App Academy Reviews

3.5

55% would recommend to a friend

(149 total reviews)

Kush Patel

51% approve of CEO

39% positive business outlook

App Academy has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 149 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The App Academy employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Education industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

149 reviews
5.0
30 Apr 2021

Review system

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good to work for newcomer. Go and learn

Cons

Management is poor sometimes. Management structure should be good

2.0
16 May 2018

Lack of Leadership in NYC

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

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.

Cons

The leadership in NYC was somehow so poor and full of bad attitudes. You were told that work-from-home days were possible, but management explicitly stated "You should just take the day off and not even work if that's the case." in a negative tone. I realized two weeks in to the job that it was a poor decision, when the first words from my manager given to me were, "You were hired because i don't want to be doing this work anymore." Great to hear from the person directly above you. Additionally, there felt like a real separation between the instructors and coaches. Communication wasn't clear, and would make for awkward interactions between the staff, certain people being invited to team events and not others. I had also signed a 1 year retention bonus and when I left the company, I was expected to pay it back. This is fine, but they threatened legal action towards me before even sending me an official invoice. What sort of professionalism is that? Overall, very negative outlook on this company. I believe it was an issue in NYC and not as much in San Francisco, as it seems it's just a satellite office and somewhat neglected (as it regards to culture) compared to HQ in California.

5.0
16 Dec 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

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.

Cons

What did App Academy do wrong? It didn't invest in creating a community for the employees, long-term, until very recently. Teams were siloed into offices (management had upstairs offices at one point) and the company felt overly professional at times. This was improving right as I left. It also kept a few poor hires around for a little too long. This began to affect morale, hiring, and business. The newest hires were excellent as I was leaving, and it looks the issue has mostly been fixed.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 149 Reviews

Glassdoor has 175 App Academy reviews submitted anonymously by App Academy employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if App Academy is right for you.