| | Eric Kufta | The pros: I left the program half way through after finding a job. Scott, head of career services, offered sound advice and went above and beyond in helping me with my resume. I did have some industry experience which allowed me to leverage contacts and shoehorn my previous role into a new path. I started applying within the first few weeks of the course and hit every single event I could. In regards to this outcome, I am satisfied.
The cons: I should mention that the entire class wrote a letter to the management requesting a refund for all the wasted time between teachers outright not showing up to class and one instructor that did not care and was wholly unqualified to teach. I left right as this request went out which requested $2000 in refunds to each student. In the end, $500 credit towards testing and certs were awarded ON THE CONDITION THAT AN NDA WAS SIGNED. In private conversations with ex-classmates, it was mentioned that most of the students accepted the offer so please consider this in your evaluation of SecureSet.
My biggest issue was with the curriculum. The lab directions and powerpoint slides were wildly out of date and had many typos. The labs required you to work within a system called "Cyber Range" which had ongoing issues making it difficult to impossible to use at times. More often than not, the first 30 to 60 minutes of lab time was directed towards deciphering the directions/ intent of the exercise. I was disappointed that the instructors did not review the labs beforehand so we worked through these troubles together during time that we, the students, had paid for.
There was lots of turnover with instructors during the program which was due in part to the acquisition by Flatiron School. The quality of instruction overall varied heavily. There were a few teachers that were excellent (partly because they diverted from the assigned curriculum), some that were incapable instructors and a separate lot that were thrown in to teach a subject that they had no expertise in (due to the sudden turnover).
As mentioned previously, career services offered me a good deal of help on my resume which worked for me. Speaking more generally, I did not feel that the connections with employers were that solid and SecureSet was not being tapped directly for talent. The salaries for the graduates I spoke with were very low ($45k-$50k) and were mostly for analyst positions. In regards to this, it seems to make more sense to do the HUNT program which is cheaper, shorter and apparently offers a similar outcome.
The disorganization within the curriculum and management was apparent to me after the first week. I was very aggressive searching for positions in hopes that I would not waste money here (you pay-as-you-go, so if you quit half way then you only pay half). I learned a lot about systems from one excellent instructor and cannot discount that but I do feel like I was grossly cheated out of what was promised. I hope that the acquisition with Flatiron School will fix these issues since there is a huge gap in cybersecurity expertise and this experience could be a great opportunity for those with the skills. |
