App Academy Reviews

Benefits were good like unlimited PTO. Nice making good connections with wonderfully driven and talented alumni. Fantastic working with the students and making a huge difference in these students lives in celebrating with them when they landed a position out of the bootcamp. Extremely satisfying to that end.

If I'm interviewing at App Academy, what should I know? Know exactly what your personal priorities are coming into the job. Though the team is financially-savvy, they're extremely accomodating negotiators if you know what you want. For example: flexible hours, specific things you want to learn, a certain job title. The key is knowing what you want and thinking creatively about your role. The company is still too small to be rigid about what you do, and roles can evolve pretty quickly. If you're coming in as a TA, think about what you want to do after 6 months as a TA: do you want to go into industry as an engineer? Work on new products? Write curriculum? Be upfront about those goals as soon as possible. You will burn out after a couple cohorts and that is completely normal. But it's a great learning experience. It was one of the most formative jobs of my life. What did App Academy do right? Two of App Academy's values are Follow The Numbers (basically, be data-driven) and Ask For Why (what's the goal? is there a better way to accomplish that goal?). I think most company values are a load of hooey — but I was surprised to find that App Academy really stands for them. Almost every financial decision and budget allocation has to be justified in terms of ROI, with baseline data to back it up. We avoided many unnecessary costs by finding a simpler (sometimes older) solution or software tool. Sometimes it felt a little ridiculous. For example, our head of sales ended up building a product prototype with wordpress instead of having the engineering team build it. But based on the data around the time investment, it was actually a very effective use of time overall at the company. It's amazing comparing App Academy to the other companies I've worked at, and realizing how irrational most companies are about spending. If you listen and learn here, you'll walk away with a very solid financial head on your shoulders. If you want to bootstrap your own company, you'll learn how to make great decisions around capital allocation. Nearly all of that stems from Kush, the CEO. There was certainly some pushback around some of the company policies that we adopted and choices we made. But if you put in the effort to understand his opinion before disagreeing with it, you'll often find it's well thought out and there's little to disagree with.