| | Anonymous | I'll give it you straight after going through the whole 6 month experience along with some of the after program career services track.
The first 2 phases or around 3 months was great. The instructors were knowledgeable and enthusiastic when it came to teaching and about the field itself. They were there to help when they could and assist you in succeeding. There was a lot of work to be done on time during this phase and a lot of additional reading as well. I can say that I learned the most from these 2 phases. It also seemed like the instructors for these 2 phases were from the original Designation school based in Chicago which had a great reputation (part of the reason why I enrolled in the program).
So the first 2 phases went great, and I came in excited and bright-eyed for the in-person phases on the NYC campus. Now this is where the program goes downhill. While I did learn some new things about UX design and research, the instructors were not attentive or great at teaching. I understand the importance of repetition when it comes to the end-to-end design process, and I don't have a problem with it. Actually, I found it helpful that it was repetitive so we had the chance to use our skillset we learned from the previous phases and apply research/design methodologies that worked in specific situations. I also found the repetitive nature of weekly presentations to be helpful in a sense that we had more experience in creating slideshows and presenting.
Now comes the bad stuff. The most amount of design feedback anyone in my cohort received on our presentations and project was in phase 1 and 2. The instructors in the in-person phases would just deflect any relevant questions with "it depends". Of course, "IT DEPENDS". Students are asking because they are weighing out certain decisions within the project framework and asking for a seasoned designers opinion on it. I value autonomy, but at that point when everything triggers the same "it depends" response is, honestly, infuriating and condescending. It's more of an excuse not to do an instructors job. We are in a bootcamp and it's the safest place to fail there--but there was no guidance in any design choices through the in-person phases. The most amount of feedback we received were about the presentation slides and style. While, this is helpful, it's not the feedback we are solely looking for as designers--at a certain point, we don't care what you personally think about certain slides as long as the content is good (but no feedback really there so we will never know). Additionally, the attitudes of the instructors were unprofessional. Personally, I had no issues with any but a lot of my classmates in every cohort had problems with the attitude of most instructors. There was a very passive-aggressive cattiness that was directed at students and was not controlled in a professional, learning environment. Most of the time, the instructors came in later and left earlier than students.
I think the quality of instructors went way down after Flatiron purchased Designation and scaled up to many locations. Being a design instructor at Flatiron seems to be the easiest decent paying job ever. We were more micromanaged about student benefits that we expected to have but couldn't because of their process mess-ups. The programs conflict resolution was a joke and their student selection measures and support were also laughable. I've seen this in many cohorts as they ruined the experiences of many students by not selecting capable designers. Honestly, it makes sense that the organization got rid of the design program because if they wanted keep that program up, Flatiron really needed to look inward and make a lot of changes.
Now career services is iffy at best. The way Flatiron sells you their program is that they have 96% successful job rate after the program for it's students. First off, this is highly contestable as the numbers seem to high to be true. Also, they sell you that the school has a great (already) built-up network with employers to help with prospective job-looking alumni after they graduate. The iffy part of it is that covid definitely took a toll on their "network" so that is due to uncontrolled external circumstances. However, the coaching is subpar and the Money-Back-Guarantee is really a sham (don't enroll because you think you will get your money back--they will fight you tooth and nail on everything to not give you the money back). They have many organizational problems within their employment team which causes alumni to face negative consequences of their bad company management. The amount of employers they have in their "network" is seemingly 0 to few very unrelated positions--which is mind-blowing if they already had a great network before when advertising. And after all that, all they do is deflect responsibility at the alumni seeking jobs about personal accountability. I am telling you right now that job seeking alumni are doing everything they can do network and apply to get jobs because it's our career and our life, so make it seem like we are dropping the ball. For the $17k price point with the advertisement before enrollment, certain services are expected.
Overall, it is a bloated organization that does software engineering really well. But I would stay clear of their design programs if they relaunch in the future. |
