Hi all, I just finished IK and landed a role. When this happens, they usually ask you to write a candid review of the program. So here it is for me. When I started the program, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I did know that I needed to upskill myself to land a big role. I had already taken 2 interviews at FAANG and not landed a role. My experience is a bit different from most in that I took the coding session with the Masterclass and then I took the rest of the course in the Engineering Management course. The coding sessions were long and went into a lot of depth. I thought they were good, but for me leetcode would have been sufficient. Where the program really went above and beyond was the system design, resume prep, mock interviews, and office hours. On the system design, I have to say, I thought I was good after reading Grokking, but this course was much better. There was about 50 hours of videos on the different components of system design and they were all well explained. The course work was also good because it helped you understand how a senior person at FAANG would approach these problems. I would recommend this program to anyone that can spend the 20-25 hours a week a good course would take to prepare. Of course there are lots of people here who think this is foolish but moving from finance to tech isn’t easy. Overall, after completing the program, I am satisfied. I had multiple offers of 500k+ and one that was over 600k. I decided to go with one of the 500k+ offers because the job had more flexibility on location. Previous TC: <400. Using rounded numbers to not give myself away too much.
Second IK ad of the day
Troll. This shows IK is having a hard time getting people to pay 6k.
@Microsoft, @Apple, @JPM: You guys have no clue how much IK is growing and the demand for our program because of people getting successful via our program and the huge network of alumni we have. I joined them recently and we are 100+ employees now. You're gonna realize next year how big we are! Till then, keep dreaming about founders doing small time tricks on blind while we grow with record enrollments without most people knowing. We have enough alumni to vouch for us, and chances are high that someone you know has been through our program without telling anyone.
I’m sure you have a lot of people in your programs. Marketing and feeding on people’s fear is easy in the tech world. The question is what % of those are really successful in getting through interviews at top companies. Unfortunately I don’t know a single person who’s been through your program and can vouch for it
Why don't you read our Yelp reviews and ping those people on Linkedin? Marketing is of no use if people don't find good results, and there would be far more negative reviews than positive if success rate was poor after paying > 6K. Percentage success is not easy to track because it's a long journey and people uplevel at different points, some in few months, some in 6 months, others take a year or more. Many won't tell us or leave reviews because they don't want their new employers and colleagues to know they went through our program. Some people are not able to persist as other things come up on work or family side. Success is also difficult to define because a much higher TC can come even from a tier 2/3 company, and many are hesitant to disclose the numbers for privacy reasons. Ask yourself this -> how many people do you find who gave gone through our full program and support period in the last year, not been successful, and written negative reviews? Success rate is also dependent on how much commitment people give to our program and those who cannot commit to doing the work we ask will also not blame us, because they would surely see that others in their cohort who went through all that we offer are getting faang or faang like offers.
Went through IK, doubled my TC. However the long term engagement is pretty subpar. My cohort channel has been silent for months and there is no engagement with other alums. They could simply place everyone into an alum discord channel but won't. I've not told them about my current position and have not offered to help because there really isn't any reason to engage at this point.
Would you mind to give bit more details? Yoe and levels?
20 YOE, staff SWE, 165k to 390k in about 1 year and change after starting IK, through 2 job changes. Edit: Senior to a faang contract to staff at mdb. Left the 165k job, started IK, got the contract in 2 months, then joined mongodb right about 1 year after starting IK.
Congrats on the offer!
Thanks Soham for the review.
good job ryan on creating a fake company domain for posting on blind.