Antonio David—or Ajay, as he likes to be called—had his life all planned out: undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, law school at George Washington University, then passing the bar exam and landing at a top law firm job.
“You go for the pretty standard thing and work at a big corporate law firm,” David says, a native of Maryland.
After three years, David liked his colleagues but was unsatisfied with the job itself. He snuck in one coding class, then another. Finally he decided it was time to say goodbye to the legal world and enrolled at Flatiron School.
His wife received a job offer in Atlanta, so they took a leap of faith and moved south. David’s coding skills he learned at Flatiron School helped him land his own job as a developer.
Based in New York, Flatiron School has already helped thousands of students start careers in technology through its online and in-person classes. The company is expanding on its mission with the launch of a new campus in Atlanta located at WeWork Colony Square.
It’s the fifth new Flatiron School location since the Manhattan-based coding academy was acquired last year by WeWork. The others are in Houston, London, Brooklyn, and Washington, D.C.
Classes, which begin on Sept. 17, include the school’s signature 15-week software engineering immersive, along with part-time classes on topics such as introduction to data science and front-end web development.
Noam Mintz, director of expansion at Flatiron School, says Atlanta is the coding academy’s ideal next location.
“Atlanta has become a hotbed urban destination for millennials in the southeast,” said Mintz. “The city is growing, the millennial population is growing, and the number of jobseekers is also growing.”
David says his the knowledge of Ruby on Rails and JavaScript he got from Flatiron School made him feel at home in his new company.
“Atlanta has a budding and growing tech community where a lot of people are excited to start their companies in the city,” David said. “I had an opportunity to grow and didn’t feel out of place even in a developer role.”
David says the community in Atlanta is great for anyone just starting out in the tech field.
“It’s a tight-knit designer and developer community,” says David. “Everybody tends to know each other. If you’re just starting out, so is the tech community.”
David recently started a new job at a larger startup that opened a new Atlanta office. It’s a small team—especially compared to the company’s offices in San Francisco and Paris—but it’s the perfect size for him.
“I do feel like I got a seat on a rocket ship with the Atlanta office,” he said.
