a little more about of the Pro's of the program.  First, the curriculum is quite strong.  By that I mean it has decent examples, explanations, and the labs do a decent job of testing your understanding of the material.  Even though there are lots of little bugs scattered throughout, it's still manageable to get through them.  Having someone to ask questions to when you get stuck is almost priceless (it may make the difference between you giving up completely or pushing through it).  Flatiron has established itself as one of the veteran scools in the coding bootcamp industry and has a great marketing team focused on getting their name out there.

And now for the Con's of the program.  Firstly, at $17,000 - $18,000 (which is the current cost of the Software Engineering Program now, I think), I expect the quality of the curriculum and the entire program to be much higher.  While the curriculum material is decent, I just personally dont think it is worth what they are charging now.  For the cost of the program now, you could nearly get a degree in Comp Sci from a fairly reputable university.  And while Flatiron will say that their program gives you a better ROI than a college degree given that you finish it in much quicker than a full-fledged degree, if you can't find a decent paying job after finishing the program then it kind of defeats the purpose.  The technical coaches that are supposed to be there to guide you through the program have very limited knowledge (and extremely limited real-world coding experience) many times.  A large majority of these coaches have only really mastered the labs (because they did them when they were in the program themselves) but when you ask them basic theoretical programming questions outside of just the obvious answers to the labs, you can see them struggle hard.  You will find that there are a few really good technical coaches that understand programming concepts really well and can convey them but the large majority of the tech coaches will have mediocre knowledge (at best) and are not really qualified to teach you any fundamental programming concepts.  It really boils down to the old adage of "you get what you pay for".  It's hard to entince anyone with a strong knowledge of software engineering & web development to come work for you for pennies and no benefits, so they aren't able to attract the talent that is desperately needed.

On that same note, one of the frustrating things that I have encountered in the program is the fact that when you do utilize the tech coaches to ask a question, the wait times can be frustratingly long (and by that I mean 30min - 1hour).  This may not seem like a big deal but when you have 4-5 questions per lab that adds anywhere from 2hrs - 5hrs to your studying time and these labs can easily take 2-3 hours a piece even if you don't have many questions to ask along the way.  Also, I've noticed that some of the tech coaches (who are being paid to tutor you) seem to have a bit of arrogant attitudes at times and will make you feel dumb at times for asking a question.  There definitely seems to be a real lack of quality coaches as well as a lack in leadership put in place to manage this whole process.  And at $17,000, I just personally expect higher quality in terms of mentors.

The last point to discuss in my lengthy discussion of the Con's of the program is regarding the projects.  You will have 4 projects throughout the entire course and each one is supposed to test your understanding of the concepts of the section you just completed.  While this sounds great in theory it doesn't necessarily add up in execution.  The biggest problem is the lack of technical support and feedback during the projects.  Firstly, you are not allowed to solicit help from the technical coaces for your project (they will literally tell you that they cannot assist with any project related questions).  Secondly, after you've spent countless hours and nights pouring your heart and soul into the project and are finally ready to present it to the project reviewer that they've assigned to you, you will only get ~30 mins max (if you're lucky) of that person's time to actually look at your project.  And out of the 2 projects I've done so far, the feedback that I received during my project review was very minimal at best.  Basically you will get little to no constructive feedback on your project, there will be little to no code 'refactoring' during the review, and you will probably feel shafted after you've poured your heart and soul into this project only to realize that the person reviewing it has little to no interest in what you actually did nor cares to take the time to actually critique your work and help you improve.

The truth of the matter is that Flatiron is a for-profit technical training company.  What this means is that their ultimate goal is to maximize the bottom-line and however that needs to be done is what's going to happen (and that almost always means not maximizing what's best for the students).  This is obvious to see when you're in the program and one glaring example being the extremely long frequent wait times required to actually get a tech coach to assist you when you have a question.  If they cared that much about their students' experience they would put more money into hiring more quality tech coaches.  Also, the behemoth company formerly known as WeWork (now the We Company) aquired Flatiron back in 2017 and you can definitely see the negative effects of the changes in the vision of the school as well as the overall quality of it's offerings and culture.  WeWork's (We Company) strategy is to grow as big and as fast as possible as a company as a whole, and that means buying up it's competition as fast as possible so that it can eliminate it.  But the We Company is not a tech company (as much as their glorified S-1 would like you to believe).  In reality 95% of their revenue comes from subleasing out office space (cowork space) in some of the biggest business oriented cities in the world.  They are not a technical training (or education) focsued company but they decided to start buying online training schools (like Flatiron) because it fit their business model and they can also utilize some of the vacant rental space that they have and are struggling to lease out by allowing the schools to operate there.  Basically it's an accounting game and if you read any of the financial investor's critique of their IPO (as of September 2019) you will see that there are a lot of fundamental problems with this company as whole.  

