Pros
- Fast-paced and impactful: It never felt like the things we were doing/learning during training were menial or served no purpose. Everything we were taught was useful and we never dwelled on any single topic longer than the team needed. - Good Challenge: While this may turn some people off (view cons), I personally enjoyed the challenge presented, especially at the start of the program as it demonstrated to me early on that Smoothstack is serious about the level of coding they expected and this served to increase my faith and trust in Smoothstack's mission as opposed to other similar companies whose barrier to entry is significantly lower at the cost of overall quality in both what is taught and the compensation provided. - Supportive: The trainees and overall Smoothstack staff are always incredibly helpful with any issues related to all aspects of working at Smoothstack, whether that be HR/Pay related or coding, Smoothstackers will always be willing to help out and offer guidance even after training ends and you are deployed to a client!
Kontras
- Can be challenging for coding novices: The first couple of weeks of training will be challenging as you are very quickly expected to have a base set of knowledge related to cs such as basic Java and algorithms. While these are covered early on in training, you must do that additional review yourself as basic topics are only reviewed, not covered extensively. - Poorly Paced at Points: Part of the training involves working on a capstone project that demonstrates all the skills learned throughout the training period. However, teams often begin working on these projects during their class instruction which many times led to technologies being used either way before or way after they were taught in class. The instructors were more than willing to answer any questions regardless of the class topic that day which helped make these issues not as noticeable.
