Xccelerated Arvostelua 

It was as great experience overall, not only to improve my Data Engineering skills, and position myself in the European market, having an opportunity to work for a good company after the program. But, also to meet new people, making friends, and having some fun also.

The trainers are very knowledgeable and the courses are in depth, which was very helpful for me.

Because of Xccelerated, I now work at a great company. What was really important in my development, is that in each training the focus is on the "why" of solutions, whereas at work, you mostly focus on the how or what. There was a broad scala of topics that were covered, and the different trainers had a lot of knowledge on those topics. All of this helped me to gain invaluable experience that will help my in my career.

Some other bonuses are the friends I've made along the way and free snacks

The interviews and the assessment were really strange.
1. The assessment involved designing a full data engineering solution for a hypothetical scenario. However, the task description was unclear regarding the expected functionality, and the figures provided were poorly explained.
2. The evaluation process for the assessment lacked interaction and clear expectations from the reviewer. Essentially, they seemed to expect much more, even though the solution worked as intended.
3. The feedback received is absolutely useless.
Overall, this company doesn’t make much sense. They claim to provide training - on topics they already expect you to know, which is absurd. The reviewers appeared to be trained only for their own assessment but didn’t seem very experienced with the actual tools. Their training program is quite limited, and the salaries are extremely low (around 50k/year max) considering how much they ask for.
To me, this company seems rather shady, and I believe they’re taking advantage of the people they hire through these processes.
Also, I think all the good reviews they have are fake since they are all from the same period.

I crossed Europe to go work for them. I initially refused and they offered me more money and a place to stay for the first month. They told me they were sure they had clients for me to work with. When I came there there was no client. I stayed idle one month and then they fired me. And this same experience happened before, to another person I met while I was there.

The person who was fired before me warned me of this. In fact I spent the trial period interviewing for other jobs knowing the chances of being fired at the end of the month were getting higher and higher. During the time I was offered their guesthouse, instead of looking for a house to stay (as I was supposed to) I had to look for another job.

When I started my month there nobody explained anything. The manager gave a quick overview but nothing more. For example, I was told there was a portal for time report but they never worried to tell me how to log in and change hours. I had to ask my peers.
They forgot to add me to their channel on Basecamp, so I was not aware of their communications. I found out about the existence of this channel just one week before being fired.

Their IT is probably on low budget. I asked to have some headphones for the interviews but I was told to use my own.

In my opinion the way xccelerated works is that they hire people even if they are not sure they have a project for them. If they manage to get you a client, then you're fine. If not, you're fired at the end of the probation period. And they hire someone else, to be ready just in case they find a client.

I think they have a tendency to lie and thus can hardly be trusted. Here are some examples:
- They told me they had a client for me ("especially in my case because I had a skill with an AWS service that not many people had") but they didn't. In fact, I never actually interviewed with any client
- During the hiring interview they told me they did not offer support for relocation. After I refused their offer and raised some concerns about the relocation they told me they would offer me a guesthouse to stay for the first month. They told me it was actually available for just 3 weeks but they would pay me a hotel for the other week. However they never booked the hotel. So they lied about the relocation support, because they actually have a guesthouse. And they lied about covering the expenses of the week that the guesthouse was not available
- They told me they would pay a certain realtor company to find me a house. But they were never interested in how my house search was going. Which makes me think they never planned on paying the agent. They probably just said that to make me accept their offer. Of course they also knew they were going to fire me...so why bother?

If they hadn't fired me, I would have resigned as soon as I had found another job

These of course are just some facts about my personal experience with them and my opinions and thoughts about it. If you do have a client it can be a nice experience

Good luck in case you already accepted an offer from them

The training had excellent (5 star) content. The trainers - Mahlia and Matthijs - did an amazing job. I liked the balance between soft and hard skills. The group had good vibes and I enjoyed the year very much. Without Xccelerated I would not be working where I am today: it accelerated my career.

Points of improvement:
- Some comeback days were less structured. Especially those right after the training month.
- Slightly outside your circle of influence: my peers (not me) did not have an assignment at the beginning or an assignment with bad (learning) environment. If that could be improved, that would be great.

I've made very good and competative/motivated friends, with whom it was easy to share knowledge and beers. We've had lots of fun events, from bouldering and paintball, to giving presentations in Hilversum (Xebia office), or having Christmas parties.

Working at one of Xccelerated partners gave me enough room to learn and pick up the art of Data Engineering, as I just finished my Software Engineering study. Experts from GoDataDriven and Xccelerated were always ready to show best practices. And we had a "return day" at wednesdays, where we studied, and made assignments.

Amazing program, amazing people. Learned a lot! Highly recommend!

My first company in Netherland! Love every moment of it!
I miss it & I make many new friends there! lovely friends!
We still miss Mahlia!

I joined their program in the first year. The trainers are great and even with already some work experience learned an immense deal here. Worked for KLM on 3 cool projects, Would definitely recommend!