So in the end you're probably hoping for me to tell you affirmitavely if you should join Flatiron or not, and unfortunately it's not that easy for me to do.  I personally quit a highl paying 3-figure job before joining Flatiron and while I do like some aspects of the program, I do not necessarily feel that I'm going to easily get a job after finishing the course.  I would say ultimately it boils down to your personal goals and situation in life.  If you absolutely cannot go to college and have to decide between joining Flatiron or flipping burgers the rest of your life, well that decision is easy.  If you're unsure if you really want to do web development as a career (or are just looking to add some skills to your arsenal) then I think there are a lot cheaper ways to learn web development skills than through Flatiron.  You'll quickly notice that Flatiron tends to publish a lot of 'feel good' stories about individuals who generally don't succeed in obtaining lucrative paying careers in the general workforce and therefore these are the people who they try to focus their marketing efforts on.  While there's nothing wrong with this necessarily, it does skew the picture quite a bit.  The truth is that your success in finding a job (and starting your web development career) is going to depend mostly on your general intellect and problem solving skills, your ability (or lack thereof) to interview well, and how intellectual (or unintellectual) the person interviewing you perceives you to be.  You will not get a job just because Flatiron recommends you for one nor will graduating from the school itself get you one.  You're going to have to stand out amongst all the other applicants and the truth is that there are lots of coding bootcamps that teach almost identical skills to Flatiron.  

So to end this review I'll say this, if you do decide to join Flatiron just be prepared for the problems & Con's that I mentioned in my review.  And don't get your mind into a comfort zone thinking that the Flatiron curriculum alone will set you up for job success because it won't.  There's a ton of other coding bootcamps out there today and unfortunately I do not have personal experience with them to offer a comparison but I would advise you to seek out alumni of those other programs to try and get honest feedback about the programs before making your decision, because with the costs that these programs are charging now, it's not a minimal amount by any stretch of the imagination.

P.S. I cannot review the Job Assistance section at this time since they do not "assist" you in finding a job until nearly the end of the program.

Please note that this review is based on my own experience and it doesn't necesarily speak to the quality of the bootcamp itself.

I tried their online part time software engineering bootcamp and it just didn't work out for me, I started off as a complete newbie, and while the pre-work was tremendously helpful to understand a lot of programming concepts, but it simply took a very steep hill and I wasn't able to keep up. Granted, I had some personal life things come up at the time, which did not help, but I couldn't continue after the first big project. I personally benefit more from the brick and mortar type of class for a variety of reasons.

That said, their resources are good, their staff is friendly and helpful and this bootcamp might be ideal for someone who has time. I did see many of my classmates do much better than I did, so it's just a matter of whether if this will fit you or not. 

Overall, I had a great experience with the Flatiron School's Online Web Developer program. I took the course as self-paced, and it took me just over 7 months to complete. I felt that the curriculum, which consists of README's, labs, and portfolio projects, to be well-written and reasonable in difficulty. The support through Section Leads, Techinical Coaches, Educational Coaches, and Career Coaches was great throughout. If you get stuck on a lab, there is an ask-a-question feature that allows one-on-one feedback and coaching through a school Technical Coach. The Career Coaching after graduation really helped me find a job and a career I'm excited about! Overall, I highly recommend the Flatiron School.

I was enrolled in the immersive software engineering course and I graduated Jan 2019. The admission and technical interviews were straight forward and really smooth. I chose JavaScript for my technical interview. I would recommend to work on the free prep as much as you could when you are just applying for the course. I also found it very beneficial after I got accepted to do all the pre-work especially for my first week.

The insturctors are really good and they are available to ask questions about different tech topics even if it is not in the curriculum. Usually when we struggle with a lab we start by debugging and search for answers online, if this is not helpful then ask one of the technical coaches and then the instructors.

I was a self-taught developer for 2 years, learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which I struggled a lot with and I had some off time, around 6 months, because of JS but there was still plenty of things I need to learn about and that is why I took the decision to apply for Flatiron School where I've learned tones of new materials such as Ruby, Ruby on Rails, React and databases.

If you want to learn plenty in a short time then this is the right place and I wish you have a great cohort as mine which helped me a lot during the time I spent there. 

