Code Institute Reviews

Code Institute is a chronically mismanaged company. Reading through the past reviews here, this seems to have been plainly evident to everyone but the board of directors. Issues were always papered over or pushed down the road, never fixed, and now the house of cards is crashing down. The company is struggling and mass layoffs are being carried out for the second time in just six months. About 20 staff members were cut in the first round, and indications are that at least 40 more will be cut in this round. All told, that's more than 60% of the company's workforce gone. I find it impossible to lay blame at the feet of anyone other than the board and CEO. The company has time and again failed to diversify their revenue streams sufficiently to account for one or more drying up, and the CEO has been placing all blame on external sources rather than himself, and patronisingly lectures employees on the basics of economics any time they ask for an explanation instead of addressing their actual questions. The arrogance of senior management would be difficult to overstate. In February, the monthly company update meeting, in which the board are meant to communicate the health of the company to staff, consisted almost entirely of the CEO explaining the concept of timeliness to his staff, and that they should profusely apologise to their colleagues if they are even a single minute late for a meeting. The fact that grown adults were being lectured on this is quite frankly shocking, especially given the fact that company was simultaneously nosediving. Unsurprisingly, the members of the senior leadership team who are most responsible for the current situation aren't the ones to suffer, with the vast majority of laid off staff being low level. Unfortunately, the board's cluelessness does not merely extend to finances. It is clear that they have no real clue about technology either. Staff have been officially informed of plans to heavily invest in generative AI, and unambiguously told that this will replace various support and content development roles. The board have made it clear that they see AI as a silver bullet that will help advance the business by replacing various humans, and seem entirely blind to its obvious limitations, or the fact that customers dislike being fobbed off to AI or consuming AI generated content. I simply do not see a future for Code Institute following this round of layoffs, as I do not believe there will be enough skilled staff members remaining to deliver obligations to customers. The primary selling point of Code Institute's content was dedicated technical support provided by experts; with all these experts being let go, the company has no edge. They are not replaceable by AI, despite what management seem to think.

I wasn't going to bother writing a review for Code Institute until I saw that they've now started trying to inflate their Glassdoor rating. Two generic positive reviews left on the exact same day - not suspicious at all. This is a tactic I've seen time and again during my tenure at Code Institute: don't fix the issues mentioned in negative reviews, just try to bury them with positive reviews. Don't be surprised if you see more positive reviews popping up here in the coming days, all from ex-staff or managers who haven't had their livelihoods uprooted by recent layoffs. Management have clearly scraped through the bottom of the barrel trying to find people still willing to speak highly of them. One of them doesn't even work for the company any more - the fact that they couldn't find enough current staff members to promote the company should tell you everything you need to know about what it's like to work there. That said, I want to rebut the points listed in the "In Transition & Evolving" review, because it's so deliberately misleading that it's an insult to every employee who was laid off, and is the entire reason I have chosen to bother reviewing Code Institute. I also want to try to warn off anyone thinking about working for this awful company. The euphemisms "In Transition" and "recent restructure" mean mass layoffs. Not just one round of mass layoffs. Two. In the space of six months. The review states that the Senior Leadership Team has nearly halved in size. Not a single member of the board, nor the CEO has been affected by layoffs. As for the Senior Leadership Team, the company has never made it clear who constitutes this team. The argument here is purely one of semantics - shuffling around senior roles and claiming that a team has shrunk in size is not the same as holding the people whose poor decisions led to layoffs accountable. When the CEO and those in charge of B2G Sales have been replaced by competent people who understand the market, then you can make this argument without it seeming disingenuous. The review also states that AI driving the recent restructure is a misconception. This is an outright lie. I know this because I was in a meeting with the CEO when he told us that the company would be restructuring due to AI. To get the timeline straight here: - In December 2024, a round of finance driven layoffs happened. - In April 2024, the CEO announced that the company was planning on shifting to an AI powered LMS, and that roles would be lost because of this. - Then in May, a second round of finance driven layoffs were announced. Just because the AI related layoffs were folded into the second round of finance layoffs, doesn't mean that employees weren't told that the company would be replacing several of them with AI. "The business lost a major multi million euro contract." This is the cause of the second round of layoffs. The company put all of its funding eggs in one basket, and it fell through. What about the first round of layoffs from December. Why not mention that one too? It's because you want to hide the fact that the exact same thing happened - the company relied disproportionately on one source for funding, and said source dried up. Making a mistake once is understandable, but making the same mistake twice is incompetence. The reviewer has deliberately omitted this fact to try to make it seem like it wasn't management's fault. "Major system change is currently underway." Yes, to an AI powered LMS. The one the reviewer lied about. The one the CEO told staff members would replace several of their jobs. And lo and behold, several student facing teams have been removed as a result. Tutoring is completely gone. Student Care has been decimated. AI bots have been introduced for both of these departments. That's most of the points in the Cons covered, but the reviewer is misleading in the Pros too. "Passionate colleagues who care" - they used to be. Now they're mostly looking for the door. You're going to see a lot of job opportunities opening at Code Institute soon. The people who weren't laid off are now starting to secure new jobs and are leaving. It will just be a company of managers and yes men soon. "Flexible hours" - the company's flexi policy allows employees to start at either 8am, 9am, or 10am. It's the absolute bare minimum required for them to be able to say they have a flexible hours policy. "New leadership & management" - the reviewer has already stated that the leadership team has halved in size, but here they're saying there's new leadership. Which is it? As I said above, it's all just semantics. The current senior leadership are yes men who won't challenge the CEO on his bad decisions, and will leave fawning and misleading Glassdoor reviews when asked. "real impact helping learners" - maybe, before it was decided that AI could perform these duties better than humans. "scope to take ownership and influence change" - speaking of AI, did it write this. It's so generic it has no meaning. And for good measure, the Advice for Management: "Keep leaning into transparency" - what transparency? As mentioned, I don't even know who constitutes the "senior leadership team" - only those on it seem to know. Also, management have not communicated with staff once since the recent layoffs were announced. That's three months of radio silence. Where's the transparency in that? As I said, I had no intention of wasting time reviewing Code Institute as the other recent reviews here captured the issues with the company quite well. But the blatant falsehoods in the recent positive review needed to be addressed. It's bad enough to nosedive a company so badly you have to lay off about half of your staff, but it's downright disgusting to try to convince people that it was all part of a grand scheme to "restructure" and "transition." If you have even the tiniest shred of self-respect, do not work for Code Institute. It's in a death spiral and is flailing around, looking to grab onto anyone it can pull down with it. I'm looking for the door atm.