Pros
I want to preface this by saying I have benefitted from the opportunity QA provided to me. I would not be in the role I am in now if it had not been for my first role that QA got me. However that is not applicable for everyone I know who also trained with me. Also don't believe the positive reviews you see on this site. I've personally witnessed trainers shadowing trainees writing them to increase their score.
Cons
QA promises the world but delivers hardly any of it both during training and on site. Training: They dazzle you with saying you can learn any of the desirable techs and skills demanded in the world of IT. However they fail to mention that you don't actually get to choose what you do. Want to get into data science and ETL? Maybe you'll be lucky. Want to learn about infrastructure and system administration? Roll the dice. The best part is you don't know what you'll be doing or where you're going until after the 4 week grace period when you're then bound to a 12k "training" fee. Let's talk about the fee quickly. I'm not sure how they valued their services at the price. I'm sure providing accommodation in central Manchester isn't cheap but the actually training I got was a joke quite honestly. Most of my last month was spent reading powerpoint presentations that had been prepared. My trainer was apparently ill, funnily enough around the time No Man Sky was originally released. As a result me and my group were left to self teach for a month from slide decks.... Do yourself a favour and just go to Udemy. You'll find more bang for your buck there. And I got off lightly... some of my peers have much worse stories. The culture amongst staff is absolutely toxic. They'll smile and talk to you but they're absolutely more concerned with bringing more people each intake than actually providing a solid training scheme for those already there. What you can learn can change on a dime. My second month I was learning front side development with the assurance I'd be heading to Leeds. One meeting later I'd been told that had fallen through and now I was to become a tester and heading to London and had to join and play catch up with a different intake. Talk about having to adapt. On site: Once you're on site you'll likely be forgotten about.The only time I saw QA take an active approach is when consultants were underperforming or tarnishing their converted reputation. For the rest of us, you're requests will be ignored, lost or simply passed around from person to person in management until you give up. After my training shift to testing I actually ended up in a more devops role. When I requested additionally training via online resources like pluralsight, it took me 8 months to get what I had asked for. So be prepared to battle for anything. In contradiction to my only positive, sometimes it doesn't work out that way. I had some close friends at the academy train to work for probably thee biggest tech company in the world. You're likely reading this from the OS they make. Each of them failed their test to be accepted by said company (mainly due to the inadequacy of the training they received at the academy). Guess where QA sent them? To a call centre where they had to sell software until they found a new client for them. Your salary compared to you peers is laughable. Good luck if you live in the south on this kind of pay. Finally, my tenure at QA finished with being "on the bench". Not on client site but still on their payroll until a new role could be given to me. I was there for three months. In that time QA could only organise two interviews: one for a position in Manchester and another in Bristol. Bare in mind I was baed London. In just one month of actively looking I had 10+ interviews lined up in the capital. One of which I landed. How did QA with all their resources and contacts not manage to find me a job in London in 12 weeks? Your guess is as good as mine. Luckily my 2 years was up by this point and I was let go without having to be billed for 12K. Just do yourself a favour and look for a different company to start your post graduate career.
