Flatiron School

My cohort was one of the beginning cohorts for the new data science program at flatiron. The structure of the program was lacking, but the content wasn't. We learned so much in a short amount of time. I was able to get exposed to the field of data science... Read More and learn the python language and machine learning and did couple projects in deep learning. I think bootcamps like flatiron are really great for those that don't want to or can't go to the traditional school and pay so much in student loans. There is a caveat however; because this is data science, it relies on math, and the most relevant subjects are calc. 1, probability and statistics. Everyone learns at their own pace, but not knowing these fundamentals might make the learning curve even harder. This is not to discourage you, the program exposes you to the fundamentals, but it would be easier if you know them beforehand. I was skeptical about the job placement but it was honestly so great. I was able to have about 10 interviews through them and placed at a job through EP. I would recommend flatiron if you do want to switch careers or get a practical sense of DS in industry.

Prior to enrolling in Flatiron School's Online Data Science Bootcamp, I had been studying data science on my own for some time. I used other online resources studying R, but it was difficult to know what I should be learning. Sometimes I would go too... Read More deep into a rarely used algorithm or I would just spend a lot of time finding/deciding which resource to use. So in the end, I decided to sign up for Flatiron School's Online Data Science Bootcamp to provide the structure and organization that I was lacking. Overall, I would say it was a positive experience:

PROS:
+ You learn how to implement an algorithm on your own from scratch in Python before they introduce you to professional implementations. This really helps you understand the underlying mechanisms and what's going on, instead of just plugging things in
+ Instructor support was always available whenever I needed it in dedicated Slack channels
+ Portfolio reviews for the non-technical business stakeholders provided valuable experience in learning how to communicate to people outside of the data science field
+ Provided a pretty comprehensive overview of data science skills
+ End-of-module projects were great for building up a portfolio
+ Career coach was great and provided lots of great feedback on my resume and interviewing

CONS:
- A lot of typos and grammatical errors in the lessons which made it difficult to understand sometimes
- The platform would break sometimes, but this was only a minor inconvenience, because you could always access it from Github
- The technical review for portfolio projects wasn't as rigorous as I thought it would be, and I was rarely asked to justify and explain my choices
- Not as much content for more advanced data science/machine learning concepts compared to the first few modules, where it was much more detailed and comprehensive

During the last month, I also began looking for jobs on my own and approximately two weeks after I graduated, I received an Data Scientist internship at a fintech.

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... Read More 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 did the online Full-Stack Web Development course. During my time in the course, I thought I was doing a good job. I was getting great feedback on all of my projects and was told I was moving along at a good pace. All my issues really started around... Read More job-search time. I'll start by admitting that I could have done more in terms of staying up to date with JavaScript. I wasn't fully aware of how much additional preparation and JavaScript practice is needed outside of FlatIron in order to be ready for a technical interview. I figured anything pertinent to a job interview would have been included in the course curriculum, when in-fact, there are additional FlatIron courses they suggest you take once completing the program to complete simultaneously with your job search. If you want a decent job after graduating, these extra courses and learning some computer science theory on your own are not something you can blow off.

However, I am still unbelievably disappointed with the quality of career services. Before I finished FlatIron, I told my career coach that I was moving to Los Angeles and would only be looking for jobs on the West Coast. Despite emphasizing this to my career coach multiple times, every meeting I had with her began with her saying, "oh! I didn't know you were moving to LA" or "so at what point do you think you'll move back East? We've got some career fairs in New York or DC with companies that would like to hire our grads on the spot!" Basically...DO NOT TAKE THIS COURSE UNLESS YOU INTEND ON LIVING / WORKING IN NY or DC. Maybe this is obvious to most people because their main campuses are in DC and NY, however, if you're attracted to FlatIron School because of their high reviews on websites like this one, know that its for the in-person NY program where the overwhelming majority of students work in NY after. Based off of some other reviews I've read from people outside the Northeast, I don't think I'm alone in this sentiment.