The school described on the website is not at all the 'school' that exists once you've paid your tuition. There are no experienced teachers (my cohort lead is a recent grad with no coding experience, no teaching experience and she generally pretty awful). They are not selective in the admission process - people are rushed through and encouraged so join (pay!) and then drop out en masse. I'm a third of the way through the program and my cohort of 35 is down to 10. The curriculum is old - often 4-5 year old videos with poor sound of other people being taught to code. There are endless 'known' issues with the learning environment not being up to date with changes to ruby. The standards are low and there's no accountability. The curriculum deviates from the syllabus on the website on day one. I have tried raising concerns with student services, and with Avi directly to no avail. The 'school' is opening up new campuses and expanding rapidly - but has a total churn-and-burn attitude towards students.

This is a review for the online Data Science bootcamp full time. The admission process was fairly easy; first, a video chat with someone from admissions and enrollments and then a technical interview, for this second interview they assume you have already gone through the preparation course, heads up: this is a free course open to anyone, and after you finished it they ask you to review it, so a lot of the reviews out there are from people who have NOT actually gone through the full program.
During the program it really depends of the instructor and the cohort, in my case there was nothing about the community feeling that they advertise, the instructors are nice but don’t expect much individual help unless you ask in the slack channel. Oh, and don’t even think about joining campus communities if you happen to live close to one, the campus directors will treat you as an outsider-space invader.
The material was difficult to follow, they introduce new concepts and finish with “don’t worry you will learn more on this later”, so the topics shift back and fort. The instructor never reviews the labs and you don’t get a grade or an official statement about the outcome of your projects. All notebooks are on Github and they encourage you to open issues if you find them; I found issues on every single notebook but as a full time student I really don’t want to spend time telling them about the issues they should have reviewed and updated before deploying the notebook. It struck me as a little bit odd that one of the labs was exactly the same as it appeared in a website that I happened to land while searching more about that topic; I’m not a lawyer but it got me thinking about where they source the materials from and how much of this is original content.
When you are approaching the end of the program, a career coach comes along with a bunch of more Jupyter notebooks about how to set up your resume, linkedIn profile, attend meetups, etc. Is not like they have a list of places asking for placements, they just push you to apply to every single job post that includes the words data and analysis; I myself have not yet landed a job. (I will update the review later on this as I still have a couple of months left before reimbursement, if that happens to be the case)

PROS
- A lot of material and resources, they do a good job putting together all related topics.
- The platform is easy to navigate.
- Instructors and coaches are nice.
- WeWork hotdesk membership for one year.
- Good education coaches.
 

CONS
- Almost every single notebook has misspellings, incomplete or poorly redacted paragraphs.
- Some lab solutions are completely wrong.
- No feedback on labs as they don’t get reviewed.
- You learn online but you learn alone.
- No information if a project is passed or not.
- Career services are not a staffing company; they just ask you to apply yourself for as many jobs as you find.

In conclusion, be prepared as you will go through probably 2 years of college in 5 months + one month for the capstone project.

**I have also posted this review on Switchup.

I attended Flatiron School London on the third bootcamp cohort. The support and community values were exactly what I needed when taking on such an intense curriculum. Not only is the teaching and material excellent, the career prep coaching played a key part in my job search. I received a job offer (at what flatiron advertised as the average starting salary) within 2 weeks of finishing the course. The instructors really did go above and beyond anything I had expected. My new job is great but leaving flatiron was pretty emotional.​

Coming from a background in business/management I joined Flatiron School to gain a technical skill. After completing the course I am now a Full-stack developer at Tried and Supplied, a recently launched start-up. I am the only developer on the team and I think that speaks to the level that Flatiron prepares you for.

At no point throughout my time at Flatiron School did I think 'I can not do this' and I think that is due to the incredible people there. At each stage, from admissions, instruction, to the careers team you have the support you need to get you through it.

I'm an alum from the Flatiron school's online web development program.  I really enjoyed the program and feel like the curriculum was really well designed.  Most lessons are short enough that you can feel like you are getting something done even if you only have an hour at a time to dedicate to the program, which was huge for me as I was working full time while going through the program.  The instructors were also really great - they have a lot of knowledge and I always felt like I learned a lot when I had a project review.  I was planning to transition to the job I have now (within the same company) when I started this program, so I can't say that Flatiron school got me my job, but it's the reason I am prepared for it and doing well.  I did still go through the career services track and still found it really valuable - even without the job searching aspect.       

I chose to go to Flatiron School, in the Manhattan campus, after a lot of heavy research and planning. I was between this cool and mt seconds choice, but after reading a review about Flatiron on Quora that seemed to emphasize the human aspect of coding, & the "bootcamp-prep" platform that Flatiron made available to you for free, I chose them.

There's a flexibility that's part of Flatiron's curriculum can be nerve racking because it really does all come down to how much work you can put in, in a short amount of time. And most likely that's being done while learning new material and in most cases while working on a module-specific pair programming project.

