Flatiron School vs Lambda School

I was part of the second cohort, cs2, back when BloomTech was called Lambda School. Our cohort started with about 30-35 students and was almost immediately pure chaos. Our instructors were constantly moving around to different cohorts, new instructors... Read More were being hired to replace them, and we were learning pretty outdated patterns. By the time our cohort graduated, there were about 5 or 6 students. Everybody else in our cohort had dropped the program and I should’ve too. We didn’t even have a real final project because they hadn’t figured out what they wanted to do with those yet. We had one ”session” with their “career coach” as a group. It took about 30 minutes and she presented 3 PowerPoints to us with some tips on making our resumes look good. There was no other job placement assistance ever offered, nor have I ever been given any job placement assistance when I’ve reached out for help. At the end of the day, you will just be another number to them. Their CEO is happy to preach online about “de-risking” education, but this is the biggest risk I’ve ever taken with my education and it’s been horrible. All they want is your money. Even if you don’t end up in a software job, they will come for you. Their promise to only charge you if you’re making $50,000 or more in a software job is a complete lie. As soon as your income in a single month (not year) is over their threshold, regardless of what job you have, you will be sent an invoice. I know there are students that have found some success from this program. Almost every single one of them that I met while doing the program had a LOT of previous experience or connections. If you’re somebody who already has decent experience with programming, you’ll probably find success with BloomTech. But you’ll find the same success if you just sat down for 6 months and worked on some projects on your own. If you’re someone like me that went in with the bare minimum level of experience, run away. Don’t look back, it’s not worth it.

The mastery-based curriculum was a true "drinking from a firehose" scenario, but being challenged forced myself and others to learn so much more than the typical academic setting. The BloomTech team do an excellent job of giving you an experience that... Read More will ACTUALLY prepare you for working in a highly competitive tech industry. One of the aspects of BloomTech that really stood out to employers/interviewers during my job searching were the LABS projects; BloomTech coordinates with companies so that students get the opportunity to deliver a real product to real stakeholders and showcase that experience on their portfolio. The staff is incredibly supportive not only in seeing you through the material, but also in helping you land a job right out of the door. They go so far above and beyond to help you get plugged in; feedback on your resume, portfolio, linkedin etc - sourcing emails for outreach to your desired companies, daily technical interview practice to keep your skills sharp, job sourcing (literally finding job openings that are a fit for you and sending them to you along with who to reach out to) providing custom tailored message templates for cold outreach, thank you messages, follow up emails - scheduled mock interviews and feedback for EVERY TIME you land an interview. So much of the guidance around the art of job searching and presenting myself professionally I would never have figured out on my own. I am grateful someone recommended BloomTech to me as I am now getting paid to do exactly what I love, and it wouldn't have been possible otherwise.