Participated in the first Data Science cohort. It started off strong, but quickly fell apart after the first module, when the material shifted from standard coding techniques that were adapted from the webdev course to more data/math focused topics. Our... Read More teacher was under-qualified to be teaching us Data Science, and we received essentially zero feedback on our coursework throughout the 15 week program. I honestly do not believe the curriculum was ready for launch, it felt way too rushed. Numerous topics advertised as part of the course were skipped or rushed through. Some of the labs and lectures were riddled with errors, and often we were not provided lecture notes or videos as promised. The 3rd module consisted of watching youtube videos 50% of the time - didn't really need to pay $15k for that.

The career guidance was misleading, we were told our guidance counselor would be randomly selected, yet 10 of 12 students received the same coach. The career team always seemed like they placed their personal interests ahead of mine.

I enjoyed the culture of Flatiron School, and have nothing but the best to say about my classmates. I feel like the program was rushed, misleadingly advertised, and did not really prepare me for a job in Data Science.

As an aside, I recommend actually sifting through these reviews before signing up - many of them are from people who have only completed the free bootcamp prep. I was asked to write a review before starting the class but refused because I thought that was misleading.

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... Read More 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!

TLDR: The curriculum is excellent, but their website makes it seem like they will work with _any_ schedule for the part time online bootcamp, and that's simply not the case.

Pros:
- Great curriculum and materials - I learned a ton!
- Really nice platform.... Read More
- Nice staff and instructors.

Cons:
- Not the exact tech stack I was hoping to learn (yes, I know this is a bit nitpicky, but we are talking about spending twenty thousand dollars here).
- I live and work a full time job on the West Coast, and the school is located on the East Coast, as are, apparently, all of the staff. You are required to attend most of the live events in order to graduate. I told every single staff member I interacted with in what time zone I am located (PST), and what my work schedule was (standard 9-5 M-F with a one hour commute each way), but they scheduled literally every single event while I was still at work or commuting home, including the weekly one-on-one 'mentor' sessions.
- When I kept repeating that the times don't work for me, a frequent suggestion was "do it during your lunch break." I'm paying over grand per month, but you don't have any staff that can end their week on Saturday or start their week on Sunday?
- I tried it out for a few weeks, but I just ended up feeling stressed out trying to meet the
- It was only after I requested withdrawal from the course that suddenly they seemed really "flexible."

I ended up withdrawing from the course for the reasons stated above.
I would gladly attend again if they offered courses where all the (required) live sessions were scheduled on weekends.

As a last note, they had just been bought out by WeWork, so may have been undergoing some structural/staffing changes behind the scenes I was unaware of during this time.

This is an outstanding coding bootcamp for the following reasons:

1) The curriculum is great! Speaking as a graduate of the online full stack web development curriculum, you are taught everything you need to work both frontend and backend to write a fully... Read More functioning web app.

2) The curriculum is test and live coding assessment driven. This means you can *prove* that you really know how to code and write functioning code. The five projects and half hour assessments with trained developers ensure that you really know your stuff by the time 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 EST) and interact with technical coaches to help you with your code, conceptual questions, or local environment issues. There is no limit to how often you can ask for help on labs (but keep it reasonable and do strive to be independent!). In addition you have a large online Slack community and weekly study groups to help you. That is for the online self paced program I did. If you do a structured or in person program you get more support still. Let me emphasize that this is *far more* support than just about any other place gives you.

4) You graduate with an online portfolio since all of your projects and labs are submitted through github. This greatly increases your credibility with employers.

5) The career and job search support is first rate. You are assigned a career coach and can do half hour weekly checkins with them. They train you to write resumes, network to a job, prepare for interviews, and many other 'soft skills' that help you find a job. Does all this work? You bet! There is a reason why this was the first coding bootcamp to have independently verified placement outcomes that were and remain outstanding.

Personal anecdote: I started from almost zero coding experience (< 100 hours). I worked hard and graduated in 6 months. I then took a part time job with Flatiron as a technical coach. Now, less than 10 months after graduation, I am starting a job as a junior software engineer making 73K a year. This well exceeded my expectations.

The bottom line: if you are dedicated and have the right personality for programming you absolutely have a high probability of success with this school. As an added bonus they have many free labs you can try to see if this is the right choice 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,... Read More 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.

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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.

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... Read More 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.