Flatiron School vs General Assembly

Attending Flatiron Immersive Software Engineering Course was such a wonderful experience. Before I started I had a hard time grasping the concepts of software design and programming in general. I entered the course on campus, which made me feel at home... Read More and accepted every day. The course content and the way the teachers explained the concepts were very easy to grasp. Flatiron did a wonderful job of not only teaching but giving you the feel of daily control flow at a typical company, from solo to team project, to stand-ups and stand-downs. Ending it all off Flatiron career coaching was a wonderful experience helping me sharpen my skills to be a better candidate in a new career. I am very excited to start a new lease on life.

Oh boy...where do I begin.

My recruiter was Madison Delaney and I would sometimes go weeks without hearing back from her. You can't call Flatiron and get a single person on the phone...always goes to voicemail. I'd constantly have to follow up, and it... Read More was overall an unpleasant, unprofessional start from the get-go. That should have been the first red-flag.

I payed for the in-person program and received the online program. Flatiron still refuses to refund the difference after months of going back and forth with them. No points awarded for ethically. Here's 600 other Flatiron students who are upset about the situtation that Flatiron still ignores and refuses to address publicly.
https://www.change.org/p/flatiron-school-in-person-students-flatiron-school-in-person-students-partial-tuition-refund-effort

On another note, Flatiron's instructors always seemed busy. When in need of assistance, more often than not, you're told to google the problem instead. Why did you pay the tuition then...I don't know. Where is the money going towards...I don't know.
Flatiron is quite big on asking for feedback, and I sure provided a lot of feedback during my time there. For the most part they don't seem to follow up on too many of them...or at least mine.

The instructors are all very nice, many of them are hired right after graduating so they aren't as experienced as the lead instructors. You very rarely get any attention from the lead instructor and even other instructors, so you're on your own for the most part.
The aloted rough schedule they advertise on their website is misleading and false. Your division of the day will mostly result with you being on your own googling answers and teaching yourself. There's a lot of BS in the schedule, like attendance for a half hour, surveys for an hour, "stand-downs" for an hour, "feelings" for an hour, etc... After doing the math, 16% of our day was actually entirely unaccounted for and pair programming was at a minimal percentage. I would have thought they'd be extra careful to not have any false advertising because they lost a lawsuit for $375,000 for having false salary and placement statistics advertised on there website.

Upon finishing the program, I feel cheated out of $17,000. The money-back guarantee sounds nice, but in actuality most people are either ineligible or opt-out and I'm uncertain why. Flatiron even leaked everybody’s personal data in a mass email and it doesn't look like anybody has received the money-back guarantee.

CSS is not taught - maybe it's just touched upon. They do a decent job with Ruby and React, but discourage you from learning Redux. You can graduate this program not knowing CSS, a single algorithm, or have a personal portfolio page. That's a big red flag.

Career services will follow up with you often which is nice, no complaints about that. They do leave everything up to you and it's mostly hands off on their part.

I do believe that at one point in time they used to be good. I came into this program looking to love it, but they definitely left a bad taste in my mouth and that's wildly unfortunate. There are way better alternatives from my understanding - even just teaching yourself is a better alternative...you can do it, don't be discouraged! Udemy looks like they have some great full stack courses for $20. I'd do that if I could go back in time.