Ultimately, there are other coding bootcamps that are well known for being just as good, but there are no second chances, they have the right to tell you that you can't work for certain companies because they'll pay you too little for them to be able to start taking back the money you owe them, or they're just plane cut throat places where only finishing is the objective.

Flatiron was a very safe space, which manages to squeeze in some Redux & Bcrypt lessons towards the end of the modules. These are some very important lessons that will surely come into play when interviewing at future startups that want to know that you're capable of picking up some slack if need be.

The groups themselves can be very organic and helpful, as much as they can be the opposite. But in the end it's really up to every individual of the group to try to be warm and friendly, and approach all of your collegues questions with openness.

Avi, the founder will come by to give you a life changing talk, which even though he's given it at the start of every mod, he never seems to lose the passion with which he tells it.

Don't listen to friend that might tell you that it's not worth it, that you need to go back to get a computer science degree or that you need to attend some community college courses. If you've saved up for the adventure, please join without hesitation.

There's a career fair that's very helpful for graduates, usually around 2 technical coaching fellows that your specific mod is given that will follow you throughout Ruby, Ruby on Rails with some SQL and Postgres, Javascript and React.

You will need to learn not only to pair program, but also how to speak up when things may need to change as well as speaking up so that your friends in your group can give you some perspective on solving a bug.

I moved from Florida to New York, and am currently working at a small startup. This place will give you the skills and resume to be neck in neck with other jr. devs in the area.

I still chat with my cohort all the time on Discord, and we continue to help each other through our interviews. This will be one of the hardest learning processes you undertake because of the time in which you need to learn. But as long as your prepare mentally, you can make it through! This amazing program has taught me that anything is possible when you have the right teaching staff.

People from all age ranges & backgrounds learn and grow with you, and it will definitley become one of your proudest accomplishments.

Flatiron School's online bootcamp prep shows how much effort they're willing to put into your success. They offer the prep coursework for free - you get to try out coding and see if it's worth your time/money and they get to know your work ethic/dedication level. The difference with Flatiron is that they WANT successful gradauates, their name and reputation depends on it. To this end, they go out of their way to provide a robust, easy to understand platform filled with instructional guidance and hands-on leanring. Very much recommended!

For those like me starting out their coding journey, I strongly recommend Flatiron's Bootcamp Prep course. Whether or not you would like to do a bootcamp, this course is a great introduction to Javascript and Ruby, with lessons covering HTML and CSS as well. The topics are broken down into clear, concise, and useful labs. Best of all, the Ask A Question button allows you to get a speedy response whenever you get stuck. There are many great resources available to people starting out, but this is the only one that I have come across (outside of a paid program) that provides continued support while you work through the course at your own pace. Everyone I have interacted with at Flatiron has been friendly, supportive and professional. My experience with Bootcamp Prep led me to apply to their in-person bootcamp, which I look forward to starting in the next few months. Many thanks Flatiron School for this helpful course!

I graduated from Flatiron School's Online Full Stack Development Program in March 2018 and I just accepted an apprenticeship at dream company in Philly. My experience at Flatiron School has been truly wonderful. The curriculum design which is always up to date with industry standards is simply genius which along with plenty of hands-on coding challenges/labs makes learning fun and effective. I was amazed by how much I learned and portfolio projects that I created while at Flatiron School helped me to present myself more strongly to companies I was interviewing with. Another great and unique thing about Flatiron School is its community support. Help is always available whenever you need. No need to book an appointment and wait for your turn! I never felt alone while learning to code. I made some great friends too! Instructors are friendly approachable and always there to help. They really know their stuff too. If you are looking for a place to learn and have fun, and where people are just as passionate for coding as you are, Flatiron Shcool is the place to go. I will highly recommend it because I really want you to succeed in your coding journey!!    

I really enjoyed my experience with Flatiron's BootCamp prep. 
The learn.co setup is satisfying in a myriad of ways. You learn what happens underneath the hood, as they explain what your code is doing.The problems are built on one another, increasing in complexity as you go.  Another perk is if you're stuck on a problem, you can inquire about it in through the chat function, and someone will answer pretty quickly, no matter what time of day.  Everyone I've encountered has been really nice and helpful. 

Flatiron has a free bootcamp prep class that is online and is a great resource if you want to move forward into a bootcamp class.   I found the information very thorough and understandable.  The best part about the Flatiron school bootcamp prep is the teaching assistants that are available for questions from 9AM- 1AM(midnight on weekends).  They were an incredible resource- so helpful and willing to chat online, or do a screenshare via zoom.  They were really an amazing asset and a great reason that I decided to apply to their full time bootcamp class, and thanks to their prep, I was accepted!!