Co-working giant WeWork is opening its Flatiron School in San Francisco, a coding school that refunds tuition if students don’t get jobs. The school will initially open in a WeWork location at 995 Market St. and move to a permanent location at 1455 Market St. as part of a new WeWork co-working space. WeWork has grown to be one of San Francisco’s largest office tenants and has also moved into the education, retail and housing sectors. In New York, the company also operates WeGrow, for preschool to fifth-grade students, with annual fees from $22,000 to $42,000. WeWork bought Flatiron School in 2017, part of a broad acquisition spree that has also included the event-focused social network Meetup and the software company Teem. The school has 10 other locations around the U.S. and in London. “It just made clear sense that the bay was a place we needed to come,” said Kunal Dalal, Flatiron campus director in San Francisco. He said the school’s advantages over competitors are its global presence and its integration with WeWork. “Our students are part of the WeWork network,” Dalal said. “We know, living in the bay, networking is everything. These companies are always looking for developers, looking for skills. Ideally, that sets us up.” Tuition is $17,000, but Flatiron School offers full refunds if graduating students don’t find a job within 180 days of searching. Other coding schools have offered similar deals. Lambda, a nine-month San Francisco school, has no up-front tuition but requires students to pay 17% of their future income over two years, up to $30,000. “Boot camps aren’t accredited, so we still determine a boot camp’s quality by its ability to get graduates jobs. Job guarantees are certainly a trend, because schools like Flatiron School are putting their money where their mouth is,” said Liz Eggleston, co-founder of Course Report, which tracks coding schools. About 15% of schools offer a job guarantee or a refund, she said. Dalal, a former high school teacher, said Flatiron School has a 97% job placement rate in New York, boosted by the strong economy. Flatiron School students have gotten jobs at Apple, Stitch Fix, Square, Google and other tech companies, he said. San Francisco classes will start in September. Three programs are available: 15-week software engineering classes, 15-week data science classes and a 24-week user interface design class. The entire school has room for around 300 students and is inside the former Bank of America vault space of the building. The building also houses the headquarters of tech giants Uber and Square. “Accessibility was really important for us: being on BART lines, being near companies,” said Dalal. The classes each will have 20 students, one instructor and two coaches. Students will learn the programming languages Ruby, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, React and Node, he said. WeWork filed for an initial public offering in April. Last year, it lost $1.9 billion with revenue of $1.8 billion as it continued expanding with co-working offices around the world. Roland Li is a Chronicle staff writer. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf
San Francisco is opening a branch of Flatiron in WeWork and plans to offer students a refund if they fail to get a job within 1455 of completing a coding course at the boot camp. The cost of a course at Flatiron is $ 17,000 and deals offering refunds are not uncommon since boot camps are not accredited and are judged on the ability of graduates to get a job. The school will open in WeWork ’s office at 995 Market Street , moving to 1455 995 Market Street when the company opens a co-working location there.